Mithril’s big hairy audacious goal is to become ‘the WeChat of everything’ or be bought out by Mark Zuckerberg.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/22
By: David Green
Credit: Mithril
Sitting down with Jeff Huang (黄立成) in the three-story Taipei office of his live-steaming app empire, 17 Media (17 hereafter), it’s hard not to be swept away.
The man is raw energy, ideas bubbling with such intensity that they often burst into a haphazard mix of English, Taiwanese and Mandarin. The onus is on his audience to keep up.
Under his stewardship, 17’s growth has been nothing short of spectacular, and the 45-year-old is candid in confirming that it is all over the news that the company is planning to IPO this year.
Since its founding in July 2015, 17’s team has grown from a single office of a dozen people to more than 700 staff, spun off new operations like the lascivious live-streaming service, Swag, raised US$10 million in Series A funding, and merged – in 2016 – with the online dating app service Paktor. Huang is now chairman, having stepped aside as CEO during the Paktor deal. [FULL STORY]
