Di Huang – President and CEO of SoWink

By IdeaMensch on December 7, 2011 in dating, grid, Interviews

Free Corporations For First-Time Entrepreneurs. Thank you eMinutes.

The most important thing as an entrepreneur is to always keep a student’s mentality. The moment you decide that you no longer need to learn, someone else will inevitably surpass you in your endeavors.

Di Huang is an entrepreneur based out of the Silicon Valley. He is the CEO and Founder of SoWink, an activity-based social dating and networking service exclusively for young people. Prior to founding SoWink, Di worked in a variety of positions in finance, sales, business development and real estate, most recently as an investment banker on Wall Street. Despite having worked in many corporate environments, Di has been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug since the prime age of 7 – starting with his first business in Xi’an, China, where he was born and raised. Since quitting his full time job earlier this year, Di has been devoting his energy to bootstrapping SoWink, assembling an all-star team, spreading the buzz and leading the team in product management.

What are you working on right now?

Currently, I’m working on getting my first startup, SoWink, off the ground. SoWink makes it ridiculously easy for you to meet new people around you by doing fun things you enjoy together, often at a discounted rate. All while preserving your privacy by effectively mitigating the risk of having to exchange contact information with other users in order to meet up. It makes meeting people in the real world a lot safer and easier.

Where did the idea for SoWink come from?

While I was in college, I heard about a campus sponsored speed dating event. I had no idea what speed dating was at the time, so I didn’t think much of it. However, on the night of the event, I happened to pass by the dining hall where they were holding the event and literally saw thousands of students dressed up and trying to get inside. The event only supported about 500 students, so there was a huge surplus of demand in front of my eyes. This is when it all clicked. I remember thinking to myself, what if I could somehow scale this service, monetize it and offer it to the masses?

What does your typical day look like?

My days are very irregular. Since we all live in a house which also serves as our office, someone is up and working just about 24 hours a day. But after waking up, the first thing I typically do is check my email. Since a large part of my role is communicating with external organizations and individuals, a good portion of my day is devoted to clearing up my inbox in a timely fashion. The rest of my day goes towards product management, digesting analytics, social media marketing, conference calls, meetings and attending events.

How do you bring ideas to life?

Typically, anyone on the team with what we call a “Stroke of Genius” can submit his/her idea on our product management tool, which I then review and prioritize from the most to least relevant. Then I spec out the best ideas with the team members that suggested it and elaborate further on the concept until it becomes well integrated with our product. The specs are then brought up during our weekly status meeting and my co-founder, Paul, assigns the technical specifications to whoever will be implementing the feature. Once the idea is functional, we test for bugs and then release it to our focus group for feedback.

What’s one trend that really excites you?

The rapid growth of online and mobile dating is really exciting! Although there are many players within our industry, there has yet to be a clear winner in our segmented market. This suggests a huge opportunity for SoWink to grow into a market leader and finally disrupt the industry and bring about some much needed change.

What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?

The worst job I had was selling newspapers on the New York subway as the only way to earn an income at the age of 13. At this time, I spoke essentially no English, as it was right after I immigrated to the United States. Although it was physically exhausting, the amount of money I was able to earn on a daily basis was almost double what one can expect working full time for minimum wage. This experience taught me a valuable lesson: always work for yourself, for only you shall reap the fruits of your labor.

If you were to start again, what would you do differently?

I would have raised money much earlier while the economy was frothier. Although it’s better to delay fundraising until as late as possible, there’s very little you can do when the general market is trending downwards in terms of valuation, terms and willingness to fund startups.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

Creating a better way to connect entrepreneurs with editors of online and print publications. Perhaps crowdsourcing a community of entrepreneurs and journalists to help both sides discover and validate the best startup ideas. This would make the writer’s jobs easier while cutting out the middleman and costs for entrepreneurs to acquire PR.

What are your three favorite online tools and what do you love about them?

Google Analytics: It’s essential for any entrepreneur trying to optimize retention.
Basecamp: It’s a must when it comes to organizing more than 5 team members.
WordPress: It’s very easy to set up and one of the best solutions for customization.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard. It’s discusses the easiest and most effective ways to manage your team, keep them motivated and ensure optimal productivity.

What’s on your playlist?

The Lazy Song, Mistletoe, Billionaire, Just a Dream, Grenade, I’m Yours, Lucky, Hey There Delilah, Down, DJ Got Us Falling in Love, With You, Beautiful Girls, Fireflies, Hey Soul Sister…

If you weren’t working on SoWink, what would you be doing?

Working on some other cool startup with my awesome co-founders and team.

Three people we should follow on Twitter and why?

@aplusk: Ashton Kutcher, helping startups go mainstream
@naval: Naval Ravikant, helping entrepreneurs get funding
@sowink_inc: SoWink, helping you to meet new people

When was the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it?

We laugh constantly and always have a good time at the office. However, the last time that I almost died of laughter would have to be the night we played Taboo. It’s black and white… It’s fat… It has big nipples… Yup, you guessed it. The word being described was “cow.” LoL…

Who is your hero?

Warren Buffett. Not only is he a great entrepreneur, manager and investor, but also a very frugal humanitarian doing a lot of good in the world.

What is the best piece of advice you can give to other entrepreneurs?

The most important thing to keep in mind when doing any startup is to never give up. Once you’ve identified a problem, adopted a solution and gained domain expertise in your relative industry, the path to success and failure is fully in your grasp. A key difference between the astronomical successes out there and the numerous failures is the determination of the founders. Look at the industry leaders out there, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon; none of them were the first in their industries and all of them were blown off by investors, press and other entrepreneurs at some time or other. They kept going and stayed determined to make themselves stand out among competitors.

What do you do during your free time?

Well, as an aspiring entrepreneur, I don’t really know the concept of free time. However, once SoWink reaches critical mass, I hope to be able to start traveling, playing basketball, ping pong, poker and singing karaoke again.