Building a unicorn in Hong Kong isn’t easy. Growing it in the midst of a global pandemic must be nigh on impossible. But that’s exactly what Danny Yeung has done with Prenetics, the Hong Kong healthtech company that’s become a global powerhouse in genomic and diagnostic testing
Healthtech company Prenetics has entered into a merger agreement with Adrian Cheng’s Artisan Acquisition Corp, and will become the first Hong Kong unicorn to be publicly traded.
The merger transaction is expected to close as early as the fourth quarter, and the combined entity will be traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol PRE. The deal marks a stunning rise for the seven-year-old firm, which just last year was valued at ‘only’ US$300 million, but which now has an enterprise value of US$1.25 billion and an equity value of US$1.7 billion.
But, how did founder and Gen.T honouree Danny Yeung reach such dizzying heights? Well, if you ask him, he would tell you it isn’t exactly rocket science. And the secret sauce to his success boils down to three ingredients: passion, creativity and humility.
“You have to be passionate about what you do. You can't hide passion. And then it becomes infectious to other people. People want to follow passion and be around people that are passionate,” says Yeung, speaking to Tatler in an exclusive interview.
Yeung, who started working at the age of 12, says he’s always “loved coming to work”. But passion alone isn’t enough. The former Groupon CEO says an entrepreneur has to be creative and resourceful, especially when a company is still small.
“Nobody gives you a playbook for what to do in every scenario. So you have to be creative about things.”
So far, so good. But why humility, then? Isn’t a certain moxie, a swagger, or perhaps even a sense of braggadocio, important in the cut and thrust world of big business?
Well, in Yeung’s case, humility is in his DNA. The son of an immigrant family that moved from Guangdong, China to the US when he was five, Yeung didn’t grow up wealthy. Even when he started his first business, a San Francisco franchise of Hong Kong’s famous Hui Lau Shan dessert shops, the then-25-year-old Yeung could be found in the kitchen, making desserts.
“I had to make sure I knew the business and needed to learn to make everything in case my chef quit,” he explains, adding he still remains a very “operational CEO”.
This “very average” background, he says, is the reason why he values being humble.
"I appreciate everything I have today; I certainly appreciate everybody’s time. And certainly, I’m always hungry to continue to create milestones for the company."
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