EP 342 – Is Hong Kong the Best Place to Build a Tech Startup? – Jayne Chan – Head of Startups at Invest Hong Kong

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:19
Let’s do it. Hi. This is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. We are joined today by Jayne Chan, the Head of Startups at Invest Hong Kong. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time, Jayne, I really appreciate you coming to do this. Thank you so much.

Jayne Chan 0:33
Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Waitze 0:36
Okay, before we get into the main thrust of this conversation, let’s give our listeners a little bit of your background for some context, please.

Jayne Chan 0:41
Okay, maybe I could just split it up into three kind of sections, you know, to be working on this, this tech and this innovation space for quite a while. So I would say, like the first third of my career really was, you know, that whole build up to the internet becoming a big thing. I mean, I started working in digital agencies, advertising agencies, other kind of marketing firms, and the whole internet thing in Hong Kong in those days was just starting out. So I was fairly lucky, actually, to have been involved and and seen some of these kind of developments. It started off from, you know, doing simple kind of, you know, step by step interactive programs, is what they used to call them, you know, you know, we worked with a number of firms, and from then on, you know, we really then started seeing the massive ascension of the InsurTech and the differences it was making. But then the whole thing imploded. And then the middle section of my career then was very much focused on, you know, called in house and doing marketing for, you know, traditional industries. So, you know, manufacturers, architectural firms, you know, that kind of side, which I didn’t really touch too much prior to that. So that was another set of, like, fantastic learnings. And then finally, I think the last third of my career was, you know, after the implosion of the internet. And, you know, people then started using the internet as, like, a, you know, it was just a regular kind of network that people were just using and being able to create lots of, like, fantastic kind of programs, and really used it on a day to day kind of basis to to enhance their companies. And then so that whole tech space was starting to take off again. And, you know, I went back into the space. I working at Invest Hong Kong. I was head of startups for 10 years. And, you know, over that time, seen some fantastic strides being made. And, you know, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. I feel like I’m a very privileged kind of position working in this role. 

Michael Waitze 2:52
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. We were talking about this just before we started recording. I feel super privileged as well, and particularly to have seen the same three cycles. I think we’ll have some really interesting stuff to talk about. And you should know this my first time in Hong Kong was 1990 July 1990 I remember like it was yesterday. Anyway, tell me particularly from your perspective at Invest Hong Kong, how is Hong Kong Asia’s most dynamic startup? Ecosystm,

Jayne Chan 3:20
well, Esther, there’s a lot of things happening here. I mean, I think if we just throw some data out to start, just so we can get to the kind of context. So in Hong Kong, we’ve been tracking the development of the ecosystm using a survey for the past 10 years or so. Last year, we had just over 4200 startups working in, you know, the CO work spaces, the accelerators and incubators. So that’s been quite a big number from previous years. In fact, you know, if you compare it to 2019, for example, at some, you know, we saw like an increase of about 30 odd percent. So, you know, so it’s a very, very healthy number even during, you know, the challenging times of covid. So, you know, actual numbers is pretty good. But the one thing I suppose, that really differentiates Hong Kong startup ecosystem is that about 27% of our founders come from outside of Hong Kong. So it’s a very international and diverse ecosystem. You know, the first the top countries of origin are, it’s mainland China, around 20% of that. And then we’ve got the UK. We’ve got the US. We’ve got the the French companies as well as Australian companies making up sort of the top five. So, you know, I feel that kind of international perspective really helps to, you know, lend a different kind of lens on solving problems, you know, if you’ve been raised in, you know, in the UK, for example, and you see different kind of solutions being brought there, but then you take those kind of ideas and you adapt it to the kind of problems that you get here in Hong Kong. So. Then it’s, you know, typically different from what someone else is going to be doing from, you know, the US, or, you know, if they’ve come here from, you know, from Thailand, it’s all, you know, our big melting pot of different kind of ideas. So I think, you know, that’s what makes it really quite special as well. But you know, again, if you look at the the kind of start some research. For example, startup genome. It’s one of the world’s de facto kind of like studies on startup ecosystems around the world. On the report for 2023 Hong Kong was the second in the world in terms of the top 100 emerging ecosystems. So, you know, for us to be in that kind of position, I mean, obviously they do see those kind of business opportunities here. But I do think it’s the fact that, you know, we have the fundamentals in place which makes Hong Kong really dynamic. You know, that’s access to funding, access to talent, access to market. Can I follow up a little

