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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

US, yeah.

Yeah. I was there yesterday, actually.

Yeah, the opening ceremony.

Those companies that are going into the Taiwan Tech Arena are immediately targeting US markets or I guess more markets?

That’s good. That’s interesting.

Yeah.

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...?

Taiwania Capital, I’m aware, they invest in Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese companies, correct?

Sovereign Fund.

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...?

Just people who have been there long enough.

This is similar. 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, 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.

We could include that.

Yeah, so I’m segmenting my Diaspora, too, yeah.

Yeah, OK. That’s just my naming problem. [laughs]

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?

Which is?

Self-identified Taiwanese person.

Yeah, I was going to say, it’s a very philosophical question.

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.

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.

Sorry, can you say that again?