Raghav

Jack Wong : CEO & Founder of Meizu; A company Making ‘The’ Futuristic Phones

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

The race about whom beats who, in the Smartphone industry is on since over a decade now, and there seem to be mixed answers about who, actually, is the best. As of now, there stands a number of companies that are delivering their best services, to increase their consumer base. Though Google, Apple and One Plus are some of the companies which are at the focus of the limelight, there are some other companies which are equally good and deliver the newest of the technologies remaining underground. There is no doubt that these companies provide cost-effective services and are efficient in their work. Meizu is one such company, that is beyond this era and is delivering future based phones. The founder and the CEO of the company, Jack Wong, shares a story that glorifies the fact that success doesn’t need a degree.

Jack was born on February 13, 1976, in Meixian, Meizhou, Guangdong Province in China. Since his childhood, Jack was very much into electronics and electronic devices. He was 16 when he got expelled from high school. So, due to this reason, he could not attend college and doesn’t have a degree.

Jack started working as a pier porter but was not satisfied with his job, because he wanted to work in the electronics industry. With this mindset, Jack moved to Shenzhen, the hub to electronics at that time. Starting from there, he, joined as the General Manager at ‘Argean’. The company focused on manufacturing speakers and MP3 players. Jack looked forward to innovative products and induced the systems with high battery and more storages.

It was mid-2002 when he decided to leave Argean, because of the divergences within the company, which made the environment unhealthy. He, at that time, had gained plenty of experiences in making music devices. At the end of 2002, Jack decided to invest 100,000 RMB to start a new company, naming it ‘Meizu’.

The first product of the company was the MP3 players. The company focused on the quality of work, rather than on the design. The M6 player series had immense quality but had a poor design. But they soon realized the importance of design and started working on it, to raise their level for the competition.

Jack, being the CEO, wanted to bring more success to the company. The experience that he had, he applied it all in the company’s working, that gained him notable sales in 2006, which was recorded to be more than 10 billion Yuan. Meizu stepped up in the game when they launched their first smartphone, Meizu M8. The phone had a touch screen of 3.4”, Windows CE 6.0 OS, and a RAM of 256 MB.

It was not until three years when they launched their next device, and this time, the device was based on Android OS, i.e. Android 2.3, with a 3.5” screen and QHD resolution.

Since then, the Meizu phones have become very popular based on their quality. It has rivalled many of the top-notch devices having lost and won the races. In recent times, the company has launched Meizu ‘Zero’ which has become the first ever smartphone device with no physical buttons. These phones are pressure sensitive and come with a wireless charger, having no volume and power buttons. The device hails no sim tray, which also, makes ‘Meizu’ the first company to introduce the concept of ‘E-sim’. The international availability of those phones, though is not confirmed yet.

“Jack prefers to be less sociable. He hasn’t given a single interview since entering the industry,” one of his co-workers said. However, Jack runs a Meizu forum, as the company is a user feedback based company and involve all the requirements that users wish to see in their devices.

Jack Wong, also known as Huang Zhang, like other successful drop-out entrepreneurs, has demonstrated another example to us that we don’t need any kind of professional qualification to put ourselves forth and prove ourselves. Knowledge comes from experience, and acquiring it can only be possible if you show the true passion towards it. Jack, gives this world the media and the ability to feel what the future may look like, by putting it in your own hands.

Raghav

Raghav is a student and a content writer. He loves to write about emerging as well as the existing technologies around and about the ones who bring them to you. Music is the other passion that Raghav processes. It is like the fuel to his body. He is also in writing songs and poems. He believes that life is short, so live the best out of what you have got. Raghav considers himself a sci-fi guy, having stories and tech all around in his head, all the time.

Greg Tseng : The Co-Founder of Tagged, A Site Bringing People Together

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

It has always been said that the human being is a social animal. And, that is because only humans are capable of interacting with its surroundings and other creatures around him. Humans are able to make friends, besides their families. But making new friends is something that is both challenging and difficult. But, there are many, who even have a problem in starting a conversation and find friends, with whom they are comfortable with. But, for making this challenging task simple enough, Greg Tseng built such a site, named ‘Tagged.com’, which allows you to see who’s around you.

