One year later, Wong took another exchange tour to the US, organised by the HKUST. “The exchange tours were valuable experiences for me,” says Wong. “They opened my horizons to other cultures, and gave me the inspiration to realise my goals.”

Wong’s passion for apps was boosted again during an English lesson in his second year at university. During the first lesson, the students were asked to introduce themselves. Wong shared his track record in mobile apps, and a classmate approached him with an idea afterwards.

“This gentleman from the mainland invited me to join his start-up to write travel-related mobile apps,” says Wong. “I agreed immediately, because this allowed me to prove my ability in writing commercial apps. I began to take freelance work after that, too.”

Wong decided to run this own business during his third year at university. “I have to thank my project supervisor at HKUST, who gave me the freedom to make this a topic of my final year project. I implemented the project with my teammate Angus Luk, who became a co-founder of EventXtra.”

The two young entrepreneurs’ efforts were recognised when they obtained a seeding fund of HK$100,000 from the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund Scheme. Although many other companies offered him jobs during this period, Wong decided that he’d rather run his own business.

“I’m proud of my studies at HKUST”, says Wong. “The campus atmosphere motivated me to follow my dream. I was surrounded by engineering talent, so it was easy to find brilliant people to join my team,” he says.

“The rich resources available at the university helped us do our work effectively. For example, our gang always gathered in the library for planning. That was basically EventXtra’s first headquarters,” he exclaims.

In its early days, EventXtra simply took orders from clients and produced customised mobile apps for them. But Wong always had concerns about this business model.  “I wondered if we should continue to write apps based on clients’ requirements, or create our own apps and sell them to customers,” says Wong. “If the clients’ specifications aren’t any good, the resulting app won’t be any good, either.”

A networking event provided his big idea. “I like joining networking events to connect with people and exchange knowledge,” he notes. “I noticed that many of these events relied heavily on manual labour, even though we’re living in a tech-savvy world. The organisers have a hard time monitoring delegates, and they also have to spend considerable time creating name tags for the guests, and checking their attendance.”

Wong realised his could make this process easier. He developed an app that can print name tags instantly when guests arrive at the event, and enable them to sign in with a click on their phone. He also developed a smart networking app for delegates to check the profiles of participants, and arrange onsite meetings. There is also an app that helps categorise contact information from all the business cards that are collected.

Wong recently decided to put various functions into a one-stop solution called “Lead Retrieval”. This covers guest registration, email delivery, notifications, badge printing, and check-in, as well as post-event interaction and relationship building.

By automating all processes electronically, event organisers will be able to benefit from faster turnaround, simplified operations and lower labour costs, while critical data can be visualised for better management and analysis. The organisers can also follow up with attendees through mobile apps immediately after the event while they are still onsite. Forthcoming features include “smart detection” which enables users to detect whom they have interacted with just now at the event.

EventXtra for has been up and running since 2012, and has customers like Yahoo! Hong Kong and The Economist. With a team of 10 staff in his Fo Tan office, Wong’s goal is to double sales every month.

The networking industry runs on people, so it’s fitting that Wong has built the success of EventXtra on people, too.  

“The core value of EventXtra is people,” says Wong. “We respect our people, we try to learn from each other, and we never stop learning.”

Wong’s positive character has attracted many talented workers. These include Raj Anand, vice-president of sales. Anand is a 40-year-old technology expert who ran a company of more than 100 people in Singapore before joining EventXtra.

“Sum has impressed me with his vision, and I feel I’m working for a company with a bright future. It’s a joy to be a member of this family,” says Anand.

Talent can win games, but teamwork can win championships.  The real champions in life treasure, respect, and care about people, as Wong does.