22-year-old entrepreneur shares story of his success

Although just 22 years old, William Joy has worked a lifetime's worth of jobs, and is already in charge of his second tech start-up.

The innocent-faced Shanghainese, who moved to Canada from Shanghai when he was 12, dropped out of a mathematics course at Harvard University to establish Wantv.me last December. Wantv.me lets viewers of online videos view information and buy featured products by clicking on the video during playback.

Joy started his first company in October 2012 with two friends, operating out of his dormitory at Harvard. Named Venvy, the company focused on optimizing the targeting of lead-in adverts for online video. It was incubated by the Harvard Innovation Lab between 2013 and 2014 and received investment from Harvard Veritas Venture among other investors. In June 2014, Venvy opened a branch in India.

Joy started working at the age of 15 after his mother stopped supporting him financially because of her disapproval of a relationship Joy was in.

Joy skipped all his classes at senior high school, working multiple jobs to support himself and his significant other. These included dish washer, mail man, sushi chef, dental assistant and construction worker.

Long hours

At one point, Joy's day would start at 4 am with his paper round, then at 9 am he would go to his job as a dental assistant. At night, he sold clothes on eBay. At weekends, he worked as a construction worker. He could earn around 6,000 Canadian dollars ($4,879.20) per month.

"I didn't feel life was hard at that time," said Joy. "I was very happy that I could make so much money and live a far happier life than my classmates."

Despite missing so much school, Joy's teachers allowed him to sit his exams. "My teachers felt sympathetic about my situation and they allowed me to sit the exams without attending their lessons," said Joy.

Joy graduated high school fourth in his class, and won a place at Harvard University. Joy believes that it was his work ethic as displayed by his number of jobs rather than his SAT score that won him the place.

Twenty-two years old entrepreneur William Joy Photo: Courtesy of William Joy

"Harvard cannot accept all the candidates who have a SAT score of 2,400. You have to be outstanding in other aspects," said Joy.

Right attitude

Joy credits his parents for giving him an independent outlook. "They did not object that I skipped classes to work. They never cared about my academic performance. They think performing well at exams is useless," said Joy.

His parents also cultivated Joy's interest in the stock market and entrepreneurship from a young age. Joy made large profits in the stock market with the money he earned from his jobs.

Like many Harvard mathematics graduates, Joy once dreamed of becoming a financier. He worked as an intern at Morgan Stanley and was offered a full-time position by another company with an annual salary of $800,000 a year while still a freshman at Harvard.

"If I followed this path, I would have become a rich man with a multi-million-dollar income," said Joy. "I could buy a luxury villa and date hot models like any other financier who graduated from a prestigious university does. But I suddenly realized that finance doesn't benefit humanity. It can only make the 20 percent of rich people richer and make the 80 percent of poor people poorer. So I wanted to do something more meaningful," said Joy.

Besides mathematics, Joy was also interested in information technology, which led him and his friends to start Venvy. Google and its subsidiary YouTube had been working on a similar idea, and were finding the technology of achieving such a system challenging. Venvy encountered similar trouble, which was compounded by the departure of its chief technology officer, who left to work for Google. Joy and his partner decided to continue with the project and soon found six new team members from Harvard and MIT, who were followed by more. They were invited to set up in the Harvard Innovation Lab, an incubator for start-ups.

"When you are outstanding enough, you can attract other elite people to join you," said Joy. "Since all the members are excellent, you don't have to manage the company and push the employees to work hard as older entrepreneurs do. Nobody would be late for work or leave the office early. We all made great efforts to pursue our common dream. I want to change Westerners' impression that Chinese students can only do well academically," said Joy.

Innovation challenge

He believes China is not lacking when it terms to "model innovation" - that is, using standard business models but in unique ways to address different problems. However, he said China needs more "technology innovation" - new business models based on new technology.

Joy said that, while some Chinese companies, such as Taobao, are successful, they use business models first developed by overseas companies. In future, Joy believes international competition will revolve around the development of new business models based on new technologies.

For Joy, another essential element to success is developing a work ethic. "I have been working full time since I was 15," he said. "Young people who have no work experience and want to start their own business with their parents' money will just waste that money."