Rush Hour Media co-founders Jerome Tam (pictured right in above image) and Jake Sharp met at the University of Leeds, where they were studying Aviation and New Media, respectively.
While Jake worked for several UK web agencies while pursuing a master’s in computer science, Jerome sold insurance in Hong Kong – still keeping his dreams of becoming a pilot at the forefront. In fact, he got as far as the flight grading process for Cathay Pacific and was one of the final eight candidates of that year.
Instead, life steered Jerome towards entrepreneurship as he worked in a sales role for NecesCity, a media startup catering to exclusive men’s lifestyle. Combining his sales experience and passion for startups with Jake’s engineering background and web agency experience – the two created Rush Hour Media.
What is your startup?
We are a Creative Web and Branding Agency. Our main focuses are web design and development, branding and graphic design work. Our clients range from two-man team startups to restaurant chains running more than 20 outlets. We are also working on a few web platforms of our own, one of which is for weddings and it will be launched late 2014/ early 2015.
How did you come up with this idea?
Jake and I always talked about starting our own company but never quite settled on a solid idea until Rush Hour Media. When Jake decided to move to Hong Kong in 2011, and find work as a web developer he realised a lot of the agencies in Hong Kong had a very low standard of work and a large proportion of websites weren’t even responsive (they don’t work well on mobile devices)! Obviously, some agencies had good work (which came with a very expensive price tag), but that was rare.
This is changing though. Now, we are seeing new and promising agencies popping up. But at the time we wanted to bring simple, responsive and well designed websites, that are developed on popular Content Management Systems (for example: Drupal, WordPress and Magento) to Hong Kong at a reasonable price point.
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
Anyone that needs a website! We have worked with very new startups as well as very large corporations. Businesses in Hong Kong are now realising the importance of digital presence and they are willing to spend money to make it happen. And we have more inquiries coming in than ever, so the demand must be growing, right?
What are your futures plans for your startup?
We want to be known as the ‘go to guys’ for anything web-related in Hong Kong, that is the goal. We also received some seed funding late last year, so it is the perfect time to start branching out, we have a very talented team of developers, who have great ideas, love a challenge and building cool websites. So we are going to utilise that further and start building our own products/web platforms. I can’t give too much away but the first one that we are going to launch is to do with weddings.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
The best thing about building a startup in Hong Kong is that there are plenty of other startups and SMEs, which is a great source of clientele, mentorship and inspiration. We talked to a lot of other business owners and entrepreneurs, when we started and we live by the advice given. This benefit is also the challenge – with so many starups in Hong Kong, it makes it that much harder to shine though.
Rush Hour Media on Startbase.HK: Rush Hour Media
Jerome Tam on Startbase.HK: Jerome Tam