Michael Waitze 5:59
bit? Because this is really interesting to me. A lot of the other start, lot of the other startup ecosystems that I see don’t have the same level of, I don’t want to say cultural diversity, but definitely country diversity. And one of the reasons why, I think, is because it seems harder today. And again, this may just be my misconception, but it seems harder today to move, like, from your home country to another country. Like, I remember when I was a kid, like I didn’t feel like I was visa restricted from going or staying anywhere. Why does it seem so easy to look at the Hong Kong ecosystm, and why does it seem so easy for so many people from so many different countries to go there and to stay there and build stuff? Do you know what I mean? Because it seems like a real big benefit. Yeah,

Jayne Chan 6:37
I think the biggest reason actually, is the fact that Hong Kong is one of the world’s financial centers. I think recently, in one of the studies, we are the the third global, international financial centers, again, in terms of ranking, and that’s after New York and London and and then it’s Hong Kong. And of course, with that being one of the world’s financial centers, Hong Kong, you know, has a lot of the financial institutions here, and so that tends to bring a lot of, you know, different kind of talents from around the world to come here. You know, initially working in the banks, the financial institutions, the investors, but later on, you know, if they want to start moving into solving some of the problems that they’re seeing in their industries, then they will, you know, come out and create so I think so it’s partly that, that the fact that Hong Kong’s is one of the world’s financial centers, but the other side also is that, you know, Hong Kong has been a trading hub for decades. Michael, you know, you know, we all know that before Hong Kong was, you know, was a conduit to the mainland, which was a factory of the world. And that was only, you know, a few decades ago before some of these kind of manufacturing industries moved to other locations around Asia and India and other places. But the fact is that people have always leveraged Hong Kong as a means to actually get into Mainland China for their manufacturing business, or basically to try and sell there and vice versa. We had a lot of people from the mainland who want to go international, and they typically do it through Hong Kong. And the reason they do that is that, you know, by virtue of Hong Kong’s very special kind of role within the context of mainland China, where we are part of mainland China, of course, but you know, we are very separate. That’s why we call the One Country Two Systems. We have our own common law, we have our own currency. We have, you know, the different ways of doing business. So it was for a lot of the International whether we’re talking talent or companies, it was actually a very familiar way to then access quite a different, you know, market with a lot of different cultures to adapt to. I think it’s always been that the in between place that made it easier for, you know, people to enter Mainland China and vice versa. And now, increasingly, you know, it’s also to enter into the rest of Asia as well, and not just the mainland. Is

Michael Waitze 9:04
there a vertical, I don’t want to use the word bias, but is there like a vertical leaning there, in other words, but do a lot of people focus on on fintech? Which would make perfect sense, right? Because there’s so many of these financial services companies with which you can interact. Or does it branch out into other type of deep tech and other types of tech startup companies. But what are you seeing there? Yeah,

