Just a quick reminder that you have 1 day left to submit your pitch to join the Tech in Asia Pitch Day on March 10.
This is a great deal for Hong Kong startups, as the winner gets flown in and put up in Singapore during Tech In Asia Singapore 2015 (formerly known as Startup Asia Singapore 2015) and Hong Kong startups Lots of Buttons and Bindo won the past two years so lets keep the winning streak going by taking the grand prize 3 years in a row against all the other startup communities in Asia!
Paddy Cosgrave put Dublin on the tech map 4 short years ago with The Web Summit – probably the most popular tech conference outside the interactive portion of South by Southwest in Austin, Texas – and now he’s bringing this huge conference to Hong Kong.
The dates are July 31 and August 1 and they have secured the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. So if you attended the Jack Ma talk earlier this week then you’ll know what kind of layout they are going for. Some of the confirmed speakers include:
But of course we’re 100% certain that Paddy will be bringing some of his famous tech friends to Hong Kong as well. We do have a big Tesla population here so could Elon Musk not make an appearance? We’re sure a lot of fashionable shoes are sold to Hong Kong so could Tony Hsieh of Zappos make an appearance? Jack Dorsey‘s Twitter just opened an office in Hong Kong and he loves Dragon-i, could we see him here too? The possibilities are endless and the spotlight is being set for Wan Chai this Summer.
We were invited to a meet and greet with some of the organisers this past week in Hong Kong and we’re excited to hear about their plans. So if you already missed the 2-for-1 tickets, plan on getting your tickets sooner than later. They are expecting 5,000 attendees and 60% of those are coming from overseas and we should be ready to put on a show for them outside of the event, not just with Uber and AirBnB but with other great Hong Kong startups showing off what they can do to a worldwide audience.
Now what are the chances we’ll see U2 frontman Bono walking around Lan Kwai Fong this Summer? We hear he still hasn’t found what he’s been looking for.
Click here for more on the Rise Conference.
Startup Weekend: A whirlwind 54 hours where engineers, designers and ideas people collaborate and possibly build new companies. Besides forming groups that will put their heads together for the weekend, teams will also come up with a business model, validate their ideas and then pitch their ideas to a panel of judges.
Hong Kong has had seven Startup Weekends so far, spawning successful homegrown companies such as mobile logistics startup Aftership. Called ‘Awesomeship’ at the time, Aftership came together at a 2011 Startup Weekend – won the competition and raised a US $1 million Series A round from IDC-Accel in 2014. Startup Weekends are clearly a great problem-solving platform for incoming entrepreneurs, but why aren’t there more events geared towards specific problems?
To address this, Allison Baum of Fresco Capital Advisors has brought ‘Startup Weekend: EDU’ to Hong Kong. “Through my experience with General Assembly, I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the education system here – so I was excited to have the opportunity to create productive conversation around how we can use startup methodology and technology to solve problems people have been complaining about for a long time,” she said.
