HKUST helped Sensbeat CEO launch a successful business

Walt Disney once said that “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” That is certainly true of the young graduates from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), who founded Sensbeat in 2014.

“Act fast when opportunities come. Don’t wait a second longer,” says Leo Wong Lu Yeung, the 25-year-old co-founder and CEO of Sensbeat. Wong raised US$1 million from six local and overseas investors in just two years to build a social networking platform, now marketed as omv (which means “oh my video”). On omv, users can share videos and emotions associated with the music they are listening to.

The story began in 2013, when Wong was staying in Spain on an exchange programme during his third-year of business studies at HKUST. Wong had some sentimental feelings after listening to an English song while visiting Switzerland for a holiday during the trip. He wanted to share his feelings about the music with friends over the internet, but there was no way of doing it.  

“We have Facebook and Twitter to share messages, and Instagram to share photos. But there is no way to express the emotions we have that are associated with music. At that moment, I became passionate about creating an app that could express this,” he says.

After returning to Hong Kong, Wong began to look for a partner who was able to write the necessary code. He met Ben Chan, who was studying computer science and business at HKUST. Later they were joined by Conrad Lo, a finance student at HKUST. The trio decided to launch a start-up to develop and market Wong’s idea. They named the company Sensbeat.

“Music inspires a thousand pictures, and expresses the feelings in our hearts,” says Wong. “A song is always changing, as the situation, and the feelings, of the listener make it a different experience for everyone. We offer a platform to share a ‘beat’, like a tweet in Twitter, on the app and on social media. It leverages the power of music, and connects people through a universal language.”

To plug themselves into the word of business, the team decided to enter some international competitions. They were judged the champions of the Hong Kong Young Entrepreneur Challenge in 2013, and won the Grand Prize (International Category) in the Ignite Entrepreneurship Challenge, which took place in Brunei same year. Sensbeat was also chosen as one of the globally "Top 5 Most Innovative Apps" in GMIC, the largest mobile internet conference in Asia, in 2014. It was the youngest team to be chosen from Hong Kong, and the youngest team from all of Asia.