Heroes wanted: Hong Kong mentality holds back start-ups
The city's start-up scene has exploded in the past few years but tech entrepreneurs are hampered by the lack of a risk-taking culture among young local graduates
The excitement generated at July's RISE conference in Hong Kong mirrored the buzz rolling across the tech scene in Asia, with venture capital database CB Insights reporting explosive growth in the region over the past three quarters and 25 mega-round financings (more than US$100 million) in the past quarter.
In Hong Kong, too, this is undeniably an exciting time for its burgeoning start-up scene.
"Compared to, say, three years ago, now is a great time to do a start-up as many people are in the scene," says Casey Lau, co-founder and executive director of the StartupsHK community. "[The scene] has grown exponentially and today there are events, talks and mixers happening almost every night on the Hong Kong side, [in] Kowloon and [the] New Territories."
But there's a long way to go to catch up with Silicon Valley in scale of funding and ability to attract talent, even as Hong Kong start-ups face tough competition in the region from Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.
The main challenges for Hong Kong start-ups, as elsewhere, relate to their ability to sell their project or vision to investors and incubators; the most significant, though, is recruiting a still-sceptical generation of new local graduates. Traditionally, the key stumbling block of many start-ups trying to get off the ground has been funding, or more accurately, the lack of it. But with increasing investment interest in this business model, Hong Kong start-ups seem to be enjoying an easier time getting funding, at least at first.
Easyship, a start-up that provides shipping and tracking services, found initial backing through old-fashioned networking, tapping the founder's connections. Co-founder Augustin Ceyrac says he and his partners worked at the same e-commerce company before leaving to launch their own venture, and were able to reach out for funding and business from former clients.
