Thank you for carving out your time to speak to me.
Basically I have two major points I want to talk to you about, which is introduce what I’m working on and then get some feedback on what you think would be the best way to leverage the network I field and the people and resources that want to dedicate their time and energy to help Taiwanese entrepreneurs.
Then see if you’ve seen similar examples for other countries or even within Taiwanese communities that implemented in the past and how we can improve and how we can help as well.
Does that make sense? Two major things.
I guess I’ll start. Let me also grab my laptop.
You’re running an accelerator?
Our interpretation of "accelerator" is quite broad. We want to help companies short-path a path to the US market, but we are not a traditional accelerator. Traditional accelerators are usually time-limited and location-based. We’re actually location-independent and we’re virtual.
I’m personally based in Austin and initially, we started off wanting to fly a group of Taiwanese startups to Austin for a duration of two months leading up to South by Southwest. Have you heard of South by Southwest?
I think most people we talked to didn’t.
Oh, really? [laughs]
Yeah. Most people, when they think of the US market, they think of Silicon Valley. We more aim to recruit a full cohort of folks to come, but we saw that we were able to help companies ahead of time anyways.
We were able to connect one of the companies to an investor who ended up investing. While we did that, we were also raising an angel fund, and we subsequently also followed on the investment as well.
Subsequent to that investment, our intention is to continue to support those companies, because ultimately we want to see more Taiwanese entrepreneurs, Taiwanese-founded companies that are global, the good old days. That’s the premise of STEEP. It stands for Supporting Taiwanese Entrepreneurs Everywhere Project.
We want to leverage the Taiwanese diaspora to invest human and financial capital back to Taiwanese entrepreneurs. They could be in the US already or they could be in Taiwan.
The whole idea is as we looked at Taiwanese folks in America, there is a relative high proportion of them who are doing well in VC as well as VC-backed tech companies.
In the Bay Area, there are multiple network doing similar projects, like the SVT Angels.
Yeah, SVT Angels, I’ve met David. Right, David? I don’t know. Actually, I haven’t asked him yet about their experience with how they’ve done and if it’s still operational. Do you know?
It’s still operational. They’re also in close contact with the newly-consolidated ASVDA office, which features the National Development Council, Ministry of Economy Affairs, and also Ministry of Science and Technology. They are congregating and working closely.
I didn’t know that, but we’re similarly trying to attract more angel investors. We want to be able to help as many companies as possible.
For a small handful that we see that has the potential to become gigantic, those are the ones that we want to invest more time and money in. Now it does seem like from this trip to Taiwan and the last time I was back that the hard thing we do have is finding enough companies that have US ambitions.
What is your experience in terms of this?
Here in the Social Innovation Lab, we also work with accelerators; our focus is with teams working on meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs).
As you said, there’s a limited repertoire of startups to choose from if you start with the premise of going to the US.
US, yeah.
That may change, though, because the Ministry of Science and Technology is now establishing the Taiwan Tech Arena, with the explicit goal of working with international accelerators.
Yeah. I was there yesterday, actually.
Oh, really?
Yeah, the opening ceremony.
It’s attracting quite a few accelerators, and they’re setting up representatives and offices here.
If it’s more B2B-oriented accelerators, I think it’s easier for them to source local teams, and then help them to transplant to the US. It would be like a part-recruitment, part-accelerator plan.
Those companies that are going into the Taiwan Tech Arena are immediately targeting US markets or I guess more markets?
I think so. That’s the plan anyway.
That’s good. That’s interesting.
You went to the TTA opening, right?
I don’t think it’s all US-oriented; more like international or global-oriented.
Do they fly, essentially, their program managers in those various accelerators, and then they will essential run a pilot, or I guess a standalone program for Taiwan, with intention of bringing them back to their local markets, or...?
Yes, that’s one possibility, but not the only possibility. There’s many other possibilities. They allocated part of the fund, Taiwan Silicon Valley technology fund, I think, for this particular purpose, which is distinct from the Taiwania Capital, which is something else.
Taiwania Capital, I’m aware, they invest in Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese companies, correct?
Yeah. Taiwania is a more ecosystem shaping, like their portfolio, as far as I understand, are usually past accelerator stage. They could be Series B, Series C, whatever. As long as it helps the industry innovation plans, it could be from the early stage startup all the way to Series C, as long as it helps.
It’s more like the Singapore National Investment...
Sovereign Fund.
Right, Investment Sovereign Fund. The MOST one is much more startup-oriented.
