Podcast highlights:

Introduction to Holly Harrington and Startup Stadium Taiwan - Taiwan's unique startup accelerator program

What makes Taiwan a unique proposition for startup founders?

Why do startup ecosystems need to build relationships outside of their own cities/countries?

Podcast notes:

00:40 Some background on Holly Harrington

04:00 How did Holly end up in Taiwan?

07:35 An experience of living in Taiwan as an American

11:03 How technology has made our life easier

15:05 How did Holly get into the startup world?

19:40 An importance of diversity and bilingualism in a team

25:26 The Taiwanese diaspora

29:05 What Taiwan StartUp Stadium does

35:47 How to participate in Taiwan StartUp Stadium program

40:20 How did Holly’s company manage to build relationships with traditional companies that aren’t innovative?

43:20 Other investment partners in Japan. Conferences in Taiwan

49:43 Promoting and building connections on conferences and trips

58:55 Learning along the way with those you help. Communication and unity between startups

Holly Harrington is the General Manager at Taiwan Startup Stadium. Taiwan Startup Stadium, a program funded by Taiwan's National Development Council, is dedicated to bridging Taiwan startups with opportunities around world. Holly is passionate about mentoring startup founders, helping them get funded and is committed to helping them build globally relevant businesses. She is involved in every aspect of the programs that TSS develops and implements and is deeply focused on their outcomes. Holly is also the co-Founder of Everiii, a Taiwan-based firm founded in 2014 with a global mission to connect people and companies across cultures. We had an incredible discussion about Taiwan, startups and the challenges and thrills of helping teams go global!

00:09 Asia Tech Podcast Stories with author, founder and managing director Shaun Rein

00:56 Internet challenges in China

01:25 Background about Shaun Rein

02:40 A little bit about the previous books, The End of Cheap China and The End of Copycat China

05:24 Innovations in China especially in payment methods

10:05 'Boots on the ground' approach

11:57 Thesis around the book, 'The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order'

14:25 China's foray into Africa

18:00 The TenCent and Alibaba duopoly

24:00 What will be the impact of Chinese companies in South East Asia?

27:05 What were the mistakes made by the Americans? How to avoid replicating them when the Chinese come in to South East Asia?

33:41 Do you get your books translated? If you do, would you want them sold in China?

37:37 Now that China has caught up, where does it go from here? What's in store for the next 5 years?

40:18 What does 'one belt, one road' mean?

43:22 What is happening in the Greater Bay region?

48:00 The domesticity of the Chinese market

We spoke to Shaun Rein about his new book, 'The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order'. A fascinating follow up to his other books…We covered many other topics as well, including the duopoly of TenCent and Alibaba, the massive internet market in China and why it is difficult for foreign firms to succeed and how China has become a hotbed of innovation across many verticals and sectors. Shaun has been in China for almost 20 years and has seen so much change and development that informs his ongoing analyses of China, business in China and the growth of some of the world’s largest internet companies. It also gives him a unique perspective on China’s changing place on the global stage and its impact on business and geo-politics.

In this week’s Asia Tech Podcast broadcast from Bangkok and Singapore, we discuss the growing importance of Asia in the global tech startup ecosystem. We look at the latest research data from the Google Temasek study which shows just how robust the South East Asian online economy is, reasons why Nutonomy chose Singapore as testing ground for its autonomous vehicles, and the importance of the Chinese Unicorns Alibaba and Tencent in growing the Asian ecosystem. But to kick off, a quote from Michio Kaku (co-founder of String Theory) this week, “Silicon Valley no longer has a monopoly on innovation”.

In this week’s Asia Tech Podcast broadcast from Bangkok and Singapore, we discuss the growing importance of Asia in the global tech startup ecosystem. We look at the latest research data from the Google Temasek study which shows just how robust the South East Asian online economy is, reasons why Nutonomy chose Singapore as testing ground for its autonomous vehicles, and the importance of the Chinese Unicorns Alibaba and Tencent in growing the Asian ecosystem. But to kick off, a quote from Michio Kaku (co-founder of String Theory) this week, “Silicon Valley no longer has a monopoly on innovation”.

In this week’s Asia Tech Podcast, we share what we’ve learned from a year of getting out there and traveling around Asia talking to startup founders and investors. How effective are startup events really? Do we really need more demo days and speed dating to grow the Ecosystem or should we focus more on substantive conversations that help Founders and Angels connect the dots in Asia? In this episode, we also share our plans for 2018 and our inaugural podcast round tables which we’ll be bringing to a city near you soon.

In this week’s Asia Tech Podcast, we share what we’ve learned from a year of getting out there and traveling around Asia talking to startup founders and investors. How effective are startup events really? Do we really need more demo days and speed dating to grow the Ecosystem or should we focus more on substantive conversations that help Founders and Angels connect the dots in Asia? In this episode, we also share our plans for 2018 and our inaugural podcast round tables which we’ll be bringing to a city near you soon.

Marcus Ellison is consumed with learning and innovating. He is not bound by existing rules nor others’ perceptions of what is and is not possible. Marcus believes that life is a system that needs to be figured out an approaches things in terms of experiments. He comes from a family of entrepreneurs and even went so far as to design his own major while he was in college. His first business, started while still in college, was an internet radio station that played Jazz music. He also built a successful real estate investment company literally from scratch that succeeded on his ability to hustle, learn the things he did not know and create trust and credibility along the way. Marcus is very talented and driven. He has now focused his energy on building VentureMark. After moving to Vietnam, he noticed that the Angel investment scene was not only very fragmented, but quite immature. He has set out to change all of that with VentureMark.

Jason Goldberg builds things…and he generally builds them bigger than you would have expected. Jason worked on Bill Clinton’s campaign and then in the Clinton White House, not because he was well connected to them, but because he reached out himself and asked. An early lesson learned was that you don’t get things you don’t ask for. Seeing opportunities is relatively easy, seizing them is the definition of success…and great entrepreneurs are great at seizing great opportunities. In his current business, SimpleToken, Jason Goldberg believes he is seizing a very large and transformational opportunity. The success of SimpleToken augurs a secular change in the way communities are built, given incentives to produce and compensated. Simple Token aims to be the platform that enables “Cryptocurrency to Power Digital Communities”.

Caspar Bo Jensen understands the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. He has seen them both…more than once. After building successful e-commerce companies in Denmark from scratch, the global financial crisis finally caught up to him and he had to shut down his businesses. Caspar Bo does not give up, however, and he learned a lot from those experiences at home and decided to join some friends in Thailand and try to do it all over again…both bigger and better. Founding Chilindo in October 2013, it was challenging from the start. Nobody had built a shopping experience like Chilindo in the region before and if it meant going to source products in Chinatown at 4AM, Caspar Bo was going to do it. Caspar tells a very interesting story of how consumers like to buy, near failure and how doing things differently can lead to sustainable success.

Rajesh Sehgal is a seasoned and well rounded investor, spending over 17 years working at Franklin Templeton India. Working with Dr. Mark Mobius since 1999, who managed the Emerging Markets Group at Franklin Templeton, helped shape his investment philosophy and inculcated a sense of rigorous investment discipline and deep portfolio optimization knowledge. Applying this to his angel investments for the last decade has given him an edge that other Angel investors would love to emulate. Mr. Sehgal’s newest entity, Equanimity Investments, continues to invests in startups and early stage businesses across sectors and geographies.