By Daniel Otis, News Reporter

Young entrepreneurs in the bustling Kitchener-Waterloo tech hub — including two recipients of the coveted Thiel Fellowship — are pursuing startup success on their own terms.

WATERLOO, ONT.—Hongwei Liu is standing in his office wearing head-to-toe black: crisp poplin shirt, jeans, suede sneakers. The co-founder and CEO of MappedIn, a multimillion-dollar company that crafts touch-screen directories for shopping malls and retail stores, is a University of Waterloo dropout who oversees a staff of 26.

He is 24 years old.

Liu is among a small but growing number of young adults in the Kitchener-Waterloo area who are redefining what it takes to create a successful business. They’ve abandoned their studies in order to launch startups in this cauldron of tech ingenuity. It could be argued they epitomize the entrepreneurial spirit, skipping classes to get in the game instead, following in the footsteps of industry icons such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

Full article published in the Toronto Star

Hongwei Liu, 24 — MappedIn

When meeting with potential clients in MappedIn’s early days, Hongwei Liu didn’t think much about ageism.

“I have the Asian genes going for me,” he laughs. “I’m ambiguously 20 to 40.”

Born in China, Liu moved to Ottawa with his family when he was 7. He left university after three-and-a-half semesters to create what is now the leading indoor way-finding platform in Canada.

“I come from a family of three generations of doctors and engineers, and this is breaking the combo,” Liu says. “I think that our generation more than any other is lacking a sense of purpose, so that draws a lot of people to look for something to do that is more meaningful … The combination of that plus a tolerance for risk, I think, results in a lot of people doing startups.”

Tips for success from a 24-year-old veteran

Lots of people have good ideas, but not everyone can turn them into reality. Hongwei Liu, co-founder and CEO of MappedIn, offers some tips for startup success:

  1. Build something that people want enough to pay you for it. It’s easy to get someone to say, “Yeah I’d love that,” but much harder to get paid for it.
  2. Stay lean. WhatsApp sold for $19 billion (U.S.) with 55 employees.
  3. Evaluate whether starting a company is something you really want to do right now. It’s generally understood that having a kid is a big decision — a commitment of time and resources for decades that cannot be reversed. A successful company looks the same!
  4. A startup is where the tricks stop working. It’s great because there’s no way to cheat, no arbitrary tests to take, no one evaluating your incremental actions. You win by getting the right results. You lose by the same measure. It’s a breath of fresh air followed by punches to the gut. It’s not for everyone.
  5. A good way to “dip your feet in” without the need to look successful all the time is to work on a project. Tell everyone it’s a side project, not your big fancy startup. If it works and develops into a startup, great. If not, you learned something worth sharing.
  6. Minimize your long-term regret. Backpack around the world while you still can, be an artist (with a self-sustaining financial plan), get your dream job or start a startup. Just do you.

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