That’s cool. I only heard of it yesterday, so I haven’t done too much digging into them.
What we’ve done is we’ve developed out kind of an online community via Facebook, with a very focused intention of facilitating mentorship, and posting some programs to increase the angles or points of exposure to one another, kind of the Taiwanese entrepreneurs and the Taiwanese American entrepreneurs.
My vision is we support all Taiwanese entrepreneurs. They can be Taiwanese American. They can Taiwanese.
When we pull Taiwanese American entrepreneurs as mentors, they actually also essentially become potential entrepreneurs that we’re also helping with.
I am thinking about this as a possible platform to also congregate all the Taiwanese American entrepreneurs to really help foster unity. It seems like our Taiwanese American communities are many of many. There’s a lot of different pockets of community organizing.
I think across all those communities are potential people that could be cofounders or the first one or two hires of some of these Taiwanese companies that are coming. We’re really trying to cultivate a space where people know that this is where they can go to actually get resources, get help, and actually find people to work with.
You mentioned there are different groups in Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley Angels. Who else is doing something similar and what is kind of like...?
On the Taiwan side, just here actually across the TAF Park, there’s the Red Room, https://redroomtaipei.com/.
The Red Room is essentially getting -- it’s not just startup, there’s also artists and so on -- the English speaking community in Taiwan a safe place, where they can get support in a not so English primarily speaking larger society and also connect startups that has international ambition to the foreign talents living in Taiwan.
Many of them are like, Taiwanese by choice. They’re not Taiwanese by birth.
Just people who have been there long enough.
Right. They are behind, for example, the Foreign Talent Act and many recent regulatory innovations that all points to the same vision that we are making it much easier for people to be "also Taiwanese". That they can start from being an Australian or New Zealander or whatever, but they get a gold card visa to Taiwan for three years very easily.
When they build their local rapport and connection, after five years or whatever, they may be "also Taiwanese" now. They don’t have to give up their existing citizenship. Then, they can advocate for Taiwan’s values.
I understand what you’re doing, but this is a...
This is similar. Yeah.
...very similar endpoint, yeah.
It’s interesting, one question that I always come up against when I talk to people about STEEP is how do we navigate the political context of if you’re only supporting Taiwanese entrepreneurs, and you’re like closing off a lot of business opportunities, potential business opportunity for us as a fund, for people who are similar to us. I guess the nearest example is China.
Or Singapore.
Or Singapore, yeah, that’s true. I don’t really know how to address this question either. I’m asking you. Obviously, my starting angle is supporting this community, but adding the business angle complicates a lot of things because we want to maximize ROI. There’re various factors that is very close and difficult to ignore I suppose. Yeah.
Even the words you use, the "Taiwanese Diaspora", it is a very political word already. You’re obviously not talking about the Maori people in New Zealand, who were also part of the Taiwanese Diaspora.
Some 4,000 [laughs] years ago, the original Austronesian-speaking indigenous people found their way across the Pacific.
We could include that.
You could, right? The latest updates on out-of-Taiwan hypothesis, anthropologically, seems to point to a cultral dissemination, not necessarily by blood. It’s culture that originates from Taiwan and it gets spread throught the pacific. The last time it happened actually on a global basis, all the way to Madagascar. [laughs]
Why I’m bringing this up is that when we’re signing, for example, a diplomatic or trade agreement with New Zealand, with the ANZTEC, there is a special chapter in it that establish a second track relationship between the indigenous people here and the indigenous people there.
They’re the Taiwan Diaspora, [laughs] thousands of years ago.
Yeah, so I’m segmenting my Diaspora, too, yeah.
Right, again, just within the name, Taiwanese Diaspora, seems to limit to mostly ethnic Han people.
Yeah, OK. That’s just my naming problem. [laughs]
There’s nothing wrong with your naming. I’m just saying you’re essentially making choices by using these potentially ambiguous names.
All right, what we’ve done, obviously, is raising a fund, we’re investing in companies. We’re creating opportunities for entrepreneurs with similar cultural backgrounds, so you could get in touch with each other, so that they can share resources.
There is a whole spectrum of different types of people who want to be involved. There is, "The Taiwanese Mafia" in Silicon Valley, who are very, very impressive and has all the resources connections. Then, there’s people who are first time entrepreneurs, the people who are working in industry and everyone wants to help.
Is there a place for every single person on the spectrum, do you think?
Yeah, I think so. I admire the Red Room founder, Chu Ping’s ideas, because it’s one of the most inclusive one I’ve heard so far.
