YouTube co-founder Steve Chen returns to Taiwan to tap tech talent, link island with Silicon Valley
- Steve Chen, who made millions from the sale of YouTube, has come back to Taiwan to connect its tech talent with Silicon Valley’s resources
- Lack of relationships, overemphasis on local growth holding back island’s potential for global reach, he says
After decades in California, Steve Chen, the multimillionaire co-founder of YouTube, has returned to his birthplace of Taiwan with plans to harvest the island’s untapped tech talent by forging connections with Silicon Valley.
Chen is putting together a project to support Taiwanese people to hatch mega-companies he says could grow quickly with Silicon Valley’s relationships, capital and know-how.
“Some of these people are going to come back to Taiwan and the number of Taiwanese going to the US is going to grow,” Chen said. “Hopefully we spawn a cycle that goes up and up.
“The dream is they’d all be unicorns,” Chen added, using an industry term for an unlisted start-up valued at more than US$1 billion.
But people with the requisite knowledge often lack the international exposure or foreign connections that are useful for building a business that can grow outside Taiwan, Chen said.
