On December 20, Fortune Magazine Chinese Edition announced the list of “40 under 40” of 2016, the annual ranking of the most influential young people in business. The founder and CEO of Avazu Holding Yi Shi is also among this brilliant group, together with other outstanding leaders of China.

They are awarded this honor not only for the great companies they have set up, but also for the things they have been doing all the time, which changed people’s lifestyle and working style. There is no doubt that they are making the world a better place for people to live.

Yi Shi was also named in Forbes Magazine Chinese Edition 2014 “30 under 30” List. Now as a 27-year-old young successful entrepreneur, he knows clearly that the entrepreneur’s desire matters most to one company and he has been holding the belief of “looking at the big picture, stay passionate all the time” ever since he started the company.

Yi Shi

Unique Personality

Concretely speaking, we can see one man’s personality from his desire. Yi Shi’s desires are mostly driven by his dreams. Once he was asked about his dream, Yi Shi said: “The first dream is the freedom of wealth. As a matter of fact, I’ve achieved it after graduating from college, which is relatively earlier, you know. The second I desire is traveling the world. However, during the trip, because of serious illness, I had to take injection for totally three months in Shanghai. After that, I started to build my own business. From that moment, my dream changed into building a company that people all respect. Of course, every dream is only temporary, so my ultimate dream is working on the things that enable people to live a better life.”

Generally speaking, nearly all internet giants make their first barrel of gold in the field they are good at, for example, Bill Gates sold IBM the Microsoft dos system that he wrote by himself, Larry Page wrote out the PageRank code when he was 22. Yi Shi had made his first barrel of gold from the long-time traffic monetization of his own websites. From 2004 to 2008, he had been focused on building personal websites related to navigation, news and blogs, and in 2008, he dropped out Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.

As we all know, Bill Gates dropped out Harvard when he was 20 years old and became the world’s richest man when he was 39 years old. Similar to him, Zuckerberg also dropped out Harvard, and both of them did so not because they cannot keep up others, but because they cannot wait any longer to start their own businesses. Yi Shi shares a common view with them, and from his point of view, he explained: “Continuing studying will bring high opportunity cost.” After dropping out college, carried millions of dollars gaining from his more than 30 personal websites, he registered Avazu in Germany, and headquartered in Shanghai to begin his startup career.

Craftsman’s Spirit

When asked “what kind of person you want to be”, Yi Shi’s first reaction goes to: to be the person who craft the goods to the best. He holds the view that goods producing requires craftsman’s spirit, no matter ads production, App or others. Take digital ads as example, he dedicated himself to the high quality of ads, the creativity of ads types, the ultimate optimization of ads experience and the precision of advertising and operation. After starting his own business, he pursues the sense of achievement, which comes from the self-developed technology and products that he’s proud of, the products owning a large user base and the team featured with abundant experience. All these achievements make up the driving force to carry on his business.

Aiming for Billions of Dollars

The initial stage of Avazu mainly focused on digital ads, and the change from personal websites to digital ads mainly because the monetization experience he had. In his opinion, money can come easily from ads, games and service provider when building personal websites.

However, after a while, Yi Shi realized that solely building ads platform cannot make a company with billions of dollars. Therefore, he started Avazu Holding at the end of 2013, and at present, Avazu Holding has covered many areas in the world, such as Europe, Asia and America. There are mainly four business segments of Avazu Holding, Avazu – ” A Leading Global Advertising Platform “, Teebik – ” Global Mobile Game Publishing Platform”, DotC United – ” World’s renowned mobile app developer ” and aFund – ” Early stage investment fund for global mobile startups”, and Avazu Holding has created a complete industry layout from various dimensions, including capital, technology, resources, distribution, promotion and other dimensions.

In the past eight years, Yi Shi has kept a low profile, and if using three words to describe him, that must be stable, accurate and tough. He considered the most important thing now is accomplishing everything to the best, and when achieved certain level, we can take a new step.

Facts speak louder than words. In the past few years, Avazu Holding’s four business segments have obtained remarkable results.

In 2014, Avazu secured $48 million international financing；

In 2015, Avazu merged with Chinese A-share listed company Zeus Entertainment, with total value of RMB2.085 billion, which is the largest transaction in China’s ad tech industry；

In 2016, Avazu ranked Top 3 twice in AppsFlyer’s global “Power Ranking”, and Top 1 in “Power Ranking” in Asian area；

Avazu was awarded “the Most Valuable Enterprise, Outstanding Company for Mobile Marketing” on the first China Digital Marketing Innovation Summit；

Avazu entered the list of “Top Mobile Advertising Companies 2016” by Mobyaffiliates；

DotC United completed RMB300 million in A round of financing；

Avazu Holding was awarded “Outstanding Strategic Partner of 2016 Foreign Trade Federation” and “Outstanding Partner of the 2016 Foreign Trade Federation”；

Avazu Holding won the “2016 Best Mobile Game Service Provider Tian Fu Award”.