Jumpstart Issue 26: The Jumpstart Awards Issue by Jumpstart Magazine: The Entrepreneur's Magazine

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The Entrepreneur’s Magazine

THE

Issue 26

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JUM P S TA R T AWA R DS ISSUE

July 2019

Rama Raditya

Qlue Co-founder & CEO Startup of the Year

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Celebrating Asia-Pacific’s

UNSUNG HEROES MEET the WINNERS Startup of the Year • Virtual Visionaries • Product Pioneers • Inspiring Youth Leaders • Grassroots Innovators Gender Game Changers • Startup BFF • Fast-Track Accelerators • Co-working Space Champions • Impact Investing Heroes

EDITOR’S NOTE

ust under a year ago, we announced the inaugural Jumpstart Awards, which is our way of tipping our hats to the movers and shakers in Asia-Pacific’s startup ecosystem. Hundreds of nominations and a handful of interviews later, we’re finally able to share the winners with you. As you’ll read in the cover story, our intent for the Awards is to draw attention to startups and individuals who may not be flashy in their presentation, but are formative in their action. What unites them is a consistent drive to challenge existing paradigms, whether through innovation or ideology, to bring about long-term change. Epitomizing this approach is our Startup of the Year winner Qlue Smart City, a platform that is allowing local communities to collectively bring about safer and more efficient cities in their home country of Indonesia. Through their data intelligence technology, enabled partly by information-sharing by the users, Qlue is able to predict and promptly address issues as small as illegal parking and as big as disaster relief. Readers will also get to know a recent high school graduate and successful startup founder who is encouraging young budding entrepreneurs to take the leap, a nonprofit organization that is using virtual reality technology to eradicate preventable blindness globally, and a CEO who is committed to breaking the glass ceiling for women who hope to follow the same path.

2019 is proving to be a defining year for environmentalists, as they push the message of irreversible environmental destruction with greater urgency. As humanity continues to grapple with what appears by many accounts to be a futile situation, many are not only recognizing, but pushing back against the false choice between economic growth and environmental degradation. We couldn’t agree more, which is why the unofficial theme of this issue is sustainability, where we explore topics ranging from the reuse economy and meteorological technology, to air pollution and animal conservation. No one can say for certain whether a fundamental shift is on the horizon; all we can do is inform and continue to support the sustainability movement in any way we can. We hope you’ll join us. As always, we thank you for your support and welcome your feedback. Wishing everyone a summer to remember and happy reading.

Min Chen Editor in Chief Have thoughts about this issue? We’ d love to hear from you. Email us at [editors@jumpstartmag.com] and include your full name and address. Please note that letters to the editor may be edited for length and clarity.

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MANAGING DIRECTOR EDITOR IN CHIEF

James Kwan

Min Chen

EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE

Nayantara Bhat

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

Anita Chan

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

Reggie Addae

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Maggie Lau

COMMUNITY EVANGELIST (SILICON VALLEY) FOUNDER / ADVISOR ADVISORS

Li Xing Chang

Yana Robbins

Joseph Chow, Carman Chan, Shitiz Jain, Leo Ku,

Derek Kwik, Jeanne Lim, Prem Samtani INTERNS

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Khadija Azhar, Kelly Cho, Yukta Shahi

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY

Qlue Smart City

SPECIAL THANKS Sabrina Wang

Jumpstart is available at over 1,500 locations throughout Bangkok, China, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Melbourne, New York City, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Sydney.

Copyright © 2019 Jumpstart Media Ltd. The contents of the magazine are fully protected by copyright and nothing may be reprinted without permission. The publisher and editors accept no responsibility in respect to any products, goods or services that may be advertised or referred to in this issue or for any errors, omissions, or mistakes in any such advertisements or references. The mention of any specific companies or products in articles or advertisements does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by this magazine or its publisher in preference to others of a similar nature which are not mentioned or advertised. Published articles do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Jumpstart Magazine. July 2019

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No. 26

Photo courtesy of Qlue Smart City

Cover Story

City of Dreams Startup of the Year, Qlue Smart City, is determined to change Indonesia for the better

Photo courtesy of Silverback Films

The Great Internet of China, 20 Years On

Looking back on how choice and trust have shaped the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Internet economy

Claws, Fangs, and a Network Connection

Our Brave New World

Technology is making strides in the conservation arena

The challenges of programming morality into artificial intelligence

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No. 26

FEATURES

Encouraging Accessibility Through Startup Innovation Growing eﬀorts in disability-focused technologies are bearing fruit

Weathering the Storm Understanding the specialized and high-tech field of meteorological technology

How Lifestyle Branding is Eating the Tech World What tech companies can learn from lifestyle brands

P48

GUEST COLUMNS

Japanese Problems, Global Solutions By GEN ISAMAYA

A shrinking nation is turning desperation into inspiration 17

Energizing Our Future By BEN BRITTON

Dissecting the development of nuclear technology 18

Power of the Collective By BRIAN REILLY

The global movement toward reuse CONVERSATION STARTERS

A Glance Into the Future Superstar firms, sustainability, social good, and more

Photo courtesy of Outdoor Voices

LIFESTYLE P89

Podcast Review

Book Review

Product Review

The $100 MBA Show Future Proof by Diana Wu David Icicle Straw: The World’s Cleanest Drinking Straw ET CETERA

Event Review

One Last Question

Seedstars Summit 2019 What is a personal achievement that is especially meaningful for you, but others may not understand? July 2019

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CONTRIBUTORS

REG INALD ADDAE

KHADIJA A ZHAR

N AYA N TA R A B H AT

JASMINE BINA

Reginald is the Director of Marketing and Special Programs at Jumpstart. Prior to Jumpstart, he was the Marketing Manager at Global Sources. Reginald is originally from Ghana, and moved to Hong Kong because he wanted to be closer to the beaches. reggie@jumpstartmag.com Read his event review on page 89.

Khadija is a second-year Economics and Finance student at the University of Hong Kong, currently working as an Editorial Intern at Jumpstart. While she spends most of her time searching for dogs to follow on Instagram, she also dabbles in writing and digital art. khadija@jumpstartmag.com Read her feature on page 72.

Nayantara is the Editorial Associate at Jumpstart and Program Associate for The STILE Initiative. She studied Economics and Journalism at The University of Hong Kong. Nayantara is originally from India, but has lived in New Zealand, Indonesia, and now Hong Kong. nayantara@jumpstartmag.com Read her cover story on page 50.

Jasmine is the founder and CEO of Concept Bureau, a brand strategy agency that works with international brands and growth-stage startups from a variety of industries. Her research on emerging consumer and behavior trends is regularly published in national outlets. conceptbureau.com Read her feature on page 48.

A N I TA C H A N

K E L LY C H O

KUM A CHOW

D H R U V I N PAT E L

Anita is the Director of Operations and Strategic Partnerships at Jumpstart. She has previous experience in co-founding her startup, Sam the Local, and working in regional marketing and communications. She has worked in Hong Kong and the San Francisco Bay Area. anita@jumpstartmag.com Read her review on page 84.

Kelly is an Editorial Intern at Jumpstart who studies English Literature and Translation at The University of Hong Kong. She is also passionate about music, theatre, and tech. In her spare time, she enjoys attending concerts and exhibitions around Hong Kong. kelly@jumpstartmag.com Read her review on page 81.

Kuma is a content specialist and freelance writer with a passion to change the world by informing and engaging others. She covers travel, sports, films, and tech, among others. Issues close to her heart include wheelchair accessibility and income disparity. linkedin.com/in/kumachow Read her feature on page 32.

Dhruvin is an optometrist and entrepreneur encouraging a healthier relationship with tech. Since receiving a grant from City University, he has built Ocushield into a globally-distributed and MHRA-rated product, establishing himself as an authority on blue light. ocushield.com Read his feature on page 74.

Y U K TA S H A H I

S A B R I N A WA N G

Yukta is a second-year International Business student at The University of Hong Kong. Born in India and raised in Thailand, Yukta identifies as a global citizen. In her spare time, the David Fincher fan can be found critiquing films and screenplays. yukta@jumpstartmag.com Read her review on page 79.

Sabrina is an avid technopreneur with a fashion, tech, marketing, and media background, currently driving PINC and FESO Asia. She has dabbled in various businesses since age 15, including web/game hosting, design, and development. princessdiary.com Read her review on page 95.

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Get in touch with us at [editors@jumpstartmag.com] to learn more about how you can become a contributor. Please provide at least one writing sample. We look forward to hearing from you.

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GUEST COLUMNS

Japanese Problems, Global Solutions A shrinking nation is turning desperation into inspiration By GEN ISAMAYA

remember the moment in school when I was taught that the world’s population was 6 billion. More than two decades later, we’ve hit over 7.5 billion, and counting (World Bank). We now live in a time of greater global access to food, shelter, healthcare, and–through extraordinary technological advancements– overall improvements to society. Contrary to this general trend of population growth, the Japanese population has been on the decline. The current population is about 127 million (Worldometers), and the government projects a decline to 90 million by 2065, marking a 30% decrease (IPSS). Combine this news with the fact that Japan boasts the highest life expectancy in the world, and you inevitably get reports of adult diapers selling better than baby diapers. As an investor, it’s through these macro demographic shifts that I see an opportunity to truly make a difference. How can Japan shine a light on and alleviate issues related to its aging population that other nations are facing or will face in the future? Fortunately, technology is offering solutions to help us navigate this unknown terrain. Firstly, population decline results in a diminishing workforce, especially in repetitive office jobs and physically demanding environments, such as warehouses and farms. Technology is already filling these gaps with drones for farming and protecting crops, and robots that receive, sort, and deliver packages in a fraction of the time it would take a person. It’s no accident that robotic process automation (RPA) companies like Automation Anywhere have found success in Japan,

using software bots to allow workers to focus on higher-value projects instead of mundane tasks. An added benefit of using robots is that they don’t need to rest like we do, resulting in more efficient output with no human errors. One cannot overstate the significance of RPA in decreasing workplace injuries and overall physical ailments caused by longterm stress on the body. When it comes to longevity, the key is to not only increase life expectancy, but also how long people stay active and independent. This field presents another significant opportunity for Japan to revamp the current healthcare industry’s status quo. Take geriatric care as an example. Japanese telemedicine services like Pocket Doctor and Clinics already provide consultations through video conferencing–a crucial feature for those in remote communities or who don’t have easy access to medical facilities. A world where patients can have their health monitored through wearables and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices is already here. Instead of being hooked up to a cumbersome vital signs monitor, which ties the patient to one place, they can simply wear a watch that sends their vital signs over the Internet, greatly improving their quality of life. A number of recent fatal car accidents in Japan have revived a nationwide conversation about elderly drivers. While it may make sense to give up driving if you live in a densely populated area with access to world-class public transit like Tokyo, I expect mobility technology to scale rapidly in rural areas, where population decline is most severe. Autonomous driving has had its setbacks, from accidents to issues with sensors not working correctly in inclement weather. I believe Japan is an ideal testing ground for this technology because of the country’s shorter, clean streets without potholes (Sidenote: I live in California) and pedestrians who actually obey street signs (Again, I live in California). A focus on elderly passengers can also fuel the growth of peripheral technologies, such as the bump-absorbing active suspension developed by ClearMotion, which helps with motion sickness. At first glance, many new technologies come across as pie-inthe-sky ideas, but we are already seeing signs of progress in each industry mentioned in this column. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to meet, collaborate with, and invest in people who are relentlessly working to make an impact on society. We can’t change the world alone, but we can contribute to the betterment of all, one entrepreneur at a time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gen has extensive experience in venture capital, finance, and entrepreneurship. He founded World Innovation Lab (WiL) in 2013. Before WiL, he was partner at DCM Ventures, specializing in online media, mobile, and consumer services. Gen is a member of various Japanese government committees, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Internal Affairs and Communications, to promote entrepreneurship nationwide. wilab.com

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GUEST COLUMNS

Your 2019 Blockchain Survival Guide How blockchain startups can stay competitive in today’s landscape By ALYSSA TSAI

itcoin was born in 2008; Ethereum in 2013; and cryptocurrency was first mentioned on the hit television show, Billions, in 2018. After more than ten years, the technology is finally part of our cultural discussion, but those in the industry are still exploring its applications and working hard to keep up with the pace of its rapid progress.

Is no rule the new rule? hile blockchain has become the startup world’s favorite child, it’s also the cause of much debate for government regulators. China banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) in September 2017 as a protective measure for its economy. But the government still has its eye on the technology, not wanting to fall behind the rest of the world, and is creating

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Just as we learned from the dot-com bubble, blockchain is not a cash cow, and should be viewed as a new system that deserves tactful growth.

funds to support innovative solutions built on the blockchain, including Hangzhou’s Xiongan Global Blockchain Innovation Fund and Shanghai Yangpu District’s Blockchain Industry Guidance Fund. Industry insiders are consistently dealing with undefined guidelines, which means we’re always learning and adapting, whether it’s from the perspective of an investor, founder, cryptocurrency exchange, consulting firm, or journalist. The most challenging part is the constant need to be flexible and customized. Chairing a consulting firm, I’ve always preached to my team and my clients that the key to surviving in such an environment is to be flexible, while keeping the same goal and core team. Unlike a traditional startup that focuses on one market to start, blockchain startups need to be more distributed.

