AwesomeShip Wins Startup Weekend Hong Kong | TechNode

After running a couple of weekend startup incubators under the BootUP! name, we hooked up with the global Startup Weekend organization to do another event. The first two being held in BootHK limited the available size to around 20, but we were able to score a great venue at the M-Lab facilities in Kowloon Tong, giving us room for 50 partcipants. This also helped with reaching into the local college community, since it is a part of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University school of design.

Startup Weekend HK Crowd

SWHK F2011 Participants, Judges, and Fans

Seven teams built startups from Friday night until Sunday evening. The ideas ranged from helping consumers manage loyalty cards to preparing your digital assets for when you die. Similarly, participants varied in their backgrounds and gave a good mix of business, development, and design experts to put together some great prototypes.

The quality of the event and participants was awesome. We has so much help from mentors, judges, and PolyU and it made it a great event that shows really what we can do here in HK.

BootUP! – 10 Lessons Learned from HK’s First Startup Weekend Incubator – BootHK – Hong Kong Startup, Maker, and Cowork Community

 

This last weekend (Nov 19-21) was the first startup weekend incubation event in Hong Kong ever, and things went really, really well. The event was a bit of an ongoing learning experiment and test of the new BootHK facilities, being the first major event we’ve hosted here in the month of operation. 

We had a total of 19 participants building startups over the weekend, along with many great local entrepreneurs who dropped by to help mentor and give feedback over the 48 hours (well, 50 hours, to be exact).

This is a bit more in depth writeup of what happened during the BootUP! weekend. Would enjoy hearing more from the participants to get feedback on their experiences.

echelon 2010 Wrap Up Part 2 – Singapore vs. Hong Kong vs. Asia

At first blush, there is a lot in common between Hong Kong and Singapore. Both are small countries with large populations, started as a trading port, and turned into financial hubs. But, looking into the startup ecosystem and communities of both, there are still many similarities, but it seems like Singapore is perhaps 5 years ahead of HK on the development timeline. 

Seed Funding

Similar: Both have government funding available along with various ways of helping to incubate or otherwise support startup companies. 

Different: In Singapore, if you ask, you can usually get $50K SGD ($300K HKD) for starting a company. In Hong Kong, the best we have at this level is the FFF (Family, Friends, and Fools). If Hong Kong is going to grow a vibrant and robust startup ecosystem, we need to find some way to fill this seed funding gap.  [Read more...]

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