How we scaled to $100M in under a year (ft. IM8 co-founder Danny Yeung)

We hit 100 million annual revenue run rate at 11 months. Bruins did it in 22 months, right? And they were acquired for 1.2 billion. AG1 took them 10 years to hit 100 million. We hit 200 million run rate in 18 months.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. Uh. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road less traveled, never lookin' back.

All right, Danny, welcome to the show, man. Why don't we start off, why don't you give a little, little intro to yourself? So, who are you? What do you do?

Hey, Sean. Thanks for having me. Quick background myself, always been an entrepreneur. Started working at a very young age. At 15, I was a telemarketer, so that's how I, you know, got started working. Age 24, had my first business, was a restaurant, did that for three, four years. Then ventured in the hotel furniture business, import-export from China into the US. Eventually worked on some big projects like the MGM City Center in Vegas. Did that also for three, four years. Then in 2010, I took a leap of faith and moved to Hong Kong, um, to launch a e-commerce company that was doing group buying. And then when Groupon went international, they acquired 51% of my company, and we became the largest e-commerce company in the region. I left in 2014. We're doing about 200 million annual revenues. I had a good exit. That's where, you know, I made my first million, you know, at that, per se.

Yeah.

More than a million. Um, but and then after e-commerce, I was like, "Hey, you know, what do I do next?" Had a lot of options at my disposal, and I didn't just want to go back into e-commerce, even though that was the easy route for me. Um, I ventured. Then I actually, you know, got started in diagnostics and DNA testing. So founded Prenetics, which was a life sciences DNA testing company. You know, again, this was 2014, right? So very early. No one was really talking about this stuff. And I think you'll see that in my entrepreneurial career, it wasn't the obvious choice, but everyone's like now looking back it's the obvious choice, right? I mean, think about in-

Right

... 2010, no one was using e-commerce in Hong Kong. You know, everyone, in fact, told me to go back to US. They're like, "Danny, just go back to US. This model's not gonna work in Hong Kong." We, but we made it the number one e-commerce company at the time. But going back to Prenetics, you know, started off as a life sciences company. When COVID hit, you know, we were prime position to take advantage of it. We worked very fast. In two weeks, we got our COVID testing kit. We then became Hong Kong's number one COVID PCR provider, as well as in the UK. So those, yeah, three years, we, yeah, I would say we were, like, printing money, I would say, right? Um-

[laughs] It exploded.

At one point, we're doing 40,000 PCR tests a day, right? We totaled at 28 million. This is laboratory PCR tests. Those three years, we did 700 million-plus revenue, um, in three years' time. We listed on the NASDAQ in 2022. We're a household name. Everyone that arrived in Hong Kong at one point had a mandatory Prenetics PCR test. And then, of course, that led, goes into, you know, IM8, which is kind of, you know,