Amazon helps Shenzhen ex-Googler turn mom’s money into a billion

After Steven Yang left his coveted job at Google, he asked his mother whether he should take venture-capital money to fund his business idea.

If his online consumer-electronics enterprise was a risky bet, she told him, go with the venture capitalists. But if building the business into something great was his destiny, he instead should use her money from a pharmaceutical career in China.

So Yang combined his Google money with his mom’s, and with less than $1 million in seed capital he moved from California to Shenzhen, a hub in southern China for technology companies. Seven years later, Anker Innovations Technology Co. sells products ranging from smartphone chargers to portable power banks on Amazon.com. And it’s getting even bigger after recently reaching a deal to put products in almost 4,000 Walmart Inc. and 900 Best Buy Co. stores in the U.S.

Recent trades on China’s over-the-counter New Third Board market valued Anker at about $1.1 billion. Yang, 36, and his wife have a combined stake of about 54 percent, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the company’s first-quarter report for 2018.

Anker offers chargers that are alternatives to those from companies like Samsung Electronics Co. or Apple Inc. and come with proprietary PowerIQ technology, which detects each phone’s maximum wattage to help minimize charging times. Yang also has branched out into just about every other smartphone-related gadget, including cables, headphones and wireless charging pads. And he’s making household products like robotic vacuums under the Eufy brand.

“We really put a lot of love, and hate, into our products,” Yang said, referencing the year-long tedium of shrinking the vacuum robot down to 2.85 inches in height so it could fit under couches.

Amazon India