SharkNinja’s Billionaire Chinese Backer on Building an American Success Story

Wang at the New York Stock Exchange. —Courtesy of Wang Many self-made billionaires conceal their humble beginnings.

CJ Wang has put his front and center of his penthouse Hong Kong office: a small stone mill for grinding soybeans.

Mao Zedong’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution was just winding down when Wang started school in what is today Yantai city of China’s eastern Shandong province. (Where, incidentally, TIME founder Henry Luce was born in 1898.) Like most neighborhood kids, Wang was obliged to help with household chores after class, especially churning soymilk by endlessly hauling his uncle’s giant stone mill around.

It was labor that made the young Wang’s arms ache, though the eventual payoff would be a business empire worth tens of billions of dollars.

After graduating in electrical engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University, Wang became a teacher like his parents.

“It was what my family did so I just naturally fell into teaching,” he says, gazing out at sweeping views of Victoria Harbour.

“But I always wanted to do something bigger and carve my own path.” In 1994, as Chinese reformer Deng Xiaoping’s market liberalization unleashed a heady entrepreneurial spirit across the People’s Republic, Wang quit his job at a vocational college and invented the world’s first automatic soymilk maker.

“It was far from perfect, and wasn't an ideal product, but it was already a huge leap forward,” Wang says.

That same year Wang founded Joyoung, which soon became a household name in China for low-cost, dependable consumer products from blenders to rice cookers.

While Americans may not recognize Joyoung, they are probably familiar with Wang’s other major venture: SharkNinja , which he acquired in 2017 and today serves as chairman, having transformed the Massachusetts-based firm into a $26 billion trailblazer for disruptive household appliances.

“I really saw SharkNinja as an American version of Joyoung,” he says.

“I really felt like I understood the business.” In our interview, Wang’s first ever with international media, he comes across as shy and softly spoken, betraying none of the performative bravado of many billionaire founders.

He is, he confesses, a very private person, whose few passions outside of work include Macallan whisky and golf. (He has a 15 handicap).

So why has he decided to chat today? “I just want to be ahead of the curve to proactively tell my story to mitigate any speculation,” he says.