For instance, almost all blockchain startups have to roll out in the most influential markets–China, Korea, and the U.S.–at the same time to make an impact, as each plays an important role and serves different purposes. China is home to many world-class public blockchains; the environment is friendly for building ecosystems, decentralized applications with full support, and go-to-market attempts because local blockchain startups are more willing to collaborate without long, drawn-out negotiations. Korea boasts many active retail traders, and the U.S. is best for branding and endorsement. Each market also evolves at a different pace. Not being flexible might lead to difficulties and failure if a market has already changed its demands or regulations. On top of being flexible, having a customized approach is also crucial. Founders

need to assess their assets: What are the problems to be solved? What talent is required? Who are the stakeholders and investors? Who matters the most? There are a series of questions they need to ask themselves to make a strategy their own. A solid strategy can be advised, but never duplicated. I’ve seen startups pursue the recent initial exchange offering hype on account of others’ success. The fundraising scheme’s failure, both in terms of the exchanges and projects, could have been avoided if either party carried out proper due diligence.

BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) alumni agree that blockchain is in such an early stage that it is almost impossible to find suitable candidates. Larger startups end up paying a premium, and smaller startups resort to spending a significant amount of time cultivating talent. As of right now, it’s still a bearish market, so it’s an excellent time to secure talent. Also, many token funds and blockchain projects shut down due to unproven concepts, poor execution, and overspending when money came so quickly during the bullish market, enabling others to recruit more easily now.

Secure talent now s with every other new technology, securing the right talent is a challenge. I’ve learned that this problem is a shared pain point for founders of top-notch blockchain startups. Leading investors and

Blockchain thinking ‘

onsensus,’ ‘staking,’ and ‘De-Fi’ are terms that reflect how blockchain is reshaping the world. As a technology and tool, it has provided entrepreneurs with the means to revolutionize business models. China, among other countries, was engaged in ‘Internet thinking’ for the past few decades. Now, it is in the era of ‘blockchain thinking.’ Every industry and realm can be integrated with blockchain. It optimizes supply chains, tokens are replacing loyalty points and being circulated worldwide, and cryptocurrency as a payment medium is lowering costs and friction for international transactions. ‘Blockchain+’ is an inevitable future. Just as we learned from the dot-com bubble, blockchain is not a cash cow, and should be viewed as a new system that deserves tactful growth. The technology is extremely demanding, and its leaders should be, too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alyssa is the founder and CEO of Panony, one of Asia’s earliest blockchain consulting firms dedicated to providing localized knowledge and expedient access to global market resources. She’s currently based in Shanghai and Seoul. Alyssa received an LL.B. degree from National Taiwan University and previously held roles in a high-tech law firm, Ogilvy, Isentia, and Vogue. panony.com

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GUEST COLUMNS

A Flight of Fresh Air How drone technology is creating valuable air pollution maps By CARLOS SAITO

ir is the most valuable resource on our planet, but it’s under threat. The World Health Organization reports that 90% of people worldwide are breathing polluted air and 7 million people die annually due to air pollution. Latin America is responsible for approximately 11.7% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (Sustainability 2018). The current situation makes it so that the economic and political conditions are favorable for businesses related to environmental care and protection, bringing about critical learnings for other regions. Governments and the general public are more demanding than ever about compliance with environmental laws for polluting industries. In Peru, the government outlines maximum permissible limits for air pollutants under its Environmental Quality Standards, and incentivizes companies to develop and use renewable energy technology like solar panels. Mexico has committed to cleaner vehicle standards, as all new heavy-duty vehicles sold in the country must meet the “best-inclass, filter-based standards” seen in North America and the European Union by January 1, 2021. Argentina was able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 65% after increasing its production of bioethanol (FAO).

The Amazon is an essential region to deploy these drones due to the fragility of its ecosystems.

That being said, there is a lot more we can do to ensure such goals are met. The current solution for air quality monitoring primarily consists of dispersed networks of stations that capture isolated information for areas of limited surface area and height. Not only is this system insufficient when providing an accurate representation of the air quality of any given area in real time, it also fails to collect the type of dataset that would be valuable enough to further drive solutions in this space. This is where drone technology comes in. Drones are becoming an increasingly effective tool in the field of aerial data collection for construction, surveying, and mining. These industries capture aerial imagery and generate valuable insights from large data sets, making it possible to measure the changes occurring over time on job sites, properties, and mines. By replacing cameras with gas and particle sensors, drone technology’s aerial data capabilities can be applied to measuring air pollution, identifying its source, and assessing how it’s carried through the air. Drones can be deployed anywhere, but are especially useful in areas where it is difficult to install a static station like jungles and deserts. The data can then be processed and shown on an air quality map. 12

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The Amazon is an essential region to deploy these drones due to the fragility of its ecosystems. Drones can measure how human activity is affecting the habitat by assessing the amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere, and its impact on the populations that live there. In five years, we believe that air quality maps will be critical for protecting this region. The maps will also have a significant impact on urban areas, as we will likely have to assess the air quality of a location before making the decision to move or invest in property. Establishing the necessary foundations to be able to access and analyze air quality data will allow us to get ahead with prevention measures and show the next generation that we took action to protect the air we breathe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlos is the co-founder and COO of qAIRa, a startup that measures air quality with drone technology. He is a researcher and professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, Peru. He has over ten years of experience developing drones for different applications and regions, including the Andean Mountains and the Amazon. qairadrones.com

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GUEST COLUMNS

Falling into Bad Data Why entrepreneurs must educate themselves on the risks of the data economy By MIKE DAVIE

n this new information-driven economy, a lack of appreciation for transparent data begins to look less like calculated risk and more like carelessness. With our systems and organizations becoming increasingly data-reliant due to breakthroughs in areas like AI, bad data is now a serious, albeit avoidable, problem in every industry. Today, startups and large enterprises alike rely on data. Ride-hailing apps, for example, use location data for their maps. Marketers spend significant resources on various kinds of intelligence to generate insights about their consumers for advertising campaigns. The healthcare sector, from hospitals to pharmaceutical giants, buys data on health trends and behavior. The problem is that all this data is sourced from a global marketplace that lacks transparency, increasing the likelihood that companies making critical business decisions are relying on ques-

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tionable data. This issue impacts real people, both employees and customers. Financial loss due to bad data can reach up to 30% of revenues for the average business, and it costs the U.S. economy more than US$3 trillion annually (HBR)–scary, but real numbers.

The costs to startups f the average company is losing significant revenues each year due to bad data, imagine what high-growth startups are losing. At 30% of revenues, this number could be in the millions–a severe consequence for a preventable issue. An entrepreneur may choose to market aggressively in a particular country based on faulty data, and millions in activation might be sunk with minimal returns. Hiring scientists to clean up bad data is costly, time-consuming, and frequently error-prone. Even if data is found to be falsified, which is difficult to do, little can be done aside from discarding it, which does not address the underlying problem. According to the 2018 State of Startup Spend Report, startups in Internet services, transportation, and data analytics typically burn through their funding fastest. If they can cut out financial losses from biased or falsified records, they could extend their runways, in some cases, by a third. What’s discouraging is that I don’t often hear investors talking about this issue when grilling founders on their downside risks, as they fail to realize that startups with data integrity should be valued more highly.

Understanding the data economy he data economy is the production, flow, purchase, and sale of information. This information can be created and sourced from all sorts of places, including transportation apps, social me-

dia networks, telecommunications companies, banks, and a range of other products and services that we use daily. Vast amounts of anonymous consumer data are created, stored, and sold in these marketplaces. The buyers, often large enterprises (and increasingly, early-stage startups), then use the data for various purposes. Intermediaries and aggregators are involved in most of these transactions. Large volumes of data are bought and sold daily, eventually changing hands so many times that it can be difficult to discern what is original and what has been tampered with along the way. This is compounded by the fact that there is no industry transparency, as middlemen do not reveal their sources, which can allow for bad actors to flourish.

Applying blockchain is a simple yet effective way to guarantee data provenance. What needs to catch up is awareness among entrepreneurs of the hidden costs of skewed or incorrect information.

In a big-picture sense, there’s no one specific way that bad data hurts entrepreneurs and slows down innovation. It can affect different startups in different ways, from botched app launches to a series of small efficiency losses over months or years that don’t seem too big of a concern on an individual basis, but can be rampant and costly when added together. Data authentication technology exists to track information from its source, and uses blockchain to stamp an indelible signature onto it. This process guarantees that, from the time of stamping, any change in the data will result in a misalignment with the

unique signature, signaling to the buyer that it has been altered at some point. Applying blockchain is a simple yet effective way to guarantee data provenance. What needs to catch up is awareness among entrepreneurs of the hidden costs of skewed or incorrect information. Education can push them to ensure the transparency of all the underlying data in their business processes and assumptions, saving themselves and their investors millions, and making the company more viable in the long-term. As with any global challenge, this problem can’t be fixed overnight. But I’m optimistic that over the next decade, we can start to make serious progress in the right direction and begin delivering transparency to what has become a murky data economy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike is the founder and CEO of Quadrant. Based in Singapore, he has been leading the commercialization of disruptive mobile technology and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure for over a decade with leading global technology firms in Asia, Middle East and North America. He parlayed his vision and knowledge of the evolution of ICT into the creation of DataStreamX, a pioneering data analysis platform, in 2014. DataStreamX evolved into Quadrant, a blockchain-based platform that allows organizations to verify and interpret complex datafeeds, with a primary focus on location data. quadrant.io

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GUEST COLUMNS

Energizing Our Future Dissecting the development of nuclear technology By BEN BRITTON

s our world develops, our thirst for energy increases. The freedom afforded by low-cost, ‘always on’ electricity enables society to progress. In this paradigm, nuclear power continues to help us attain more freedom by generating significant quantities of low carbon electricity. Each plant provides a secure supply, occupies a limited landmass, and promotes better urban air quality. As a technology, nuclear power has been with us for over 60 years, and we now have about 450 power reactors, which generate around 11% of global electricity (World Nuclear Association). Nuclear reactors are broadly categorized into generations, where we are now building Gen II and Gen III reactors. China leads internationally in the number of reactors currently under construction; China General Nuclear Power

Group brought the EPR (a Gen III reactor) into commercial operation at Taishan 1 in August 2018. Additionally, the country is looking to develop external markets for their indigenous Hualong One reactor design. Such designs build on water reactor concepts, currently seen in boiling water and pressurized water reactor variants. Typically, these reactors are large units operating at over one gigawatt (GW) in net capacity with an approximate 60-year design life. The size and complexity of each design, together with local rules and regulations, increase the financial and time cost of new projects. Each requires substantive state investment or financial underwriting, which is risky in an evolving world, where renewable technologies are increasingly generating intermittent and inexpensive supply. The large reactor concept de-risks electricity supply on a per-unit basis, as it reduces the cost-per-megawatt (MW) once the reactor is built. However, its size is also a weakness. Let us consider: in a developed nation, the typical electricity consumption per person per year is 10,000 kilowatt-hour (kWh). Thus, a GW reactor serves 100% of 800,000 people’s needs. But considering the long build time, cost, and ‘always on’ usage, large reactors can be problematic in maintaining a steady stream of electricity.

Such concerns are motivating the development of small or advanced modular reactors (SMR or AMR). These reactors are between 50 to 600 MW in capacity and are built in a factory, which enables learning-by-doing and a cost reduction due to the standardization of training and manufacturing methods. The United Kingdom is seriously exploring the SMR/AMR space, with around 50 concepts and designs available. These include a scaled down, conventional water reactor proposed by Rolls-Royce, which has limited deviations from larger reactors, but can be factory-built in a similar manner to a jet engine. Another is the NuScale power module concept, where each unit provides 60 MW of electricity, and multiple units can be linked together in a reactor facility. This makes the plant scaleable in price and capacity, and reduces economic risk. Electricity only makes up around 16% of global energy consumption. Significant energy is consumed in the production of goods, process heat, and transport. In terms of new markets, co-generation of synthetic fuels, including hydrogen and process heat, could be serviced by Gen IV reactors, such as the gas-cooled High Temperature Pebble Bed reactor. In 2018, the HTR-PM steam demonstrator reactor passed pressure tests, and it will be exciting to see this design rolled out in the 18 proposed reactors, and scaled up in the future in their 650 MW design. The threat of climate change, poor air quality, and our boom in energy demand create a perfect storm. To calm these waters, we must continue with our deployment and development of nuclear power as part of our basket of technologies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben is a Senior Lecturer in Materials at Imperial College London and is Deputy Director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering. His research focuses on understanding materials for high-value and high-risk applications, including nuclear power. In 2016, he was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Trust’s ‘Young Engineer of the Year Award.’ imperial.ac.uk/people/b.britton

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Power of the Collective The global movement toward reuse By BRIAN REILLY

n April 16, 2018, I had a lightbulb moment on an airplane. The year before, I noticed the world beginning to wake up to the issue of plastics and our current models of consumption, which was occurring on an unprecedented global scale. I realized that the collective was ready for change. We share plates and cups in restaurants, but vendors, consumers, and entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly aware of the need to take more drastic action.

