Hong Kong startups come together: A StartUP Saturday report
When I landed in Hong Kong last Thursday, I was initially struck by the similarities between Singapore and Hong Kong when it comes to business environment. Both cities are major financial hubs in Asia, have very open economies, great supporting infrastructure and legal systems in place, and what’s more – they are among the top five cities in the world to do business, according to the World Bank. Keeping this in mind, I attended StartUP Saturday to check out the startup ecosystem in Hong Kong.
While Hong Kong and Singapore are great for business in general, the startup scenes in both cities couldn’t be more different. Jonathan Buford, a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur and one of StartUP Saturday’s organizers, wrote that Singapore’s startup scene is “perhaps five years ahead of HK in development timeline”. Lack of a strong community, funding options and support structures were some of the reasons behind this notion.
But, from witnessing first-hand the largest startup event in HK and meeting local entrepreneurs and incubators – I can conclude that the Hong Kong startup scene is definitely ramping up and it points towards bigger things to come.
StartUP Saturday was organized by the StartupsHK group – a community of Hong Kong startup founders who meet up on a regular basis to discuss the vagaries of startup life. What started off as a casual meet-up of about 10 people ballooned into a 400-strong event. They are now planning on making StartUP Saturday an annual affair.
StartUP Saturday Report
The event was kick-started by an introduction to the IncuTrain program (more on that in the next post) – an incubation and training program for digital media startups. Following that was a keynote by Douglas Young, co-founder of GOD, a contemporary retail and design shop. Although the keynote was not technology oriented, Young shared his learning on the importance creating strong identities with the brand or product you are building.
The Keynote was followed by a StartUP Panel discussion between Arthur Chow (co-founder of 6 Waves), Kevin Huang (CEO of Pixel Media), Andy Ann (CEO of Darizi Media) and Terry Tsang (Co-founder of Pencake Limited). Moderated by Gene Soo (Co-founder of StyleNearBy), the panel mainly touched upon the various stages of the startup cycle. From getting funding to acquiring customers. Discussion mainly veered towards how to move from idea to execution from the lessons they learned.
The other interesting panel was the funding panel which consisted of Douglas Glen (Hong Kong-based angel investor), James Giancotti (director of investments at Excitin), Tony Chan (founder of AP Deal Flow) and Ken Ko (CEO of Lakoo). The discussions started with a report on existing grants and matching funds available for entrepreneurs in Hong Kong.
There are three main funds:
- Inno-tech grant: matching fund up to HK$350,000 (US$45,000)
- InnoCentre grant: matching fund up to HK$350,000 (US$45,000)
- SERAP: matching grant up to HK$4 million (US$515,000)
Most entrepreneurs I met in Hong Kong acquired funds by bootstrapping through “three F’s” or by doing consulting on the side. They unanimously lamented the lack of seed funding to get their businesses started.
“[The] investment climate in Hong Kong is bad and the most investors here are likely to invest in China-based startups, ” Frederick Yung from the Hong Kong Science Technology Park said.
The other major aspect of the event were the startup pitches. There were 18 pitches in total. You can find the entire list of startups here.
Personally, from all the pitches, I found the following products interesting:
- Pandaform: One of the echelon 2010 launchpad startups. It is a simple online professional form builder and manager.
- ResumeTracker: Personalized career site to handle job applications and to manage applicant information for SME’s.
- StyleNearby: iPhone app that enables shoppers to discover unique boutiques, follow designers and check out different style-related events in town.
- Spoilt: Online retailer of unique experience gifts in Hong Kong offering consumers a portfolio of experiences across the categories of Water, Flying, Outdoor, Gourmet, Creative and Pampered.
- PhotoGoodness: Digital photography management and manipulation application, built from the ground up for photography enthusiasts with DSLR cameras.
- Enterproid: Android-based technology that enables professionals to consolidate work and personal life onto a single enterprise grade device.
You can watch some of the interview with startup founders here
What was probably the biggest highlight of the event was that BootHK secured funding just minutes later after co-founder Jon Buford (yes, the same guy who helped organize StartUP Saturday) pitched it on stage. BootHK is a community and co-working space for startups and makers. It is the equivalent of Hackerspace in HK. Their first space will be in Sheung Wan and they managed to get a commitment of US$16,000 from members and supporters.
All in all the event had a great vibe going on about it and the excitement was palpable. It has definitely set a precedent for bigger and better things to happen in the Hong Kong startup space.
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