Brian Wong: The Youngest VC Funded Entrepreneur

You might agree that moving to Sillicon Valley, working for infamous social content sharing site Digg, and starting two companies is enough to set Canadian native Brian Wong apart from the crowd. Add the fact that at 20 years old, he’s one of the youngest entrepreneurs to secure venture capital, and you’ve peaked the interest of the entrepreneurial community at large.

When I asked Brian how he convinced investors to back his company at such a young age, a time when most enterprising minds don’t have the credibility to attract clients let alone backing, he chalked it up to building relationships.

Wong is quick to give credit to the mentors who have been instrumental in providing him with advice and introductions. He references Matt Van Horn, who recruited Wong to work at Digg, Chris Redlitz of startup accelerator Kicklabs, Eghosa Omoigui of Intel Capital and prolific venture capitalist Mark Suster.

The art of building the right relationships, says Wong, is all about hustling, and opening up once you get an introduction. Certainly not run of the mill advice in an industry where a cloak-and-daggers approach to new ventures is the norm.

Brian’s first venture was Followformation, a production of the company he started to offset the costs of his university degree. The service is a Twitter directory of sorts, making it easier for users to follow others by interest or location, and garnered a lot of attention when it launched in 2009.

Wong has since shifted focus to a new project: Kiip.me, a mobile advertising platform for Android and iOS devices. It’s a novel twist on ad serving: get the user while they’re on an endorphin high after earning an achievement in a game, and offer them a real-world reward for it — perhaps a free product sample for killing a certain number of green pigs.

It’s for this project that Wong earned his title as the youngest entrepreneur to secure venture capital. He takes the record from Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg, who took funding from True Ventures — also one of Wong’s investors — at the age of 21.

Brian believes that mobile advertising is the next gold rush, and that attacking it from a unique angle as Kiip.me does is a sure way to provide a return on investment for his venture capitalists. We’re watching with interest to see what Wong makes of his first funded venture and how it pans out for his investors.

Image Credit: screen capture from this Kiip video.