最受美国年轻人喜欢的财务应用,创始人是一名中国留学生
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洛杉矶GrowingTreesLanguage
2024-01-04

这个中国男孩叫李伯伦( Bolun Li ),是地道的北京人。他从小就不喜欢中国的教育体系,在玩过 GTA 游戏后,就爱上了美国文化,立志要去美国看看。

This Chinese boy is named Bolun Li and he is a native of Beijing. He never liked the Chinese education system from a young age, and after playing the game GTA, he fell in love with American culture and was determined to go to the US to see it for himself.


13 岁的时候,他被父母送到了美国波士顿的一个小镇念高中。刚到美国的他几乎不会说英语,于是就提前录制了自己的英文介绍视频。见到学校的面试官,就放视频给他们看,全程什么都不说。就算这样,他还是被学校录取了。

At the age of 13, he was sent by his parents to attend high school in a small town in Boston, USA. When he first arrived in the United States, he could barely speak English, so he recorded an English introduction video of himself in advance. When he met the school interviewers, he simply played the video for them without saying anything. Even so, he was still admitted to the school.

当他在巴布森大学学习创业课程时,痴迷于创建一张青少年借记卡的想法。后来转到达杜克大学后,他仍然执着于这个想法,一有机会就和其他人交流。

When he was studying entrepreneurship courses at Babson College, he became obsessed with the idea of creating a debit card for teenagers. After transferring to Duke University, he remained committed to this idea, and whenever he had the chance, he would discuss it with others.

他偶然地认识了当时美国金融信息公司 Sageworks 的 CEO 斯科特(Scott Ogle)。斯科特并不看好李伯伦的“青少年借记卡”项目,并告诉他银行需要“交钥匙解决方案”,而不是另一个借记卡系统。但斯科特觉得李伯伦很像他年轻的时候,于是给了李伯伦一笔钱 —— 一张10万元的支票。

He accidentally met Scott Ogle, the CEO of the American financial information company Sageworks. Scott was not optimistic about Bolun's "teen debit card" project and told him that banks needed a "turnkey solution" rather than another debit card system. However, Scott felt that Bolun reminded him of his younger self, so he gave Bolun a sum of money—a check for $100,000.

李伯伦拿到10万美元之后的第一件事,就是去买了一辆保时捷跑车。剩下的钱用来注册了一家名为 Zogo Finance 的金融科技公司。接下来,他就开始招募初创的团队,因为他自己并不怎么会写代码。

The first thing Lieblen did after receiving $100,000 was buy a Porsche sports car. The rest of the money was used to register a fintech company called Zogo Finance. Next, he started recruiting start-up teams because he wasn't much of a coder himself.

他在杜克大学 Facebook 群组上写了一篇帖子,意思是只要你会写代码,并能够一起创业,那你现在就可以过来,我在五星级酒店等你,一起共进晚餐。

He wrote a post on the Duke University Facebook group, saying that if you can code and want to start a business together, you can come now. I'm waiting for you at a five-star hotel, let's have dinner together.

他原本估计会有 3-5 个人过来就很不错了,结果接下来发生的事情大大超过他的预期。超过 30 位才华横溢的杜克工程师齐聚一堂!他们不得不改变计划,去一家面馆吃饭。就是这一次,他遇到了他的第一位创业合伙人西姆兰·辛格 ( Simran Singh )。

He had expected three to five people to come and it was good, but what happened next was much more than he expected. More than 30 talented Duke engineers in one room! They had to change their plans and eat at a noodle restaurant. It was this time that he met his first entrepreneurial partner, Simran Singh.

他们听取了斯科特的建议,把 Zogo 设计成为了一款教授年轻人财务知识的应用软件,不但可以学到很多理财知识,还可以通过学习赢得积分,兑换现金奖励。

They took Scott's advice and designed Zogo as a financial literacy app for young people, where they could not only learn a lot about money, but also earn points that could be redeemed for cash rewards.

当 Zogo 还只是PPT时,他们就赢得了一些金融机构的支持,因为传统金融机构不太会和年轻人打交道。所以,他们很愿意通过 Zogo 和年轻人沟通,并获取他们的相关信息。

When Zogo was just powerpoint, they won the support of some financial institutions, because traditional financial institutions do not deal with young people. Therefore, they are very willing to communicate with young people through Zogo and get information about them.

在李伯伦大学毕业的前一个月, Zogo 被一家大公司收购了。他在推特上(现在的X)上发了条贴子:

A month before Liebron graduated from college, Zogo was acquired by a large company. He posted this on Twitter (now X) :

“我在交易完成前飞往洛杉矶,讽刺的是,洛杉矶恰好是 GTA 的所在地。我坐在曼哈顿海滩的一家星巴克里,刷新了我的银行账户。砰!零比我见过的还要多。终于自由了!”

"I flew to Los Angeles before the deal closed, which ironically happens to be where the GTA is. I sat in a Starbucks in Manhattan Beach and refreshed my bank account. Baaaah! Zero is more than I've ever seen. Free at last!"

团队方面,Zogo最初只有1名员工,但在收购时已经发展到35人,目前团队规模扩大到了50人。

Team-wise, Zogo started with just 1 employee, but had grown to 35 people at the time of acquisition, and now the team has expanded to 50 people.

期待您的精彩评论~
成立于2005年,其使命是为来自多语言背景的儿童提供高质量的语言和学术教育,支持他们成为具有全球能力的成功精英。成长树中国学院承担着责任,并致力于为幼儿的中文浸入式教育提供最佳实践,同时为所有年龄段的孩子提供高质量的中文学习!
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