Which is?
Which is just by convincing more people to become more Taiwanese.
Self-identified Taiwanese person.
Right, exactly, exactly, to expand the reach and richness of Taiwanese lives. It’s a value-based narrative. If we define Taiwanese as whomever appearing on the geographic feature that is Taiwan and figuring out some common values, despite our different origins, and using these common values to find solutions that work for everyone.
This resonates with what President Tsai Ing-wen said in her inauguration speech. She said, "Democracy in the past used to be a clash between two opposing value, but in Taiwan, democracy is now conversation across diverse values" and things like that.
If we define Taiwan as whomever would want to identify with these kind of values, then there is by definition place for everyone. On the other hand, this is a more cultural and I would say even more spiritual view.
Yeah, I was going to say, it’s a very philosophical question.
Is a very spiritual thing. There are successful uses of a spiritual affinity in past in other cultures, but I’m not exactly sure whether a spiritual approach to an accelerator is the best approach.
But if you talk about inclusivity, I think that part of approach is the most inclusive. I’m sure.
Yeah. That’s interesting. Then you have to...claiming to be Taiwanese is Taiwanese, then there’s not necessarily the cultural ties, unless you just suddenly assume all of those identities.
Yeah, but you have to mingle with other people who are identifying as Taiwanese, right?
That’s true. From interacting with a lot of Taiwanese startups is it seems like the highest chance for success for a company from Taiwan to migrate to the US is they would need to find a really solid partner in the US, and then tackle the US market together, versus doing it on their own.
Just because it’s entirely different market, entirely different language, culture, etc.
Sometimes, the better they are at pitching to the Taiwanese government, the worse they are to the American VCs. It’s contradictory.
Sorry, can you say that again?
Previously, for many government grants and fundings, they had to deliver their pitch, like the elevator pitch or a deck of pitch in a way that seems not risky.
For a long time, Taiwan’s investment scene on startups are especially risk averse, especially when you’re seeing from a Silicon Valley viewpoint, one need to deliver returns, either social impact or fiscal, but on a very risk-taking basis.
It’s also because the previous round of the National Development Council fund are essentially grants and not really investments. A grants maker’s tolerance for risk is not the same as an investor’s tolerance for risk. The return is also very different.
They tend to be risk averse and emphasize their position within an existing ecosystem, the so-called disruptive or ecosystem-making plays are not encouraged, compared to known product or services. However, they could also be branded in a way that seems very risk-taking and maximize the impact, and so on.
There’s really a lot of incongruence and...
Yeah, but there’s a lot of incongruence. Sometimes, when we bring people to the Valley to make pitches, they have to be coached separately or even a completely different person needs to make the pitch because there’s many differences.
Now, after a couple of years of shifting the direction of the government relationship, of working with the civil society, not against them; and of doing investment rather than grants, I think we’re gradually seeing a better alignment to this issue.
I agree. Language definitely is one of the biggest issue that we run up against whenever companies are pitching in the US. I saw one team do this pretty smartly. One of the original founder is Taiwanese genius coder essentially.
Built a product that was cool and then realizes his weakness was language skills and being able to sell his company. He found a co-founder that was doing that exactly. They were able to do well.
Yeah, we see that dynamic.
It’s just a matter of finding more of those, I suppose.
That’s right.
In the US, we have Crunchbase or an AngelList, where every and all the startups are on. Is there a push to encourage Taiwanese startups also to get on to those platforms?
Yeah, to list on Crunchbase and AngelList. The Asia Silicon Valley people, last I heard, is working on that. Here, in the Social Innovation Lab, we have our own registry. We did talk about connecting that social enterprise registry to international registries as well.
That’s cool. Last time I searched AngelList or Crunchbase, I forgot which ones...
LinkedIn?
...or LinkedIn. They can categorize my location, which is super easy. I remember only seeing 900 startup companies. That just can’t be real. Do you know how many startups are or technology startups are in Taiwan?
No, [laughs] because loosely categorize any new company within two years or within five years, it really depends on how you count it. There’re different statistics. Yeah. I don’t have the numbers here.
It seems like the likelihood for global businesses for Taiwan will be dependent on how advanced the technology is of a company because Taiwan is so small? Do you agree or disagree?
I don’t know. There’s roughly speaking 100,000 new companies every year, but I wouldn’t call all of them startups. To us, a startup means something that try to create value where other people don’t see value yet, and that’s a very Silicon Valley view.
