Founder: deploy: Helping early-stage investors find better deals through crowdsourced expertise and active field intelligence.
🚨 Spoiler Alert:🚨 My position is "Possibility" The real conversation needs to be had around the 'how'. Steven Roach has been taking a ton of heat for his assertions that Hong Kong is 'over', but when one looks past the sensationalism of the headline, I agree with his key message, that is: "What's over, in my opinion, is the imagery that many still cling to in looking into the future of [an] understandably proud city, Asia's world city, known for its very free market," Roach said. That city "is not the Hong Kong of today, and especially not the Hong Kong of tomorrow." There seems to be no real plan for what the Hong Kong of tomorrow is. My experience working in regional corporate innovation, building Neon! Ciders and now with a technology startup in deploy. have all been incredibly rewarding, but even more so extremely difficult especially in the Special Administrative Region. Join me and my fellow panelists Andy Chan, Joon Nak Choi, Raymond C., Carrie Hang-yin Ling, and Vincent See for what is sure to be a lively discussion on the "how" we make Hong Kong into a thriving innovation ecosystem. Link in comments.
Joseph Wang
3mo
So people react to think in different ways. When I read Stephen Roach saying that Hong Kong is over, I get angry, and whenever I get into a discussion about the future of Hong Kong, its hard for me have a rational conversation with someone who thinks that Hong Kong is finished because I get extremely furious every time I hear this nonsense. However, someone taught me that there are no bad emotions, what is good or bad is how you deal with them, and the nice thing about being angry is that it gets you out of bed. Anger makes you do stuff, and you just have take a deep breath and make sure that the stuff that you do is positive, and honestly feeling angry feels better than feeling depressed. So its hard for me to get into a debate about whether Roach is right or not because, I have to spend a lot of energy controlling my anger, and that takes a lot of effort. As far as whether Hong Kong will be an innovation hub, I've decided that it *WILL* happen. As far as powerlessness and frustration, I looked over the stablecoin legislation consultation response and they changed one sentence. You can't change everything, but if you can change anything you need to be happy for small victories.
Joseph Wang
3mo
Just do it. Don't have conversations. Don't have dialogue. Just figure out what you can do with your own business to make it happen and just make it happen.
Agree on the possibility but it will not happen by itself in the short or medium term, it needs clear strategy leading it to become one. Within that strategy Hong Kong needs to look towards the talent pool within the city and how we can bring more talent to Hong Kong that is relevant towards the innovation we want to build in Hong Kong. We need to drive cost of operation in Hong Kong down as well look into more diversity in government support towards innovation and the overall start up community. The systems today are way to rigid and lead by real estate aim by the innovation parks like Cyperport or Science Park.
Looking forward to our discussion !!!
Hong Kong's evolution demands creative reimagining. Exploring viable paths collectively fosters progress.
Joon Nak Choi
3mo
Look forward to it!
Computational Astrophysicist and Quant Developer
3moJust one reason why I think talking about "strategy" is useless. It turns out that Hong Kong invented stablecoin (USDT) and was the first place in the world to have crypto futures (Bitmex). All of this happened *years* before the Hong Kong government did anything, but rather than encourage these efforts, the policy of the HK government is to license and impose restrictions to try to kill these innovations. So this is kind of crazy, and as far as I know there is no dialogue between the HK government and USDT or Bitmex, and efforts to promote virtual assets through the VASP licensing scheme were a disaster. As far as Stephen Roach... 1) I think he is way too pessimistic about Mainland China. If you think that Mainland China is not going to prosper, there is honestly no reason to stay in Hong Kong. Hong Kong and the Mainland have a shared destiny and there is no way to decouple. 2) As far as geopolitical tension between US and China. If it goes too far, then the world explodes. However, I honestly believe that if the US and China get into a serious trade/tech conflict, then the US will lose. I think that a lot of people in finance agree, and so they are pulling the US from the brink.