Careful coordination between such entities could significantly reduce the amount of waste entering our landfills and oceans. But let’s back up and rewind to 2001. Then a junior in college and a physics major, I took a class simply titled ‘Climate Change’ by an exceptional human being: Professor Richard Wolfson. We used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) working report as our textbook, learning about the likely consequences of the massive amounts of green-

house gas emissions to our atmosphere. At that moment in time, the term climate change was not widely used, and the phenomenon was commonly referred to as ‘global warming.’ In the U.S., my home country, the administration was blocking the publication of the IPCC’s report due to widespread denial that our environment was at serious risk. The government and industries alike were reticent to change business-as-usual in the interest of sustainability. Wind energy was priced at around US$200 per megawatt hour (MWh) and solar at roughly $700 per MWh. In comparison, coal and natural gas were levelized around $60 per MWh. The outlook at the time was optimistic. As an idealistic and perhaps out-oftouch young person, I decided wind energy and climate change was my calling–a bit to the dismay of my parents who had worked so hard to give me an education and set of opportunities they had dreamed about (they are now incredibly proud, and probably always were, as parents are).

As an idealistic and perhaps out of touch young person, I decided wind energy and climate change was my calling–a bit to the dismay of my parents who had worked so hard to give me an education and set of opportunities they had dreamed about.

What I experienced in the next 15 years changed my perception of humanity and left me an eternal optimist about the power of collective action. I participated in and experienced wind going from that $200 per MWh to the current price of $20 per MWh. Then, in 2010, when solar began its exponential decline from $140 per MWh to its current installed cost of $25 per MWh. I met and worked with many talented people from around the world who helped make this transition possible. Most importantly, I learned that this incredible shift was not because of any one person, but because of every person who got involved. Before my lightbulb moment on that plane, I already knew that great things were about to happen–the signs were there. 18

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Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when I turned my attention to waste. While I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fully comprehend the level of waste that was being created at that point, I did recognize that the system was not working. What I have learned since is that bioplastics have an essential role to play, but we must think long and hard about the feedstock materials they use, and what this new system would look like on a global scale. Also, bioplastics are only as good as the backend waste systems that sort them, and if we want them to mimic the plastic qualities weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve come to know, then we will need specialized equipment to break them down. Another obstacle is that, while recycling is incredibly important, the volume we are putting toward these systems is overwhelming, which is made worse by the fact that recycling systems differ tremendously depending on where one is in the world. That said, reducing consumption and being more conscientious about how

we use materials are simple and obvious answers for allowing the rise of bioplastics and the development of recycling systems. I am happy to report that a little over a year after that first light bulb moment, I can confidently say the world supports the idea of reuse on a city-wide scale and in an increasing number of closed-loop applications (e.g., festivals, universities, office buildings, and airports). Cities like Berkeley, California, are requiring businesses to pay a fee for single-use items, and offices around the world are searching for solutions to cut down on single-use materials. The feedback we have received, whether from our growing and dedicated team of believers, investors and advisors, and most importantly, our customers, tells me the world is ready to rethink consumption. I believe, more than ever, in the power of the collective, and I am humbled by the many changemakers who are elevating, establishing, and contributing to this movement. July 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian has spent 15 years pioneering renewable energy development globally. He spent eight years developing largescale wind energy projects throughout North America as the industry was growing from its infancy, and later transition to solar energy. There, he built and managed the renewable energy team for the largest U.S. energy company, NRG, before heading to South Africa, India, and China to encourage the adoption of solar energy in these fast-growing markets. revolv.io

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GUEST COLUMNS

Are You Paying Attention? Artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive the future of personalized education By ANDREW GEORGE

re you paying attention? Every student has heard the question. Now, imagine if a teacher no longer had to ask. Thanks to an electroencephalography-enabled (EEG) headband system from BrainCo, which is currently being tested in Chinese classrooms, this scenario is now a reality. Yes, a headband that reads minds. Or more accurately, a device that determines focus and attentiveness by measuring brainwaves. Awesome, right? As a teacher, I look past what’s advertised and at the real potential of the new device: truly personalized learning. In North America and Europe, classrooms are changing; student choice, project-based instruction, and ‘genius hour’ dominate the trend toward personalized learning. For instance, instead of having a class novel, students can pick their books. After learning the basics of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathemat20

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July 2019

ics), students create their projects in ‘maker spaces.’ Teachers lecturing in front of the class is out of style. While this change seems ideal for learners, it can be a nightmare for educators. One-to-one feedback is the foundation of teacher-led learning, which is challenging to manage when 25 to 35 students are engaged in different projects. However, an EEG headband could make this more feasible and efficient if some improvements are made. What if the device could measure whether or not the student likes what they’re learning? Is the student actually reading their text? That can be measured, too. Are they genuinely looking at solving a problem, or distracted from working on the task at hand? You get the picture. However, BrainCo appears to miss the mark by only providing solutions for traditional lecture-style learning, which admittedly does still have a foothold in Asia,

as opposed to following the personalized learning trend. The real potential lies in education’s new direction, not its former. While BrainCo does mention the benefits of data, the company remains much too general in how it applies it. Educators need to be informed about how this technology can be used, as the majority are not sufficiently literate in such matters. Furthermore, I believe BrainCo is just scratching the surface of what’s to come based on the data they can obtain on learners, which would allow for the integration of AI in instructional design. Imagine: while a student reads, the headset measures engagement and how the content of each page is analyzed. Thought-provoking questions are formed by the AI when the student reaches the end of the text, and further recommended readings that cover subject are made. The AI then presents activity ideas to get the student engaged in a self-directed and curriculum-appropriate project. These activities challenge the students enough, allowing them to learn, while at the same time maintaining their comfort level based on their learner profile. While BrainCo’s system doesn’t have these capabilities yet, the company does appear to be integrating machine learning into its device to handle the data. Companies such as BrainCo need to work with teachers who are welcoming, and not resistant, to the above change. This relationship will allow teachers to connect with students on the social-emotional level rather than as an authoritative bearer of knowledge. It will foster student engagement, and create a school that’s inspiring, friendly, community-based, and tailored to the needs of every student.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew teaches English and Film at Steinbach Regional Secondary School in Manitoba, Canada. He’s an award winning filmmaker, having produced short films and several broadcast documentaries. Andrew also worked as a freelance creative consultant, advising companies on marketing strategies and projects, and served as the Creative Director for Bizview Media. andrewjoegeorge.com

July 2019

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GUEST COLUMNS

Achieve the Best Return on Investment for Your Personal Brand (Part 2 of 2)

How to win respect and influence people By TRACY HO

Positive brand equity helps to generate a good rapport, and build trust with potential business partners and people who may want to work for you–all before the first in-person meeting. Strategic personal brand-building takes time, energy, and resources. There is, unfortunately, no exact formula for measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your brand. A common misconception is that you can track your ROI based on every dollar you spend, like with Google Analytics. To measure ROI, we must instead look at personal branding from a long-term perspective by regularly monitoring whether the perception has been formed as desired. Let’s go over the ‘BRAND’ model that I use with clients: ell is rung, and the door is knocked: When you develop a good personal brand, people search for you instead of you reaching out to find leads. Your ROI can be measured by the number of leads coming in per month. Many factors may cause an increase in leads, but it can be an indicator of whether you are achieving positive ROI on your personal brand.

•

n our last column, we talked about building your personal brand equity as the foundation of your company. According to Inc., “when people speak of ‘brand equity,’ they mean the public’s valuation of a brand.” In other words, brand equity acts as a framework for companies to understand the power of their target customers’ emotions to determine their positioning. Our online presence plays a crucial role in establishing our brand equity. You may be amazed that many startup founders do not even care that their customers, investors, and staff would Google them before making purchasing, funding, or employment decisions. According to research done by the book Brand Aid, “among 6,000 C-suite executive respondents, 78% of them indicated that they would look up the salespeople before meeting them.” We are now living in an interconnected world, where information cost is incredibly low. People across continents can find information about each other with a click or two.

eferrals and word-of-mouth: These are powerful tools for bringing in business. Trust can’t be bought, but it can be nurtured. Your brand story, online presence, and the positive experience of your clients will help raise your brand equity over time, and hence, your ROI. uthority is built: People should recognize you as an industry leader or expert on a topic. Your brand will be able to draw attention and support from investors, customers, and talents who are fascinated by your insights. You can measure ROI by looking at the ease of acquiring contacts, conversion rates, cost of hiring, etc. etwork is expanding: People would feel they know you because they have already heard your insights from your online content or talks. Those who follow you will trust you, and then buy from you. ifferentiate your brand: Consistently delivering a clear and concise story that allows people to understand the value of hiring builds trust. Your brand narrative will become a strong differentiator that sets you apart from the crowd.

You have the opportunity to establish your brand and tell your story. If you leave it to chance or allow others to frame you, then you are putting your success at risk. Take control of your brand now, and make it the best investment you’ve ever made.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tracy is a leading personal branding strategist based in Asia. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Frame and Fame, an award-winning personal branding boutique. Tracy is also a personal branding coach for various MBA programs, startup accelerators, co-working spaces, and universities in Hong Kong. frameandfame.com

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July 2019

GUEST COLUMNS

The Trust Economy Era Building trust and shifting power dynamics in big tech By PHILIPP KRISTIAN DIEKHÖNER

ast year, a big hotel chain compromised my passport and payment details. It took me six months and a lawyer to find out exactly what information was lost. But don’t feel bad for me. There are millions of other people who have faced and are facing the same situation. In 2014, the credit card details of over 20 million South Koreans were exposed. Someone had downloaded the data onto a USB stick. Of course, there was that incident where our favorite social network treated our personal data as their own. If you have any fondness for privacy, you probably think that all of this is insane. Data isn’t the new oil; it’s the new nuclear power. It’s the heart of the digital economy. But does that mean we all need to exploit people’s data to succeed? Can we compete if we take a more ethical approach? The answer to the latter is yes. Big tech CEOs now talk privacy because it pays off, beyond making the world a better place. When they apologize for their mistakes, they’re actually sorry to see billions of their market capitalization shrink in a data breach. Whenever trust leaves, value leaves with it–think the global financial crisis, Dieselgate, Cambridge Analytica, and so on. But with every incident comes a huge opportunity. When a company, industry, economy, or individual suffers a loss of trust, they become less competitive. This loss allows competitors to gain

ground, making it easier for new entrants to establish and scale. It’s just like in a petri dish: the moment the nasty e-coli bacteria start decimating, other microorganisms hustle for their place. There’s never been a better time to be the friendly probiotic bacteria. Since many successful tech companies resemble monopolies, we should trust startups to seize the opportunities sowed by the giants’ malpractice and show us how it can be done better. Trust is the most powerful competitive advantage a company can gain. Without trust, it’s impossible to establish value. The more there is, the more likely your customers will see you as unique. I like to think that trust creates mental monopolies. When you trust that something is the best or only option, it’s hard for anything else to compete. In the data economy, this dynamic is more evident than ever. The more your customers trust you, the more willing they are to share their data with you. Data quality and quantity make your product more valuable, which leads customers to trust you even more. It’s a virtuous cycle. In the digital age, trust is about action. When a person says they do or don’t trust something, they are typically referring to its trustworthiness. But many companies we entrust with our data and money are unworthy of it. Like money or technology, trust itself has no morality or agenda. Society likes to think of trust as a good thing by default. It’s definitely true that trust feels good, intuitively and scientifically. But that is exactly what makes it dangerous: trusting the wrong thing has bad outcomes (looking at you, Silicon Valley). So, trust is about how we use it. As the world becomes more aware of this fact, big tech will be at risk of a downward trust spiral. Silicon Valley is aware of this downturn, and sorely lacks perspective on how to rebuild trust. As many wise before me people have put it, Silicon Valley has always given us the donut: instant gratification that inspires people to waste as much time as possible in front of their screens. The focus is getting the user to behave as desired. Value is shifting toward companies that prove themselves trustworthy and trusted through a genuine vision to better our lives. The most successful startups today establish trust quickly and design value propositions to bolster trust in the long-term. Sadly, it appears that the largest privacy offenders are doing little more than paying lip service to trust. This inaction will cost their business dearly over time, but it’s good news for the more enlightened competition, which now has a unique opportunity to fill this trust vacuum. The future belongs to startups that believe data and the trust economy are the same thing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philipp is a TEDx speaker, entrepreneur and global authority on the trust economy. He has shared event stages with the likes of Ban Ki Moon, Ken Robinson and Niall Ferguson. In 2018, Philipp left the corporate world to join the family business, Denkfabrik Digital, a leader in innovation management with a 45-year track record. He’s also building a portfolio of companies creating a happier economy through more trusted choices. philippkristian.com

