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SHANGHAI -- Three years ago, Jason Jiang was an unknown Chinese entrepreneur with an offbeat notion to sell ads in elevator lobbies. Then he persuaded the money men to back him.

Jason Jiang. [whnews.cn]

Today, Mr. Jiang's company, Focus Media Holding Ltd., has a market capitalization of almost $2.9 billion. Its share price has quadrupled since the company's initial public offering in July on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Mr. Jiang has amassed a personal fortune of more than $700 million, including a 25% stake in his company.

Not long ago in China, getting rich fast was suspect. But Mr. Jiang, 33 years old, is a celebrity in China, where he is one of a small group of young entrepreneurs pursuing the nation's rising consumer class, rather than relying on its traditional economic role as a center of low-cost manufacturing.

The Shanghai native's name is on a list of top-10 "IT Young Spirits" posted on a Web site run by the Shanghai Municipal Committee. China's state-owned newspapers feature profiles recounting his rise to wealth.

For legions of private-equity investors and venture capitalists coming to China to make a buck, Focus Media's trajectory serves as a wishful template for deals in a country where spectacular economic growth often hasn't translated into spectacular investment returns.

By paving the way for other start-up companies, Mr. Jiang says, the country's new entrepreneurs "will inject new dynamics into the Chinese economy."

Mr. Jiang is the only child of a middle-class couple. His father was an accountant, and his mother managed a state-run grocery store. He attended a teachers' college in the city, preparing to become an elementary-school instructor. While a student, he wrote poems and recited them at public readings.

An avid debater as a first-year student, he would engage upperclassmen in discussions on philosophy and literature, recalls Alan Ji, a college friend who is now Focus Media's head of public relations. He later was elected president of the student union.

Mr. Jiang first became acquainted with advertising in college. To earn pocket money, he began selling print ads for an advertising company, and he quickly became its top salesman. After graduation, he founded an ad firm that worked mainly with Internet advertisers.

He left that business to found Focus Media in 2003. Mr. Jiang figured the emergence of newly affluent Chinese required advertisers to find better ways to target customers, many of whom put in more waking hours at the office than at home. His idea was simple: Sell advertisements on a network of electronic billboards installed at elevator lobbies in office buildings in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities.

In 2003, Mr. Jiang still was struggling. Rapidly burning through seed capital from Softbank China Venture Capital, Focus Media was operating at a net loss for the year and sorely needed more money.

So Mr. Jiang on Christmas Day flew to Beijing to visit the senior partner at CDH Fund, a private-equity firm. He showed up on a freezing afternoon without an overcoat, recalls Wu Shangzhi, the CDH partner. Waving away concerns that he would catch a cold, Mr. Jiang began an explanation of his business strategy.

[Mr. Wu says the young entrepreneur spoke passionately. He also displayed an understanding of the potential shortcomings of his business model, including the challenge of sustaining growth once the company had contracts with most major office complexes in Shanghai and Beijing. In Shanghai, it already claimed 70% of the market.

Mr. Jiang addressed such concerns by explaining that the company was establishing franchises in secondary cities in China, such as Changsha and Tianjin, with the hope of buying and integrating them into the parent company once they became financially viable. He asserted that the company had moved to profitability for November and December, even while posting a loss for the year.

What convinced Mr. Wu was Mr. Jiang's willingness to share the risks he was asking investors to take. He pledged that the company would post a net profit of $10 million the following year and said the fund could ratchet down its commitment if that target wasn't met. "If I don't achieve what I set out, I will suffer," Mr. Wu recalls Mr. Jiang saying.

By the end of the meeting, Mr. Wu agreed to invest even more money than the entrepreneur sought. Mr. Jiang was looking for a little more than $6 million, but left with a verbal commitment for $12 million.

Revenue grew quickly in 2004, and Focus Media wound up beating Mr. Jiang's $10 million earnings target by several million dollars. The results enticed other backers. That November, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., venture-capital fund 3i Group and United China Investment Ltd. provided $30 million.

So far, Mr. Jiang's company hasn't slowed down. Focus Media reported $68.2 million in total revenue last year, compared with $29.2 million in 2004, although a buying spree of rival advertisers this year and a temporary tax exemption, which may expire next year, have caused some analysts to question whether the company can maintain its pace.

Since last summer's IPO, which raised about $171 million, Focus Media's investors have reaped big profits. In January, the company raised about $295 million in a secondary offering on Nasdaq that yielded about $40 million for Mr. Jiang and more than $100 million combined for Goldman Sachs and CDH, the company says in regulatory filings.

Mr. Jiang is considered so important to Focus Media that its prospectus cites the possibility of his departure, while unlikely, among "risk factors" for investors.

Today, Focus Media's office is a whirl of activity. Slightly disheveled in a white button-down shirt, Mr. Jiang entertains visitors and discusses at length his goals. He lives alone, next door to his parents, in Shanghai's financial district. Most of his friends, he says, are business associates or company employees.

His one indulgence: a foot massage almost every evening about 10, at a parlor near his home. The hour-long respite, he says, makes it possible for him to resume work afterward and concentrate late into the night.

During a recent foot massage, Mr. Jiang said he thought about getting out of advertising, perhaps moving into films. A fan of the Chinese blockbuster "Hero," which recounts events in China in the third century B.C., he says that someday he would like to weave Chinese legends into a movie extravaganza.

That is a plan for far in the future. "I like to do one thing at a time," he says, "and when I do, I focus on it."