In Taiwan, many people start companies to do other things. There’s many NGOs nowadays asking us if they can set up subsidiary companies, not to maximize shareholder value, but to hire a competent manager to amplify their charities work. That’s also registered as a company. They would count in startup.
They’re actually just a interface to the market to a maybe 20-year old or 30-year old charity.
Why couldn’t they hire that under their original NGO?
Quite a few reasons. First, the shareholder structure is different. In Taiwan, we now have the idea of so-called closely held companies, where you can offer special shares, like special voting stocks and all those Silicon Valley instruments, to your co-founders, but still have a majority representative retains veto rights or whatever.
You can shape it however you want. They want impact investors and professional management, but as a charity, they can’t really get investment. It’s against the law actually to receive investments.
They want essentially a wholly controlled, closely-held company that could hire management based on the usual incentives, stock options, but while the charity itself retains the control in its mission.
There’s hybrid organizations, we see a lot actually of these demands around here. What I’m saying is that in Taiwan, starting a so-called company is complicated.
I think the technological element is pretty strong for closely-held companies, but they don’t necessarily are focused on tech alone. They may be more focused on, for example, I don’t know, keeping the family business in the family.
I guess the point of my question really is to find an area of focus that Taiwan can excel at, compared to rest of Asia, rest of world, where they can compete and win. It seems like the similar model would be like Ireland or Israel, where the population size is so small that they are basically competing on technology versus a population or infrastructure.
That’s why I asked that question. Do you think there’s interesting sectors that Taiwan has that has that competitive edge or?
In innovation, there is the original spark where innovation happens. There is the long line of replication, of trying to make it actually fit the social need for your target audiences.
In Taiwan, as you said, anything disconnected to our existing very strong, very powerful hardware supply chain has a higher risk of getting absorbed by the parent company. We see that kind of acquisition strongly and quickly.
It pays more actually to be acquired, to be absorbed back to a large hardware-based group, than to innovate as a startup. If you resist that temptation though, you can nevertheless leverage a very good relationship with the hardware, with the smart machinery, with semiconductor design, communities.
Which is why I think Taiwan is really good as a testing field for AI, for machine learning integrated into the society, but not necessarily of teams that’s only strictly speaking Taiwanese. Mostly because...
Because there’s a lot of data needs in these traditional semiconductor firms.
Yes, exactly. Yeah. The current generation of AI, they’re very data hungry and they require a lot of domain expertise to be useful. Taiwan SMEs can provide the domain expertise, but not necessarily the data.
Some very large companies, multinationals and also large companies based in Taiwan, they may have the data, but they may not be as interested in improving the life of SMEs. What we’re seeing is that there’s a real gap of system integrators that can bridge the new AI innovations, the data that government or the other large entities have, and the social need identified by the SMEs.
Be it workflow, automation, or logistic management or whatever. Such integrators, I think they will have a field day. I just visited one yesterday solving real social problems. The thing, though, is that the initial innovation necessarily happens in a local context.
If you can abstract out some useful algorithm, or useful tools or useful things on top of it, after maybe have a year, then it’s globally applicable.
Then, there are other places that has more similar social situations compared to Taiwan that’s not the United States. They come to United States if they lack the capital, lack the connection to a large corporation, or the connection to an ecosystem that they really need.
That is a long answer, but what I’m saying is that there’s a lot of technologically minded startups in Taiwan to solve a specific local social problem. They may well replicate, but US may not be the best market for them.
I’m absorbing. [laughs] I think that’s understandable. There’s a really large focus right now, I guess, on Southeast Asia, as well. I want to circle back to my point earlier about everyone on the spectrum of the diaspora that wants to help.
What is everyone’s role? Obviously, the Taiwanese mafia resources capital connections, but people who are first-time entrepreneurs or people who are just working, how can they contribute to making Taiwanese innovations and entrepreneurs much more connected, and accelerate their path?
They can share their experience and how they feel. They can form a learning circle...
Just a lot more content generation, the more easy access?
Yeah. I think one of the things that I learned working with Silicon Valley companies, that failure is not personal. If you write a post mortem, that becomes a social object around which you can have a meaningful discussion. It’s not so much face losing as experience sharing.
That’s why we’re working on so many so-called sandbox acts here. We have the FinTech Sandbox Act already passed. The AI Mobility sandbox will pass in a couple of months. There’s many more sandboxes in the future.
What is a sandbox act?
