chozun 途赞’s Founding Team: Where Did We Come From & Where Did We Go?

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Raw Startupism

8 min readMay 14, 2018

Written by Stefan Petersen, based on all the questions I can’t help but ask, while listening to Cotton Eye Joe. chozun 途赞: Where Did We Come From & Where Did We Go?

When two leading women in tech & the current co-founders of chozun 途赞, Teresa Truda & Zia Word met, big things were bound to happen. At the time, Teresa was already a digital advertising legend, & Zia was fresh to the scene of Melbourne’s tech leaders, direct from London. Fast forward 8 insane years, working across 5 countries with offices in Australia & China, meeting hundreds of inspiringly intelligent & hard working leaders & mentors along the way, while building a wealth of crazy experiences & knowledge; it’s no surprise chozun 途赞 is making waves in the travel & crypto industries.

Zia & Teresa (2010)

The story begins in 2010, when Teresa & Zia met. They would often take elevenses (mini-breaks at 11am, just like Mr. Paddington Bear) to chat about how much they wanted to be their own bosses. All they needed was a killer concept & a dream big enough to match their potentials.

Co-founding CEO Teresa Truda, is Melbourne born & breed, with a background in Operations within global Ad agencies. With almost 10 years of tech experience, she’s shaken-up the Australian digital landscape. She also loves soy lattes.

Co-founding CEO Zia Word is an OG Londoner. She’s dominated tech for over 13 years, advised startups & had 2 successful exits — upscaling to even bigger & better things. She been introducing groundbreaking digital content to big name brands since back in 2008, including the BBC’s Upstaged!

Zia meets Wil, introduces Wil & Teresa (2011+)

Zia met Wil (enter the Hacker), now CTO of chozun 途赞 in 2011. Zia, Teresa & Wil collaborated on prominent projects for some Australian big guns, including Maybelline. They all bonded instantly.

Wil Pringle, Chief Tech Officer of chozun 途赞 is from Melbourne’s hip inner-north. A crazy good hacker, he’s worked for successful startup VenueMob in Australia as Lead Engineer, full-stack tech specialist using skills across both front & backend development. He is all over blockchain; fluent in many computing languages & tech stacks. He leads the teams in building great products & is always ahead of the curve with tech. He is passionate about building great products & new technologies.

Will, T & Z moved in together, while working for different agencies & collaborating on their own side hustles. Sometimes Wil wouldn’t sleep for 48 hours, as he would be engrossed in coding & gaming — which is paying off immensely now! The three of them work together, lived together for a while, play together, & cherish their 7 years of friendship.

Zia & Teresa became their own Bosses (2014)

Zia & Teresa quit their full time jobs & started their own digital consultancy. They helped large traditional brands on their digital marketing presence — from strategy through to execution. Working across large brands like Selfridges, BP, Honda, Mazda, Lindt, L’Oreal & many others.

When Teresa & Zia were on a work trip to Mexico with friends, they decided to start a new venture together in early 2014. They saw something in the local Mexican craftsmanship, hotting on a trend & set up an eCommerce shoe store — designing, creating, importing & selling handmade Mexican leather boots in Australia. They handled everything from the entire supply chain, eCommerce store, social, branding & beyond.

Mexico, Bali & chozun 途赞 (2015)

After returning from Mexico, while still in Melbourne, Teresa had an idea. The initial concept for chozun 途赞. Teresa was a time poor business traveller with needs. Sensing she wasn’t alone in this struggle, she started offering the services that the app now offers, to see if the need actually did exist. She’d hit the nail on the head. At a conference in Bali, Zia & Teresa met the program director of Chinaccelerator. At that point they were consultants & running a shoe store online. “We’re not paying you to fly to Mexico to import shoes” — the program director frankly informed them. So they started working on a bigger idea together, something that would change the digital tech game & start a new chapter in their lives. That little idea that Teresa had, & had already tested, came to fruition. Chinaccelerator would frequently check in with the two, to see what they were up to.

