Allen Lau is a Canadian and Chinese entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of

Wattpad Wattpad is an online literature platform intended for users to read and write original stories. The founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen say that the platform aims to create social communities around stories and remove the barriers between readers a ...

Biography

Lau was born in Hong Kong, and at age 19, he immigrated to Canada where he attended St. Robert Catholic High School and the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. There, he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1991, followed by a master's in electrical engineering in 1992. In 2006, he founded Wattpad, an online platform that allows writers to share their writing with the online Wattpad community. Lau is a prominent member of the Canadian entrepreneurship community; in 2014, he and his wife founded Two Fish Ventures, a venture firm that invests in internet-based startups in the

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

and

Kitchener-Waterloo The Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Waterloo Region or Region of Waterloo) is a metropolitan area of Southern Ontario, Canada. It contains the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo (KWC or Tri-Cities), and the townships of North Dumf ...

regions. In 2021, Wattpad announced that it was being acquired by South Korean conglomerate,

Naver Naver (Hangul: 네이버) is a South Korean online platform operated by the Naver Corporation. It was launched in 1999 as the first web portal in South Korea to develop and use its own search engine. It was also the world's first operator to in ...

, for US$600 million; Wattpad is planning on continuing to run independently with Lau maintaining his leadership position.

References

Hong Kong businesspeople Canadian businesspeople Year of birth missing (living people) Living people {{Canada-business-bio-stub