Startup ecosystem in Hong Kong

Planning to open a company in Hong Kong and not sure if the entrepreneurial ecosystem is the right one for you? Well, the startup ecosystem in Hong Kong is excellent if you are looking for a place that provides you with the ease-of-doing-business.

As a matter of fact, a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem and the ease-of-doing-business are two different things, but almost everyone who walks into the business world relates to both as the same thing. The three aspects of a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem are:

• Rebellion
• Know-how
• Capital

For some time now, Hong Kong has been ranking in the top 5 of the ease-of-doing-business, and has a fast-growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. Even though Hong Kong still lacks a bit in terms of rebellion, it is still one of the best places where you can be sure to boost-start your entrepreneurial career.

The other points that make up the startup ecosystem are:

• Regulation
• Infrastructure
• Market
• People
• Culture

Hong Kong has been ahead in these five points in recent years. Obviously, if you visited Hong Kong a decade ago, it would have had a very different ecosystem. But thanks to all the great development that has come our way, Hong Kong is now one of the best places where anyone can start their career as an entrepreneur and succeed.

With all that mentioned above, here are the four things that keep Hong Kong thriving with the best startup ecosystem:

Support

For this, the InvestHK activity has started to help those who want to build something in Hong Kong. It is an organization that helps in promoting the inbound foreign direct investment, and it also offers support to those who join the Hong Kong startup ecosystem.

InvestHK wanted to do more in supporting the entrepreneurs coming into Hong Kong to open a company. Hence, in 2013, they started the StartmeupHK which was an initiative to concentrate completely on the startup community.

Since then, they have evolved more to support the startup ecosystem where one of the premier startup events in Hong Kong is the annual eponymous festival that is hosted by InvestHK.

Infrastructure

In Hong Kong, there are over 50 innovation labs, incubators, accelerators, and co-working spaces currently, while some years ago there was only one Cyberport. After the Cyberport, two new co-working spaces were launched called The Hive, and CoCoon. The places here are pretty impressive where each has the open-concept workstations, high-end design and also, free coffee.

Inspired by all the ones that started in 2012, there are about a hundred services like these that are provided by huge global operators such as WeWork as well as many small local spaces too. Along with these, there are many corporate innovation programs and a huge number of accelerator programs like the Swire’s Blueprint, Brinc, The Cage, and Betatron.

And that is not all! There are also a lot of government-assisted programs that help those entrepreneurs coming into the country like the Science Park’s “Incu” Programs and Cyberport Incubation are also some of the best ones.

Capital

In Hong Kong, the funding environment was entirely controlled by the great foundations like the Horizons Ventures. But nowadays, things have become much better where there are many rising star VC firms such as the Vectr Ventures and the Mindworks Ventures. These firms have overshadowed the once tightly-held oligopolies.

Moreover, another great Chinese corporation that has its name on the top for helping the local startups and even international ones is the Alibaba’s Entrepreneurship Fund. Overall, there has been a huge change in the risk appetite of about five million high net worth individuals (HNWI) within Asia who are much more supportive to help the startups.

Talent

As per a survey conducted by InvestHK in 2016, about 2,000 startups in Hong Kong employed more than 5,000 employees, which is an increase of 24% from the numbers in 2015. The most interesting thing about this is that the most significant percentage (20%) of foreign startup entrepreneurs are US ones.

The greatest disappointment in an ecosystem for startups has always been the retention of talent. If we spoke about Hong Kong about two decades ago, things were different. Then, when anyone started up, they would always close the company and move to Silicon Valley due to the lack of talent. But today, with the abundance of talent, many larger companies have opened their Asia headquarters here in Hong Kong.

In addition to this, Hong Kong’s funding environment and the infrastructure at that time couldn’t even handle the growth. With the advancement of things today, foreigners fly in and set up their businesses, making things more open and better for Hong Kong and Asia as a whole.

Conclusion

Even though these four points might seem as something small or something some of you can handle by yourself, remember these are highly important aspects that your business will have to face sooner or later. So, if you are about to choose a place for opening your business, the ecosystem of Hong Kong is the right one for you.

And when you have all your business plan and idea ready, you can have your company incorporated as you sit in your home country. Startupr can assist you in registering and incorporating your business in Hong Kong within a maximum of 3-5 working days. To know more details regarding the services and the packages, contact Startupr today!