Why this entrepreneur thinks Hong Kong is a 'natural place' for start-ups

If you want to find out what Hongkongers think of Uber, you could look at public polls on the issue. Or, even better, Sam Olsen's social media analytics dashboard.

Olsen, 38, worked as a risk consultant in Hong Kong before founding his own technology start-up Lamplight, which sifts through over 20 million social media platforms in around 100 languages to generate real-time sentiment analysis of keywords for international companies.

"We are essentially teaching machines to read emotion by understanding languages. The power of that is something that hasn't existed before. People used to use surveys and focus groups for trying to understand their markets. But now we can do that instantly and far cheaper," said Lamplight's co-founder Fergus Clarke, sitting at The Hive, a start-up hub in Kennedy Town.

Hong Kong, a city known for its financial muscle, is catching up with mainland China in building an appealing hub for innovation. According to a government survey, the number of start-ups in the city soared 46 per cent year on year to 1,558 as of September. Half of them were founded by locals and the rest by mainland entrepreneurs and expatriates.

Founded in August 2014, Lamplight has raised US$1.49 million in seed funding this year. One-third of the funding came from Hong Kong-based Venture Capital fund Vectr Ventures, and the rest from friends and family members of the founders.

"It's difficult to expect people who have spent all their lives investing in properties to suddenly switch their horizons to tech," Olsen said, adding that the city lacks a culture of investing in small technology firms.