July 2019

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July 2019

GUEST COLUMNS

What We Learned About Startup Culture After traveling to more than 50 countries By ANTONIA LI

e all yearn for new experiences and learning through travel. I often find myself on the road, traveling whenever time permits, but my colleague and friend Maurice Lee takes it to the next level. As a social progress-minded futurist and thinker, he specializes in advising startups with market expansion and growth plans. His life pursuit of studying the human condition has led him to explore over 50 countries across six continents, connecting with people of varying cultures and mindsets. Through my regular conversations with Maurice, one vital learning I took away is the diverse nature in which startup culture has taken shape across the planet. When it comes to launching a venture, founders are often told to “think global from day one.” As a result, globally-renowned startup hubs such as the Bay Area, London, and Singapore, among others, have experienced explosive growth in terms of the number of startups founded over the past decade. While these locales might be favored places to start businesses, what Maurice has recognized, through traveling to emerging startup hubs around the world, is that the next generation-defining companies will likely come from elsewhere. These new hubs, characterized by thriving community-focused startups, are popping up everywhere–from Tunis to Tallinn, São Paulo to Buenos Aires. In Buenos Aires, for example, Mauricio Macri’s government has launched initiatives such as Ley de Emprendedores to provide interest-free loans to startups, and accelerators like IncuBAte to provide mentorship, office spaces, and additional funding. A host of regional venture capitalists have also financed ventures in different stages of their development. It is essential to note the role startups, and, more broadly, innovation plays in our society. In prominent hubs such as Silicon

Valley, inequality is rampant. Maurice has noticed that startups born out of these hubs are usually less cases of disruption and more so cases of increasing the concentration and accrual of value, at least in recent years. As Anand Giridharadas discusses in his book Winner Takes All, Uber “casts [itself ] as empowering people by allowing them to chauffeur others around,” but in reality, such companies are merely dismantling labor unions and taking the market for themselves with little consideration for the well-being of their drivers. These companies don’t challenge systemic problems, but build on them in ways that don’t harm market leaders. Startups outside of these traditional hubs, on the contrary, tend to be built around real needs that the state and its policies have failed to address adequately. One such company Maurice has shared with me is the Brazilian healthtech company, Dr Consulta. It’s a private medical service provider working to execute the Brazilian government’s goal of offering comprehensive and free medical coverage to every Brazilian citizen. While public solutions have faced challenges, including lack of funding, long queues, and geographic disparities between urban and rural areas, Dr Consulta offers a viaJuly 2019

Maurice visiting and meeting the friendly people of Uyuni, Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Maurice Lee.

ble alternative built on the back of public infrastructure and policies. While astronomical valuations and new unicorns still originate from established hubs, it is vital to keep an eye out for great companies born of other geographies. They may start with servicing and addressing local and community-specific needs, but some will grow to tackle universal problems and offer products to benefit people all around the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Antonia is an entrepreneur and startup veteran working to help startups unlock new market opportunities. She is involved in all aspects of strategy and operations at HYPE, a venture builder that’s the first of its kind in the region helping startups globally to land in Asia. hypeasia.co

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CONVERSATION STARTERS

A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE Recent Market Findings to Tickle Your Interest

SUPERSTARS

SUSTAINABILITY

25 PERCENT of global corporate earnings can be

50 PERCENT

attributed to superstar firms (McKinsey)

of power generation will be renewable after 2035 (McKinsey)

50 PERCENT of all superstars fall out of the top ten

2of venture PERCENT capital funding went to the

38 PERCENT of superstar firms today are American,

20 PERCENT of energy-related carbon emissions will

percent in every business cycle (McKinsey)

compared to 45 percent 20 years ago

cleantech industry in 2018 (Preqin)

(McKinsey)

decline by 2050, due to the reduction of coal usage in the power sector (McKinsey)

21 PERCENT of the global GDP comes from 50

US$16 BILLION could be saved by residents in Southeast

(McKinsey)

superstar cities, which are pulling away from their peers in GDP per capita

Asia annually, as better housing options lower energy bills

THE 575 SUPERSTAR COMPANIES INCLUDE… 315 OF THE 500 LARGEST FIRMS BY MARKET CAPITALIZATION

230 OF THE 500 MOST VALUABLE BRANDS IN THE WORLD

53 OF THE 100 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES WORLDWIDE

188 OF THE 500 BEST EMPLOYERS IN THE WORLD

(McKinsey, 2018)

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July July 2019 2019

“What we do now and in the next few years will profoundly affect the next few thousand years. But to do that, we need a plan.” – Sir David Attenborough

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING TECHNOLOGIES HAVE YOU USED TO MANAGE YOUR HEALTH IN THE PAST YEAR? U.S. respondents who use healthtech, n = 1570 (Accenture) WEBSITES MOBILE PHONE OR TABLET ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

HEALTHTECH

56% 46% 38% 33%

AI & SOCIAL GOOD

3 MILLION US$140 BILLION violent crimes can be prevented annually of biotech revenues are generated in the U.S. annually (Statista)

60 PERCENT of millennials support the use of telehealth to replace in-office visits (MedCity)

1healthtech OUT startups OF 7 that received

investment in 2018 had a female CEO (Forbes)

73 PATENTS related to healthcare have been filed

by Microsoft between 2013 to 2017, focusing on artificial intelligence and telehealth (Ernst & Young)

by machine learning software that generates predictions of areas where crime is likely to occur on any given day (Juniper)

US$10 BILLION worth of goods from the trading of illegal wildlife can be prevented annually using AI-powered image classification and object detection (McKinsey)

5000 LIVES lost each year to traffic accidents, fires,

and homicides could be saved through mobility solutions, crime prevention, and better emergency response (McKinsey)

US$26 BILLION is the expected value of the global elderly and disabled assistive devices market in 2024 (Forbes)

“I am an optimist and I believe that we can create AI for the good of the world. That it can work in harmony with us.” – Stephen Hawking

July 2019

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FEATURES

Co-working’s Coming-of-Age Tracking the industry’s trajectory with the Hive Founder Constant Tedder By MIN CHEN

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July 2019

iven how pervasive co-working spaces are today, it’s easy to forget that the concept is still considered young in the real estate world. Brad Neuberg is widely credited with pioneering the business model with the founding of San Francisco Coworking Space in 2005. Co-working has since become mainstream, with over 18,900 spaces worldwide as of 2018 (Statista), and the industry is set to service 5.1 million users by 2022 (GCUC). As co-working comes into its own, providers are grappling with growing pains while embracing new opportunities. At the forefront of this evolution is Constant Tedder, founder of Asia-Pacific’s largest co-working operator, the Hive. An entrepreneur many times over with several successful exits under his belt–notably with United Kingdom-based video game publisher Jagex–he set his sights on co-working in 2012 because it offered the kind of

We have always believed that running the physical space is only 25% of what we do.

flexibility and support he was looking for when he was building his startups. He headquartered the Hive in Hong Kong, attracted by the city’s open economy, regulatory framework, entrepreneurial spirit, and reputation for being a regional business hub. It was by all accounts, Hong Kong’s first, true co-working space–broadly defined as a collaborative work environment with participants who share the same values. “I wanted to create a beautiful work space that was like a second home. A place where entrepreneurs like myself could thrive. It was a new kind of space and new way of working, getting well away from the cramped layout, utilitarian lighting, and desk materials of traditional offices. I think, in that respect, the Hive was the

first to bring co-working to Hong Kong,” says Tedder. Partly as a result of the city’s notoriously high real estate costs, co-working soon became the most disruptive model to hit the commercial real estate sector in recent years. In 2017, over 90% of Hong Kong’s top 200 occupiers considered flexible workspace as part of their strategy (Colliers). The number of operators reached 283 in 2018 (SCMP), amounting to a total of 1.5 million square feet of co-working space (Statista)–an upward trend seen across many other Asia-Pacific markets. Another cause for the flood of competition is demand from the city’s burgeoning tech and innovation sector, which has enjoyed government support over the past few years. Additionally, the effect of digitization on the surge of flexible work arrangements–epitomized by such terms as ‘digital nomad’–is driving adoption from freelancers and remote workers. Tedder also attributes the general rising interest for “beautiful, flexible, and creative” work environments to be a cause for this growth. “They can be a large enterprise or a small enterprise, but they have the same mindset of looking for a beautiful working environment with creative energy and vitality. Having that kind of positive atmosphere is what people want from co-working spaces,” he adds. A people-oriented approach is consistent with the literature; a study conducted by the University of Michigan (‘Should Your Company Embrace Coworking?’)

found that “interactions with others” is the main reason people seek out co-working. Tedder has placed considerable focus on community-building to foster such an environment, which has played a defining role in the company’s operational and expansion strategy since founding. “We have always believed that running the physical space is only 25% of what we do. Our whole ethos is based on engaging with different communities and utilizing spaces to act as a catalyst for people’s learning experiences, meetings and interactions, or business collaborations,” he says. “Events are a core part of our DNA and drive us to build a community.” Walk through any of the Hive spaces and one will come across posters showcasing events ranging from documentary screenings, to entrepreneurship talks, to painting classes, which serve to connect members and increase stickiness. Each space is also built to encourage networking, with special attention placed on the design of common areas. Tedder has had a longstanding partnership with Soho House designer James Waterworth, who provided “a little design gold dust” to all of the Hive spaces. the Hive was also the first in Hong Kong to introduce niche spaces, such as the Hive Studios, which is equipped with photography studios members can rent by the hour, and Hive CoFarm–a station for agritech and cleantech companies to test their pilot projects. Other concepts include product designer-focused space MakerHive and

Top: the Hive Jinnan located in Tokyo. Photo courtesy of the Hive. Right: the Hive Founder Constant Tedder at the company’s headquarters in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong. July 2019

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lifestyle boutique the Hive Spa in Bangkok, all of which speak to the company’s intent to bring together communities from all industries and walks of life. The company’s digital magazine Hive Life celebrates the activities of creative entrepreneurs and its member app, Hivers, allows members to engage and collaborate with one another, where the theme of knowledge-sharing stands front and center. the Hive Passport is a significant part of the company’s expansion strategy, as it gives members access to the Hive’s extensive network across seven countries. Tedder says that the company’s regional community, spanning Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and most recently Australia, is a crucial differentiator for the company. “We’re the largest regional network of spaces. I think that makes the biggest difference in terms of when enterprises look for a pan-Asian solution,” says Tedder. He adds that the company’s strategy is to scale quickly while ensuring the business is sustainable in the long-term, as maintaining service standards and community engagement are the main challenges co-working operators face. Tedder considers scale to be a crucial competitive advantage, as it gives the Hive “operational experience and footprint to expand to more countries,” having launched 21 loca-

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July 2019

We’ve had many companies that started as two people and now have a 24-person office with us. For them, that flexibility to not have to worry about office fit-outs, to be able to continue to grow with their teams without the constraints of space, has been a tremendous evolution.

tions in the last seven years. “Our model is not to have a single workspace. Our model is to have four, five, six locations in each city, as we have done in Hong Kong, and soon will have in all our other cities. Our rollout continues,” he adds. The implementation of market-specific growth strategies by operators like the Hive points to how segmentation is becoming more evident in the industry. Tedder says that in the early years of co-working, there was a misconception that it only catered to startups and small or medium-sized enterprises. However, recent trends show that enterprise clients are also coming around to its benefits,

both in terms of its flexibility and ability to attract the right talent. “For many growing commercial sectors, attracting talent is very competitive. Having your team work in a beautiful workspace very much helps you to attract and retain talent,” says Tedder. In 2018, WeWork–the world’s largest co-working operator owned by The We Company–saw its enterprise customer base grow by 370%, making up around a quarter of its revenues (HBR). While Tedder says that “in the last two years, the most dramatic change has been team sizes,” he also ascribes this shift to long-term tenants who have grown alongside the operators. “We’ve had many companies that started as two people and now have a 24-person office with us. For them, that flexibility to not have to worry about office fit-outs, to be able to continue to grow with their teams without the constraints of space, has been a tremendous evolution,” says Tedder. He likens co-working’s segmentation to that of established hospitality industries like the hotel industry. On the one hand, there are “operators that build big-box Left: the Hive Villa located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The space is spread across two floors, and includes a garden and a pool. Right: the Hive Central, located in Hong Kong’s prime business district. Photos courtesy of the Hive.

hotels, maybe slightly soulless, with average service and little sense of community.” On the other, there are boutique hotel chains that “pride themselves on interior design, a warm welcome, and stellar service,” which is where Tedder positions the Hive. The industry’s transformation begs the question of how co-working behemoth WeWork will affect its future. Servicing around 268,000 members (as of 2018) in 637 locations across 111 cities (Recode), the operator is now the most valuable private company in the U.S. after Uber’s IPO in May this year. Tedder says that the US$45 billion company has “evangelized the movement toward flexible work” and educated the market about co-working, but he does not believe the WeWork narrative dominates the space. “I think WeWork would like to have us believe that it is winner takes all, but I don’t see that it is. They’ve obviously reshaped markets that they come into, but what’s interesting is that there’s plenty of room to grow for the best boutique operators like the Hive,” says Tedder. WeWork is now New York City and central London’s biggest office tenant, meaning they are also digging into the traditional leased office and serviced office markets, which are starkly different from co-working’s community-oriented model. Also, by taking on corporate tenants like Mastercard, Salesforce, and HSBC, WeWork risks further diluting its once

people-centric brand. “To some extent, I see them becoming more and more of a standardized business. They’re losing some of their DNA. That leaves a clear opportunity for us to be true to those original values of warm welcome, community, service, and of giving people a place where they’re super happy to come in every day,” says Tedder. Even though 30% of office space is projected to be flexible by 2030 (JLL), it’s difficult to predict how much of that growth will be taken up by co-working in its original form, given its hybridization with other concepts like corpoworking (i.e., imbuing co-working elements and values into corporate office settings). In

light of the industry’s fluidity, operators that carve out their own identity are likely to be more successful as co-working continues to mature. For Tedder and his team, the next few years will see the Hive ramp up its presence in the cities they currently operate in, while entering new markets such as Hanoi and cities throughout Australia. Members can look forward to new conceptual spaces in the pipeline, but the company’s mission remains unchanged. “Our goal is to be a catalyst for success, providing a beautiful workspace and superb service that enables our members to thrive,” he says. “If we’re able to do that, then we see it as a success.”

