2015 was the first, full year for official Techstars activities and business in Greater China. It was a year full of challenges but also many great achievements. As we look forward to 2016, let’s take a look at the progress we have made in Greater China in 2015.
By Mark Koester
2015 was the
first, full year for official Techstars activities and business in Greater
China. It was a year full of challenges but also many great achievements. As we
look forward to 2016, let’s take a look at the progress we have made in Greater
China in 2015.
The Promise:
Helping Startups Get to the Next Step
In November
2014, I gave a short presentation at a meetup in Chengdu about my vision for
our programs in China. After sharing some info about each of our programs like
Startup Weekend and Startup Next, I concluded with a promise: In 2015, we would
bring at least least one company from China to the United States. It was a bold
promise all things considered, and many at that meetup probably thought we
would never deliver.
Across all of
our events and programs, this remained our defining objective: help entrepreneurs take the necessary steps level up their startups and businesses.
I’m proud to say
we achieved this goal at least once this past year through one of the
“graduates” of our first Startup Next in Shanghai: PartnerGo. I’ll share more
about their story later.
In brief, 2015
was the year we launched official operations for Startup Weekend and Startup
Next in Greater China. This began under the banner of UP Global and a very
clear initial mission. Having achieved our initial objectives, namely
sponsorship goals, it morphed into a larger strategy. With the acquisition of
UP Global with Techstars, our mission joined theirs, and we were given the
opportunity to delivery more awesomeness with the Techstars Accelerator team.
Like our review
from June, let’s take a look at our top achievements from the past year.
1: Increased
Startup Weekend’s Impact, Focus and Quality in China
In 2015, we held
53 events in China, including 22 Startup Weekends and 29 pre-events, workshops,
social hours, and training sessions. Officially we ran these events across 10
cities in China. Combined, these events reached over 6000 entrepreneurs.
In 2015, we
focused on China’s major startup hubs: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei,
and Hangzhou. 71% of programs were held in these cities (38 of our 53
programs). We avoided the temptation of expanding into lesser developed cities,
since a major part of our strategy has been building up our following and
network in these hubs, in particular with high quality mentors, partners and
top startups.
China’s startup
situation is quite unique. I have written pretty extensively about startup communities in China. While China had a lot of energy and resources going into
startups in 2015, it also presented a huge “bubble” of sorts as all kind of
characters joined the “startup supporters” game. Unfortunately, as a foreign
brand program, we met lots of special challenges that local supporters don’t
have to deal with.
Specifically, in
2015, we were greeted by a huge increase of copycat and imitation Startup
Weekend programs. This is a testament to our success and timing. It’s also
indicative of the association in Chinese startup supporters between running
events and building a startup ecosystem. While events are part it, events and
programs need clear goals. Otherwise we merely provide places for people to
spend their free time without building skills, connections, momentum and
progress.
I’m happy to say
that we have taken strong steps in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, and
Hangzhou over the last year by hosting strong traditional startup weekends,
unique vertical-focused startup weekends and our later stage Startup Next
programs. We have also hosted interesting regional events in other cities like Ningbo,
Chengdu, Qingdao and even Xi’an.
Compared to the 14 events we hosted in 2014, 2015 was a big growth year as we grew to 53
events. This combined with a strong focus on quality and strategic
partnerships. Overall, we reached more of the right people and delivered high
quality engagement. Expect to hear more from these startups and entrepreneurs
in the coming year.
2: Established
Sponsorships and Partnerships for Startup Programs in China
In order to help
startups, we have to be a successful and sustainable business ourselves. Prior
to 2015, we had no national sponsors in Greater China. Combined with high
variation in quality and program engagement, we did not have a clear
understanding of existing partnerships as well as how to find and on-board new partners.
Partnerships has
been our biggest challenge and opportunity in China. Expanding to China was not
without a number of unique questions. Without partners, we could not build up
our brand nor leverage our international network locally.