Tagged.com can be defined as a social discovery site. A site where you can view, talk, share tags and also share virtual gifts with people around you. Tagged was launched in 2004, by Harvard masterminds Greg Tseng and Johann Scheiler-Smith, who were science class buddies since class 7th. They both wanted Tagged to be different from all other social networking sites out there, mainly from Facebook.

greg tseng — Image Source: gettyimages.com

To make their website stand out, apart from other, Greg and Johann targeted the audience of age group between 13 and 19. Hence, the site was set up for teens at first. The design and the concept were such that users could meet other people in a short period of time. In October 2006, Tagged expanded its user base. Now, the network was not just for teens only, it was open for all the age groups. The move went as it was planned. Tagged, eventually, saw an increase in the number of its user (at that time) by having more than 80 million users registered, and 7 billion views on the page per month.

But, Tagged also attracted some negative publicity towards itself. In 2009, Tagged was on the verge of getting sacked due to ‘deceptive email marketing and invasion of privacy’. In the same year, Time Magazine’s journalist Sean Gregory mentioned Tagged as the ‘The World’s Most Annoying Website!’ During that time period, Tagged paid an approximate of $1.4 million to settle down all the lawsuits that were against it, and soon after that, inherited new privacy policies.

After having a smooth sail for years, Tagged again started drawing criticisms from the users about the inappropriate content that was on the site. So, following the protocols, Tagged limited its services to users who were above 18, from February 2014.

Tagged has a simple sign-up process for a free account. A profile is built with all of the key features such as public profile and a display profile. Tagged shows you people around you in accordance with the similarity of interests which is surely a standout from Facebook which restricts you among the people you know. The site also has a gold membership which is VIP status with a monthly fee. The VIP membership, however, allows you to see who visited your profile.

The site also has games on it, which is Greg Tseng’s “hi5’s” work. He built this game studio during the development of the website. On the Tagged.com, people can collect pets (Other Users) and can share virtual gifts with each other.

Alongside this, Greg also developed flyingchickens.com and CrushLink. In 2015, he stepped down as the CEO of the company. “I initiated it and it’s happening the way I want”, he said, when asked about why he was leaving the post. Tagged has projected more than $45 million in revenues, and seek a $1 billion valuation IPO. The company also changed its name to If(we). Greg’s own net worth is around $25 million.

The story of Greg Tseng shows that to stand apart, you must have new ideas and also, that handing responsibilities to others after a certain period of time is required, so as to keep rolling new ideas and innovations. The ex-CEO of Tagged is someone to learn from.

Raghav

Paul Forster : The Man On The Job To Provide You Jobs

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

In this era, jobs are hard to find. Also, job hunting stands as a headache for a lot of working professionals, who want to change or start something new for the better. But every problem has its own solution, and when it comes to job hunting or searching, Indeed is there to find the ‘perfect job’ you seek.

Indeed is American employment search engine that works at a global level. In simpler words, you can refer to it as the ‘Google’ of job searching. Indeed was founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan, in November 2004, and Paul shares an interesting story about how he came forth with the idea of making the biggest job searching site of all time.

Paul was born in Buckinghamshire, England. He did his M.Sc. from Oxford University, followed by an M.A. from Cambridge University, and an MBA from INSEAD. After completing his education, he started looking for a job and ended up working at many. It was his dream to start his own business and was not short of ideas, but wanted to work on something that troubled him the most. In 1988, he worked for International France Corporation, Washington, in the Human resources department. That’s when he realized that there was no job site that focused on providing jobs for the finance professionals.

He discussed this idea with his friend Rony Kahan. They both co-founded Jobsinthemoney.com. It did not take long when the site became a great hit because it, specifically, looked upon the ‘finance department’ of the industry. Jobsinthemoney was bought by eFinancialCareers which is a British Job site.

The next thing that Paul wanted to do was to start a new business. Soon after, with all the creative ideas and knowledge in his head, in November 2004, he launched ‘Indeed’, the first job search engine. In 2005, Indeed launched a beta version of pay-per-click job advertisement network which was similar to that of Google’s idea in 2004. Its working is also very much similar to Google’s. The site drew investments of only $5 million from Union Square Venture, The New York Times and Allen & Company. Indeed is headquartered in Austin (Texas) and Stamford (Connecticut).