Constant's Advice for Entrepreneurs

“

Don’t just convince yourself

Think creatively at every step

Know what you don’t know

Read up and find useful resources

A lot of people, including myself in days gone by, get excited and rapidly commit to a business idea. But receiving feedback is crucial. Speak to people, not just your friends; (a) they may not fully understand the business and (b) they’ll likely just say this is great. Ask people who would look at it from different angles. Learn to take a step back and assess, in the cold light of day, whether it’s a good idea.

When I co-founded Jagex, my partner had an idea for delivering a game in a pretty creative way. He realized that by accepting that the game would be more limited graphically using Java, he could deliver it straight to the player in a browser. At the same time, it would allow users to play a version of it for free. This new way of thinking enabled us to expand the addressable market massively.

There’s a transition from being an entrepreneur with an idea to one who’s running a business. It’s a really big shift. You need to learn how to manage people, be a leader, and gain many other skills. At the same time, you need to think about the future. If you’re an ‘ideas person,’ then you need to learn to pay attention to the details. If you are impulsive, then you need to learn to plan for what’s around the corner.

Many successful entrepreneurs have never had time to do an MBA and, to a certain extent, it may not be useful for what you’re doing. The important thing is to be cognizant of your weaknesses and find ways to make up for them. It’s important to read a lot and look for useful resources. You should also absorb other people’s lessons and, of course, build a team that complements your strengths.

“

July 2019

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FEATURES

Encouraging Accessibility Through Startup Innovation Growing efforts in disability-focused technologies are bearing fruit By KUMA CHOW

y mom opened my eyes to the difficult world of wheelchair users. Her last months were spent on a bulky wheeled device, which was as restrictive as it was assistive. Two years after her cancer diagnosis, our family became aware that she needed help to get around. Sidewalks, ubiquitous in urban areas, became daily obstacles. I 32

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July 2019

Such technologies are not just opening doors for people living with disabilities. They are opening minds and revealing the resourcefulness of the startup world.

began my search for better solutions, and was surprised by the wide variety of startups that are innovating in this area.

Make travel great again

ccessible tourism has been gaining momentum in the startup world. Airbnb is a prime example with its efforts to help people find accommoda-

tion that is wheelchair accessible. Suzanne Edwards, a wheelchair athlete and advocate who worked at Accomable [acquired by Airbnb in 2017] said: “Travel is something that can be pretty challenging when you have a disability.” She recently announced the launch of a Facebook group called ‘Airbnb Adapted,’ which aims to transform the world of accessible travel by connecting people and enabling them to share travel stories and recommend unique, accessible activities. There will be regular features of accessible travel blogs, travel tips, and giveaways for fun travel perks. The Robins is the Chinese answer to accessible travel. Launched in March 2017, it positions itself as the first accessible tourism agency in the country. Last April, it began a partnership with Locals, an online portal for Chinese bed and breakfasts, to remodel homes to fit the needs of disabled travelers. Another rising star is Jiangsu-based Qitu Travel, which received EUR€200,000 in funding from Booking.com in May 2018 in support of its Access China project. The company’s founder Ji Xun has traveled to over 30 countries despite suffering from neuromuscular disorders. The startup will focus on building a database for special needs travelers and accessible tourism service providers in its first stage and connecting them in the future. Xun also aims to introduce international accessible travel-related training and education in China.

Drop Roll Co-Founder Andrew Holmes designed a wheelchair attachment that enables users to store and access items like their groceries while remaining on their chair and without third-party assistance. The design, which was featured in Caitrin Lynch’s TEDx talk on design thinking, was conceived in one of Holmes’s class assignments, where students were asked to create a prototype for adults to improve an aspect of their life. Novel designs are now being explored and prototyped, and the company is also considering incorporating electrical actuation into the device to benefit motorized wheelchair users.

Roll out artificial intelligence and robotics

round the world, curb ramps aren’t being built fast enough, and many mobility device users would agree. To rectify the situation, early-stage American startup DeepWalk is developing an app with three-dimensional imaging and machine learning technology to streamline the assessment, cost estimation, and design processes for building curb ramps that adhere to the guidelines outlined by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Exoskeletons are the future when it comes to mobility device design. Ekso Bionics’s lead product, the EksoGT bionic suit, enables people with spinal cord injuries and hemiplegia to speed up their rehabilitation, giving them a greater chance of being able to walk again. According to the company’s Fourth Quarter 2018 Financial Results report, a total of 354 EksoGT units are being used around the world.

Don’t forget about the gym rats and shoppers

t would be a pity if efforts in promoting accessibility were not applied to everyday activities. For wheelchair users who love a good workout, Dutch brand Rolfix invented a gadget that can lock wheels firmly on the gym floor during weightlifting sessions and other exercises, which might be too strenuous for ordinary wheel brakes. Keeping shoppers in mind, Shop July 2019

ccessibility-focused startups are only one part of broader efforts to advance disability-tech around the world. Remarkable, Australia’s first disability-focused impact accelerator, is funding early-stage startups that are providing solutions for people living with disabilities, and their families and caregivers. Remarkable’s first cohort includes Bookbot, a reading assistance app for those with learning disabilities; JobMatcher , an AI-enabled job platform that tackles low employment rates for people living with disabilities; NomadVR, a virtual reality experience for those without the means to go outside; and Our Care Journal, an app that helps caregivers organize their everyday care needs. Such technologies are not just opening doors for people living with disabilities. They are opening minds and revealing the resourcefulness of the startup world. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

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The Great Internet of China, 20 Years On Looking back on how choice and trust have shaped the country’s Internet economy By MIN CHEN

ast August, the Chinese government announced that the number of Internet users in the country had reached a mind-boggling 802 million, which is more than the combined populations of the United States, Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil (CNNIC). Of these users, more than 29 million gained Internet access for the first time in the second half of 2018 (CNNIC). The tale of China’s Internet economy is akin to seemingly every other story about the country since the turn of the Millennium, where speed and scale appear to be of the essence. While it may be tempting to attribute this dizzying growth to China’s rivalry with the West, academics, analysts, investors, and the like agree that such a conclusion is overly simplistic when making sense of its digital transformation. One such authority is SOSV General Partner William Bao Bean; with over two decades of experience in the space, he is frequently cited as one of the leading non-local authorities on the Chinese Internet economy. He points to the country’s developmental path and cultural perceptions about trust and choice for creating an environment that’s conducive to astronomical rates of digitization. Bean began his career as an equity research analyst, where he was ranked as the number one stock picker in tech, media, and telecom by Reuters Starmine in 2006. He also worked on Alibaba, Kingsoft, and eLong’s international initial public offerings (IPOs) before moving to the investment-side with SoftBank Group, and later, Singtel Innov8. He now manages two of SOSV’s accel-

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The American Internet leaders have run their playbook; it’s a good playbook, and it worked in every single market in the world.

erators: MOX–a mobile-only accelerator focusing on emerging markets–and China’s first and longest-running accelerator, Chinaccelerator. Having witnessed China’s Internet economy grow from nascency to its globally dominant position, Bean acknowledges that “the only constant is change” when it comes to characterizing the landscape.

Choice and trust

he inception of the Chinese Internet during the late 1990s was defined by ‘copies’ of U.S. companies of the early Internet era. Founded in 1996, web portal company Sohu was much like Yahoo. Tencent came on the scene in 1998 and introduced their take on AIM Instant Messenger, QQ, in 1999. Alibaba was founded the same year, going on to launch Taobao, ‘China’s Amazon,’ in 2003. Baidu, the country’s equivalent of Google, was founded in 2000. Phase two, beginning around the early-2000s, was a crucial growth stage for the Internet economy. Employees from the first generation of tech companies

began to found their own startups, seeking solutions to problems their predecessors had yet to solve. It was also during this time that China’s GDP experienced astronomical growth, increasing around 80% between 2000 and 2010, from US$1.2 trillion to $6.1 trillion (World Bank). With the influx of capital, venture capitalists, in turn, hit the jackpot with many of their early bets. One such example is Youku; founded in 2006 by former Sohu President Victor Koo, the company raised US$40 million in five rounds by 2007, going on to list at the New York Stock Exchange in 2010 (Crunchbase). After only four years, Youku was, by all measures, China’s leading video streaming platform (Nielsen). Although significant shifts were taking place for the country’s rising middle class during this time, China hovered as a country on the precipice of global leadership, while invariably facing the challenges of an emerging economy. Mobile penetration began its dominance, where it now makes up 98% of all Chinese Internet users (CNNIC). “[GDP growth] doesn’t change the fact that there was not a lot of underlying financial infrastructure. For example, credit cards. So we had a leapfrog effect, from cash to mobile wallets,” says Bean. For this reason, fintech took off as a solution for those who previously resided outside of the formal economy, much like other mobile-first markets, such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Underdeveloped financial infrastructures also paved the way for high adoption rates for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. PPDAI Group launched in 2007 as the first online lending platform in the country; by 2016, a total of 3,383 P2P platforms were managing combined monthly transactions of RMB130 billion (Home of Online Lending). Bean says it became clear during this phase that American Internet giants couldn’t compete because “the solutions that were built to solve an American problem often times don’t solve problems in China.” He notes that U.S. enterprise solutions, for example, weren’t able to gain any traction in the country simply because demand was virtually non-existent. “The American Internet leaders have run their playbook; it’s a good playbook, and it worked in every single market in the world,” he adds. “U.S. companies are U.S.-centric, and Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs are famous for being navel-gazers.” July 2019

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Below: Bean speaking at the 2018 SOSV Skydive Summit, which took place in Sanya, Hainan. Photo courtesy of SOSV.

Aside from U.S. companies’ inability to solve Chinese problems, they also failed to account for the population’s perception of the Internet, given how important a tool it was in modernizing the country. In many ways, the Internet economy brought choice to existing systems, be it financial institutions, retail, or transportation. In his TED Talk ‘The rapid growth of the Chinese Internet,’ SCMP CEO Gary Liu used the Chinese New Year travel rush as an example of how technology and the Internet have enabled choice. Connectivity aided a strained transportation system that had to meet the needs of 290 million migrant workers traveling to reunite with their families: around 70% of ticket sales are now digital. New solutions, such as Didi Chuxing’s carpool platform Hitch, also serviced 30 million travelers during the 2018 holiday period. This ‘needs economy,’ as Liu describes, has bolstered a sense of empowerment among users. “When capital and investment become focused on the needs of people who are hanging on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, that’s when we start to see the Internet truly become a job creator, an education-enabler, and–in many ways–a 36

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path forward,” he adds. Such perceptions of choice and trust, in effect, would determine the types of business models that would succeed in China. Bean gives Facebook as an example. In the West, social networking platforms operate like media companies, as they monetize through advertising. Users who follow the brand will only see its posts

if the brand pays Facebook, and they are often sensitive about the capacity in which influencers work with brands. By contrast, social networking platforms in China are more like marketplaces; they monetize through additional services, such as mobile wallets, and users are generally more open to sponsored posts. “A lot of times, they know that a star is getting paid by a brand to promote something. They know, but it’s not the end of the world. They’re okay with it. Whereas in the West, it’s like you’re a traitor if you’re getting paid,” says Bean. The integration of social networking and ecommerce is now known as ‘social commerce’–a model that describes some of China’s biggest tech companies today, including Xiaohongshu, iQiyi, Bilibili, and Bytedance. Social commerce is projected to account for US$413 billion worth of goods sold in China by 2022 (Frost & Sullivan). “You don’t necessarily have to pay to get in front of somebody, but you do have to earn [users’] trust because if you’re not trustworthy, then those customers will likely not pay attention to you,” says Bean. “I think that it’s not so much that people trust technology, but that technology, for the first time, brought trust.” This sentiment has ingrained tech into the cultural psyche, especially among the younger generation of digital natives. In line with this notion, MIT Technology Review’s Josh Feola looked to Shanghai-based artist Miao Ying, discussing that “much of her work deals with her concept of the ‘Chinternet’–a break with Western norms that supplies fertile ground for new

If you looked at frontier technologies in the last ten years in China, you would lose your shirt and go nowhere. But now they’re required in order to start that revolution.

ideas and identities to grow.” A predominant focus within this cultural discourse is tech leadership. Having been the face of their companies since phase one, founders like Jack Ma and Pony Ma have become cultural icons in their own right, amassing extraordinary wealth and propelling their country into the era of connectivity. In kind, they epitomize a new interpretation of Chinese capitalism that inspires others to follow suit. “From the first generation leaders, you have two types. You have sort of the godfather-type and the godmother-type. Both are inspirational, both drive followers, and both are very important in terms of retention,” says Bean. Through this culture-driven narrative, the Internet economy has been able to carve out its own identity–one that is deeply woven into the fabric of Chinese society.

