Quick: Name an electronics company whose value grew faster than that of Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. Can’t? It’s cellphone maker Xiaomi, based in Beijing, China.

Now a shareholder of that $45 billion corporation, KK Wong (S’96) helped found the company in 2010. Wong and six other cofounders worked around the clock to build what would become the fastest-growing tech company China had ever seen.

Wong’s persistent work ethic is an innate habit — the long hours he had become used to as a Purdue student continued in his professional life. After graduating from Purdue, he interned as a student programmer at Microsoft in Seattle. “The Microsoft work was until 2:00 a.m. every day, and both of my bosses were there too,” Wong says,

Following nine years in Seattle, Wong, a Hong Kong native, joined Microsoft China for several years. He watched the fast-growing electronics market in that country and ultimately decided to pursue a new career path. “I realized how fast the China market was moving, how big it was, and also how fast the mobile internet wave was actually moving,” Wong says. “That’s why I decided to move on to the next phase of my life and cofound Xiaomi.”

Taking a cue from Apple — a “food eaten around the world” — Wong says his team picked another globally eaten food to name their company. In Chinese, Xiaomi literally means “little rice.”

“It was a personable name; a humble name,” Wong says. “We wanted to be personable.”

Being likeable was a central goal for the Xiaomi brand. But even more integral was Xiaomi’s mission “to bring cutting-edge technology — the premium of the premium products — to a mass market at very affordable prices.”

To illustrate how Xiaomi achieved that goal, Wong recounts that when his company was introduced to the Chinese market, iPhones were selling for RMB6,000. “We used all the top components from all the makers that were providing components to China. And when we launched our first phone and the competition was selling their phones for RMB6,000, we sold our phone for below RMB2,000.”

Xiaomi entered the market in 2010 with a quality product whose affordability blew the competition away, and it hasn’t let up since. Nine years later, it is the world’s fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer. It also has carried out its high-quality, low-cost mission into a series of products that include mobile accessories, TVs and speakers, and electronic wearables. In 2018, it added tablets, laptops, and smart-home devices.

Now traveling the globe as an angel investor, Wong shares advice with others eager to incorporate the wisdom of his experience into their own strategies for the future. “I always tell people to remember two things: never underestimate the caliber of yourself and your team, and never overestimate your understanding of what other people need,” he says.