So, largely 2015
was a year of building relationships with the right people and partners. We
were extremely fortunate in 2015 to have secured several financial sponsors to
help us make us sustainable and also to help entrepreneurs in our network. A
special thanks to:
Qingcloud:
Qingcloud provides high quality cloud hosting in China and abroad. They are
highly scalable and got a number of high profile clients. They provide trial
credits to all Startup Weekend China participants and prizes to event winners.
Servcorp: Servcorp
provides serviced office space around the world. We have partnered with them to
provide local winners with part-time space for their new projects and teams.
EFC: EFC is
based in Hangzhou and is focused on bringing innovation and startup culture to
Hangzhou. They are a real estate developer, pivoting into creative startup
focused spaces. They are a huge supporter of ours in Hangzhou.
Haier M-Lab: As
a subproject of one of China’s most well-known manufacturing brand, Haier M-Lab
is a national sponsor for Startup Weekend and exclusive cooperation partner for
Startup Weekend Youth Maker.
Beyond these
national sponsors, we were fortunate to work with several sponsors and partners
in developing vertical programs. The China Space Foundation was critical in
helping us deliver the first ever Asian Startup Weekend Space in Shanghai in 2015. Haier and its associated companies helped us launch a Startup Weekend Maker in Qingdao, and in Ningbo, local supporters like NexMaker and WuKa Coffee
helped bring Startup Weekend Maker to Ningbo too. JD.com PowerUp has joined us
in helping bring more IoT focused innovation.
One of our
oldest and longest serving partners has been Bob Zheng and People Squared,
which is a network of startup friendly co-working spaces in Shanghai and
Beijing (so far). People Squared hosted Startup Weekends in Beijing and
Shanghai as well as our first Startup Next in Shanghai.
Beyond these
companies, we have been fortunate to have a number of local partners helping us.
3: Successfully
Launched Startup Next in Shanghai and Hong Kong
In November 2014
when I made my promise to help bring at least one China-based startup to the US
via one of our programs, my main target was Startup Next. Startup Next is our
6-week pre-acceleration program.
In 2015, we ran
41 startup next programs around the world. I’m happy to say we ran two
successful startup next programs in Greater China last year, namely in Shanghai
and in Hong Kong. We will be continuing both these programs this Spring 2016
and we are expanding to additional cities as well.
Both programs in
Shanghai (Spring 2015) and Hong Kong (Fall 2015) brought a truly high-level
experience to the teams selected. Through a competitive application process, we
selected 5 teams in Shanghai and 7 in Hong Kong. Each program had a number of
high quality mentors and speakers to guide teams throughout.
Both were
guiding by the underlying mission to provide next step opportunities beyond
Startup Weekend and strategic help to get startups into top accelerators.
4: Grew our
Mentorship and Community Network in China
Techstars is, by
definition, a mentorship-driven accelerator program. This emphasis on being
mentorship-driven is also key to how we run our pre-accelerator programs. These
programs aim to educate and accelerate entrepreneurs through a focused
curriculum and learning process with the guidance of mentors and coaches.
One of the added
challenges to growing our programs in China is the lack of a culture of mentorship. China is also not particularly strong culture of volunteer-ism.
These two characteristics create some unique challenges.
Quite frankly we
cannot scale and grow high quality programs without high quality mentors and
partners. We depend on our local ecosystem to be successful. So, along with
growing our programs, engagement, and participants, we also significantly grew
our mentors and community.
As a volunteer-led
organization, a percentage of my time goes towards training the right kind of
organizers and volunteers. Startup Weekend in particular is a massive effort by
a collection of local volunteers and our network of officially trained
facilitators. For many of our student run events, we have helped in finding mentors and
judges too.
In 2015, we
significantly grew the number of people involved in running and helping out at
our programs. We increased the number of official facilitators in Greater China
and added lots of first time organizers and mentors. This “people capital” is
our biggest value and wealth.
Beyond any of
these other achievements, I’m most proud of the great people we have involved
now. From volunteers to mentors, we engaged more than 400 community leaders
this past year.
A special thanks
to our regional heroes!
