Masa and Lillian explore the Taiwan tech scene
Last week, our CEO Mr. Hashimoto Masanori (aka Masa), and I attended many events while exploring the Taiwan tech scene. Let me fill you in on our crazy-packed schedule!
Modern Web
We were proud to be part of one of Taiwan’s biggest technical events of the year! Modern Web is a 2-day event with around 800 attendees (mostly front-end developers and designers). Two keynote speakers were the fathers of Javascript and PHP, Brendan Eich and Rasmus Lerdorf!
Lucky to have these two young entrepreneurs, Derrick and Amy, helping out at our event booth!
We happily greeted our dearest Cacoo users by giving out limited edition Cacoo t-shirts at our booth!
On Day 2 of Modern Web, Masa flew in from Korea after attending beGLOBAL SEOUL 2015. He spoke at the afternoon session on the topic, “The problem was solved by design.” He shared how our project management tool, Backlog, has improved its design to gain more trust from existing users and attract new ones.
Want to know our secrets to success? Check out our presentation slides from Modern Web. If you have any inquiries, please feel free to message us in the comment section below.
TechNode Taiwan Demo Day
TechNode manages TechCrunch China. This was the first time TechNode held an event in Taiwan, and Nulab helped as a strategic partner for this event.
Our CEO, Masa was honored to be a panel judge for the demo pitch. 10 international teams participated, including teams from New Zealand and Brazil. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon, we had many enthusiastic attendees! It was tough choosing the winner since every team was impressive. Plus, the winner gets to go to TechCrunch Shanghai!
After a lengthy discussion, we had a winner: Syngency, a management system for talent agencies! Want to know more about the teams? Read “10 Startups From Technode Taiwan Demo Day.”
Shoutout to David from iiiNNO for being a great MC! iiiNNO puts a lot of effort into providing support for startups before incubation. Many startup teams have benefited from the events and programs they have held.
After the event, we all went out for dinner and formed a Startup Idol group named “Startup Rock Kids.” Our goal is to improve the current Taiwan startup ecosystem.
We’re the Startup Rock Kids! Buy our album at your nearest 7-11 in the coming future. 😛
Nulab Startup Mixer #1
Finally, the day for our first Nulab Startup Mixer has arrived! Let me introduce you to the team from Japan!
Mr. Sadayoshi from Fusic Inc. looks young, but he started his business 12 years ago while still a student. He now has a team of 30 people, including two non-Japanese staff. His company provides system integration and consulting for clients. It also offers an evaluation system called 360 Degree Evaluation. He is also thinking of expanding to Taiwan, so he came to find any opportunities and to get to know more about Taiwan’s startup environment.
Later in the afternoon, we also met up with Sam from VMFive. He won last year’s TechCrunch Beijing and this year’s Slush Asia. VMFive is a very young team — they have been together just one year — but it already has 30 employees and has won several startup competitions. It’s considered the startup to keep an eye on in Taiwan. Sam is an experienced entrepreneur with a knowledgeable technical background. His team developed a Virtual machine concept for a gaming trial platform. Users can try out games on VMFive’s platform before purchasing.
Masa, Mr. Sadayoshi, and Sam talked about the Cloud and Big data technology in Japan.
As Masa, Mr. Sadayoshi, and I rushed to Fabcafe for our first Nulab Startup Mixer. We were pleasantly surprised to see three attendees already waiting for us!
The mixer was an exciting, unique experience where we people talking in English, Japanese and Chinese all in the same place. We kicked it off by having the Japanese teams share their experiences and talk about their services, followed by the Taiwanese teams. The mixer became a massive networking session. Even the venue owner came over and spoke with our attendees!
The event was supposed to finish at 9:30 PM, but no one wanted to leave. This was a good sign; we successfully created an event where people from different backgrounds could share information and experiences, develop ideas, and find opportunities.
Masa and I also learned much from this meet-up and received positive feedback. Don’t worry, friends! We will have another meet-up very soon. If you are a Japanese or Taiwanese startup team wanting to participate in our next event, please get in touch with us. (Remember to like our Facebook page first!)
Mobile Hero
Mobile Hero (百人Pitch) is an event held by Taiwan Industrial Development Bureau. Nulab joined to help early-stage startups. We organized this closed meet-up with mobile heroes to exchange ideas and give the advice to help them become better teams and provide better services.
Triskel shared how their belt could help posture.
We also met more startups in Taiwan’s famous co-working space, Appworks, including WritePath, who came to our Fukuoka office last month.
We had a meet-up with Yani from III, who will throw the most exciting and big startup event in July called the IDEAS Show. If you want to expand your services to Taiwan, you must check out this event. We also attended the Meet Startup event again, which was fabulous.
Overall, it was an excellent week for us. Even though we were swamped, we met new people and found good friends! If you missed our event or couldn’t meet with us this time, don’t worry! Masa will join us again in the summer. Stay tuned for more!