Ivan Wong has been passionate about technology and education since he was a child. Since secondary school, he has been self-learning programming and has created YouTube and Instagram channels to share his learning with others.
Turning the pandemic into an opportunity
When Ivan was at university during the pandemic, he had the opportunity to launch an online platform to help students solve their learning problems by sharing note-taking when work and classes were suspended. Ivan and their friends joined the Inno Impact Youth Creative Practice Programme of the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups (HKFYG) in 2021. The programme aims to encourage young people to care about society in multiple ways and use innovative solutions to solve social problems to create social value and impact. Ivan’s team, with their “Flowclass” project—a comprehensive educational and tutoring service matching platform tailored for SEN (Special Educational Needs) students, successfully secured a start-up fund of HK$200,000 to begin their entrepreneurial journey.
A Changing Word
Ivan believes that passion and work hard are the ways to run the business successfully. However, during one of Inno Impact’s networking sessions, his mentor asked, “If you can’t even support yourself, you can’t even call it entrepreneurship. These words made him realise that passion and hard work alone could not ensure the continued success of his business, and he began to think about ways to make a sustainable profit to ensure the company’s stable development.
Breaking through bottlenecks on the road to innovation
Most of Ivan’s team were university students around his age who had their own careers after graduation, which brought the company’s business to a standstill for a while. However, Ivan did not give up and actively earned extra income to keep the company running. Ivan realised that there was a huge demand for online marketing in the education industry, so he began to study Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques and the best processes for online system design and transformed part of the company’s business into an online marketing agency. The business is now an important part of revenue for the company.
Tips for Continuous Innovation
Ivan knows that innovation is not difficult, but continuous innovation is not easy. He believes that while it is important to stay true to one’s vision, it is also important to keep an open mind to respond to the changing needs of society, to be innovative and ready to take on new challenges and to find the right opportunities to showcase one’s hard work. Ivan’s entrepreneurial journey has been full of challenges and obstacles. However, with his strong will, teammates’ support, and continuous pursuit of breakthroughs, he successfully overcame it.