Once again, Paul’s idea became a hit as the company became profitable in 2007. Indeed was selected by ‘Time Magazine’ as one of the top 10 websites in 2007 and one of the best 50 websites by ‘PC World’. It also won Weddle’s Users’ Choice Award in 2008 and was named the best job hunting site by Job-hunt.org.

The website’s working is done by aggregating job listings from thousands of websites, job boards, staffing firms, associations and company career pages. The site indexes your content for free but if an employer would want to come up on the searches on the site, Indeed takes a specific amount of payment. It also attracts more traffic to the company site which stands fruitful for both Indeed and the employer company.

Paul, when asked in an interview about “what tool Indeed is”, replied, “We want job seekers to find exactly the right jobs that fit their skills and interests. Our proprietary search algorithm is very effective at doing this with just a few keywords and the location of the job seeker. Users may refine their searches by job title, company name, location and other criteria; and more sophisticated users may conduct advanced queries. Job seekers can easily save their searches by email alert or RSS feed to receive new jobs matching their criteria. They can also set up a ‘My Indeed Account’ to track their job searches. This allows them to save jobs, add notes to jobs and manage their job alerts. These are great ways for both active and passive candidates to track and apply for jobs they are interested in.”

In 2012, the company who ran on just a $5 million funding was sold to Japan’s Recruit Co. Ltd., by the cost of nearly between $750 million to $1 billion, which came as a surprise. The company contributes more than 94% in GDP. The yearly revenues vary between $2 to $5 billion.

The site surpassed Monster.com in traffic job website. As of now, Indeed is the number 1 job site, with more than 250 million visits per month. The site is working in 60 countries and runs in 28 languages. There is a total of 120 million resumes and more than 100 million ratings in and about the site. An approximate of 10 jobs are added per second globally. Indeed has more than 7400 worldwide employees. The site holds the account for more than 500 million salaries which are the greatest number for any industry.

Paul stepped down from the position of CEO of the company in 2012, and at present, is a senior advisor in the company itself. He keeps on investing in technology products and startups that match the meet of the future.

The story of Indeed and Paul Forster is something that tells us that sometimes, the problem itself has the solution which can be easily found if one thinks with a calm and composed mind. Paul Forster, Founder of Indeed, indeed created a site that helps you in the biggest aspects of your life, i.e. job hunting, making it easier with the simplicity and transparency it holds.

Raghav

Robert E. Kahn: American Computer Scientist & the Co-inventor of Internet

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

What is the thing in this modern world you cannot live without? Well, without any guesses it would be internet and why? Because it’s simply irresistible! At present, no one can imagine a world without the internet because it has become an integrated part of our lives. Everything we tend to do, normally, at first we check about it on the internet, so that nothing goes wrong. The Internet has got the answer for literally everything! It is no more a thing for the business only, but it has also entered into the personal lives of people. From the brightest of the ideas to the darkest of things, from social media to entertainment, it is everywhere. The Internet carries information, business, entertainment, and what not. In today’s era, almost everyone has access to the internet.

But the internet was not always a posh thing. It had its own origin, and it was Robert Elliot Kahn, who defined its origin. He is the mastermind who made our lives easier by bringing the internet into our lives. The story of Robert though looks simple but is the most inspiring one, as it shows that the knowledge, when contained properly can help one change billions of lives, as he did.

Robert Elliot Kahn was born on December 23, 1938, Brooklyn, New York, US. He was born in a Jewish family. He did a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from New York’s City College. For his higher studies, he went on to Princeton University and received a master’s degree, in 1962, and completed a PhD, in 1964.

Kahn started working in Bell Laboratories. He also gave service as an assistant professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for two years, from 1964 to 1966. Later, he joined Bolt Beranek & Newman (BB&N) as a senior scientist. BB&N was an engineering consulting firm. It was his joining of BB&N that where demonstrated the ARPANET by connecting 20 different computers at the International Computer Communication Conference.

ARPANET, the name derived from its sponsors DARPA was basically a different kind of project. ARPANET stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPANET is considered as the predecessor to the internet. It basically was a satellite packet network project. In BB&N, he was in the group that designed Interface Message Processor, which was mediate between the network and the host computers, of the institution. He further went on and organized an International Conference on Computer Communication. This also stood out as ARPANET’s public debut.

