Down South, Up in the Cloud
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Loading... - Aiguo Wang
- 11 Oct 2022
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The August sun shines bright in Taiwan’s south, but the future looked even brighter inside the Kaohsiung Exhibition Center, where more than 250 startups, enterprises, investors, and government accelerators gathered at the 2022 Meet Greater South 5G AIoT Expo.
Launched by Business Next Media in 2011, Meet is a startup community platform that provides news, venture capital funding, and industry events. This year’s Meet Greater South, held on August 26-27, featured seven themes: 5G and AIoT, blockchain, digital content and experience technology, food-related technology, marketing technology and new commerce, green technology, and new businesses. The idea is to facilitate meetings between startups and investors, government actors, and digital giants to find new opportunities for collaboration.
“Seeing these people’s dreams, ideas, triumphs, and setbacks up close really inspires me to want to help them succeed,” says Kyle Chen, director of Business Next Media and Meet. Working with Meet since 2014 has enabled him to follow success stories like iChef’s from the very beginning. The software company is now the most awarded point-of-sale system, serving over 5,000 restaurants in Asia. But Chen still recalls when Meet gave the three co-founders six minutes on stage after naming iChef one of the top 30 startups in Taiwan in 2014.
“I remember seeing these boys walk onto the stage, wearing suits and aprons,” he says. “They had practiced for over six hours the day before to make sure their presentation was perfect. I was impressed by how seriously they took their business and the opportunity, and I think that’s partly what’s made them so successful.” But regardless of whether entrepreneurs succeed or fail with their ventures, he says, Meet’s most important assignment is giving them the best possible chance.
Although many startups gravitate toward Silicon Valley, some see significant advantages in building their business locally. TMYTEK Founder and President Su-Wei Chang says he chose Taiwan as the base for his mmWave total solution business because the island’s robust supply chains make it possible to create a one-stop-shop solution that can easily be integrated with the global ecosystem. This approach has helped him serve international clients better.
“For 5G, the ecosystem is very important, which means we need to work closely with system integrators,” says Chang. “Next year, the U.S. government will focus on building infrastructure to prepare for autonomous cars, which means that right now, there’s a very good opportunity to increase investments.”
Events like Meet’s also allow digital giants to showcase services that could benefit entrepreneurs. In a bright pavilion, Cisco (mainly known for the video meeting software Webex) displays its Meraki Go, a cloud-based IT solution for startups and small businesses.
“The idea is to make the infrastructure as simple as possible so that entrepreneurs can focus on doing their jobs,” says Yvonne Wang, a Cisco collaboration sales specialist. “We integrate a lot of different applications to make work more convenient for our customers.” Among other offered solutions, Cisco’s new devices enable employees to connect their phones to any desk to see their calendars or join meetings. Read More…
