Why don't Hong Kong people love Internet entrepreneurship? Even Li Ka-shing rarely invested in Hong Kong

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Every household has 1000M low-cost broadband access to Hong Kong is not keen on Internet entrepreneurship, this is why?! I share an article, the author of this article tells him about the Internet entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. I found that there is no shortage of internet genes in Hong Kong, but because of the reluctance of university graduates to invest in the financial sector, and the asymmetric information on the mainland and Hong Kong, investors are not interested in investing in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong entrepreneurs are not concerned about the mainland market.

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Internet situation in Hong Kong

In early January, Google's executive chairman, Schmidt, came to Hong Kong. Speaking at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he offered a tempting entrepreneurial training program--providing mentors to help Hong Kong entrepreneurs who performed well to visit Google's Mountain View headquarters in California to build a wider network of people and so on. But even so, I wonder if he can pick the person who meets the criteria. A comparative study of "Taiwan and Hong Kong Youth Entrepreneurship", released earlier this year, shows that young people have the lowest entrepreneurial aspirations and confidence.

Curiously, at the same time, there are a lot of reasons why Hong Kong is the place where Internet entrepreneurship can be chosen. The establishment of a company in Hong Kong is easy, the tax system is simple, there is one of the world's fastest broadband network, Hong Kong people on electronic products also have a very high renewal enthusiasm. Rent is not a big problem. The shared workspace for entrepreneurs is already growing, and I know at least 7 of them, all in Hong Kong, including the not-so-remote Lai Chi Kok area. Can be frustrating is that, in addition to the funny picture site 9gag and walkie-talkie application Talkbox, there is no good entrepreneurial ideas originated in Hong Kong.

I can imagine how Hong Kong people can calculate this opportunity cost. In Hong Kong, doctors, lawyers and financial practitioners are the three most socially recognised occupations. Apart from the fact that these occupations have high incomes and are also the most advantageous industries in Hong Kong, both young people and their parents naturally think that it is easiest to get ahead in these three industries. Based on this assessment of the industry, Hong Kong's universities are the highest in the business and legal professions, and the information engineering majors are almost at the bottom. As a result, the Internet industry is becoming less talented.

Where's the VC going?

Yes, and the money. VCs do have a growing lack of interest in Hong Kong, but Hong Kong's rich are not unwilling to invest in the Internet industry, and Li Ka-shing's "Victoria Harbour Investment" supports Facebook, Siri, map company Waze and so on, as well as the recent comic-generation application bitstrips on Facebook.

The Hong Kong project of Shanda Capital has only talkbox. Wang Yu, its investment director, told me that there were too few projects in Hong Kong and investors were unwilling to come to Bandi and look at one or two items at a time. In addition to the fact that the mainland LP does not understand the Hong Kong market, the cost of communication and case management is too high, which objectively results in less concern for the entrepreneurial team in Hong Kong.

A continuous entrepreneur in Hong Kong complained to me that whenever he needed a VC, he would either go to Singapore or go to Silicon Valley. I asked him why he didn't go to the mainland to change his money, and his answer was "it feels like investors in Singapore and the U.S. are more likely to understand what I think."

Zhang Yonghan, a partner of investment ventures in China and Europe, rated the Internet entrepreneurs in Hong Kong as having too little vision. Hong Kong is only more than 7 million people, the narrow local market determines its potential is very limited, so Zhang Yonghan advice is to either target the mainland market or do international market. I have shared an article with Talkbox, a Chinese regional manager Huangho, who has experienced the Hong Kong Internet. Before the dotcom bubble of 2000, he said, Hong Kong's Internet engineers were the hottest, with years of experience driving up to 100,000 of the sky-high salary. After the bubble big consortia to the Internet no longer have the confidence, the entrepreneur always cannot find the fund development, also became the Hong Kong Internet product development deadlock. I feel that the lack of sustained infusion of funds may be one of the reasons why Hong Kong's internet start-ups are not booming. )

What are the limits of entrepreneurship?

Hong Kong people do not lack good ideas. In Hong Kong, I often use a similar website, called "Openrice dinner La". Openrice was founded in 1999, more than 4 years in the morning than the public comment, but openrice in many details to do than the public comments rough. For example, opening Openrice's mobile app will suddenly surprise an ad page and affect the experience.

The Internet entrepreneurs in Hong Kong do not know the mainland so well, nor do they know the foreign country as much as they think. On one occasion, Zhang Yonghan and a Hong Kong internet entrepreneur chatting, asked where to start entering the mainland market, the entrepreneur gave the answer is that my mainland strategy is to do first Hainan island, because there I know people. More worrying for Zhang Yonghan, he found that some Hong Kong teams were somewhat repelled by the mainland market and did not know if there were any teams in the mainland doing similar products. (for the mainland strategy to do first Hainan Island market, I said the Dark horse is also very worried.) )

If the target market is to be placed in the mainland, then Hong Kong entrepreneurs need to understand the preferences of mainland users, how to do marketing and how to build a mainland team, a series of issues. To do this, I'm afraid it's not enough to stay in Hong Kong.

But Hong Kong is not making any progress. I recently attended a party at the American law Firm (Cooley), which advises innovation companies and investors, where I heard lawyers discussing that Hong Kong's Internet start-up community, although still rudimentary, grew rapidly. The reason is that investment banks in Hong Kong were hit hard by the 2009 financial crisis and some left their jobs in the promising internet industry.

This is a good thing, finance is a lot of entrepreneurs of the short board, there are skilled people to join to let the start-up companies to eat less loss.