PressLogic co-founder Ryan Cheung on how one textbook and one teacher changed his entire life path
I am Generation T is a series of quick-fire Q&As with some of the extraordinary individuals on the Gen.T List.
One economics textbook and one dedicated high-school teacher managed to change the entire life path of a young Ryan Cheung—now the co-founder and CEO of PressLogic, a Hong Kong-based social media content and data analytics startup.
Cheung describes himself as a very badly behaved student growing up. “I didn’t study at all, and in secondary school I was in the bottom of my whole class,” he says.
The only exception to his lack of interest in school was his economics class. “One year I remember reading this economics textbook, and all of a sudden I felt so excited—it was so interesting and easy to me. It honestly just changed my life.”
After realising his new-found passion for economics, Cheung went from skipping all his lessons at school and being in the bottom 200 children in his school year to becoming one of the top 10 students and heading off to university.
After a stint in the corporate world, Cheung launched PressLogic with co-founder Edward Chow in 2016. It started with a proprietary AI system that uses data analytics to predict the topics that will trend on social media among specific groups. To show its clients how well the system works, PressLogic launched its own lifestyle content brands. Just a couple of years later these brands, such as GirlStyle and UrbanLife Health, claim over eight million followers and more than 700 million monthly impressions.
This rapid growth attracted the attention of Chinese tech firm Meitu, which acquired a stake in Cheung's startup in late 2017, and was behind PressLogic's US$10 million Series A+ funding round a year later. Today, the startup they has six offices around the world and more than 130 staff.
“If I didn’t have the chance to take that economics subject at school or meet that teacher, then I wouldn’t have had the chance to turn my life around like I did,” he says.
We talk to Cheung about AI, Gen Z, and the future of social.
What sparked your interest in AI and predicting social media trends?
Before setting up PressLogic, I founded another e-commerce startup company in Hong Kong, where I worked with Edward, my technical partner and CTO. We learned a lot about big data, data analysis and social media marketing from that company. After we left we realised that data, content marketing and social media were the future.
You use a proprietary data analytics system called MediaLens to predict social media trends. How does it work?
MediaLens is a data-driven analytics system that Edward and I developed. It combines machine learning and AI capabilities to optimise our performance on social media platforms. It sources popular content and hot topics from the internet every day to determine what is likely to go viral. We then break down every topic and analyse the popular content in each interest community. This helps us to build our followers and engagement on our social platforms, and PressLogic utilises this data to manage our content, publishing, the content optimisation and even the editorial management.