Colin Huang belongs to a rarefied cohort of Chinese entrepreneurs who launched their careers in Silicon Valley and then returned home to start successful tech companies. Huang, an ex-Google engineer who worked on early search algorithms for e-commerce, is already on his fourth and most ambitious startup.
Pinduoduo, or PDD, is a kind of Facebook-Groupon mashup that Huang believes could revolutionize e-commerce. PDD just raised more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter, valuing the company at more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) less than two years after its founding. Huang, featured in the latest episode of the Decrypted podcast (subscribe here), is one reason China has created as many $1 billion startups this year as the U.S.