5. From China to
US: Bringing Entrepreneurs and Startups to the next level
Ultimately we
are driven to create and educate successful entrepreneurs. In the end, we will
be judged by our ability to take these entrepreneurs and startups and help them
create successful businesses. Each of our programs has a particular goal.
Regionally, our
mission this past year has been to help at least one entrepreneur or startup
from China get to the US. We were fortunate to have achieved at least two
important successes this past year.
From Startup
Weekend Chengdu, one of our participants spent several months working on their
Startup Weekend project before finally giving it up. His dream didn’t die there
though. He went on to apply and successful attend Draper University in Silicon
Valley. Check out his full story and video here.
From Startup
Next Shanghai, we had a number of strong teams. Each of these startups are
still going strong with some having raised money and others having pivoted to a
new focus. Our biggest success story was PartnerGo, which was founded by Tanya
Cheung.
Tanya and her
team joined Startup Next in Spring 2015. While she had gained some traction and
early customers, she wasn’t sure about her next step or even how best to tell
her story. Over the course of the program, Tanya and her project gained focus
and confidence.
PartnerGo is an
international real estate referral network. After graduating from Startup Next,
the team was invited to join Chinaccelerator in Shanghai and received some
additional funding. Over the course of that program, PartnerGo has grow as a
team and company, including relaunching their online platform and marketing.
After a year of
progress and successes, PartnerGo is one of 12 teams invited to attend
Techstars’ Startup Next Demo Day at CES in Las Vegas. They join only one other
team from Asia from Mumbai. We truly did deliver on our promise this past year
with the help of our mentors and passionate entrepreneurs. Check out the full story of PartnerGo at TechInAsia.
Entrepreneurship
is a long-term project. Few results happen overnight. Over the last year, we have significantly grown our community of people and seen a few startups get to the
next level. Many are still hard at work, and we can’t wait to watch more of
these people go onto to greatness in the coming months and years.
Conclusion:
Helping Entrepreneurs in and into China in 2016
With the merger
of UP Global and Techstars, we now have a mature suite of programs and network
of people to help startups and founder go from inspiration to investment and
beyond. Through a “curated” network of mentors, startups and community leaders,
we truly are an international force providing an “unfair advantage” to
startups.
At Techstars,
our mission is to be a “global ecosystem that helps entrepreneurs build great
businesses.” This means businesses and founders anywhere in the world, not just
in Silicon Valley. This distributed regional focus is a strong part of our
vision internationally.
In China, we
have been working hard to grow our connections and programs. We have achieved a
lot of great things in 2015. Now with the combined force of Techstars and
affiliated companies, we are working hard to help Techstars companies come to
China.
Whether it’s
manufacturing or expanding sales and marketing or seeking investment, China is
one of the most important ecosystems for startups now and in the future. It’s
not to be ignored. Over the last several months, we have already been helping
Techstars companies navigate China. This is one of those areas where being part
of Techstars provides unique opportunities for founders. We can’t wait to do
more of this in 2016.
We recognize the
challenges of operating in China. At the same time, we believe that the
ingredients of a strong ecosystem for startups can be found, cultivated and
maintained in China. In 2016, expect more awesome programs, more high quality
mentors and additional opportunities for startups in and into China.
Thanks again to
all of our regional and international supporters. We look forward to another great year in 2016!
About The Author:
Mark Koester
runs Regional Development for Techstars in Greater China.
Mark Koester is
a life-long-learner, teacher, traveller, Drupal-er, hacker, polyglot, writer,
mystical atheist contributor of free and open source software and community guy.
He is originally
from Omaha, Nebraska and has been living abroad for nearly a decade, including
significant time in France, Spain, China and Southeast Asia. Where have I been?
He is rather nomadic but likely these days to be found somewhere in China or
Asia.
Mark is
passionate about open source technologies and entrepreneurship. He runs his own
web development shop (Int3c.com) with a focus on Drupal. He hopes to return
soon to pursuing his latest startup, Diverific!
Publication
Details:
This work was
originally published at Mark’s Blogsite on January04, 2016 and licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.