olution. You can’t come up with a better mousetrap without leveraging frontier technologies like AI, and blockchain is opening up opportunities for industries that lacked transparency,” he says. Bean notes that there are still opportunities for edtech, fintech, and healthtech, especially within the context of improving lives for those living in more rural areas, or Tier 3 or Tier 4 cities. With regards to the middle class, he’s interested in investing in foodtech, such as meat alternatives, and travel. In this way, he expects the Chinese Internet to become more familiar to Western markets in the coming years. China is now in a position to look outward, especially toward countries that are following its mobile-first trajectory. The country is laser-focused on emerging markets that are currently undergoing tremendous rates of digitization–a strategy that’s also in place in Silicon Valley. According to Bean, “The battlefield is in India right now.” “In 2016, there were virtually no Chinese plays in the top ten apps in India. By 2017, 17 of the top 100 apps in India were Chinese. And in 2018, 47 of the top 100 apps in India were Chinese,” he adds. 2018 saw China surpass the U.S. in venture funding for the first time, accounting for 47% of the globe’s venture capital in the second quarter (Crunchbase). While

China still trails the U.S. as the second largest venture capital market in the world, the country is on track to overtake the hegemon in terms of aggregate deal value by the end of this year or 2020 (INSEAD). Competition for international influence is heating up between China and the U.S., both on the technological and user acquisition-side. The outcome of this dynamic will undoubtedly be made more unpredictable by the U.S.-China Trade War and its effect on the global economy.

ne only has to look to the Chinese Internet’s inextricable relationship with culture to understand why its leaders began to follow their own playbook, guiding an economic upswing that’s unprecedented in the annals of history. Of course, the caveat when speaking on the topic is the government’s hand in the market–a discussion that goes beyond the scope of this piece. When looking at how pivotal a role the Internet economy has played in changing the socioeconomic conditions of a significant portion of the population, it becomes clear that it’s misguided to paint a one-sided picture. What’s yet to be seen is how far the world’s superpowers will go to export their digital influence, and whether their technology will continue to better lives in the process.

The next frontier

he current phase of the Chinese Internet is no longer a case of untempered growth, having matured significantly over the past decade. Incumbents have solved most problems, and founders need to innovate better than the next guy to succeed. “We’re coming to that stage in China where it’s not enough to be fast and raise a lot of money,” says Bean. “The low hanging fruit has all been picked, and you’ve got some very large companies that have consolidated very large user bases.” He adds that Alibaba and Tencent’s duopoly of the Internet economy also makes meaningful user acquisition near-impossible without support from one of the two. Investors and founders are now looking to frontier technologies–a change that has only emerged in the last one or two years. “If you looked at frontier technologies in the last ten years in China, you would lose your shirt and go nowhere. But now they’re required in order to start that revJuly 2019

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Claws, Fangs, and a Network Connection Technology is making strides in the conservation arena By NAYANTARA BHAT

he sub-Antarctic isle of South Georgia lies deep in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s densely populated for an island so far south, but not by humans. Large colonies of penguins and seabirds throng there to breed and raise their chicks. The only humans braving the climate are researchers and a small group of officials from the Government of South Georgia, along with the occasional cruise liner. Natural and undisturbed, no vehicles are allowed on South Georgia. So when the crew from Silverback Films arrived to film a scene for Netflix’s Our Planet, they came prepared for engineering. They brought with them the parts for a beach buggy, modified to tote around cameras and stabilizers, and trundled around the island to the general consternation of its residents. Conservation efforts can take many forms, but viewers of Our Planet can attest to the power of film. It’s an eight-part series narrated by the legendary Sir David Attenborough, with each episode addressing both the preservation and ongoing destruction of various habitats around the world. The episodes, which explore every landscape from frozen poles to grasslands, were conceived solely with this message in mind. A winning combination of technology, expertise, and engineering has seen Sophie Lanfear and Jamie McPherson through the creation of multiple wildlife films throughout their careers. Both zoologists by trade, Lanfear has production and direction credits on several Our Planet episodes, while 38

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It’s really exciting for filmmakers. You can have a camera on drones where you can’t get a helicopter, to see aerials and show the other perspective. It just opens up the world a bit more, really.

McPherson’s talents lie in cinematography and designing the innovative filming rigs used on shoots. “We’ve all wanted to do more, and we’ve wanted to get that message out. It can be hard to get conservation films commissioned because the argument is that people don’t want to watch,” says Lanfear, who produced and directed the ‘Frozen Worlds’ episode. Each episode points viewers to [www. ourplanet.com] for information on living sustainably. Visitors to the website can watch short explainers on sustainability or behind-the-scenes videos from the shoots. The main takeaways from each episode are also rendered into slideshows, accompanied by an interactive globe that visualizes the state of natural habitats and the spread of human civilization. “We’ve got a full-time team still working on [the website], and they will be

working on it for at least the next year. They’re churning out the stuff that we couldn’t put in the show,” says Lanfear. With Netflix’s streaming service now accessible nearly globally, it’s an ideal medium for spreading the message of environmental protection. Our Planet and its predecessors, the Planet Earth anthologies, have widely been hailed as groundbreaking in the field of wildlife documentary filmmaking, as they showcase never-before-seen facets of animal life. In part, this has been made possible by advancements in filming gear. One such example is gyro stabilizers: futuristic-looking machinery used to turn chaotic scenes into perfectly steady footage. “It’s really exciting for filmmakers,” says McPherson. “You can have a camera on drones where you can’t get a helicopter, to see aerials and show the other perspective. It just opens up the world a bit more, really.” Lanfear referenced filming humpback whales’ feeding habits in Antarctica. It made a world of difference to capture the action with a drone rather than an expensive, resource-intensive helicopter. The result: sweeping aerial views of whales, dolphins, penguin colonies, and massive cascading ice shelves breaking off into a gray sea. Technology is being worked into conservation in a multitude of different ways, helped along by greater accessibility of information to raise awareness for the Clockwise from top: A curious King penguin on the isle of South Georgia, Gentoo penguins sliding their way down from the colony to get to the sea, and a walrus family on the coast of Russia. Photos courtesy of Silverback Films.

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cause. Conservationists have struggled for decades to observe wild animal populations and monitor the conditions of key habitats, but this task is gradually becoming easier. One of the most striking scenes in Our Planet documents the annual walrus haul-out, where over 100,000 walruses are forced to gather on the Russian coast by drastically thinning sea ice. Anatoly Kochnev, who supervised the crew, is a naturalist who has studied walruses for decades. He used to gauge the number of animals on the shore by using a pair of binoculars to count them one by one. “Now, he can fly a very cheap drone across the beach taking photos, and then he can be very accurate when he counts them,” says Lanfear. While the advent of drones and availability of cameras and sensors has enabled great leaps and bounds in the field, Lanfear and McPherson are careful to point out that tech can, at times, hinder conservation efforts. “Anti-poaching units have been having problems with poachers using drones to find the animals,” says Lanfear. She adds that poachers can use mobile phones to coordinate rendezvous locations to escape 40

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We come back with a tiger story and go, ‘Look at the tiger!’ But now we’re saying, ‘The tiger is threatened, it’s in a tiny habitat, we need to do something about it.’ from anti-poaching units. National parks have taken steps to protect against this new threat. When the crew was filming in Namibia, they were barred from using drones and required to have rangers in the car with them at all times, despite their filming credentials. While the crew was more than willing to abide by the rules, the experience served to underscore the pervasiveness of poaching. In the academic world, tagging marine animals and observing their movements is usually the first step in anti-poaching efforts. Technological advancements in this methodology have resulted in more granular data for research and less intrusive methods of attaching tags to the subjects. Tagging animals can also facilitate the gathering of oceanographic information– details about depth, salinity, temperature, and so on–that would be difficult for humans to obtain without a submarine. In 2018, researchers Berger-Tal and Lahoz-Monfort wrote about using remote

sensing systems as early warning systems against poachers, and lab-made rhino horn and shark fin to replace the sought-after and often smuggled biological commodities. They also referenced an anti-logging device: a solar-powered recorder able to identify the sound of machinery and alert forest rangers to the activity. Satellite video streams are also proving to be an invaluable resource, as governments can no longer deny the scale of illegal deforestation. Berger-Tal and Lahoz-Monfort also detailed how connectivity through tech has become a significant trend for conservation. In the past, researchers had no choice but to rely on hardware created for other industries. Now that they can collaborate online, organize hackathons, and Left to right: Lanfear and Sir David Attenborough on location in South Africa whilst filming meerkats for BBC wildlife series Life Story, McPherson, who was a principle cinematographer on the Our Planet series, and Lanfear and McPherson on filming the ‘Frozen Worlds’ episode. Photos courtesy of Silverback Films.

request the services of volunteer professionals, researchers are effectively crowdsourcing innovation in this field–and are able to crowdfund when there are no other options. Lanfear and McPherson have observed an increase in crowdsourced science, such as projects where anyone can help to count the number of penguins in a colony. These projects make the natural world seem more tangible and accessible to everyday people, most of whom live urban lives. “It’s nice to involve people in [conservation projects]. They feel that they’ve got use and they’re helping,” Lanfear says. The software and hardware used by researchers are also becoming more affordable. Lanfear and McPherson say that scientists everywhere, even those in developing economies who may face financial limitations, can afford the right equipment for the most part. Wildlife institutions around the world are also exploring new ways to enhance their conservation efforts through tech. Zoos Victoria, a conservation organization with three zoos in Australia, turned to augmented reality (AR) to add a new dimension to visitors’ experiences. A large-format exhibit called Air, Land, and Sea, a col-

laborative project between National Geographic and AR experience designer INDE, was on display for two months at Melbourne Zoo. “The role of AR/VR in shaping a more sustainable future could certainly benefit from further research, as it is an emerging area,” says Visitor Services General Manager Scott Killeen. “Visitors engage with the experience in many ways.” Zoos Victoria has taken other steps to care for the animals in their charge and the local wildlife populations, including installing hundreds of cameras, sensors, and GPS trackers to monitor populations of indigenous species. Zoos Victoria is also exploring integrating a variety of new technologies, including a voice activation feature, which can answer visitors’ questions when prompted, and a commercial VR experience to simulate realistic, up-close encounters with gorillas. “Technology helps us connect with more people, whether they visit our zoos or via our community conservation campaigns,” says Director of Digital Engagement David Methven. “Technology also provides the tools that are invaluable in monitoring the welfare of animals in our care and in the wild.” July 2019

Today’s prevailing sustainability thesis emphasizes the ‘prosumer’ and the individual as forces for change. Pushing the message about endangered animals and the destruction of habitats is impacting viewers of the series. “The people I spoke to said that they’re just glad someone’s telling them the reality of what’s happening,” says McPherson. “All these shows, we come back with a tiger story and go, ‘Look at the tiger!’ But now we’re saying, ‘The tiger is threatened, it’s in a tiny habitat, we need to do something about it.’” “Loads of people have been writing to me about the things that they’re doing– like, I’ve given up meat, I’ve given up air travel, and so have my children,” says Lanfear. “As long as people start thinking that way, that’s a start.” These reactions are a testament to many things that we take for granted: high-definition footage of the world’s most inaccessible places, commercially-available drones, and the Internet as a unifying force. It’s becoming impossible to ignore the deadly impact of unsustainable practices on the natural world. Awareness and action could be deciding factors in saving the planet. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

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10 Minutes with Jan Honoré Head of PM Equity Partner explains the dramatic side of corporate innovation By MIN CHEN

(FMCGs). Founded in 2015, PMEP has nine diverse portfolio companies, including sustainable bio-chemicals and ingredients manufacturer Comet Biorefining, and Bow Group–an Internet of Things and wearables company. Head of PMEP Jan Honoré has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech and venture capital industries. He took on this role because PMI’s vision aligned with his view that companies, and not just regulators, should work to alleviate public health concerns. Jumpstart interviewed Honoré after he spoke on the “How Innovation and Technology Rejuvenate Corporates” panel at the 2019 Hong Kong International Entrepreneurs Festival (HKIEF), to better understand what the firm is doing to further PMI’s corporate innovation efforts. What motivated PMI to pursue investment as a means of corporate innovation?

orporate innovation has become a somewhat eye-roll-inducing term in the tech community, as it’s often labeled as overused and overly vague. While most corporates stick to widely adopted methodologies like establishing accelerators or incubators, dedicated innovation teams, and innovation hubs, others are transforming their businesses from the ground up. One such company is Philip Morris International (PMI), the tobacco giant that owns six of the world’s 15 best-selling cigarette brands including Marlboro, which is number one. With smoking being the leading cause of preventable deaths globally (CDC), PMI has chosen to align with demand for less harmful alternatives and gradually move away from the business model that has defined the company since 1847. Much of their efforts to be at the forefront of realizing “a smoke-free future” are put

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into research and development (R&D), investing over US$6 billion over the past two decades. The most notable example of such efforts is IQOS, a device that heats tobacco to a maximum of 350°C to produce vapor instead of smoke, as it’s below the 400°C burn threshold. The company points to 30 independent studies that find heatnot-burn devices to emit 90 to 95% fewer harmful or potentially harmful chemicals compared to traditional, combustible cigarettes. IQOS is used by 7.3 million consumers worldwide, and the company has several other alternative tobacco products in the pipeline, including their interpretation of the electronic cigarette. In addition to internal innovation efforts, PMI is also tapping into the startup ecosystem through its investment arm, PM Equity Partner (PMEP), which focuses on environmental health, human health, and healthier fast-moving consumer goods

There are a lot of products that are being developed as part of our annual R&D budget, which is close to one billion [U.S.] dollars. But as we discussed in the panel here at the conference, it can be difficult to do real, groundbreaking innovation from within because you have certain paradigms and beliefs. If you don’t want to get crucified, you better stay within these limits. That is one reason we founded PM Equity Partner, where we have a US$150 million fund to invest in outside innovation. We do not control these companies; we get, maybe, 20% ownership. They are, therefore, completely independent. That’s a very important way to get true innovation in a company like Phillip Morris. What does disruption mean to PMEP? It fundamentally means: can we help with this enormous task to convert all of the world’s smokers–there are more than 1 billion–to devices like this and others? Today, we have 150 million smokers who smoke PMI products. Seven million of those have already converted to better alternatives to cigarettes, but there is a long way to go before we reach 150. Everything that can help with that–whether it is investing in new devices and technologies, digital health, or proteomics that can significantly improve clinical trials, so we can get more evidence to show regulators and consumers that we do reduce risk. It is not only a question of reducing exposure, but its biological consequences. Left and right: Honoré at HKIEF 2019, which took place in Hong Kong.

