Brian Wong

Entrepreneur

I want to change the world.

Greplin, Airbnb, About.me, Context Logic, Crowdbooster, Hipmunk, Kickstarter

Fundraising is both frustrating and rewarding. But in all seriousness, everything along the journey is rewarding. What's frustrating is not doing it all soon enough.

Hubris.

Most of what you expect is half of what actually happens.
Be ready to use your gut. A lot.
Vision and direction is crucial early on.

Brian is the founder of kiip (pronounced "keep"), a stealth startup focused on mobile in-game advertising, backed by True Ventures. Very recently, Techcrunch and the Wall Street Journal called him the "youngest person to ever receive funding by a venture capital firm". Last year, at only 18-years-old, he was an early Bachelors of Commerce graduate from the University of British Columbia, after skipping four grades in elementary and high school.  Brian speaks around the world advocating youth entrepreneurship, while focusing on topics like youth targeted marketing, mobile marketing, and mobile gaming with social game dynamics. He has spent much of his time in Asia and Latin America working closely with young entrepreneurs and high-growth tech startups. He was recently lauded in Mashable as one of "The Top 5 Young Entrepreneurs to Watch", and the Vancouver Sun called him "a budding internet visionary". He was also recently a recipient of the Top 20 Under 20 awards in all of Canada, and the Impact Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. He is also the youngest charter member of the C100, an invitation only Silicon Valley based organization of top Canadian entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists. Before starting kiip, Brian was responsible for key publisher and tech partnerships at the social news website Digg.com. He also launched the Digg Android mobile app, adding to the company's rising mobile presence. He began his career after University by creating the world's first categorized Twitter discovery tool: Followformation.com. Followformation was touted as one of the best Twitter user discovery tools in Mashable, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, and more.