APP TEAM: Guo Lie shows a cartoon image in his office in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on June 6, 2014 (CFP)

"I encourage my employees to argue and even physically fight it out if they hold different ideas," said Yu Jiawen, a 24-year-old entrepreneur with a hoodie and black-rimmed glasses, on China Central Television's program Voice of Youth.

Right before Yu was invited to deliver a lecture on behalf of young business startups, his company got an investment of $10 million from Alibaba, the leading e-commerce company in China. It was the fourth round of investment that his company has received since 2012, when his team released their smartphone-app Super Curriculum.

"I let employees decide how much they earn. Maybe I am the only boss that can do this," said Yu, who also revealed that he was thinking of handing out 100 million yuan ($16.4 million) in bonuses to his staff in 2015.

His lecture and the success of his business created a flurry of attention from the audience and netizens. Yu has been called a representative of China's youngest Internet tycoons and entrepreneurs.

Audacious age

"To be young means to be brave enough to take risks and never be afraid of failures," said Yu, who has acted on his words in running his own business.

In 2012, Yu started his business of developing and promoting the app Super Curriculum in his third year of studying software development at the South China Institute of Software Engineering. The app targets college students who can import their curriculum schedule to their mobile phones and help students share their class notes, homework, review schedules and ideas. Students can also send secret letters to the ones that they have crush on. "I am too shy to speak to girls and my motivation was to create an app that can help solve this problem," said Yu.

While everything was going well, the investor all of a sudden refused to put money in. The team couldn't afford an office, choosing instead to move into a shabby apartment. They didn't even have money to buy chairs and desks and for a time were forced to survive on a diet of instant noodles.

At the same time, Yu was diagnosed with cancer. "I told myself that I couldn't die before I finish everything. I calmed down and made a list of things to do and dealt with them one by one," said Yu. "After I finished everything and went back to the hospital for treatment, the doctor told me the diagnosis was a mistake."

"I wanted to encourage more people my age," said Yu. "We also can succeed without a strong family background." Yu's parents are pork sellers in Chaozhou, south China's Guangdong Province. "My father kept telling me that if I don't study hard I will end up working as a pork seller, too."

Yu's business talents were shown during high school when he started his own business by setting up an online social platform for local students. Two years later he sold the website for 1 million yuan ($164,000).

It was already a big success for a high school student, but Yu said he couldn't allow himself to sit on that and get satisfied.

"What if you lose everything again?" asked an audience member during the show.

"I'd get a job to support myself," said Yu. "No matter how much you have, you can lose it. It is not a big deal, just start again."