Chapter 1: The Spark of an Idea - Meeting the Founder

Have you ever stood in front of a shelf in a store, wishing you could buy something fun for your family but realizing it costs almost everything in your piggy bank? Or maybe you’ve visited a relative in a small village and noticed that the toys there are old-fashioned and the snacks are limited? What if there was a way to make shopping not just cheaper, but also more exciting—like a game where everyone wins? This big, beautiful question started with a quiet, thoughtful boy named Huang Zheng, but you can call him Colin, which is the name he used when he traveled far away to learn about the world. Colin didn’t set out to build one of the biggest shopping apps on the planet; he started with a simple, powerful idea: *What if technology could help ordinary people, especially those living in smaller towns, get a fairer deal?* In this chapter, we’ll meet Colin, walk through his early life like following a trail of clues, and learn how a single spark of an idea can grow into a forest of change. We’ll also build our own mental treehouse—a model for turning any dream into reality—using Colin’s journey as our blueprint. By the end, you’ll see that every big adventure begins with a small, curious “what if?”

Colin Huang was born in 1980 in a place called Huangyan, a small city in Zhejiang province, China. Imagine a town surrounded by green hills, where people know each other by name and the air smells of tea plants and fresh river water. His parents were schoolteachers—people who spent their days helping children learn to read, write, and think. Growing up in a household filled with books and questions, Colin learned early that knowledge was a kind of treasure. His mother often said, “Education is the only light that can guide you through dark tunnels.” But Colin’s childhood wasn’t all quiet study; he loved playing with building blocks, not just the plastic kind, but also ideas. He would spend hours solving math puzzles, and his teachers noticed he had a special talent for seeing patterns in numbers. This love for logic and problem-solving became his superpower.

When Colin was twelve, something happened that planted a seed in his heart. His grandmother fell ill and needed medicine that was expensive and hard to find in their local town. To get it, his parents had to travel to a big city hours away, waiting in long lines and paying high prices. Colin watched this and felt a mix of helplessness and anger. *Why should getting medicine be so hard?* he wondered. That moment didn’t solve the problem, but it lit a tiny spark: he wanted to build something that would make life easier for people like his grandmother. This spark would glow quietly for years, waiting for the right moment to grow.

School came easily to Colin. He was the kind of student who finished his math homework quickly and then helped classmates who struggled. But he wasn’t just book-smart; he was curious about how things worked in the real world. In high school, he sold computer parts to his friends, learning early that a product’s value isn’t just in its price tag, but in how well it solves someone’s problem. After graduating, he earned a spot at Zhejiang University, one of China’s top schools, where he studied computer science. Here, he learned to speak the language of machines—code. But more importantly, he learned to think in systems: how small parts connect to create big outcomes. He compared writing software to building a city: every line of code is a brick, and if you lay them carefully, you can create places where people live, work, and play.

After university, Colin’s journey took him across the ocean to the United States. He was accepted into the University of Wisconsin for a master’s degree in computer science. Imagine a young man from a small Chinese city stepping onto a campus where everyone spoke fast English and thought in different ways. It was overwhelming, but Colin adapted. He devoured courses in algorithms and data structures, but he also spent time in the library reading about economics and sociology. He began to see a connection: technology wasn’t just about cool gadgets; it was a tool for connecting people and spreading fairness. He remembered his grandmother’s struggle and thought, *Maybe I can use code to build bridges instead of walls.*

His first big break came when he landed an internship at Microsoft. There, he worked on software that helped businesses manage their data. He saw how large companies used technology to become more efficient, but he also noticed something missing: the technology rarely reached small shops, family farms, or ordinary consumers in remote areas. The digital divide felt like a deep canyon. After completing his master’s, he joined Google in 2004, a company that felt like the wizard’s castle of the tech world. At Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, Colin worked on engineering projects, learning from some of the brightest minds on the planet. He absorbed the culture of innovation—how to ask bold questions, prototype quickly, and fail forward. But even in that shiny environment, his mind often drifted back to Huangyan. He would video-call his parents and ask about the local market: “How much are farmers getting for their oranges? Are the prices fair?” The answers were consistent: middlemen took large cuts, and farmers, despite hard work, stayed poor. Shoppers in cities paid high prices for goods that traveled long distances, while producers in rural areas barely made ends meet. Colin saw a system that was broken—a puzzle waiting to be solved.

In 2007, Colin made a daring decision. He left Google, a secure and prestigious job, to start his own company. Why would anyone do that? Because he had caught the entrepreneurship bug—a feeling that you can’t just watch problems from the sidelines; you have to jump in and try to fix them. His first venture was an e-commerce company called Leku (which means “happy journey” in Chinese). It was an online store that sold electronics and other goods. Colin poured his energy into it, learning about supply chains, customer service, and the nitty-gritty of running a business. Leku did well enough that in 2010, he sold it to a larger company. This sale gave Colin something precious: not just money, but confidence and capital. He had proven he could build a company from scratch. Yet, after the sale, he felt a familiar tug—the spark from his childhood was still glowing. *Selling gadgets isn’t enough*, he thought. *I want to help people who really need it.* He took some time to travel around China, visiting villages and talking to farmers, shopkeepers, and families. He listened more than he spoke. What he heard changed everything.

In rural Anhui province, he met a woman named Li who grew peaches. Her peaches were sweet and juicy, but she could only sell them at the local market, where prices fluctuated wildly. If she had a bumper crop, prices would crash; if the weather was bad, she might not sell at all. She showed Colin a photo of her peach orchard on her old phone and said, “If only people in Shanghai could taste these peaches, they would pay more. But how do I reach them?” In a small town in Sichuan, a father ran a tiny hardware store. He wanted to buy better tools to serve his customers, but the wholesale prices from the city were too high, and shipping costs ate up his profit. He told Colin, “I feel like I’m stuck in a well, looking up at the sky.” These stories weren’t isolated; they were echoes of a massive imbalance. China had hundreds of millions of people in smaller towns and rural areas—roughly 40% of the population—who were left out of the digital shopping boom that was transforming cities. They were the “forgotten half,” as some economists called them. Colin realized that the problem wasn’t just about selling products; it was about *access*, *fairness*, and *dignity*. People in villages deserved the same choices and prices as those in Beijing or Shanghai.

The idea for a new kind of shopping app be