💥What a great panel yesterday!
💪Our founder Alfonso Ballesteros had the pleasure to moderate the discussion “Asia and Europe pulled together”. Great insights from Fernando de la Cal González from InvestHK Brussels and Bowie Lau from True Global Ventures. The speakers covered different aspects of how to access different Asian markets and the role that hubs such as Hong Kong or Singapore play in the region for entrepreneurs, corporates and VCs.
🔍Asia accounts for 2/3 of the world’s population. With economies at all stages of development which offers tremendous opportunities for startups that get the strategy right.
👉One such startups is The Sandbox which have enjoyed tremendous growth and exposure in Asian markets despite being originally American. The Sandbox is in True Global Ventures portfolio and Bowie shared some great first hand insights about their success story. Fernando also described the fundamental role that jurisdictions such as Hong Kong play in any Asian strategy.
💡One of the main takeaways of the discussion was the need to break the chicken-and-egg situation where European firms and entrepreneurs avoid Asia due to lack of familiarity, which in turn leads to never learning about these markets.
👉A good approach to start breaking this cycle is to travel to the region more often, attend summits in key Asian cities, engage with the ecosystem builders and investment promotion agencies and consider opening up Innovation Outposts which are common in Silicon Valley but relatively uncommon in Asia.
🏃♂️A very well known advice to startups is “get out of the building” in this case the panel suggested “get out of the continent”. :D
✈️Reach out, make things happen. Engaging leads to knowledge, which leads to spotting opportunities that you can pursue. Once you have some successful experiences you’ll quickly integrate Asia into your overall strategy. Reach out to any of the panellists for help and advice on these markets.
Link to the video of the panel (starts at 07:23:00):