Jayne Chan 9:25
I mean, Fintech is definitely our biggest sector, and, you know, unsurprising, because it is one of the biggest employers that whole financial services industry in Hong Kong. And so when you’ve got people starting new companies, then you know, Fintech is an area they inherently feel very familiar with. So that is our biggest startup industry sector. But we’ve also got quite a substantial amount of companies working on the E commerce and logistics tech. And again, that harks back to the fact that, you know, we’ve been a trading hub for quite a few decades. And. You know, again, lots of talent who are used to, you know, working in the logistics industry, whether that was just like shipping things from Shenzhen to the rest of the world, you know, like, for a while, like Apple shipped to the majority of their products from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. Incredibly, you know, so a lot of people working in that kind of space as well. But then increasingly, we’re starting to see quite a lot the deep tech companies, you know, showing up, especially for example, on the biotech area. So Hong Kong as the second biggest fundraising hub for biotechs globally, after New York. And that’s not something people know about. I didn’t know that. And that’s Yeah, and it really is. And the reason that came about, actually, was the fact that the stock exchange changed some its rules a few years ago to allow pre revenue biotech companies to list. Because, you know, with biotech, it’s a long game, yeah, and that runway is, you know, it takes up a lot more financial resources before you actually come to, you know, the end kind of commercialized products, and for a lot of biotechs. So it’s a very hard way to go. So the fact that they’re able to list and get, you know, raise up a lot of revenue to actually maintain their runway for a little bit longer, I think it’s, it’s a real boon for them. And so when the stock exchange changed these rules, you know, Hong Kong very suddenly became, you know, a half a fundraising hub for biotech companies. So we’ve been seeing developments in that as well. But, you know, other areas that we’ve been seeing is on the, you know, on the green tech side, for example, a lot of climate tech solutions as well as AI. There’s no talk about tech without going into the AI side of things. So so, you know, quite diverse actually, but increasingly, we’re seeing strong, kind of deep tech companies coming through as well. Can

Michael Waitze 11:55
you talk about because you already mentioned this thing that the stock exchange did right to make biotech kind of more viable. You’re right. We saw the same thing in United States, if I’m correct, like in the 1980s and 1990s where the VCs would go out and raise a ton of money for biotech companies that literally had no products yet. I’m not saying that’s the case in Hong Kong, but it made it so much easier for these companies to go out and build businesses, because it’s very capex intensive, right? And the runway, like you said, to profitability or even to income, is long. Are there other things that Invest Hong Kong itself either encourages the government or works with the government to do to make building that startup ecosystem so dynamic?

Jayne Chan 12:33
Well, we are the government department. Fair enough. Our department is there to basically support companies set up and expand here in Hong Kong. And our team looks specifically in the in the startup side, but we are very much, you know, dovetailing what the policies that the this, you know, the policy making departments are coming out with. So, for example, you know, there’s a big push to for digital assets. You know, the regulators and our financial services and Treasury Bureau a few years ago decided that they, you know, wanted Hong Kong to become a digital assets hub, and correspondingly, came out with various kind of regulations that really helped to provide clarity in an area that was still sort of like, you know, a bit hit and miss in different locations. I mean, it’s risky, you know, as soon as you talk crypto, for example, you know, a lot of like, countries are very, sort of reticent, and, you know, it’s something you’ve got to be very aware of, because it’s still a very, sort of like volatile and, you know, the risk high kind of industry to develop, but we do see, you know, concrete use cases and positives in being, you know, a hub for those kind of industries, not least because Hong Kong being one of the world’s financial centers, we are really more focused on the B to B side when we’re talking about financial services, yeah, so, you know, you know, a lot of the banks and institutions are working with other locations in Asia, with Mainland China. So, you know, when you’ve got kind of like, good digital asset solutions that really help to, you know, facilitate those cross border, whether we’re talking payments, currency flows, trade financing, you know, leveraging digital assets to do that is, you know, in some ways it really helps to provide efficiency, and it’s very quick. So I think having, you know, come out with various kind of regulations through the, you know, the regulators and things we’re very much out there. You know, as soon as we get these kind of clarity, we go out and, you know, we go to different locations around the world and we say, you know, we’ve got these kind of developments happening. If you are working in this kind of space, why don’t you take a look at the. Opportunities in Hong Kong and see whether, you know, your solutions would be a potential good match for that. So, you know. So these are the kind of ways that we are, you know, Invest Hong Kong actually helps to execute on, you know, the policies that’s driven up by, you know, by the our central government as well as our local government as well, you know, our various secretaries and the policies. So, yeah, we’re very much on, you know, in step on that. Do

Michael Waitze 15:26
you want it to because you mentioned it, right, and it’s a good segue into artificial intelligence. Do you want to talk at all about what you’re seeing in Hong Kong, and just what you think the significance of it is?

