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.
Complaints about Hong Kong lacking innovation and creativity are not new, and Baum believes that this problem goes beyond the education system. “A lot of the complaints about the education system here are related to the same reasons why people think the startup scene is suffering. Schools aren’t teaching creativity, innovation and how to be problem solvers – but just how to follow rules and pass tests,” she said.
Besides drumming up some ideas to improve the local education system, ‘Startup Weekend: EDU Hong Kong’ also comes at a great time as the space has never been more lucrative, according to this report from GlobeNewswire. While US $2.3 billion has been poured into the education technology space in 2014 (500% growth since 2009), 24% of which was invested into China. Besides funding opportunities, the market size for EdTech startups is huge: Besides 600 million K-12 students being in Asia, which is 10 times of the number in the United States, Asia is the fastest eLearning market in the world. It’s also in this region where the average Asian family spends more than 40% of their income on education.
It’s definitely prime time for EdTech entrepreneurship in Asia and Hong Kong’s first ever ‘Startup Weekend: EDU’ will be a good way for the city to kill two birds with one stone: Ramp up innovation by solving problems in the education system.
We are needing a culture /environment encouraging Innovation & ideas.