Eye of the Distro Tigers: 500 Startups Growth Lessons Learned in Hong Kong

April 13, 2015 by Susan Su

distro_tiger_500_Startupshk

I just got back to the Valley from a Distro Tour of Asia with a group of mentors from 500 Startups.

It sounds glamorous… AND IT WAS.

Aside from doing lots of eating, we also helped 60+ companies in Taiwan and Hong Kong (from a pre-selected applicant pool) tackle their biggest questions in growth marketing, b2b sales, fundraising / pitching, and team leadership with workshops and lots of hands-on office hours.

We learned a LOT about the realities of growing and funding a startup in Taipei and Hong Kong. These are two talent-filled ecosystems in the “Asian Tiger” constellation of developed economies, and they have a lot going for them.

In Hong Kong the companies we met had a solid grasp on their initial customer needs and how to find those first customers.

But, startups and their founders in these regions also face some big, non-obvious realities that pose unique challenges.

From our perspective focused on startup growth and distribution, here are the challenges that stood out to us the most.

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Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: 500 Startups, Blueprint, Distro Tigers, Hong Kong, Rui Ma, startups, Susan Su, Taiwan

Are You Not Entertained? How to Win a Startup Pitch Competition in 5 Steps

April 10, 2015 by Casey Lau

howtowinapitchcompetition

I’ve either attended, judged or put together so many pitch competitions I thought it would be a good time to share 5 main points on how to win one.

Yes, there is a formula and I’ve seen it work on big VC judges, media judges and the general audience. If you have these 5 things you will most likely win or at least place in audience favourite (as long as the other teams don’t read this post! ;-). When I sit as an audience member I can guess who will win everytime based on these factors no matter what the product is and no matter the founder’s experience level.

Luckily my friend Masaru Ikeda from The Bridge filmed the Lots of Buttons pitch at Startup Asia 2013 because that was one of the best pitches ever from Hong Kong. On the outside, it sounds like the dumbest idea for a startup – but it stole the show, the judges votes and showed the audience what makes a startup pitch work.

I’m going to discount a few obvious things like making sure the pitcher has fluent, non-accented English (this applies to obviously English pitch events), the slide deck is beautiful and not done with Comic Sans and that doing a live-demo is the kiss of death when wifi goes down and you have nothing else to show.

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Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: casey lau, Pitch Events, startups

Tales of Startup Inspiration: How Having a Baby Inspired My New Startup

April 9, 2015 by Patrick Kosiol

Photo by Gyeongroe Kim

I just recently became a dad to an incredibly adorable baby girl.

Several months before our new sunshine was born, my wife assigned the tasks of getting large baby items to me. At the same time, my long-time colleague William told me about those buy and sell groups on Facebook where he bought several such baby items for his little one. So I went on Facebook, joined many such groups and after a not so long time, I found right carseat I wanted and an almost new baby cot for pretty much half the normal retail price. Yet, at the same time the process of buying such items on Facebook felt rather cumbersome. Having been in the mobile app industry for over a decade (way before the word “app” was invented), I immediately knew that this could be done better.

A split-second later, the idea of swapit was born.

When you analyze the way people trade on such Facebook groups, you can easily see that there are several points that feel very 麻煩 (sort of cumbersome) for you actually want to do: buying or selling items to locals; quickly and easily.
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Filed Under: Columns Tagged With: Patrick Kosiol, startup talk, SwapIt
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