Chinese entrepreneur & ex-Google engineer Colin Huang builds $1.5b startup

Chinese entrepreneur & ex-Google engineer Colin Huang builds $1.5b startup

Colin Huang, chief executive officer and founder of Pingduoduo.com, poses for a photograph at the company's new office in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Feb. 24, 2017. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

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.

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