What are the most important factors you consider when evaluating a potential portfolio company? Number one is strategic fit. Can it make an impact on smoking in the world? Number two you would assume is technology, but in reality, it’s the quality of the management and people. Very often, technology fails. You have certain visions and ideas, but it is risky to deal with new technology. So, having an experienced management team who can work well together and overcome obstacles is the most important. There’s a long list of other factors. One of those is, of course, intellectual property. What are some areas of development in biotech that excite you the most? I am very interested in new technologies to improve the efficacy of clinical trials– continuous monitoring of physiology and vital signs combined with genomics and proteomics. AI provides amazing possibilities for breakthroughs in what we can monitor and show to regulators, so that we can get [alternative tobacco products] and pharmaceutical drugs approved in a much more effective way than before. Of course, there’s the medical device space, which in many ways has been underinvested in the last several years. If you have a drug that is effective as a molecule, but you cannot get it into the body and administer it in the right way, it doesn’t help much. The respiratory route for delivery has been underestimated, and there are many things to research in this area. Such as using vapor to deliver medication?

Absolutely. What that means is that you circumvent the liver in metabolizing the drug, so it doesn’t have the same toxicity requirements and has a faster onset. Through the lungs, it immediately gets delivered to the blood, and therefore, the brain. What about innovations in cleantech? As responsible citizens, and also a corporate with 80,000 employees and numerous factories around the world, we want to contribute to the circular economy. Helping to make the world more sustainable is an ethical requirement of our time. We have invested in a solar-based company that brings energy to off-grid Africa, where 600 million people live without electricity today. We are also investing in companies that can convert agricultural waste into green chemicals and attractive food ingredients, so instead of wasting resources, we can actively use them to make differentiated products. How do you think manufacturers can be incentivized to develop FMCGs that are healthier? This is quite interesting. We’re communicating everywhere that it is unhealthy and dangerous to smoke, and that has helped us to innovate and get to these new product categories. But if you think about it as just a normal consumer, there are so many products, unfortunately, in the FMCG category that are quite dangerous if you don’t control your consumption. Let’s take alcohol, fast food, and soft drinks: these are all related to the epidemic

July 2019

growth of diseases like diabetes and obesity. Sooner or later, I think these industries will be confronted with the same requirements from regulators and society to disclose how the consumption of their products will influence health. I believe that they will be inspired by what we have been doing and will be searching hard for ways to innovate. I’m sure that a lot of the companies in these industries are, as we speak, looking into reducing sugar and fat levels to make their [products] healthier. I think it’s good news for all of us. Can you share a bit about PMEP’s most recent investment and why you were drawn to the company? A company that I’m quite excited about is one from my home country of Denmark. We invested in an indoor cleantech company [Domisphere] that is using ultraviolet lights to produce free radicals that destroy pollution 100%. It has been used in outdoor cleaning systems, but now we are miniaturizing this technology, so it can be used for indoor air cleaning. As you know, indoor pollution is a problem faced by countries all around the world. Many people use indoor air cleaners that are carbon-based; carbon is good, but it doesn’t destroy pollution fundamentally. It just absorbs the pollution, so it sits in the filters. We can disrupt the industry by completely destroying the pollution, so there is nothing left in the filter, and you don’t need to change the filter over time. We see this as an extremely interesting investment to create a cleaner environment.

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Weathering the Storm Understanding the specialized and high-tech field of meteorological technology By NAYANTARA BHAT

nyone who’s ever made weekend plans that depend on good weather knows that forecasting is both a blessing and a curse. While it’s comforting to not be entirely blind to meteorological changes, it’s often the case that forecasts are either vague or completely incorrect. That’s where meteorological technology comes in. Weather technology is a small but rapidly-growing field. Most startups in this space are business-to-business (B2B) as opposed to consumer-facing. A notable player is the Climate Corporation [acquired by Monsanto in 2013], an agriculture-focused company that examines weather and other field data to help farmers withstand the increasingly volatile weather conditions caused by climate change. Such insights could have tangible impacts on many other essential industries, including, but not limited to, renewable 44

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energy generation, aviation, shipping, drone operation, and by extension–the individual. According to Chinese University of Hong Kong Professor Gabriel Lau, the technologies used in the field range from supercomputers running numerical models to project changes in the earth’s climate, to advanced communication devices disseminating information across the globe, to the deployment of large-scale satellites and other observational instruments. “The use of technology has advanced very rapidly in the weather and climate field over the recent years,” says Lau. Remote-sensing techniques and new methods of viewing dynamic atmospheric events, which happen too fast for cameras to capture, are contributing to a higher-accuracy understanding of the field. Better monitoring and prediction models have become all the more essential with the growing urgency of climate change,

necessitating the use of high-speed computing and data archive facilities, and conscientious long-term data collection and management. However, progress in this field isn’t equally distributed. Developing countries are lacking in the infrastructure that is crucial to collecting all this data. That said, they are now realizing the importance of forecasting and monitoring the climate and communicating the information with the public. Lau believes that if developing economies are given sufficient access to information collected by other entities, they will be able to address the climate issues they are facing more effectively. “Advances in communication and Internet technologies have contributed to improved data access,” says Lau. “Weather and climate operations and research in Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India and South Korea have attained high standards in recent years. With all of this technology being put to use, the hope is that industries and individuals will be able to more efficiently gather the information needed to take action against climate change. Boston-based ClimaCell is one startup that is trying to make weather less of a wild card. Founded by a trio of Israeli Air Force veterans–Shimon Elkabetz, Rei Goffer, and Itai Zlotnik–the startup is already making waves in aviation and other industries, recently carrying out a limited launch of their consumer app. Jumpstart interviewed ClimaCell on technology, industry, and the real-world applications of their solution. What is ClimaCell’s founding story? As is often the case with startups, ClimaCell was founded to answer a real-life need our founders experienced. In our case, it was the need to have weather forecasts you can actually rely on, given the massive operational and safety implications of being surprised by weather conditions during high-stakes operations. Once they started working on ClimaCell, they saw how broad the need was, from industries to emerging economies. Can you describe your technology? ClimaCell is pioneering a ‘Weather of Things’ approach: the combination of unique data from the connected world and proprietary, high-resolution models to make sense of that data. On the data side, ClimaCell takes all of the regular meteorological data used today, and adds in hundreds of millions of data points from the connected world. What was previously just a cellular tower, vehicle, aircraft or a satellite dish, is now receiving new life as a weather sensor. This data is then analyzed by the ClimaCell Bespoke Atmospheric Model, which analyzes the data more regularly (every few minutes vs once an hour) and at far higher resolutions. How do these systems provide hyperlocal weather information? Existing meteorological data leaves many blindspots. Satellites, for example, are extremely expensive to deploy, even in developed countries, and don’t pick up what’s happening at ground and rooftop levels. By tapping into a variety of data types, such as the changes in signal strength sent between wireless towers due to precipitation, this new form of data is processed into weather data and ingested by ClimaCell’s models. Top: ClimaCell’s founders (left to right): CCO Itai Zlotnik, CSO Rei Goffer, and CEO Shimon Elkabetz. Photo courtesy of ClimaCell. July 2019

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What information does ClimaCell provide to users? The result of this new kind of data and modelling is MicroWeather: hyper-accurate, specific, and customizable information. Customers can choose which weather parameters they care about (rain, snow, sleet, temperature, humidity, wind, thunder), the areas they care about (at a street-by-street level), and the timeframe they care about (current conditions, short-term forecasts, longer-term forecasts, or historical information). How easy or difficult has it been to get access to the requisite data sources you need for your software? The data sources we use from the connected world (wireless signals, microwave links, airplanes, drones) are all part of existing infrastructure. It is the rare win-win situation, as it gives the companies a secondary use for their data–which is all anonymized, network-level information–while providing us with the data richness and diversity we need to vastly improve weather forecasting. Who are the intended users of this platform? There is a broad need for accurate weather forecasting since weather has such huge impact across sectors. Our customers fall into four categories: existing industries such as aviation, transportation, and construction; new economy and on-demand companies; developing countries, where there is little to no traditional forecasting infrastructure; and, finally, we are launching a consumer app in the coming weeks. What kind of industries would benefit from this software? One third of the global economy is comprised of weather-sensitive industries and each needs different kinds of weather information. Renewable energy generation companies, for example,

are focused on wind and solar parameters to anticipate supply, while drone operators may care about precipitation and thunder to plan routes and ensure safety. There is yet another need in developing countries, as many have little, if any, forecasting infrastructure, impairing planning on everything from agriculture to flood relief. What are the implications of ClimaCell’s technology when it comes to climate change research and conservation efforts? ClimaCell is focused on weather forecasting. That said, as weather conditions become more volatile and unpredictable due to climate change, the need for accurate, specific weather forecasts continues to rise. How do you deal with infrastructure limitations in developing countries? This situation exists in many emerging economies, but let’s take India as an example: As of now, weather forecasting in India is very inaccurate. ClimaCell’s technology uses the connected infrastructure that already exists to predict the weather. In the two pictures (above), the one on the left is showing one government weather station in Mumbai, which is at the airport. The picture on the right shows ClimaCell’s sensors. Since traditional forecasting infrastructure is extremely expensive, many emerging economies have few satellites, radars and weather stations, if any. However, they are part of the connected world. Therefore, ClimaCell can use them to predict the weather. [The image on the top left is taken from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) website, and might not represent all the IMD weather stations in that region. Still, the availability of real-time observations in that region is very limited. The image on the right is an anonymized depiction of our virtual sensors. Locations of the actual devices were randomized, but it is true to the density of our sensors in that region.] How will better weather forecasting affect our daily lives? Weather impacts everyone’s lives, as we are constantly making weather-related decisions. Should I take my dog for a walk now or will I get stuck in a downpour? Should I cancel a camping trip due to a vague ‘30% chance of rain tomorrow’ forecast? Of course, ClimaCell’s forecasts, which are in use by companies and emerging economies, affect people’s lives behind-thescenes, everyday. This is true for an airline being able to avoid delays by knowing the exact time and location of a lightning storm, a roofing company that is able to maximize work time by knowing exactly when to expect rain, and a developing country getting flooding information that allows them to evacuate residents in advance.

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July 2019

Forget the aesthetics or aspirations. Those are mere tactics. If you want to be a lifestyle brand, you need a rock solid understanding of the values that you want to explore with your consumer.

