In 2017, 25 year-old Kytu Lin made up his mind to become a successful leader.

Weighing 91 kilos at the time, he swore he would lose weight. Employees relate that “Even when he traveled to the US, Japan, or China on business, the boss insisted on bringing his own scale. Because as he said, getting on the same scale at the same time each day results in a precise baseline.”

At the same time, Kytu Lin started devouring books on finance, management, and the biographies and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs, from which he drew motivation. 

For instance, he had been a typical night owl, accustomed to working in the still of the late night. Yet he went out of his way to adjust his biological clock to make himself into a morning person, forcing himself to rise at 6am, be the first one to turn the lights on at the office at 7:30, start work, and first quietly read for an hour. By adjusting his mental and physical condition, he was prepared to face his colleagues and everyday decision making. 

Taking after Apple founder Steve Jobs, he wore black or dark clothes, reducing the time it takes to choose his attire each day before work. Lin stresses that he implored himself to learn how to manage his health, time, and efficiency, to elevate the overall quality of his decision making.

That year the social media platform that he and fellow National Taiwan University (NTU) student [Jian Qinyou 簡勤佑] founded was taking off, adding 10,000 new members a week. Matching that growth, company staff quickly expanded to over 30 employees. However, different outlooks and opposing opinions began to separate management, so that staff would wait for the CEO to offer direction, and a couple dozen staff would come to him one after another to discuss matters.

“The year 2017 was the most painful period,” relates Lin. This prompted him to read a lot of management books, contemplate organizational adjustments to Dcard, and seek counsel from older seasoned entrepreneurs in the effort to become an outstanding business leader. 

Three years down the road, Forbes magazine named Kytu Lin, now 28 years old, to its prestigious 30 Under 30, Taiwan’s sole representative among Asian IT leaders. Forbes describes Dcard as having become “the most influential social media platform among young Taiwanese.” 

Charles Yen, co-founder of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA) Taipei chapter, gushes: “Kytu Lin is one of the very few young entrepreneurs I know with a very mature personality and a serious,  hard working attitude. Most twenty-somethings lack sufficient experience and are unable to lead others, whereas he is exceptionally good at motivating others.”

Turning Vision Into Action, Attracting a Million Members

Kytu Lin and Chien Chin-yu setup the Dcard platform around 2011 while they were students in the computer science department at NTU. Believing that taking the initiative to meet girls was not an easy task, Chien brought forth a romantic sentiment, envisioning encounters in which fate brings us together.” 

Chien once wrote on his personal blog about those days at NTU in search of a startup partner. The original kernel of the concept came from him, while in Kytu Lin he happened upon a “genius developer” to help him set up the site’s programming architecture.

The “D” in Dcard stands for “Destiny,” and random “cards” are drawn to introduce men and women. This takes place at midnight, with a limit of one card per day. And as long as both parties hit the button and agree to see each other they can be friends. On the other hand, once the opportunity has passed, it is gone forever.

Although the internet is all about speed, this room for imagination full of random chance tapped into the zeitgeist of current university students.

Presently, Dcard has become the largest anonymous social media platform in Taiwan, with over four million registered members, averaging 15 million unique monthly visitors and 1.5 billion monthly views. With over 200,000 posts on average per month, it has replaced the previous generation’s campus BBS site, PTT, to become a wildly popular site where students and young people go to talk about life, work, politics and social issues.

Kytu Lin became interested in programming after reading about Bill Gates. While at university studying computer science he took on a lot of contract work - including setting up websites for startups and helping a headhunter company install systems - making over one million NT dollars for himself.

During his sophomore year he helped set up Dcard, unexpectedly echoing Facebook’s development process. Dcard was registered as a company in 2015, and beginning in 2017 he worked harder to cultivate his identity and capability as a leader.

“Losing weight is a lot like management - both require delayed gratification,” offers Kytu Lin. From that time, he practices strict discipline in preparation for becoming a CEO. “Unlike writing code, in which you can see the outcome right away, with management you don’t know if what you are doing is effective, or staff have assimilated it. Still, I know that Dcard must break through ‘the innovator’s dilemma.’” 

Referring to Clayton Christensen, the “father of disruptive innovation,” Lin stressed that the hard thing about transformation is whether or not the subject can perceive market changes, to find the second growth arc. For although Dcard commands a vast number of members and high volume, how to transform to achieve a stable cash flow and business model, and ultimately drive revenue growth is a major challenge.

One industry insider revealed that Kytu Lin and co-founder Chien Chin-yu eventually did not see eye to eye on company development and went their separate ways. With this, Chien sold off his stocks and left Dcard. 

Presently Dcard’s revenue largely comes from advertising. Lin does not divulge revenue figures, but stresses that the number of company staff has already exceeded 100. At the same time, profits are holding steady at a slight loss or equilibrium even balance.

Busy working on strengthening Dcard’s hiring and business development, Kytu Lin relates, “for a company to innovate it needs more talent, which must be placed in the right positions to bring in new thinking, make better decisions, and create innovative products for the company.”

Lin offers that he studied how to be a good leader three years ago, and now he has started to help other people become leaders. “The organization has grown larger, with multiple levels, so internally I help employees advance to become team leaders, while finding even stronger marketing, sales and public relations people from outside the organization to help expand operations. I’m trying to work on empowering (others).”

Last year, Dcard began exploring e-commerce, observing which products generate the most buzz among internet users and asking vendors to list the products. This way, when members exchange views or share articles in the forum, stimulating their desire to buy, which they can satisfy by placing direct orders.

In order to accommodate more members and traffic, Dcard has incorporated tools like data analysis and machine learning training modules, keeping on top of client conduct to understand clients’ preference for content, how long they read articles for… and use similar group preferences to provide precise article and product recommendations.

“Social media platforms can be huge, like Korea’s Naver, or China’s Tencent or ByteDance. I want Dcard to become the ‘infrastructure’ for the youth of Taiwan, catering to their daily needs.”

Kytu Lin likens managing a company to the process of weight loss. “I’m good at managing my own hardship, to cultivate a habit and advance toward the goal of success. I love doing difficult things that few people endeavor to do, and entrepreneurship is just that sort of thing.”

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Kytu Lin
Age / 28
Position / Dcard CEO and co-founder
Education / B.A., Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University
Experience / Built Dcard website in 2011, founded Dcard Technology in 2015

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Translated by David Thoman
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Penny Chiang