Jayne Chan 15:36
Yeah, I mean, artificial intelligence. I think there’s just so many people talking about it, you know, you’ve got the lawyers talking about, obviously, in terms of, you know, that kind of data privacy side, personal privacy, as well as, like, the responsible side of AI, you’ve got governments who obviously want to, You know, leverage the potential of that for the various kind of industries. So in Hong Kong, you know, we, you know, like any other major tech hubs, we’ve seen a lot of kind of developments within the whole AI industry, and actually in most of the, you know, startups, you know, AI, prior to it being this, this big buzzword was something that was embedded, you know, many of the companies, they were using it, but

Michael Waitze 16:24
they weren’t talking about it, right? Because it wasn’t like a buzzword, yeah, go ahead. Sorry, yeah,

Jayne Chan 16:28
no, no, it was. And I think it’s, I think the way AI was used was different. I mean, generative AI really was, you know, quite a different kind of technology. But prior to that, you had computer vision, you had, like, machine learning, a whole bunch of stuff, yeah, all of that. So, you know, we had a lot of companies already deploying some of that, but now we are getting companies getting more and more specialized into AI and leveraging opportunities, especially once, you know, you had llms that were available, you know, on a kind of open basis, and people could try different things. They could, you know, use these kind of models and build on top of it and create API. So we are seeing a lot of kind of developments on that. But then the flip side is also, as a government, you know, we’ve really got to be cognizant of the fact that, you know, AI is great, but the kind of potential for misinformation, for misuse, for, you know, a lot of those kind of more nefarious kind of potential uses of it, or just pure and simple mistakes, just from, you know, lack of data and training and things it’s got to be, you know, something that all governments have got To be cognizant of, I mean, for Hong Kong, you know, the government basically created a new digital policy office in July this year, and this this department is basically going to be playing a very crucial role, actually, in terms of, you Know, promoting data driven, people centric and outcome based digital policies, especially in terms of like government. I mean governments, we are going to quite a big stakeholder and kind of driver, in some ways, for the digital transformation, especially in large kind of organizations. We’ve got to adopt these kind of technologies. But then how do you you know, deploy something like aI responsibly when you’ve talking about this, you know, the privacy concerns of your citizens. So this digital, digital policy office was set up to address things including, you know, these kind of discussions on, how do we deploy technology responsibly? They basically also released the, what we call the ethical artificial intelligence framework, actually, just, you know, a few weeks ago, and, and this is this framework basically helps to guide, you know, government departments as well as other kind of statutory bodies. We call them to deploy AI, but we’re also hoping that that’s also going to roll into the private sector as well. So you know, going to be lots of developments happening in that space. So

Michael Waitze 19:10
talk to me about this. We spoke a little bit earlier about how Hong Kong has kind of differentiated itself and used some of its like innate differences, things that have been around for a long time, right? To make it really dynamic, but I have this philosophy, kind of across the board, that no one succeeds alone. I’m wondering if you do any of these kind of reach out things, where you reach out to the startup ecosystem in Fukuoka or the one in Singapore, the one in Taiwan, even in Silicon Valley, to kind of not take what they’re doing, but just understand better what’s happening there, and create synergies between all those separate startup ecosystms, and kind of merge them together, but benefit both ways.

