This is a story about three ‘brothers’ in Silicon Valley
- Australian Chinese Andrew Toy who grew up in Hong Kong went to Stanford
University, where he met Su-Zhou-American David Zhu; they both worked in IT
department in Morgan Stanley, together with a Brit called Alex for 5 years.
Then the story began. With the crowd demanding to access
company emails with their own iPhone, the brothers realized the tipping point.
They launched software, transformed a phone to be ‘two-faced’ - separating
private and company usage. Before product even launched, Google and some others
ventures funded them 11 million dollars. This year they plan to double their
size, everyone is working on his butt in the technical headquarter, Hong Kong.
Hong Kong to replicate Silicon Valley? They said no
problem!
I met Andrew and Dave in their new Tsim Sha Tsui office.
With a team of locals, exceptionally young, Andrew and Dave can only deliver in
English. Although Andrew did grow up and studied in Hong Kong, he never used
his Chinese name, not to mention the language.
The company is called Enterproid, co-found by Andrew,
Dave and Alex in early 2010. Within 2 years, Google Ventures, Qualcomm and
Comcast Ventures jointly funded the company with 11 million dollars. As a
matter of fact, they had more choices than those three VCs. ‘We chose them at
last,’ Andrew said proudly.
The fame was earned for a reason - just as research firm
Gartner put it, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has been a headache for all CTOs
(Chief Technology Officer). And Enterproid offers the solution. The software
‘Divide’ would literally divide a phone with two separate interfaces, simply
double-tapping a button, the phone would switch from private mode to business
mode, no data linkage in between. Executives no longer have to bring two phones
in hand.
‘Through the software system, the distribution for data
and telecommunications usage in both private and business mode can be clearly
seen and managed. Enterprises can save a great deal of money by splitting the
bills with their employees,’ Dave demonstrated on a computer screen.
Take an example of Morgan Stanley, the telecommunications
expense for first half of the year 2011 reached 114 million dollars, according
to its quarterly report Q32011.
Up to now, Dell has already launched the first adopted
‘Divide’ Android tablet in China. Enterproid has also signed an agreement with
the British network vendor AT&T, the first ‘Divide’ Android phone is
expected to be launched in coming 2 months, driving an annual revenue of
hundreds millions dollars to Enterproid. They are now in discussion with Apple
to running the software on iPhones.
‘It’s Stanford tradition to work on a start-up,’ Andrew
met Dave in the Computer Science department, Stanford University in late 90s,
similar time when Larry Page and Sergey Brin working on the Google search
engine. They then joined Morgan Stanley one after another, where they met Alex
and spend together 5 years to work on mobile devices - to negotiate with RIM
for benefits of Morgan’s Blackberries.
‘The experience in Morgan Stanley let us know what we can
demand from mobile manufacturers.’ Andrew was thankful to their old employer.
Dave and Andrew then left Morgan for good. Despite they
were in three different continents, they skyped to explore opportunities for
starting their own company. ‘I can actually hear babies crying in the
background. I know oh that’s Alex’s boy or oh that’s Dave’s.’ Andrew grinned.
In the late 2009, Alex who remained in Morgan first
spotted the trend from Blackberries to iPhones, that the demand of using own
devices to access company data exposes risk of data leakage. The software
Divide was then coded by the three. With Angel’s seed-funding of 50 million
dollars, they all quitted their jobs operating Enterpriod in three different
places - Andrew being the CEO stations in New York, David supervises the
technology headquarter in Hong Kong, and Alex overlooks products in London.
Why Hong Kong? It’s purly a bet of luck - Dave’s wife who
is from Hong Kong, wished to bear the baby with the company of family and
friends. ‘Silicon Valley has a huge competition for talents, and provided that
Asia is one of the biggest markets in the future, then we said why don’t we try it in Hong
Kong? If Hong Kong didn’t work, we will move to Shanghai or Beijing.’ And Hong
Kong didn’t let them down. The compensation for local engineers is relatively
cheaper than in mainland China, and the stability of talents is high. ‘They
don’t just want money, they need satisfaction,’ Andrew found Hong Kong
engineers more pleasant to hire than those across the border.
The brothers hope to bring culture of Silicon Valley to
Hong Kong. ‘Hope that they can, by seeing what we are doing, start their own
company one day.’ I look outside the office where the local staffs are
sitting, the theme song of Canton-drama series ‘When heavens burn’ was playing,
with the lyrics ‘If I can choose my destiny...’ echoing around, I could finally
sense some fresh air in the land where dreams are undervalued.
