Mind The Gap | Hong Kong’s start-ups don’t need showbiz and celebrities, they need a dose of reality
Few of the city’s young generation can succeed as business owners and even fewer can succeed as entrepreneurs, and having a celebrity actor say they can does them a disservice
Not since Bette Midler made her first entrance in Hello Dolly has an audience erupted as it did when A-list Hong Kong actor Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, channelling his best imitation of Steve Jobs, strutted the stage last week at an Our Hong Kong Foundation event to announce his new role to guide young people towards fulfilling their tech start-up dreams.
When celebrities like Nicholas Tse wade into the technology and start-up scene as “feel good” messiahs, they trivialise and bypass a discussion of the genuine problems that plague Hong Kong. Being a tech guru has become a trendy way to promote yourself in this city. But, unlike the latest fashion, these dilettantes only insult the genuine labours of experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
Tse is an inappropriate role model because he has nothing substantial or meaningful to say about technology or business. Hong Kong’s start-up scene needs fewer middlemen and showmen – and more people who can write cheques for seed capital.
“Be high on life” motivational speeches exhorting young people to wave light sticks about and embrace the true and only heaven of entrepreneurship in the face of hopeless economic and home ownership statistics only worsens their plight. When a flat the size of a prison cell costs 37 times the median annual salary, all the showbiz charisma cannot begin to address the underlying problems.
Becoming an entrepreneur won’t narrow this massive income and wealth inequality gap. It diminishes the daunting challenge of transforming Hong Kong’s economy. The young generation is being oppressed by an entrenched oligarch class of property developers, families and conglomerates, who are choking the city’s economic growth to death. But, that’s not an entertaining message.
Tse needs to know that very few people can succeed as independent business owners and even fewer can succeed as entrepreneurs by inventing something new. It is irresponsible for him to encourage young people who are inexperienced in business and life, who possess little capital and even fewer innovative ideas.
