Hong Kong Really Rose for RISE: The Thank You Post

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

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

Also thanks to SoftLayer for really coming in big and bold with support of so many events as well.

A special shout-out goes to KPMG’s Anson Bailey who is without a doubt the craziest and most awesome guy you will meet and really helped pull this altogether for us and for me. Thanks Anson.

The RISE conference team Aoife, Jack, Sinead, Rebecca, Teigi, Chris, Alicia, Cait, Anna, John, Peter and all the other crew who made this the most incredible experience with their kindness, professionalism and amazing passion to help make this the landmark event that it is. You guys are incredible and I miss all of you already.

And of course last but not least the man/legend himself Paddy Consgrave. I cannot believe what he has accomplished in 4 years from Dublin and that he saw something in Hong Kong to bring his amazing vision here is beyond words. Thank you so much for everything.

I’d like to share a bunch of photos taken by the talented Ruby Law here with you so I just uploaded a bunch to our Facebook page here. And here are all the official RISE photos.

But what is really incredible to look at is if you go to any social media like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and search #RISEconf – the photos and messages there are truly inspiring. Here are just a few I grabbed:

There are over 1000+ photos tagged on Instagram so have a look.

And the Twitter storm was stronger than any typhoon:

In my startup travels around Asia I’ve met many people all living the startup life: and I was very happy to see many of them in Hong Kong as well: Mimi and Aim from Thailand, Kevin and his entourage from Indonesia, Masaru, David and Max from Japan who brought tons of Japanese startups with them, David who I first met in Vietnam, Khailee and Cheryl from Malaysia, Jamie and Yani from Taiwan, Rich from China, Gwen, Andrew, Mohan and all the peeps from Sinagpore that would take a blog post by itself.

We had startups and investors from 70 countries join us and to cap it off, as I walked out of the HKCEC at the end of the last day a startup from Zimbabwe came up to me and shook my hand and said he had an amazing time at RISE and loved Hong Kong! WOW!

So please keep posting messages using the #RISEconf hashtag – Paddy and myself are reading them, blog, tweet, post photos about your experience and keep the buzz going – Hong Kong startups are on the map and there’s no turning back now!

Casey Lau
Co-host of RISE