Speaker : Yat Siu

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Outblaze

Yat Siu is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outblaze, the first company to tap the market demand for multi-lingual community-oriented Internet messaging services. In 1998 Outblaze pioneered the provision of multi-lingual online community services that allowed other companies to offer such services to their users without having to develop or buy expensive platforms themselves.

Yat Siu began his career in the technology sector working for Atari Germany in 1990. Three years later, in Boston, MA, he served as Director and Head of East Coast Operations for Lexicor, a professional graphics software company.

In 1996 Yat Siu moved to Hong Kong and established Hong Kong Cybercity (later renamed Freenation), the first free Web page and e-mail provider in Asia. Freenation grew rapidly and was later acquired by an US-based company.

Yat Siu joined AT&T Solutions' System Integration practice in 1997 and left a year later to set up Outblaze, which provides hosted messaging services to over 35 million people around the world.

Outblaze is headquartered in Hong Kong with offices in China, US, UK, Korea, Philippines, India and Japan. Outblaze continues to enjoy rapid growth and has recently added Terra Lycos and Register.com to its list of blue-chip clients, which also includes Easylink, Verizon Mail.com, PCCW, Barunson, Opera and The Irish Times.

Yat Siu holds a degree in Music from the Music Conservatory Vienna, Austria, and is a World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow. Yat Siu has been awarded for his contributions in business and society: Standard Chartered Platinum Achievers Award, the URENCO Innovation Award, and, for the execution of his vision at Outblaze, the IT Excellence Product Award, Linux Business Adoption Award 2003 and the Asia Pacific Information & Communication Technologies Award 2003.