Jayne Chan 19:49
Absolutely, I think you hit the nail on the head, actually, Michael, I think no place should be an island, frankly, if you want yourself to succeed. See it in the digital innovation kind of space, especially now with technology on things like social media, you know, being so pervasive, and the fact that you’re so connected to what’s happening around the world as well. So for us, we have always, you know, been out there talking to different ecosystms and building those kind of bridges, whether we’re talking about government to government, for example, or from private organizations to to us. I mean, we, we’ve got 33 offices around the world, and that really helps. That means that we’ve got people on the ground, you know,

Michael Waitze 20:36
three. That’s a lot of offices. Wow, I didn’t know that. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah,

Jayne Chan 20:40
we do. So we would cover the majority of the major markets globally. And what’s great about having those offices out there is that, of course, they’re the ones on the ground who are building the initial kind of relationships and networks. But then, you know, when we come in, as in the sector teams, you know, we’ve got 10 different sector teams in the head office here in Hong Kong. So when we go to those kind of locations, and for example, we want to find out what the investors in New York are looking into at the moment, what kind of challenges are they facing, what kind of collaboration are they potentially interested in with a place like Hong Kong, you know, there’s already some kind of relationship in place, you know, we try to deepen that by, you know, doing, you know, events over there. We collaborate with what we call the Hong Kong Inc partners like Hong Kong science and technology part, like Cyberport, they have these programs where they’re bringing startups to those locations, and we basically help to facilitate that. We organize events to showcase them, connect them. So it’s hugely important, especially since like Hong Kong, you know, we’re a population of 7.4 million people, which, you know as a city is pretty big, but it’s like as a final market, it isn’t. So we’ve always had to look International and to, you know, to try and support the successful companies in Hong Kong to go and scale overseas, but also we want to attract those really strong scale ups to come to Hong Kong that make a difference in our economy as well. So

Michael Waitze 22:18
you’ve we just talked about it, this macro impact, right, of having the ecosystms themselves connect to other ecosystms, I didn’t realize you had so many offices around the world in 10 different verticals. I think, I think people are going to be surprised when they listen to this. They can be like, Oh my god, I definitely need to talk to Jane now, because if there are people on the ground in their city, then they can benefit from that in this kind of both way thing, where they can benefit from what’s going on in Hong Kong, but the people in Hong Kong, but the people in Hong Kong can benefit from what’s going on. And I’m just making it up Boston. I don’t know if you have an office in Boston, but I’m just making it up, but I want to get a little micro now, if you don’t mind, but kind of on the same topic in the old days, which, let’s say it’s three to five years ago, because time moves really quickly today, a lot of startups were talking about disruption. We’re going to go into the InsurTech industry, and we’re just going to disrupt the whole thing, right? Disrupt the whole thing, right? We’re going to go into finance. We’re going to disrupt like Goldman Sachs, which is probably not going to happen, and now it’s more like what I’ll call either enablement or Value Chain Innovation. What kinds of things do you do if you have a FinTech or an InsurTech or even a deep tech startup, to work together with incumbents? Because from the incumbent perspective, it’s still a little bit risk. Little bit risky, right? Is this company still going to be around? How deeply do we want to embed them? What kind of things do you do on that sense as

Jayne Chan 23:30
well? So in terms of more pragmatic help, you know, you bring up a good point, like fintechs, for example, we do invest. Hong Kong actually has a dedicated FinTech team, and they have a program called, you know, the Fast Track FinTech program, and it’s got two sides. One side, it’s like a startup competition where, you know, they try to find the best fintechs and showcase them at the FinTech week, which is happening in a couple of weeks time, and hopefully get them exposure and potential, you know, clients as well as investors, I mean, whatever they’re looking for. But the other side of what they do is that even for companies that don’t make it through to the competition they are, they can basically get onto the system. And we already have, like, a number of partners, corporate partners, as well as you know, potential clients listed on there who have said, Yep, I’m interested to connect with fintechs. And, you know, once they get onto there, they would have, like, it’s like, a little bit like a marketplace where, you know, the fintechs themselves can get, like, access to some of these different kind of players, whether they’re looking for advice and free mentorship, for example, or they’re looking for an investor. But it’s also a place where the corporates themselves, they’re looking for very specific solutions, and they can leverage that to access them. So that’s one of the ways to provide that kind of, that interface of, you know, to allow those, those kind of like minded groups to connect together the other side of. Trying to encourage more companies to adopt these FinTech solutions. For example. I mean, it is risky, you know, some sometimes, like, even for, you know, small companies, is a big thing of, like, you know, how do I actually get this in and, you know, is it going to take up a lot of my resources to actually, you know, get the software, even though it’s going to help me. But I, you know, I’m just not too sure. And for cases like that, the government has got different kind of programs, funding subsidy programs, to actually help the companies to actually adopt innovation and technology. So you’ve got to do it both ways. You’ve got to provide the kind of access to interfacing. You’ve also got to have, like, you know, other kind of fundings or other ways to actually decrease the risk of adoption of tech. And so there’s various kind of programs, whether we’re talking FinTech, whether we’re talking about AI and other smart city solutions, you know, there’s different kind of programs that the government has launched to try and courage more companies to adopt these innovations.

