Think outside the city: Start-ups in Hong Kong should look to Taiwan to become regional players, says Google executive
Founders need to seek broader horizons from the get-go or risk losing out on future funding or getting swallowed up by established players
Founders of start-ups in Hong Kong should be more ambitious and think of broader horizons when launching companies if they want to scale up their businesses in the years to come, a senior executive at Google said this week.
Entrepreneurs in the so-called Asia's World City should adopt a “multi-city strategy” when forming their business plans or risk getting stuck in one small market, said Lee-feng Chien, the internet search giant’s managing director of its operations in Taiwan.
A typical challenge for any start-up is how to scale up its business. If it is unable to do this, it may either struggle to secure further funding and expand its customer base, or soon find itself an acquisition target of bigger regional or global rivals.
“International venture capital funds have been showing more interest in the Southeast Asian region in recent years as they see a lot of opportunities here, especially in the mobile app business,” said Chien, who joined Google about a decade ago when it was just another Silicon Valley start-up with only a few thousand employees.
“Mainland China has been too hot for a long time in terms of investments in start-ups,” he said.
