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Meet the 6 Hong Kong Startups Heading to Google to Meet Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs and Investors

October 17, 2014 by Iris Leung

The Bay Area has seen a whole lot of Hong Kong as of late. While our own Shopline has been accelerating with 500 Startups and the Cyberport Delegation to the US has come and gone, six teams (HITA, Jobdoh, Myflat.HK, Optica, Talk-Now and Trafluence) from the Google EYE program will be visiting the tech giant’s HQ in Mountain View from October 19-24.

After the program launched in February, 900+ participants teamed up, wrote business plans and went through multidisciplinary training to learn entrepreneurship and tech know-how. 40 teams were then selected to enter the second mentorship-focused stage of the program, where they refined their business plans and built their prototypes.

Eight months later, six teams were chosen to visit Mountain View to meet with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors. We had a chat with all six teams and asked them two questions: ‘What did you get out of the Google EYE program?’ and ‘What are you hoping to get out of Mountain View?’

[Read more…]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Google EYE, HITA, Jobdoh, Myflat.hk, Optica, Talk-Now, Trafluence

Hong Kong Travel Startup ‘Klook’ Raises Seed Round to Fund Mainland China Expansion Plans

October 15, 2014 by Iris Leung

For those that enjoy planning trips almost as much as the actual traveling itself, there’s a startup we want you to meet.

Klook, a carefully curated activity-booking platform, was founded by Eric Gnock Fah, Ethan Lin and Bernie Xiong – three wanderlusters with impressive domain experience. Before jumping into the entrepreneurial realm, Gnock Fah was an analyst in consumer retail and China-focused public equities while Lin brings investment banking advisory know-how for the hospitality and real estate sectors. As the technical co-founder, Xiong has years of mobile development experience for both a startup and an R&D lab under his belt.

Just six months in, Klook has grown considerably with a full-time team of eight and concrete plans to expand into Mainland China. As almost 100 million Mainlanders traveled abroad in 2013 and spent a whopping US $128.7 billion in 2013 – the Chinese outbound tourism market is incredibly lucrative for startups like Klook.

Without wasting any time, Klook raised a seed round of several hundred thousand US dollars in August mainly from a strategic Mainland investor with strong ties to the Chinese tourism industry. The founders are tightlipped about the deal particulars for now, but promise to reveal more in future interviews. [Read more…]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Bernie Xiong, Eric Gnock Fah, Ethan Lin, Klook

Shopline’s Raymond Yip Gives an Update on ‘500 Startups’ and Cyberport’s Recent Delegation to the US

October 14, 2014 by Iris Leung

Back in August, we congratulated DIY eCommerce startup Shopline on their acceptance into 500 Startups. It was kind of like watching your kid go off to college.

In just a few months, the one-year-old startup has grown a lot under the care of the Silicon Valley accelerator. Besides adding two senior engineers and one marketing person to their team, Shopline has also been in talks to raise a round of funding from Hong Kong, US and Southeast Asian investors.

We had a caught up with co-founder and CEO Raymond Yip and he said that one of the biggest benefits to accelerating with 500 Startups is having access to a large mentor network. “There are 250-300 advisors and people within the 500 network come in and out every week for office hours. They’ll teach you things like design, tech or legal – you name it, someone’s going to help you out,” said Yip.

And it’s not just mentors lending a hand at 500. As 30% of the cohort is made up of international startups, Yip said there’s been a strong sharing culture within the program. On many occasions, fellow batchmates have come up to Yip’s desk offering help on a problem, and he said that this is an area that Hong Kong’s startup community can improve on.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: 500 Startups, Shopline