Michael Waitze 26:01
Yeah, it’s great. I mean, you need to, as you mentioned, you need to de risk both sides, right? Because for the startup company with limited resources, committing to, like, a six month or nine month project, which an incumbent bank, or even an incumbent investment bank, could be really risky on the other hand, from the bank’s perspective, or the existing incumbent, first of all, allowing somebody in sharing information, but then somehow committing to integrating technology with a company you’re not sure it’s going to be around forever, is also risky. So this idea of de risking it, which is kind of what I was asking about, can be super important. I feel like, sorry. Go ahead. No,

Jayne Chan 26:38
that’s for sure. But, you know, you mentioned before about, you know, the attitude a few years ago of companies saying we’re just going to be disrupting this industry and turn it completely upside down. I mean, you’re right, that rhetoric really has changed. I think it’s, you know, a lot of these digital banks or digital insurance companies are not really saying that we’re going to be disrupting everything anymore. I mean, a lot of them are, you know, working with banks. I mean, banks to to launch these digital banks, to try and capture a different types of audience and and that whole kind of, you know, value adding collaboration between large incumbents and the, you know, the nimble, agile kind of startups. But it’s starting to see that more and more.

Michael Waitze 27:23
So I feel like you’re looking at my notes over my shoulder. I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna have to check my studio to see if there’s some kind of hidden camera somewhere. You mentioned it before that, if you build in Hong Kong, right? You have to kind of take a world view of it, particularly from a B to C perspective, right from a B to B perspective, there are plenty of large, very large clients that could do voluminous amounts of business, but the population is only around 7.4 million, right? But you’re sitting right at the base of the GBA, the Greater Bay Area. And I’m wondering if you can talk to me about if that gives an edge, both from a B to B perspective, but also from potential B to C perspective, because the Greater Bay Area has what, 86 million people in it, which gives it much more leverage for growth. How does that work? From the perspective of invest? HK, oh,

