By Lorna Tan

In 1995, when he was 18 and still in school, Mr James Sun set up his first investment firm Sun & Associates and invested US$5,000 (S$7,000 at today's rate) of his savings in popular auction portal eBay.

Six months later, he was looking at a profit of US$150,000.

He then diversified into four technology stocks including AOL, Google and Yahoo, besides eBay.

By the time he was 23, the Korean-American was looking at a portfolio worth US$2.2 million.

'It was boom time and I rode a good market. I chose some good technology stocks and got really lucky,' said the entrepreneur and TV host.

He was shrewd too. 'I took my money off the table before the tech bust in 2001 because the tech stock market was over inflated then.'

It was hard work though. Besides pursuing his full-time degree in computer science and business at the University of Washington, he was putting in 60 hours a week researching his stocks so that he would know them intimately.

'I treated it like a job. There was no partying. In 1997, people started giving me money to manage. From 1998 to 2000, I was managing US$10 million.'

Mr Sun, 32, graduated in 1999 and joined Deloitte Consulting as a strategy consultant from 2000 to 2002. With a sum of US$2 million, he then set up wireless software firm 3P Networks, which he sold for a profit three years later.

He took a break for 18 months during which time he backpacked around the world, before starting a location search engine GeoPage in 2007 with US$1.5 million. Next on his cards is a hedge fund which will be launched here soon.

Mr Sun, who was the first Asian finalist and runner-up in the hit reality show The Apprentice in 2007, currently appears as a host who provides makeovers to businesses in a BBC TV programme Sun Tzu - War On Business, which Channel News Asia airs every Tuesday at 9.30 pm. He signed up as an artiste with home-grown firm Fly Entertainment last June.

He shuttles between South Korea and the United States. He is married to a Korean-American, 32, who is a community volunteer, and they have two daughters aged five and three.

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