She followed the guidelines given by the assistant at the hardware store and carefully removed the old paint from the kitchen walls, eventually painting the whole room.

The living room proved more of a challenge and she only completed one wall, yet she credits this as a learning experience she later applied in business.

“Instead of the whole room, I picked one wall and it still turned out good. So it’s just like the start-up journey,” she said. “Nowadays we all know that Plan A doesn’t always work out. You just have to iterate and find the next plan that works.”

To date, she has invested in almost 20 start-ups with a focus on internet or mobile companies from countries such as Israel and Korea. All the companies are still running and 70 per cent have gone on to raise further investment rounds, she said.

Chan, a regular speaker at entrepreneur events around the world, spoke to the Post about her career journey as a technology entrepreneur and Hong Kong’s place in the start-up scene.

Q: What are Hong Kong’s strengths in terms of building a strong start-up ecosystem?

People in Hong Kong are more international, so I have seen a lot of start-ups that from day one are already looking globally. These start-ups are quite successful in a way that the founders themselves have a global mindset and they’ve got the experience and connections to other countries and ecosystems. They have been able to find the talent with global experience and perspective. It’s not like Korea, China or Taiwan where they start with their own country only.

Q: Are there any issues in Hong Kong that might limit the growth of the start-up scene?

Hong Kong’s regulations do not facilitate fintech [financial technology] that much at the moment. I have heard London is more aggressive. Everybody is opening up, but Hong Kong is making it more restrictive, more regulated. I can see the government is trying to do something, but somehow it is more difficult than before. A lot of companies cannot even open a bank account in Hong Kong. I think when you really get to rock bottom, you will bounce back. When we get to a point where it’s really impossible, then people will change, regulation will change. And then things will open up.

Q: Is Hong Kong a good environment for female entrepreneurs?

In a culture like Hong Kong a female’s responsibility is higher than a male’s. In western countries, I’ve discovered more males share the responsibility. And the entrepreneurs don’t need to work as late compared to Hong Kong and China, so they still have some time to go back home and pick up their child. Somehow we developed another method to solve the problem, so in Hong Kong, most people have a helper, which is not that common in other countries.

Q: The Hong Kong Information Technology Council was this week forced to shelve plans for an IT Goddess pageant for women in tech after the public questioned whether the show was sexist. Is the pageant representative of sexism in the technology industry?

The pageant does not seem like a mainstream event for the tech industry. It feels like it’s organised by traditional business people or people with a traditional mindset, as a lot of their events will sometimes add a pageant. They are very used to thinking in this way. However, if you are inside the tech community long enough, you are unlikely to think about such events because it’s really quite irrelevant. IT events are more focused on openness, out of the box [ideas], innovation, networking and sharing.

Q: The pageant claimed to be trying to promote women in technology, what’s a better way to encourage women into the field?

Just by providing more successful examples. By building communities and events to share experiences of female business founders. There is research saying a team with women founders performs better, raises more money and has a higher revenue.

Q: Can Hong Kong succeed as a start-up hub against strong regional competition?

Hong Kong will be able to find its role. Every city, every country has its own advantage or disadvantage. A lot of people like to compare Hong Kong and Singapore and even Taiwan. Each city has its own characteristics. Singapore and Hong Kong are both very small places with small populations. So from day one, start-ups or even the government need to think about how to connect the local ecosystem with those around them. For Singapore, they try to connect with Southeast Asia and even India. For Hong Kong, we try to connect with China, especially Shenzhen which provides Internet of Things [connected devices] capabilities. So at the moment Hong Kong focuses on a few streams including IoT and fintech [financial technology].

Q: Mainland Chinese cities like Beijing have thriving start-up ecosystems, can Hong Kong compete?

It doesn’t need to compete. In a way we could collaborate. One accelerator from China has already come to Hong Kong and acquired a whole building in order to bring some of the start-ups from China here. They can leverage on the resources and manpower talents in Hong Kong to target global expansion. I think this is a very good strategy because if you start from China it may be more difficult to tap into the right talent for global expansion. Hong Kong can act as a bridge for Chinese companies wanting to tap into the global market or global companies wanting to tap into China.

Q: From your visits to other start-up hubs, which government policies to support entrepreneurship have impressed you?

I met the chief scientist for Israel and he shared a very different perspective. He told me that at the moment they have a scheme to use government loans to match the investment of venture capitalists. And if the start-ups have revenue, they will return the loan. When the return rates of such loans are too high, it might indicate that not enough risks were taken. The Israelis have an angle, they know what is not good in the country and they focus on those areas to try to catch up and encourage innovation.

Q: What made you turn down a scholarship and place on a PhD programme in the United Kingdom when you were younger?

I gave up the PhD offer to continue with Englishstreet, which I had started. It was not that I knew this was the right direction; it was just that I wanted to do it instead of the PhD. I did not have the motivation to buy the plane ticket to go to Imperial College. I kept delaying buying the ticket until the last day when I thought: ‘Ok, I’ll just give it up’.

Q: What made you turn from being an entrepreneur to an investor?

For Click Limited [Chan’s third start-up], after six years I planned to have a second child and I was also inspired by one of my angel investors. He was very successful and I told him that I also wanted to become an angel investor. He was very supportive of this idea, so I exited my project. Around three years ago, I became an angel investor myself. I made small investments, and started to learn and get connected to the community in both Hong Kong and Silicon Valley.

Q: Have you experienced failure during your career and how did you recover from this?

There’s a Chinese saying – a risk can be an opportunity. As to why I became an angel investor, it goes back to when I was facing a very difficult situation in my own start-up. We had very good traction and before we launched, we communicated with our investors that if we took off, our second round of funding would need to be ready. Upon launching, we suddenly got the news that one of our main angel investors, who was supposed to put in the second round of money, had passed away. We finally found another angel investor after the Lunar New Year break, but it was already a few months later and we missed a golden chance. That investor I met after the disaster was the one who inspired me to become an angel investor. So a risk became an opportunity.