Meet Colin Huang, who just stepped down as CEO of $100 billion Pinduoduo and whose wealth exploded by $25 billion in 2020

Colin Huang, Pinduoduo CEO Visual China Group/Getty Images

Colin Huang, ” the 40-year-old creator of e commerce Pinduoduo, is currently China’s third-richest individual.
Huang on July 1 stepped down as chief executive of Pinduoduo, which has managed to rack up a market cap of over $100 billion in less than five years.
Pinduoduo is a online marketplace that connects sellers and buyers also has a market value of $101 billion — over Uber or even Sony. Huang, who possesses 29.4% of the company, is currently worth over $40 billion.
Huang’s first occupation was at Google. He stepped in 2007, and has been a serial entrepreneur.
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Colin Huang is not a household name out of China, but he’s a serious challenger to Alibaba creator Jack Ma and Tencent creator and CEO Pony Ma to the title of China’s richest man.

Huang has just stepped down as the first executive of Pinduoduo, a online marketplace. It is popular in China and also has a market cap of over $100 billion, giving it a much higher valuation than Uber or even Sony.

Folks purchase items on Pinduoduo such as iPhones at sale cost while playing matches, and even rope from friends to”group-buy” grocery store at enormous discounts. Pinduoduo requires a little commission and fees sellers to promote their merchandise but does not hold any stock.

Huang, 40, launched the company. It has grown ever since, also recorded in July 2018.

Huang’s luck has exploded as. His net worth is up by roughly $25 billion in 2020, also shares in Pinduoduo climbed to an all-time high of $87.58 on the Nasdaq on June 19.

On June 21, Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Index showed Huang, worth $45.4 billion, briefly surpassing Alibaba’s Jack Ma, worth $43.9 billion, to become China’s second-richest man after Tencent’s Pony Ma. Huang soon slipped back into third place and currently he is 23rd on the global Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Keep reading to learn more about the life of Pinduoduo billionaire Colin Huang.

Huang came from humble beginnings, and a math Olympiad changed his life

Huang was born in 1980 to factory worker parents on the outskirts of Hangzhou, a city in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang. It’s also where Alibaba is based.

Huang has detailed some aspects of his life in a now-suspended Medium blog.

In one post, he wrote that he went to an “ordinary” elementary school, but after he won a prize in a math Olympiad his teacher asked him to take an admission test for the highly selective Hangzhou Foreign Language School (HFLS).

He gained a place, but initially didn’t want to go as he thought the school focused on foreign languages. “I wished to attend a school strong in Math, Physics and Chemistry,” wrote Huang.

“Later our chief called me and persuaded me to go. In retrospect, [thank] goodness that I opted to go to HFLS.”

His secondary school was renowned for its liberal approach. “We had been subjected to the western culture and influence much earlier, deeper and to a greater extent. A lot of us are somewhat more liberal compared to our peers in other colleges,” Huang said.

In the late 1990s, Huang was one of relatively few young Chinese people with internet access and international friends

At 18, Huang started studying computer science at the prestigious Zhejiang University. In his freshman year, he was selected as a fellow at the Melton Foundation, established by VeriFone founder Bill Melton.

The foundation selected young students from emerging regions around the globe. Each fellow was given a computer and internet data so they could browse the web and message other fellows. They could also travel to a member country each year. Huang credits this experience for giving him a more international mindset than most people in China.

But Huang has one big regret about his youth

Although Huang feels”very lucky” about how he was educated and the opportunities he enjoyed, describing himself as a”phoenix soaring out of a chicken coop”, he has one major regret.

“I was overly goal-oriented and wasted too much time trying to be number one in course and a fantastic student,” wrote Huang. He added that he wished he’d spent more time being rebellious, naughty, and”purely enjoying childhood “

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