One "mission" I set out to do on this trip was to explore and understand the ecosystem of internet startup businesses in Taiwan. I went to events sponsored by government innovation promoting agencies, seminars and "meetups" organized by formal and informal professional groups, such as "Startup Taiwan", "Taipei Entrepreneur Community", "Young Professionals Network - Taipei"... and met an interesting crop of entrepreneurs, professionals, organizers, expatriates (foreigners living in Taipei), etc.:
Jamie is a young man who came back to Taiwan after studying/working in the States and started one of the first internet startup accelerator programs in Taiwan--and I later found out he also hosts one weekly news-magazine show on TV; Ellen is a young woman who also came back from the States after finishing her school in Texas and went to work in the manufacturing and trading businesses in China and is now getting ready to embark on another venture there; Clio also came back from China after working there for years for an international software company and is trying to set up some innovative IT professionals network in Taiwan.
Winston is a local young man who had tried an online business with social cause; Ben is currently working for a niche printer part company but itching to start a business of his own; JP is the co-founder of a cloud-based video monitoring startup which has established some footing in Taiwan and is now looking to expand to world markets; Rebecca is a college English teacher who had published 19 books on English learning and has an app idea to help foreigners learn Chinese in a fun way.
Zack is a young programming wiz kid who's building a software tool that he plans to use in his own future company; Marco is a nice kid just came back from the States to fulfill his military obligation and take care of his ailing mother while in the same time tries to start a business implementing the startup plan he had won prize for in the States before graduation.
Jake is an American from Oklahoma who graduated from the same University of Southern California I went to and did the same technological venture (VoIP) I did during the same period (late 1990's), except he was doing it here in Taiwan while I was doing it there in the US. He's happily married to a Taiwanese woman, with kids, and managing a technical consulting firm he co-owns that has over 30 software engineers in Vietnam; Jim is a guy from UK who came to study MBA here and decided to stay and is now editor of a startup newsletter while working for a law firm whose founder is a (Caucasian) American who became a naturalized Taiwanese citizen whose office building in downtown Taipei is probably one of the first to install roof-top green house in the city that the newly elected mayor of Taipei was invited to visit (and Jim showed me around after our lunch near the office).
Troy is a Canadian from Toronto who had long established passive-revenue generating e-commerce sites before he moved to Taipei 7 years ago to enjoy internet prevalent, foreigner friendly, relatively low cost living here. He has just set up a business book club to meet like-minded people while planning on starting some new online business venture; Karen is an American woman who's been in Taiwan for over 30 years who teaches English, linguistics and phonetics at National Taiwan University and are now exploring the possibility of launching a startup with former students to develop and market English-learning apps.
Sebastian is a German who had a neat language exchange app for which he's looking for funding to monetize the service; Robert is a Swiss who owns an international translation agency while on the side organizes monthly startup meetups at a cafe restaurant whose young owner Donnie is an entrepreneur and the co-organizer of the events.
Bernard is a Hong Konger who gained his hi-tech startup experiences in Boston, Beijing, Singapore, and started some months ago an "entrepreneurial skills" training school here teaching coding and online marketing; Richard is a non-technical Taiwan native whose eclectic life experiences through Australia and Japan convinced him to come back and organize and manage a startup innovation center here sponsored by the city.
And Asics is the energetic owner of a newly founded accelerator company from mainland China who came here to convince young Taiwanese entrepreneurs to move to the city just across the strait to start their businesses there, promising to provide all the "grounding" logistics and a gateway to the biggest internet/mobile markets of the world!
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