A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How the RISE Conference Became THE Startup Event in Asia on its Inaugural Outing

August 5, 2015 by Casey Lau

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Photo by Teigi Lee.

I first met Paddy Cosgrave a few months ago at a China Club dinner organised by Anson Bailey at KPMG and little did I know that was going to lead to the biggest startup conference in Asia.

Paddy is a full on legend already having turned a 400-person startup conference into what this year will be the 30,000 person Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland. This is what Dave McClure (also a guest at RISE) looked like on the stage of last year’s Web Summit in Dublin – if you can see him:

Websummit

As many of you recall, we at StartupsHK put on the very first Startup Saturday conference back in 2010 where we expected 100 but got 500 people to come to Cyberport! So we were on similar trajectories as Paddy but he was going to take it just a little bit further.

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Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: engineered synchronicity, Paddy Cosgrave, RISE, Web Summit

Ambi Climate Wins RISE: The Victory Interview

August 4, 2015 by Casey Lau

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In what was an incredible finale at RISE – over all of the startups selected for PITCH; the main RISE pitching stage that included 33 startups from around the world – all 3 finalists were from Hong Kong: Ambi Climate, Soundbrenner in the Brinc program and Prenetics by the founder of Groupon Hong Kong.

But it had to come down to 1 victor and the judges from Google, Facebook, Misfit and JP Morgan picked one winner: AMBI CLIMATE.

I’m thinking – as you probably are as well – that by now Julian Lee and his Ambi co-founders have won just about every startup pitch competition out there.

So I sat down with him quickly to talk about his most recent victory:

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Filed Under: Columns, Interviews Tagged With: Ambi Climate, Hong Kong, Paddy Cosgrave, pitch, Prenetics, Soundbrenner, Web Summit

Hong Kong Really Rose for RISE: The Thank You Post

August 3, 2015 by Casey Lau

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So, what a week eh?

Just a quick post here before a longer deep dive post into RISE week.

I am absolutely amazed at what we all pulled off in Hong Kong for RISE. It absolutely blew away all expectations! Just an incredible show of passion and just plain awesomeness from everyone.

I did a shout out on stage during the closing comments to many people but I guess this is even better: a thank you to the following people, who without, could not have made this #RiseWeek happen. Looking at this list its awesome to see that its filled with people who have both been with us since 2009 all the way to people who just recently joined the community:

  • Gene my right hand man
  • Jon my left hand man
  • Raffi the Alive Not Dead party-making machine.
  • Michelle and the Blueprint team
  • Catherine, Naomi, Fion and the Notey team
  • Atin from HUKapp
  • Bay and his Brinc empire
  • Simon from Nest
  • Asif from Spacious
  • Elaine, James and the Garage Society team
  • Mikaal from 8 Securities (still no Cinnabon)
  • Danny from Prenetics
  • Ibrahim from Outblaze
  • Elisabeth from KPMG
  • Arthur, Matt and the Vectr team.
  • Karen, Karena and the W hub team.
  • Pritish and the Gormei team.
  • Jeffrey, Bart and the Startup Weekend Avengers.
  • Fred and Hugo from East Founders

There were 30+ pub crawl captains that were the first point of entry for visitors to HK all should be knighted (if not with a sword, then at least with a beer bong) many of them are on the list above and here are the others:

  • Kalina from Lightstage
  • Nat from Hong Kong Hustle
  • Eric and Richard from Floship
  • Alice from TiE
  • Tony from Nest
  • Edwin from Spottly
  • Thomas from Double
  • Richard from Localiiz
  • Larry from Pay4Bugs

I also was ecstatic that I was able to get the BreakthroughHK stage set up and have to thank the 4 kingdoms of Westeros on coming together and getting us the 20 best startups:

  • Cyberport
  • Hong Kong Science Park
  • Blueprint
  • CoCoon

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I called and all you guys came through! The HK community is eternally grateful!

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Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: Hong Kong, Ireland, Paddy Cosgrave, RISE, Web Summit
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