IIn 1972, Kahn left BB&N and joined DARPA’s IPTO (Information Processing Techniques Office). While working at DARPA, he faced and solved problems about the deployment of packet switching technology. However, the real problem was connecting the military network. That’s where ‘internet’ came into being and got its name, Internet- the network of networks.

In 1973, Kahn was joined by Vint Cerf, and the two started working together on the Internet’s Technical Protocol. The protocol is the basis of internet’s architect, or we can say, is the foundation of the internet. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol) are the primary structures of the internet, which permits a computer to enter a certain network.

Alongside internet, he also contributed to the US government’s Strategic Computing Initiative and coined the term ‘National Information Infrastructure’.

In 1985, he left ITPO, and joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a non-profit organization in Reston, Virginia, as the president, in 1986.

Robert was an achiever. He won many awards which included U.S. National Medal of technology presented by former President Bill Clinton, in Dec 1997, ACM Alan M. Tuning award in 2004 (biggest award in Computer Science) and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, presented by former President George Bush.

The Founder of the Internet, Robert E. Kahn’s (aka Bob Kahn) story shows us that success doesn’t come overnight and it takes patience and hard work. Your work is the baby steps to success. We should never constraint ourselves just because we don’t see results just after.

Robert is an inspiration to the whole world.

Raghav

Adam Neumann : The CEO & Co-founder of WeWork

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

Startups have become a trend these days. Every day we hear about several new innovative ideas, which are brought up in the market, with a pure desire to succeed. The masterminds see the industry as an empty canvas, on which, they want to paint with their own colours. They don’t want to work under some other person’s rules, but they aspire to make their own set of rules.

If you are also a startup genius, there are always 3 questions roaming around in your head. First, ‘Where to get the funding from?’, second, ‘Where to get the workforce from?’ and third, ‘If I get the workforce, from where to start working?’ Alongside, you also need the information and the contacts to get in the community of independent business. Well, the first question depends on your hard work, but when it comes to the second and the third questions, WeWork will get the job done, because Adam Neumann, the co-founder of the company, does everything to provide you with the best of everything.

Adam Neumann, the CEO and co-founder of WeWork, was born in Israel, in 1979. He was seven when his parents’ relationship came to an end, and they got divorced. His mother specialised in medical science and moved to the U.S., in 1986. Adam and his sister Adi also moved with her to the United States. After 4 years, the family shifted back to Israel and settled in Kibbutz Nir Am. Adam joined the Israel Navy and served as an officer, for 5 years. As his sister was pursuing a career in modelling, in New York City, she became the reason for him to move to the city after his service in the Israel Navy.

He then graduated from Brauch College, New York. He met Miguel Mckelvy through a mutual friend, and that’s when things took a turn. They both had many similar thoughts about connecting companies to each other and to build a community.

In 2008, they both co-founded Greendesk, in Brooklyn. Greendesk still continues to operate and provides eco-friendly office spaces for any business need, no matter if you are a team or an individual. After Greendesk, Adam switched and started to run a business, which made baby overalls. In 2010, both Adam and Miguel came up with another idea, ‘WeWork’.

When asked about the basic need and the idea of WeWork, Adam said “The truth behind WeWork is that we never saw co-working spaces. I owned a baby clothing business, and there was an empty building. I talked to Miguel. We talked about different things we could do to make that building better. And when we actually got to talking about it, I said that this is my third business, it’s a very difficult thing to start a new business, and if we could create an environment, where entrepreneurs and small businesses can come in, have a space, share services, and help each other to be more successful, then it would be a great product.”

First network lab that WeWork set up was SoHo, New York, in 2011. Soon, the company grew. As of now, it has more than 10 million sq. ft of real estate! It has drawn some big money investments from ‘Goldman Sachs’ and ‘Softbank’. WeWork has more than 5000 employees. Working at WeWork means that you’ll get to play an arcade room and enjoy the free beer!

The company has established its offices in more than 77 cities, in 23 countries, like India, Germany, France, Spain, UK. It has helped more than 20,000 companies, including big names, like Microsoft, Spotify, Facebook, Starbucks, Pinterest etc. It has also given a push-start to startups like Meetup, Consumer, Hack Hands etc.

