How a high-school dropout with big ideas founded GoGoVan, Hong Kong’s first US$1bn start-up
Like all the best ideas, it started with a problem. For Steven Lam Hoi-yuen – the man who would go on to co-found Hong Kong’s first US$1 billion start-up – that problem was the difficulty of trying to find delivery vans. The year was 2010, and a young Lam was trying to launch his first business venture – a company selling advertisements on food takeout boxes. He and his two co-founders quickly discovered it was nigh on impossible to arrange vans that could transport the takeout boxes to the restaurants, as the call centres they were phoning often did not pick up or claimed they did not have vans available. “ There is never a best time to start something, you can never wait for enough resources to start something. Don’t wait to do something, use your own hands and [go prove it] ” STEVEN LAM, CO-FOUNDER, GOGOVAN The trio had to ring multiple call centres with different pools of drivers to find available vans. They soon realised that each call centre had a limited numbe...