2016 InnoVEX Forum-VC/Accelerator-Exploring Opportunities in Taiwan

• Report rights infringement
• published: 30 Jun 2016
• views: 59

Panel Discussion: VC/Accelerator-Exploring Opportunities in Taiwan Moderator: Tom Wang, Founder of Dream School Tom received his MBA from Stanford University. After graduate school, he worked for Dun & Bradstreet, Disney, and MTV. He co-founded Flow, Inc. Flow is a venture capital firm investing in social enterprise startups. Now he consolidates all his activities into Dream School and Start Up Latte. Tom likes to write. His novel “The Protein Girl” is popular in Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea. Panelists: Rui Ma, Investment Partner and Head of Fundraising of 500 Startups Rui Ma is a Partner at 500 Startups, a leading accelerator and seed investment fund in technology companies, where she is in charge of all investment activity in the Greater China region since 2013. Prior to 500, she worked for nearly a decade in private equity and mergers & acquisitions roles at the Raine Group, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch in both Silicon Valley and China. She is based in Beijing and has been living and working in China since 2007. Rui holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, a Masters in Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as an Executive MBA from INSEAD and Tsinghua University. She writes frequently about technology and is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, Techcrunch, TheNextWeb, and TechInAsia. Peter Hsieh, Ph.D., General Partner of Acorn Pacific Ventures Dr. Peter Hsieh started his Venture Capital career about 20 years ago, he is a General Partner of Acorn Pacific Ventures. Mostly recently, Peter served as Chief Strategy Officer of Coretronic Corporation, President of Coretronic Venture Capital, and President of Optoma Corporation. Previously Peter was a partner with AsiaVest Partners in Beijing, and partner with Harbinger Ventures. He was founding team/cofounder of PanoCorp Display Systems and WebEver Inc. Before that, he worked for KLA Instruments in engineering and sales management. He also serves as board advisor to iSoftStone, a software technology consulting firm headquartered in Beijing, with close to 30,000 people worldwide. His previous investment exits include IPO’s of OmniVision, Oplink, Applied Optoelectronic Inc, and iSoftStone; as well as M&A;’s of Ultima Interconnect, U-Systems, Lattice Power, and Leyou. Peter has a PhD in Ultrasound and Optics from Stanford, and a BS ME from National Taiwan University. Jerry Yang, General Partner of Hardware Club Jerry is General Partner of the Hardware Club, a private community for global hardware entrepreneurs that has gathered 160 exciting hardware startups from 30 different countries, including Misfit Wearables, Thync, Prynt, Click & Grow, Reach Robotics, etc. The Hardware Club provides capital investments as well as manufacturing and retail resources to its member startups, for which it has partnered with prestigious EMS firms (Foxconn, Pegatron, Flex, Jabil, Quanta, Compal, etc) and retailers (Amazon, Best Buy, Brookstone, Target, Media Saturn, Citadium, etc). Before jumping to the dark side of venture investments, Jerry had been in Analog IC Design for more than a decade after receiving his Bachelor and Master degrees in Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University. His engineering career, including 4 entrepreneurial years, spanned across Taiwan and Silicon Valley, where he last worked for Qualcomm Atheros Inc. in San Jose. Tom Chiu, Board of Director at Sand Hill Angels Venture Partner of Enspire Capital, Advisory Board of Sand Hill Angels (top 5 angel groups in U.S.), Mentor at SparkLabs, PlugAndPlay, Stanford GSB, Carnegie Mellon University and UC Berkeley. Investor of over 50 startups and multiple funds including 500Startups, Quest and Tandem Capital. Investment focus in IoT, mobile, O2O, enterprise, eCommerce and CE. Eugene Kim, Principal of SparkLabs Global Ventures Eugene is currently a Partner at Sparklabs and manages the day –to-day operations of the Sparklabs accelerator program. Eugene previously served as a Director of Global Business Development at Tencent Korea. He was responsible for the sourcing of Korean game titles to China and Tencent’s global publishing network, headed the global sales of Tencent game titles, and he managed relationships with Tencent’s global publishing partners.Eugene led all overseas sales efforts and service support, and all business development and game engine licensing activities. Eugene was a Manager and Group Head of the Quality Assurance and Localization Group for NHN USA. He previously served as Project Manager of the Publishing Group at NHN USA and Assistant Manager of Global Strategy & Marketing Development at NHN Corporation. He began his career at The Contents Company, an SK company, in business development and played a key role in launching Korea’s first pilot IP TV service with overseas partners. He earned his BA in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Michigan.