Jayne Chan 28:14
having a GBA in our doorstep is definitely, you know, one of the differentiating points for Hong Kong in terms of development of a startup ecosystem. I mean, like you say, the having the 86 million people there, if you are talking about BTC kind of solutions, obviously you’ve got the market there, the GBA. Just to step back, in case people don’t know what is it comprises the nine cities in southern China, plus Hong Kong Macau, and collectively, that’s known as the Greater Bay Area. And you know, one of those cities is Shenzhen. And you know, as most people know, a lot of the innovation and technology that happens in Shenzhen is probably the most advanced in mainland China. For example, Tencent has their head office there. You know, TCL has their headquarters there, as well as Huawei and all these other kind of companies. And that in itself, sparks its own kind of cascading ecosystm of innovation and technology people. So tech hubs are happening. And so when you are trying to sell your solution to a market that tends to be very receptive to innovation and tech. You know, it helps to have, like, a quite a sophisticated, tech savvy kind of audience. So the GPA is really great for that. But so what we tend to see, you know, for companies who are interested in Hong Kong coming from overseas, you know, they may be an American company that is looking to develop its climate tech, green tech kind of company here in Hong Kong, but it’s usually like a test kind of market. So what they do is basically refine their solution and adapt it to make it suitable for a more kind of like, you know, Asian kind of audience, or even it’s just a case of just how. They market. It is different. And it’s not a case of just whatever’s going to work overseas. It’s going to automatically work in a place at Hong Kong, because it’s international. It’s not it really is like a melting pot that’s of like the East meets West. So we do find companies adapting and changing some of the technologies, or how it’s some of the processes, how it’s marketed, with the idea, of course, to enter the GBA at some point as well, because those are, you know, where you’ve got the big numbers, you’ve got the big tech companies with the kind of budgets, you know, that can potentially procure these, these innovations. So at some you know, the GBA is a big kind of opportunity for us. And also, I mentioned before, you know, a lot of the companies in the GBA, you know, especially now with the mainland having a slightly tougher time of it economically, you know, they are sort of like looking to go international, and instead of just looking purely at a domestic market. So we’re seeing a huge amount of companies in the mainland who, you know, again, trying to adapt to an international market, tends to set up something here in Hong Kong. Change your solutions, you know, change the rhetoric. Hire the right people. Says the right things before they actually take it elsewhere. So, you know, it’s a great facilitator. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 31:20
I mean, it’s a $2 trillion GDP, so even though the monetary numbers are not small, I want to ask you one more thing before I let you go, if that’s okay. You mentioned earlier the Hong Kong stock exchange, and I’ve traded on the hkse, and I’m just wondering, and I don’t want to disparage any of the other kind of regional stock exchanges, but Hong Kong was always pretty liquid. Do you think it gives the startups in that are in Hong Kong a kind of another chance, another place? Excuse me, that other startups don’t have to exit if possible, because if they exit onto the Hong Kong stock exchange, the world is going to be looking at what’s happening there, and there’d be enough liquidity to make it worthwhile to list you work together with them as well to make that a possibility too?

Jayne Chan 32:04
We are very much, you know, working with a stock exchange to, you know, support startups who are looking to exit. I mean, the stock exchange also is looking for, you know, innovative kind of companies. Yeah, new companies, yeah. To, you know, to to basically increase that kind of diversity of types of companies within the, you know, the exchange as well. I mean, they don’t want just a regular kind of, you know, traditional property companies, or, you know, your, your kind of large conglomerates. They definitely want to bring some of that innovation in house. And so, yes, we do. We, you know, have this collaboration with different partners, including the stock exchange, to try and support the kind of startup. So in various Hong Kong, you know what we do, depending on the stage of a startup, we offer different types of customized, targeted kind of services. If you’re really early stage, you know, we’ll be telling you about the accelerator programs around or, you know, if they’re looking for funding and they’re still at seed stage, we may be recommending angel investors to them. Or, you know, if they’re not, if they’ve set something up in Hong Kong already, we give them opportunity to market themselves. We maybe organize events within, get exposure, get connected to other people, but once they’re in the scaling up stage, you know, we are very much like encourage them to look at the Hong Kong stock exchange, because, as you say, it is a very liquid, you know, Stock Exchange, where we’re increasingly seeing a lot of tech companies being listed on there as well. So I think it’s definitely one of those, you know, kind of exit routes and funding routes that is available, that may not be as available in other locations, yeah,

Michael Waitze 33:47
particularly in this region. Okay, I really want to thank you for doing this. Jayne Chan, Head of Startups at Invest Hong Kong, I’ve honestly learned a ton from beginning to end, and I think people that listen to this are going to learn a ton as well. Thank you so much for your time and all the time that your team has spent organizing this, I really appreciate it.

Jayne Chan 34:03
No. Thank you so much. And and Michael, if I may, can I just mention very quickly the start with Hong Kong festival, please. We’ll be running from the 21st to the 25th of October, which is next week, lots of different events going on. And hopefully we’ll see some of your you know, your your audiences, come along to that.

Michael Waitze 34:21
Thank you so much.

Jayne Chan 34:22
Thank you.