Luo Yonghao

Luo Yonghao (Chinese: 罗永浩, b. 9 July 1972[1]) is a Chinese entrepreneur and internet celebrity. He is the chief executive officer and founder of Chinese technology company Smartisan[2] and founder of now defunct blogging website Bullog.cn.[3]

Luo Yonghao
Born (1972-07-09) 9 July 1972
Helong, China
Alma materBeishan Primary School
Occupation(s)entrepreneur
internet celebrity
former teacher at New Oriental in Beijing (2001-2006)
TitleFounder and CEO of Smartisan
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese羅永浩
Simplified Chinese罗永浩

On August 20, 2018,[4] Luo's company Smartisan launched the messaging service Bullet Message, which gained 7 million users in its first three weeks.[5]

Early life

Luo was born to a Korean Chinese family in Helong, Jilin, China. His father is the party secretary of Helong county Luo Changzhen (Chinese: 罗昌珍). At age 12, his family moved to Yanji and he transferred to Beishan Primary School. In his second year of high school, Luo dropped out.[6] Luo pursued various business endeavors, including selling second-hand books and reselling smuggled cars. However, after economic pressure he decided to study English and pursue a career teaching English.

Career

In 2001, Luo became a teacher at New Oriental in Beijing. From 2001 to 2006, Yonghao prepared students for the GRE test. Because of his humorous teaching style and often off-topic tangents, a few of his students filmed him and uploaded some of his lectures online. The videos, titled "Lao Luo Quotations", became popular with young people. Luo, nicknamed Lao Luo by his students, became an internet phenomenon[7] and was featured in Baidu's annual top-searches between 2005 and 2006. In June 2006, Luo Yonghao resigned from New Oriental.

Bullog.cn

On July 31, 2006, Luo launched Bullog.cn, citing dissatisfaction with the censorship of the major blog portals such as sina.com and sohu.com.[8] The site was considered to be one of the most liberal[9] blog portals in Chinese cyberspace.

Luo opened his portal in 2006. His words and recordings aimed to inspire independent thinking and sticking to life mottoes. Some excerpts that satirized or criticized unreasonable situations and misdemeanors aroused sympathy among netizens, and spread rapidly over the Internet. This became a topic of the year on the Chinese Internet.

References
  1. "Luo Yonghao made a post on July 10 called "Yesterday's birthday"".
  2. "Idealist Luo Yonghao: From internet celebrity to entrepreneur". December 29, 2011.
  3. "China closes 91 websites in online crackdown". Reuters. January 12, 2009.
  4. "罗永浩：支付宝很快接入子弹短信". August 25, 2018. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  5. "Bullet Message to spend 1 billion yuan to acquire 100 million users as it aims to take on Tencent's WeChat". South China Morning Post.
  6. "罗永浩：愤怒是一种生活方式".
  7. "英语牛人罗永浩的传奇人生".
  8. "新浪不弱智，新浪的做法弱智，新浪不傻逼，新浪的行为傻逼". July 27, 2006. Archived from the original on April 11, 2006.
  9. Liberal Blog Site Shutdown by Chinese Authorities Archived May 28, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Boxun News, January 9, 2009.
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