At the end of 2015, Zia and Teresa sold the eCommerce shoe store & began to work on the seeds of the idea for chozun 途赞.

Big Lou (2016+)

Our gun Imperial College London alumni & Data Scientist, Machine Learning & Blockchain specialist, Louis Cronin came across chozun 途赞, almost by accident. When we were looking for some remote assistance he reached out to us from his home town, Cork, Ireland. After some time and incredible work, Louis was offered the opportunity to move to Australia & physically join the team, because he was so, so good. In the excitement — Louis told all his mates & family he was moving, & his grandma got him a lovely Australian hat to celebrate. Little did he know, he’d be entering the world of dumplings & chopsticks, not kangaroos.

Louis met Wil, Teresa & Zia in person for the first time in China, the night before starting Chinaccelerator. A few Guinness later, over some great banter & common ground — Louis found his spot in the chozun 途赞 family. We feel so lucky to all have a history of friendship, trust & a solid honest, personal foundation to which continues to transpire throughout the companies’ culture today. Louis has spent the last two years immersed in the blockchain & crypto scene while learning from the best mentors out there.

China: here we go!

After bootstrapping a clunky prototype, packing three suitcases on average per person, Asia’s most prominent accelerator, Chinaccelerator becomes a firm vision as we’re accepted. The startup participates and receives amount of seed-investment from SOSV. That’s when things really took off. Since, the product has been rebuilt, along with a growing customer base, and now, chozun are now ready to take the company to the next level with the ICO.

Interestingly enough, Louis was actually the first of the team to make it to China. Louis got there first & spent two weeks alone while Teresa, Zia & Wil were waiting for the visas to be approved. On their first night of meeting, Teresa suggested they go to a bar in Shanghai. Once again Louis was the first to arrive, & the first to discover the bar had actually closed down a year ago. If only they had an app to recommend a place for them back then…

China: from two months to two years

Originally the team thought they’d only be in China for a month or two. They were sorely mistaken. After their initial visas expired, Teresa, Louis & Wil had to briefly leave the country to get new papers. They went to Thailand to renew visas, & their brief papers took a month. Zia stayed in Shanghai because she had a boss visa — while the rest of the team worked from the many beaches & cafes of central & southern Thailand.

China: 2016–2018

With the help of SOSV’s seed funding, some bootstrapping, a solid vision & roadmap, chozun 途赞 evolved to our current Beta version — launching publicly in Q3 2016.

In early 2016, Zia realised that if we started to implement this technology it would put us way ahead of the game. So, we started using blockchain & moving our provider inventory onto the blockchain — which evolved into creating our cryptocurrency, & from there we began growing our community & tooling up for the next evolution of the product. We also quickly realised that the best way for us to create real value for CZN would be to launch an ICO, which is where we’re at now!

Melbourne, Shanghai, & beyond: now

Since our humble elevenses, we’ve expanded the team include local Chinese experts & advisors, built partnerships & customers, have a killer marketing team & some of the leading mentors in tech from around the globe. We’ve won the GBC Women’s Entrepreneurship Prize, have been finalists in Seedstars World & won Shanghai’s own Foreign Entrepreneurs competition.

As part of the Crypto Queens Zia & Teresa advise on blockchain technologies. Developing knowledge & expertise on blockchain technology. Teresa regularly speaks on tech, startups & blockchain. She also became involved in blockchain in 2016, now consults, provides workshops & talks on blockchain & cryptocurrencies as part of Crypto Queens with Zia. Zia regularly talks on China, tech, blockchain & crypto. We are supported by a great team of business development, Chinese market specialist & blockchain talent, including Darren Camus who is from Cardano, which is one of the top ten cryptocurrencies.

We’re blessed to be where we are at now, with our chozun 途赞 family — & we’re finally ready to open our door to the rest of the world. 2018, you ready for us?