When Leaf Hua Li joined Shenzhen-based Tencent in 2000 as employee number 18, the tech start-up was barely known; it had not yet come up with WeChat and indeed only became a listed company four years later. But it was part of an emerging ecosystem that included Huawei, drone-maker DJI, Ping An Insurance, the Beijing Genomics Institute and others that would soon put Shenzhen on the global map and attracted the brightest young minds from all over China.

In flocking to Shenzhen, these aspiring entrepreneurs not only sought to join the tech groups that had the best prospects, they soon learned the satisfaction of receiving shares and options that would make them wealthy when their companies finally went public, enabling them to turn part of their holdings into real world cash.

When Mr Li decided to leave Tencent in 2007, he was not the first to depart; two others who had joined in the company's infancy left before he did. They chose to retire; Mr Li decided to become an entrepreneur in his own right. Today, his online brokerage, Futu Securities, is among the most successful financial companies in China and is listed in New York, a model for how technology can change the template for the industry on both sides of the Pacific.