The Sandbox Act is essentially saying if you are in Taiwan and you want to do AI banking, peer-to-peer lending, cryptocurrency, whatever, anything financial that is currently prohibited or not recognized by the Ministry of Finance, you can apply for an experimentation proposal for 6 to 12 months. During that period, you get to break the law.
Sweet.
You get to break the law. Not just the law pertaining to the FSC, but also any regulation whatsoever that you point them out and even city-level regulations that you want to violate. For the social good, you have to say why the law is worth violating.
There are some red lines. You can’t say, "I’m going to experiment for half a year on money laundering," or on funding terrorists... Maybe not a good idea.
(laughter)
"A new twist on the Ponzi scheme."
"To experiment on a new twist on the Ponzi scheme."
(laughter)
Anyway, if you apply such an application, previously, the public servants if they see the existing law as not exactly disallowing it, it is a gray area. They’re inclined to reject, even if it’s just because it reduced their workload.
If you interpret in your favor, they have to maybe work for seven days working on the paperwork, interpret the law, so that you can do your innovation. Now, two forces are already in play.
The first is that the KPI for the National Development Council is now how many interpretations can you relax for innovators? That’s one. You get some credit.
The second thing is that if you reject it anyway, they can enter through the sandbox application. Then you have to spend six months with them. It’s actually in the public servants’ payoff if they just accept and interpret in their favor.
Sometimes, it’s really against the law. We really do enter the sandbox then and work with the stakeholders for six months. In the end, if everybody thinks it’s a good idea, then the regulations get changed.
If law need amendments, then legislation needs time. The experiment can get extended as much as three years, which is, again, the world’s longest. We’re now taking this from the FinTech Sandbox to AI Mobility.
The idea is that people can now apply for a hybrid vehicle that’s driving, but also flying, but also in the sea. That’s working with the people in any urban or rural area that solves a social need and balance of loss and code creator regulation together.
That’s something that I see as very positive in Taiwan, is that we welcome anyone really who want to break some laws to come to Taiwan to create those new laws together.
That is the coolest thing I’ve heard.
Really?
In a while. This is common in different countries?
All this is really new. In the continental law system of countries, I think Taiwan is the first to allow this kind of thing. This, plus the Foreign Talent Act, is part of how we’re trying to attract people to be also Taiwanese.
Circling back to how people who may not be first entrepreneurs or people who are highly successful, they can come and experiment their ideas in Taiwan.
Right, but even if you experiment elsewhere, and even if you don’t do the sandbox, everyone who are first-time entrepreneurs, they still make some very valuable mistakes.
If you can get them to document these findings, and have them share it in terms of talks or support groups or whatever, then I think that’s what binds people together. Even the most senior mentors, they still learn something when they hear how an entrepreneur failed.
Fascinating. This is the opposite of what I originally had in mind, which is getting a bunch of successful entrepreneurs who write letters to their younger self to inspire future generations. This might be much more interesting read as well or both can work, yeah.
Both can work. I think once they... at maybe their fourth or fifth try when they succeed, they already have the support network. That’s all early metrics where the thing with entrepreneurs is not how many from you pivoted, is whether you will be recognized by your peers as having contributions even before you succeed.
That’s cool. I think I am running out of questions. Have you heard of a program called Love Boat?
Is there something similar like that for tech? Attracting back-tech talent, coming back to either mentor, advise, or even explore Taiwanese ecosystem.
No, but it’s a fascinating idea.
It may be worth pursuing.
Pursuing, OK. Even the people who are now involved in our STEEP community, a lot of them have previously participated in programs like these. That was the reason why they fell in love with Taiwan in the first place, and then they’re still really actively involved. So something like that could be interesting.
Yeah. There’s many cruises around tech, Geek Cruise, JoCo Cruise, but no, I don’t think there’s cruises specifically tailored to Taiwan and technology, or if there is, I haven’t heard of it yet.
What are these other cruises called?
My old community, the Perl community used to have a cruise called Perl Whirl, but I don’t think they’re around anymore. They stopped 20 years ago.
In any case, so there’s many technology related cruise now, but I don’t think there’s one that’s Taiwan based.
Thank you so much for your time. Actually I’m heading to InnoVEX right now, but I’d love to keep in contact.
Yeah, please do.
Maybe ask some questions around... Can I get a picture with you? Is it possible?
Of course. Now the SVEAT people, they’re part of the XFail community and I didn’t know that. I just looked them up, the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Association of Taiwan. They’re just running this platform of sharing failures.
OK, great!