Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture backed company, Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools. Involved in several startups, he was the co-founder of Triton Works, which was acquired by UBM (London: UBM.L) in 2010 and was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Corzen, Inc., which was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City (acquired by Google in 2011).
We chatted with Stephen about his accelerator program in Hong Kong and what we need to shake up the startup scene in Hong Kong:
What is AcceleratorHK?
AcceleratorHK is Hong Kong’s first startup accelerator. It is focused on hybrid mobile development and its first cohort ran from November 2012 to February 2013. The first cohort had 6 teams from around the world that spent 3 months in Hong Kong working on their mobile apps. AcceleratorHK provided seed money investment in each of the teams as well as workspace.
What is the ultimate goal for AHK?
To advance the startup community in Hong Kong and bring awareness to hybrid mobile development (cross platform development with HTML5.)
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
Anyone from around the world can apply to Accelerator HK, we take between 4 and 8 teams per cohort. Our next cohort is expected to start up around May 2013.
What are your future plans for AHK?
We hope to grow the model and have more participation from the local investment community.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
Benefit: there are 2 mobile phones for every man, woman, and child in Hong Kong.
Challenge: the startup ecosystem is enthusiastic, but still in the very early stages of development (especially investors and lawyers!)
AcceleratorHK
- Site: www.acceleratorhk.com
- Twitter @acceleratorhk
Connect with Stephen:
- Twitter : @worksonmypc
- CrunchBase
- Pluralsight
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