In January 2019, WeWork was rebranded as The We Company. The corporation is giving a tough competition to real-time Real Estate. It is the biggest property holder in Manhattan (5.3 million sq. ft). Neumann himself has a worth of $4.1 billion (Reported by Forbes) with his company valued at more than $20 billion.

Adam Neumann and his company exhibit the value, a community can hold. It gives a vivid message that a team is better than you standing alone. When problems are tackled by teams, it brings a sense of unity and a better understanding. By being in the community, you are surrounded by geniuses and masterminds, very much available to lend you help whenever you need. Adam, clearly brought a more than needed product into the market to make your offices a better place and ‘you’ a part of the community in easy ways.

Raghav

Eric S. Yuan : CEO & Founder of Zoom Video Communications, ‘A Service That Connects People’

Founder, Social media, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

In this fast running world where problems require an instant solution, face to face interactions are hard to get. At this time, people require a connection, which they can use, to interact with each other, without covering the actual distances between them. Also, many video calling apps in the software market doesn’t allow to connect more than 4 or 6 people at the same time. Eric S. Yuan also had faced the same problem, but instead of resenting over it, he stepped up and worked hard to give this industry ‘Zoom’.

Since his college days, Yuan had dreamt about building a communication platform that covered the distances between the people without even travelling. That’s when Zoom’s idea popped up in Yuan’s mind while he was still in his freshman year of college. And, in 2011, he founded Zoom. Zoom is a company that provides remote conferencing services using cloud computing. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States and the software it brings, gives you the advantage of the combined video conferencing, online meetings chats and mobile collaborations.

Eric S Yuan — Image Source: bmmagazine.co

While in college, Eric’s girlfriend (now wife) lived at a place quite distant from his place. Whenever he wanted to meet her, he used to take excruciating 10-hour train rides. He wished that he could build a solution to this problem through which his girlfriend and he could stay connected, even without being together, physically. He wanted that he could visit her anytime without any travelling.

Eric always said that it was his dream to come to the United States and achieve something big due to his interest, he had grown in the new technology ‘Internet’ that was blooming at that time. At the time, when he applied for the Visa for the US, he got his application rejected a few times. He continuously applied for nine times over the course of 2 years. And after his ninth try, he was finally granted one.

“When I came to America, I did not even speak English, but I knew that I could write codes. I knew I had to work very hard, and so did I. Also, I’m very paranoid so I say to myself, I have to work harder’. Working hard, that is the only thing I know better than my competitor”, says Eric recalling his old days and his mantra of success.

In 1997, Eric came to the Silicon Valley and joined WebEx. WebEx was real time, and it had only a dozen employees. After Yuan’s joining, the company grew very quickly and went public in no time. In 2007, WebEx was sold to Cisco. He was appointed as the Vice President of Cisco and the in-charge of collaborations software.

At Cisco, he did consumer interactions directly with consumers. He found out that many of the consumers were not happy either with Cisco or WebEx. Eric knew that this was the time to do something big that he always dreamt of, something during his college times. He left Cisco and alongside geared up a team of 40 engineers, and came up with ‘Zoom’ in 2011.

After the release, Zoom frew to about a thousand users, and the numbers kept on growing with every update release. As of now, Zoom can process 1000 participants in a single video conferencing call. After being in the market for 5-6 years, it registered more than 20 Billion annualized meeting minutes.

Eric believes that keeping customers happy is something which runs a company. If the customers are not happy, the company will be long gone. Zoom was ranked 18 in the Forbes Cloud 100. Also, Eric was ranked number 1 in the top CEO by Glassdoor based on approval ratings from the employee reviews. Eric got an astonishing 99% approval showing that how he keeps his employees happy too.

He wishes that he could open his company a lot before, but he is still happy with his success. He thrives to do hard work. When asked upon start-ups, he said, “The journey is long and tough, but one must not be afraid to start. One should be vulnerable to taking risks. Also, find investors who want to invest in you, not only in your business”.

Eric S. Yuan, the CEO and Founder of Zoom Video Communications, has a story that motivates and says out loud that hardships are inevitable and without them, no one can reach the success they desire. Eric is an inspiring leader, leading his team to the best to provide the best.

Raghav

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