Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

The funding landscape in Taiwan

Alvin Woon of Plurk and TMI shares his thoughts on how the funding landscape in Taiwan is changing.

Two years ago, if one were to look at the investment landscape in Taiwan, he would find very few VCs, incubators and angels stationed here. The lack of domestic exit options, either via M&A or IPO, coupled with abysmal monetization performance deters many investors. The few VCs that did exist were struggling to transition their investment theses from hardware to software. Taiwan has traditionally been a host to many hardware titans during the PC-era. Asus, HTC, Acer, TSMC, Mediatek–you name it, they were born here. As an entrepreneur, such legacy successes can often lead to some very frustration when dealing with VCs who try to apply the same recipe of success to internet software.

But things are changing. M&A is going global – Facebook and Google have been acquiring startups from Asia. Payment innovations and mobile explosions have introduced new and exciting monetization options. Global internet market means successful startups in Taiwan can IPO in Hong Kong, Shanghai or Singapore should they wish to do so. Investors are starting to see the immense potential of funding startups that produce services for worldwide audiences using relatively lower human and technological cost in Taiwan. Reputable international VCs like CyberAgent Ventures have set up shop here. Lee Kai Fu, Wi Harper and ITRI have set up a new joint fund called Taiwan Mobile Innovation (TMI), at which I’m one of the partners. Yushan Ventures has brought in their Startup Labs program. Angels have started to appear. There are more than 20 incubators, co-working spaces, and off the top of my mind, more than 50 active angels in Taiwan right now. DeNa, Google and Rocket Internet are expanding their teams in Taipei. Local VCs are reaching out as well – funds are introducing twin programs to give their portfolio more overseas exposure. CyberAgent has shops across Southeast Asia and regularly bring teams to China and Japan. TMI has spaces and mentorship programs in Beijing and San Francisco.What we see here is this amazing transformation and self-learning process by the startup community in Taiwan, be it the entrepreneurs or investors, at a breathtaking pace. The ecosystem is further enriched by the increasingly thriving startup events such as demo days, hackathons, web conferences and meetups. The recently held Appwork’s demo day saw 15 teams presenting. Yahoo! hackathon attracted 60 participating teams 2 weeks ago. The winner of Taiwan Facebook hackathon actually won the global grand prize. E27 held their first ever Echelon satellite even in Taipei in April. There are nodejs, python and redis meetups every week. Vibrant community, maturing investing environment coupled with an abundance of human capital, especially hardware based engineers, have made Taiwan a very attractive startup hub over the last few years. But has anyone actually raised?

Yes but not enough.

If we go by the numbers, I think the honor of having closed the largest funding round goes to SNS+, a social gaming platform. They raised more than US$10 million from Wi Harper Group and Matrix Partners. Japanese venture capital firm CyberAgent has also invested in iCook.tw, a local recipe-based social network back in October. 500 startups has invested in Cubie and PicCollage over the last 12 months. TMI seeded seven teams over the last nine months. Yushan Ventures has also seeded 5 teams. EZtable raised over US$1 million from Rose Park Advisors. Pretty sure I’m missing a few other closings, but overall I would characterize the deal flow as slow but healthy. Historically, Taiwan hasn’t had the market size or resources to compete for everyone’s attention but that hasn’t stopped them from competing and excelling. Great academia, strong IP laws and all the points I mentioned above make Taiwan a very attractive startup hub. Now for the missing piece – a blockbuster hit.