[FLUX-YOU]

>35-Year-Old Unknown

First of all, that's rude.

Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign. I doubt China's P2P and venture capital markets are related, but I'd bet they gave a high valuation just to grab headlines. Also, it'll eventually get censored like everything else in China, so 'doing better than Baidu' is probably temporary.

[jasode]

>First of all, that's rude.

Real question: Is there some social etiquette rule that says describing a person to a news audience as "unknown" is being rude? Honestly, I've never heard of that.

If I created a billion dollar company and Bloomberg called me "an unknown", I'd consider it a massive compliment. It means that I was able to grow the company totally under the radar without any distracting interview requests from TechCrunch, TheVerge, Gizmodo, etc.

[gutnor]

I guess the problem is the combination of "35-year-old" with "unknown".

Seems the 35yo bit is irrelevant to the story, that's neither old nor young: you can have a significant career by that point and you are a long way from retiring. So I can understand some people from the Valley would think this is just another case of ageism.

A bit like saying "A Black Woman left me her seat in the bus" can be suspicious even though it is factual.

[johnchristopher]

FWIW I have always been under the impression that "first of all that's rude" is mostly used as a funny meme, a recurring harmless little joke (to put emphasis on what comes next in the speech).

[isoskeles]

Every other founder is virtually unknown before they become known. Is he unknown because he lives in China and didn't attend Stanford? What does it mean that he is Unknown?

[j45]

In this context, unknown could be pretty easily with calling someone a nobody.

A nobody, compared to who? A status quo? Innovation is about outliers getting things done.

Whereas a success like this would normally be celebrated to the moon and back. Why not here? Is this individual's success outside a self-congratulatory echo-chamber?

With media it's worth asking questions about the use of words, because they wordsmith for a living.

[moomin]

My real question is: do they really mean unknown or just “unknown to us”. Guy could be quite well recognised in China for all I know. There’s a lot of implicit parochialism that works its way into news stories.

[ijpoijpoihpiuoh]

"Unknown" is not an insult. It's not rude. It just means that he was not prominent before this company. It's actually somewhat of a compliment, because you generally expect gradual rises in fame and performance, not meteoric ones. So to say "unknown X does great thing Y" is more complimentary to X than saying "X does great thing Y".

[mistrial9]

whose definition of 'prominent' ? many, many assumptions there

[cirgue]

I agree, I think this says more about the VC market in China than it does about Bytedance.

[apo]

I'd wear "Unknown" as a badge of honor.

[amelius]

Especially with all the trading of personal information these days.

Being unknown to even Google is a huge accomplishment for a 35-yo.

[sbr464]

I was going to say the same.

[bagacrap]

And technically he was 29 when he started it.

[mongodude]

Honestly, we the lesser mortals do not know what goes behind the closed doors when cheques like $1.5 billion are written.

People said the same thing when Microsoft valued Facebook at $15 billion. Now, in the hindsight, it seems so funny that people frowned upon those valuations.

Power of having many consumers engaged on your platform is too much in digital age.

[module0000]

With a $75b valuation, the state-actors coming for their protection money might expect quite a lot of it.

[duxup]

Or state-actors arrive on behalf of their competitors to put an end to it...

[ospider]

Actually, the profit plan has been going very well and straight forward - ADs.

[coldtea]

>Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign.

For whom? Because the founder will walk out a billionaire, or at least multi-millionaire, whatever happens...

[idrios]

Right? "Sorry this is only my first multi-billion dollar startup. I guess I need to start a second to merit having a name in your headline."

[desireco42]

Absolutely agree. When Kevin Rose came out of the blue with Digg, they didn't call him 'Unknown'. It is just how media in the US (and rest of the world is trying to copy them mostly) tries to grab attention.

Also, it is unknown to them, but Bytedance has been around for quite some time and covered in the US. Also, it is not like they are not making money. So many things are wrong with how they cover this.

[thomaslangston]

Kevin Rose was a TV host at the time Digg launched. He might not have been well known, but he wasn't unknown.

[tobltobs]

A bit off topic, but isn't you nickname FLUX-YOU a bit rude? Apart from that you are screaming does it sound quite similar to f%&$ you. And to flux means something like "flowing of fluid from the body, such as diarrhea".