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.
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.
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.
And to be honest Chinese billionaires not being well known in the west isn't that surprising to me, particularly when their business ventures are heavily China-facing.
Not really. Tesla's founder was well known, for example (as a founder and exiter of another company). Ditto for the founder of NeXT.
And "unknown" here also means not born with a silver spoon, no heir, no previous positions eg. as CEO/CTO somewhere, no major tech connections, etc.
>Virtually Every other founder is unknown before they become known
.. :)
Tesla's original founders are indeed "unknown."
Ultimately, it's a difference of opinion and social influences. It got an article click anyway, so mission accomplished for Bloomberg.
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.
Being unknown to even Google is a huge accomplishment for a 35-yo.
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.
For whom? Because the founder will walk out a billionaire, or at least multi-millionaire, whatever happens...
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.