Coconuts Singapore chat up 9GAG’s main man Ray Chan at the Echelon conference in Singapore last month to find out what it’s like to work at the Hong Kong startup, best known as the funnest social media website in the world. His answers were surprising.
We started 9GAG in 2008. Three years passed before we actually focused on it.
We didn’t really treat 9GAG seriously at first because it was just one of the many projects we were working on and we didn’t think sharing funny pictures could be a business.
It was just an experiment; to see if we could build something.
We could grow to the level we’re at right now because social media was also growing at the time. Sometimes, it’s about timing.
Working on it was a bit like the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There are so many dots… when you look back, they’re obvious, but when you’re living the moment, you don’t really know.
9GAG is still very ‘green’. We’re trying to understand more about how to build and run a company. We’ve started hiring more people and thinking about company culture, about how to make our team members happy.
Nothing much has changed since 9GAG except, I’m busier. There’s no work-life balance. As an employee, you get things done, have your boss appreciate you and when you get off work you can play computer games and date your girlfriend.
When you’re building a company, you go home and you still have to work, and you don’t really go on vacation because emails.
We can’t control whether people share funny pictures. But we dislike it when they use names like ours. Nobody really used the word “gag” or numbers in their company names before, but now so many do.
It makes people misunderstand that they’re affiliated to us. When they work with advertisers or when it shows they have little experience in this kind of thing, we get users writing to us asking, “hey, why does this version suck?”
Being famous is not that useful. We’re not actors, artists or standup comedians. It’s only at business type events that we play up what we do, so people pay attention to us, but otherwise, we keep a low profile.
What matters most is our users. You really need people using your product, that is key.
Once, I went to Brazil for a conference and someone asked me to sign on their iPad with a marker.
It’s kind of crazy, but you get the sense that, wow, we have some users who really love 9GAG. It’s a happy thing.
People have fun and humour in their DNA, it’s just that sometimes the environment and education constrain them. So you have to “release the kraken”.
The good thing about working at 9GAG is, you won’t be bored. Of course your standard gets higher the more you look at funny pictures. You don’t find things funny that easily.
People ask me, “hey Ray, how did you become such a funny guy? The thing is, when you read funny stuff everyday, you absorb the humour. It’s like when you work on lifestyle stuff and you start to care more about the quality of life.
Our mission is “forever alone no more” because we want people to have one more place to get in touch with others. Like, on 9GAG, you’ll see a user in Singapore talking about how troublesome his girlfriend is and a Brazilian guy comments on that. That kind of interaction is interesting, and that’s what we want to see, not just users who are addicted.
We want people to have a life, and a happy life at that. That’s why we started the company.
We run the team very formally, like start the day with a meeting at 9:15am, and get off at 6 or 7pm. Though we try to keep things more open, it’s not like, “hey, we’re freestyle”. It’s like making a comedy. The audience will see the movie as funny, but as makers you have to be very disciplined.
The content is very relaxing, but creating it is hard work.
I’m a big Game of Thrones fan and I love all the funny stuff about the show on 9GAG. I also like Philosoraptor.
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