He left NetEase to build one of China’s first livestreaming startups

David Li, co-founder and CEO of YY / Photo credit: YY via Bloomberg

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with GGV Capital’s 996, a podcast about tech and entrepreneurship in China hosted by Hans Tung and Zara Zhang. This is heavily revised from the original show transcripts. For the full interview, go here. You can also listen to the 996 Podcast by searching “996” in any podcast app.

Disclaimer: GGV Capital counts YY as a portfolio company, and managing partner Jenny Lee was on the board for seven years.

David Li is the founder and CEO of YY (formerly Duowan), one of China’s first livestreaming platforms which went public on Nasdaq in 2012. Li is also the co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-based Bigo, a leading livestreaming platform in Southeast Asia.

Before founding YY in 2005, he served as the editor-in-chief at NetEase.

Here, Li discusses his journey into internet businesses, what it’s like to take a Chinese company public in 2012, how YY spearheaded modern livestreaming features such as in-app tipping and virtual gifts, and more.

How did you find yourself in the internet business?

I love technology very much. In college, I helped to fix computers for the teachers, so I got many free hours to use computers in return. At that time, I learned a lot about computer technology.

Then, my first internet job was Sohu, where I was in charge of the IT channel for news. My assistant was very talented, so I promoted him to chief editor, which left me with more free time. I’d stay at home and play games every day, while doing very well at my job.

My boss found it very strange that I rarely go to the office, so he asked me, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Since I was able to make the channel grow, fire me or give me more jobs.” So, he gave me the gaming channel.

I wanted to diagnose the market, so I interviewed many gaming people, including Ding Lei, the CEO and founder of NetEase. After three or four meetings, Lei asked me, “Do you want to join NetEase? I will give all the portal control to you.” I said, “Of course, I have enough time.”

So, I immediately flew from Beijing to Guangzhou to take on the opportunity.

Why did you leave NetEase and build your own startup?

At NetEase, my boss gave me a KPI—30 percent growth per year. At that time, I did not know what KPI means because I never worked for an English-based company. So, my answer was, “I do not know if I can complete that KPI, but I will work very hard.” After a year, I was able to grow the traffic by 16x.

How did that happen? Sina was the leading English news portal in China then, but they offered very serious news. So, we decided to reposition ourselves into a publication that’s more concerned with our readers’ daily lives. We’re also the first one to combine user comments and news in one portal.

At that time, I thought I could build something like Sina. But it was very difficult to surpass such a huge company. I thought if we wanted to be a bigger media company for the next five years, we had to do something different. So, I decided to focus on the information business.

How did you think about monetization?

How did you move from votes to virtual gifts?

Why did you choose to make YY public at the time when there was a decrease in Chinese IPOs in the US?

Why list different companies (YY, Huya, Bigo) instead of having all of them under one big company?

Why did you spin off Bigo?