District15 Platforms held panel discussion at The Nate: Starting up in Hong Kong on 9 April 2019 at 7- 8pm.
We invited Elementz Ventures Nio Liyanage as our panel moderator. Spacious Founder & CEO Asif Ghafoor, Spread-it CEO & Co-founder Timothy Ng, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer of Steam Building Jeffrey Yim and Co-founder of Roots Joe Cheng were our guest speakers.
MODERATOR:
Nio Liyanage, Managing Partner of Elementz Ventures
Formerly at Apple with a background in Management Consulting and Venture Capital, Nio Liyanage is a Founder & General Partner of Elementz Ventures - an innovative new VC firm which differentiates through hands-on tailored support to founders.
He sits on numerous advisory boards, has advised 200+ startups in strategy, growth & fundraising, and has conducted 150+ workshops, lectures or speaking engagements. Having lived in four vastly different countries, Nio speaks five languages (none fluently) and gets overly excited by technology, sustainable impact outcomes and most of all spreadsheets.
SPEAKERS:
Asif, Founder and CEO of Spacious
Asif is an experienced speaker on the topics of Proptech, real estate technology, startups and innovation, having been featured on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, Financial Times, South China Morning Post amongst others. He is available and looking for opportunities to share his experience of startups, property technology and financial services (fintech).
Jeffrey Yim, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer of Steam Building
Jeffrey Yim is Steam Building’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer with primary responsibilities for research, development and implementation of advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Drone, Robotics, Virtual Reality and Internet of Things, for corporate experiential curriculum and virtual reality-based corporate learning platform.
Timothy Ng, Co-founder of Spread-it
Timothy, Co-founder of Spread-it (www.spreadit.today), has started his entrepreneurial journey in his university studies. Before graduation, he has co-founded Spread-it with his partner, growing the platform from scratch to now with more than 200 MNC clients. Spread-it is HK's largest micro-influencer platform that offers more than 10K micro-influencers to promote brands on social media.
Joe Cheng, Co-founder of Roots
Joe is the co-founder of Roots, an online mortgage matching platform aims to bridge the disconnection between homebuyers and banks in Hong Kong. Prior to Roots, Joe was working in one of the leading Swiss private banks as the Greater China business manager, directed the regional business strategy and other run-the-bank initiatives such as the acquisition of Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management of over USD 10 billion assets under management.
Joe holds a Master of Business Administration from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and completed his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Finance at King’s College London.
All speakers shared their experience of starting a company in Hong Kong and also what the investment climate is like for startups in the city.
Again special shout out to our official beer sponsor Black Kite Brewery.