Start with the conversation, not the lifestyle

A FEATURES

How Lifestyle Branding is Eating the Tech World Lessons from Lifestyle 2.0 By JASMINE BINA

ifestyle and tech brands have had an intimate relationship for quite some time. Apple created a strong lifestyle around its hardware, and many nontech brands like Nike and The New York Times have incorporated tech into their lifestyle world. They’re brands that allowed us to pursue lives of our own choosing, regardless of our lot. We could find our tribes and rally around the ideas that stirred us, whether they are aspirations of freedom, creativity, or individualism. But today, consumers are changing. People are becoming more sophisticated in the brand vernacular, and more demanding of the brand value they pay a premium for. We find ourselves with new users who are looking for self-discovery instead of being pushed to purchase aspirational products. We’ve gone from the outer world to inner world. It’s a much more intimate and personal relationship that adds a layer of intrinsic value to the product. The successful tech companies of tomorrow will actu48

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ally be lifestyle brands. With this new perspective, let’s look at some of the elements that should go into your brand blueprint if you find your company on this trajectory.

lot of brands falter from the very beginning because they don’t understand what a lifestyle brand actually is. A lifestyle brand initiates a conversation that happens at specific points in a consumer’s life. Forget the aesthetics or aspirations. Those are mere tactics. If you want to be a lifestyle brand, you need a rock solid understanding of the values that are worth exploring with your consumer–the ones that help them move down the path of self-discovery. Values are provocative and revealing, and you either really care or you really don’t because as a consumer, you immediately know if that value will get you to someplace deeper within yourself. Peloton has squarely planted themselves in the lifestyle space, despite the fact that they are a tech company on both the hardware and software side. Over a million Below: The Peloton Bike streams fitness classes to users live and on-demand. Photo courtesy of Peloton. Top and right: Outdoor Voices’ flagship store in New York City. Photo courtesy of Outdoor Voices.

bike-obsessed owners have a cult-like passion for the brand, and it has little to do with the product. The brand engenders a sense of competitive fandom, where users post their athome training videos, look up to famous users like Hugh Jackman and Richard Branson, and demonstrate their loyalty through logoed clothing and even tattoos. But what underlies all of this activity is Peloton’s commitment to a singular narrative that says ‘exercise should be intimate.’ It’s a unique value that touches all parts of the business, and why Peloton controls virtually every aspect of the experience from the music and user interactions to the carefully curated instructors and overall energy. The brand is continually using these touchpoints to push the same values-driven conversation forward.

Emulation vs. empowerment

f we’re moving from aspiration to self-discovery, then we’re also moving from emulation to empowerment. Many companies have beautiful and tight visual branding that signals something to aspire to, but not much more beyond that. We see them everywhere – clothing, food, entertainment –but as consumers, we’re so overexposed to this kind of glossy two-dimensional branding that it has started to become redundant. Aesthetics, while important, are a tactical trap. They are not where lifestyle brands end, but rather where they start. A simple way to vet your brand is to ask yourself: Am I encouraging people to emulate this lifestyle, or am I giving them the tools to attain something bigger? Notice I said tools, not products. For truly brand-led companies, the product is secondary. You’re not selling your yoga pants in the promise that people will become more athletic – that’s aspirational. Instead, you’re doing what fashiontech company Outdoor Voices is doing: building a brand around ‘happiness’ while everyone else is building theirs around extreme grit, physical endurance, and in the women’s category, sexiness. Founder Tyler Haney says she asked herself: “What if I built a brand around something people loved – a recreational Nike that’s all about staying healthy and being happy doing it?” It’s this question that drives every decision within the company. The brand empowers customers in unique ways, including crowdsourcing many of their designs, deliberately focusing on low-impact daily activities instead of ex-

treme sports, and featuring ads of women that haven’t been retouched, with real bodies and cellulite. It’s why the company grew 800% in 2016 alone and commands huge lines at their New York City sample sales, rivaling the sample sales of most luxury brands.

money and thirst for deeper engagement – a place to direct their attention. When a founder’s personal brand is further into the future than the company they are building, it demonstrates a real devotion to a larger belief. You don’t need to be a celebrity CEO, but you do need to be creating spheres of influence through content, social, or in your physical network. You need a strong point-of-view that perhaps would be too heavy-handed for your company, but can comfortably be explored by you as an individual.

The buck has to stop somewhere

ifestyle brands need a founder’s face and voice. People need to know that if they are investing so much intangible brand value and giving themselves over to such a demanding (but rewarding) self-discovery experience, there is someone on the other side of it who is just as committed. Your consumers don’t need a relationship with the founder, but they need the comfort of knowing they aren’t being cheated by some flashy marketing gimmicks and a savvy art department. Elon Musk’s personal brand of being a rebel futurist is arguably leagues ahead of Tesla’s. He gives people a channel through which to understand him and the company, and partake in a richer story. It gives avid users– the ones who spend the most

The lifestyle consumer is changing, and your brand should, too

July 2019

he next generation of winners in tech already see that we’re moving from Lifestyle 1.0 of graphics and clever taglines to Lifestyle 2.0 of conversation, empowerment and accountability. As we move from aspiration to self-discovery, you need to be positioned as a brand that can guide users deeper into themselves. It’s a riskier strategy that will take more time and money, but it’s the only strategy that will win the long game. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

Photos courtesy of GreenHouse, Ctrip, BOP Industries, and Giant Leap Fund (left to right).

Ctrip CEO Jane Sun

JUMPSTARTHead MAGAZINE July Kyosev 2019 Greenhouse of Indonesia Viktor

BOP Industries team members

s Kate Macklin and Tadiwa Mhiti

Giant Leap Fund Investment Manager Rachel Yang COVER STORY

Jumpstart Awards Celebrating Asia-Pacific's Unsung Heroes

he Asia-Pacific startup ecosystem is often hailed as the most dynamic, innovative, and ripe for unicorn creation. With high Internet penetration, fast adoption of new technologies, and impressive talent pools, this region is a hotbed of activity for lean tech startups, and the rest of the world is well aware. According to CBInsights, nearly US$209 billion in investment has been allocated to over 8500 equity deals in the APAC region since 2012. With cutthroat competition for investment and titans like GO-JEK, Grab, Sensetime, Canva, OYO, Carousell, and many others making headlines globally, it’s unsurprising that some of the most interesting startups are being glossed over entirely. Some of them are deliciously surprising in their innovative approaches to tackling problems on an individual and macro level. Jumpstart Awards was created to shine a spotlight on startups and individuals who are making waves in their respective industries, working tirelessly to support the innovation sector, and challenging the status quo in impactful ways. You may not have heard of some of them yet, but–with their fresh take on innovation and technology–they could very well transform the region and beyond. –NB

July 2019

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Startup of the year Qlue Smart City

Qlue Co-Founder & CEO Rama Raditya

Photo courtesy of Qlue 52

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COVER STORY

City of Dreams Startup of the Year, Qlue Smart City, is determined to change Indonesia for the better By NAYANTARA BHAT

he high-tech cities of the future have captured people’s imaginations for decades, and no interpretation is quite the same. The Jetsons, a cartoon that premiered in 1962, imagined a floating city in the sky, where people drive around in flying cars and live in smart homes that can bathe and clothe them. Dark portrayals of the

future in the Netflix series Black Mirror series show people living in cubes made of wall-to-wall screens, brain implants that can store and re-access memories, and an idyllic virtual world where dead people can live forever. Real-world interpretations of future cities aren’t quite so fantastical, but they’re equally exciting. Qlue Smart City, a Jakarta-based smart city platform, is one examJuly 2019

ple of a company utilizing the abundance of data in the Internet Age to make cities safer and more efficient. By using everything from Tweets to traffic data from Waze, to CCTV footage from around the city, Qlue is tapping every possible resource to unearth insights about how cities can work better. Top: The Qlue team at the company headquarters in Jakarta. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

It’s frustrating that people have social issues as simple as a pothole in front of their house, and they don’t even know where to report it. That’s something that we’re encouraging them to do. Qlue’s primary consumer-facing offering is its mobile app, which has close to 12,000 downloads on Google Play. The app allows users to report common issues around the city, from potholes to illegally parked vehicles. The complaints, which include geo-tagging and a function to upload a photograph of the problem, are forwarded to the appropriate handling department in the government. According to Qlue Co-founder and CEO Rama Raditya, the platform is a far cry from the old way of doing things, and it promotes more communication between the people and the state. “It’s frustrating that people have social issues as simple as a pothole in front of their house, and they don’t even know where to report it,” he says. “That’s something that we are trying to encourage them to do.” Traditionally, problems with illegal parking or fires were handled within communities, with little to no intervention from municipal services. Flooding, a common occurrence in the fast-sinking capital, plagued low-lying areas of the city with alarming regularity. Raditya says that Qlue’s data intelligence helped the government to identify causes and alleviate flooding in most of the city’s worst-hit zones. The number of flood-prone points has reduced from 8000 to 450 through diligent garbage removal 54

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and other measures to prevent the city’s canals from overflowing. The startup placed first in the Public Empowerment Category of the 2019 World Government Summit Awards for Best Mobile Government Service for their work. These success stories have prompted Qlue to export this technology to the Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Government (B2G) sectors. Their corporate offerings include a dashboard with various data streams, a mobile workforce system called QlueWork, and QlueVision– the startup’s recently-deployed machine vision system. QlueWork allows field operators to report incidents to central command easily. For instance, the police forces of Jakarta and Palembang (a city on the island of Sumatra) employed the app to monitor the streets during the recent Asian Games. On a corporate level, employees can report intra-company incidents, such as theft, sanitation issues, or problems as simple as the Internet being down.

Origins

o-founders Raditya and Andre Hutagalung began exploring the idea for Qlue in 2014 after seeing hundreds of unanswered citizens’ complaints on social media. However, the idea behind the app began before that, when

Raditya had just returned from a decadelong stint in the U.S. “When I came back in 2007, it was kind of surprising,” he says. “There were many urbanization issues that I saw, like traffic, sanitation, illegal parking violations, and so on.” These observations eventually led to Qlue’s founding, supported by Raditya’s previous experience building similar solutions on top of Google Maps. Within a year of developing and launching the app, Qlue was receiving thousands of reports from around the city. The government also began working with Qlue on the Jakarta Smart City project: a command center reporting data from hundreds of sources. Soon enough, other organizations began to show interest as well, including the national police force, natural disaster agencies, provincial governments, and corporations. Qlue’s system has already been integrated into the patrolling and security systems of corporations like Sinar Mas Land and Agung Sedayu–two of Indonesia’s largest property developers. Security guards are equipped with devices that alert them when the AI identifies suspicious activity in the building’s CCTV feed. “We are entering into contracts with real estate and property developers to help them build smart buildings with AI, as well as use the mobile workforce app,” says Raditya. “Today, we are available in 20 cities, malls, hospitals, real estate developTop: Qlue Co-founder and CTO Rahim Yaseen (left) and Co-founder and CEO Rama Raditya. Photos courtesy of Qlue.

ments, and more.” Unlike other ambitious startups in this space, Qlue’s founders aren’t looking to expand the company outside of Indonesia at this time, preferring to focus their efforts on perfecting their system and doing all they can to improve their country. That’s not to say Qlue can’t be found elsewhere; resellers and distributors have begun to license the technology and export it to Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Another area where Qlue is applying their talent for data intelligence and crowdsourced damage reports is disaster response. When devastating flash floods struck the city of Bima in West Nusa Tenggara province in March, Qlue’s platform allowed citizens to report damaged infrastructure, missing persons, and shortages of food, water, and clothing. With up-to-date information about the situation readily available, authorities and non-governmental organizations were able to organize quickly and begin rebuilding the city. “There’s a lot of social issues being solved, especially with people getting super involved,” says Raditya. Earthquakes and tsunamis are frequent in Indonesia, which sits squarely in the path of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The deadly September 2018 earthquake and tsunami in Palu could have been detected earlier had a sophisticated sensor system Below: The Qlue Smart City app, which allows users to report problems directly to the city government and businesses, and share the information with neighbors. Photo courtesy of Qlue.

More data means more predictive analyses, and more decisions can be made. I think that’s what Jakarta needs to be working on right now. been set up as promised. However, incomplete data from the lone sensor in the region prompted the national geophysical agency, BMKG, to prematurely lift the tsunami warning. “Those sensors have to be managed by a private company,” says Raditya. “I think someone who’s focused on that system needs to take care of it and keep it maintained. It’s silly when those things are installed, and they don’t work.” The next step for Qlue in this area is building the technology to anticipate disasters, something Raditya says they are working on together with local universities.

Aspirations

aditya’s vision of a truly smart city is out of reach for Jakarta and most other cities in the world at the moment, primarily because it needs to be built from scratch. The Qlue team understood from the outset that their work in Jakarta would merely be corrective, and are directing their efforts toward conducting predictive analyses on everything from criminal activity to flooding. “Right now, it still needs a lot of improvement. The good thing is, the government is very supportive of the smart

city initiative. [They] want to have 100 smart cities by 2021,” says Raditya. The Jakarta Smart City initiative is one decisive step the government has taken to realize this goal. It captures 400 data sources, including GPS tracking of public buses, data from navigation app Waze, CCTV analytics, and Qlue’s data sources. These streams of information are enabling authorities to better understand and predict traffic, crowd density, and more, but Raditya believes greater efforts are needed in terms of installing sensors and gathering mobility information. “More data means more predictive analyses, and more decisions can be made,” he says. “I think that’s what Jakarta needs to be working on right now. There’s a lot of homework to do, which is exciting because we see these problems as opportunities for us to help Jakarta to become a smarter city.” As a local startup, Qlue hasn’t encountered barriers to data access and ownership, enjoying a greater-than-average level of trust. However, Raditya believes that this laissez-faire attitude toward data security and protection is a double-edged sword, as data is currently entirely unregulated in Indonesia. Using facial recognition as an example, he illustrates the differences in attitude between Indonesia and that of other nations. “In China, they embrace it. In the U.S., they don’t–it’s a privacy issue. But in Indonesia, there is no regulation yet,” he says. “That’s why it’s also good for us to help the government and provide insights on what needs to be regulated.” Qlue’s vision for its system of dashboards and workforce management apps is equally ambitious. They hope to connect clients’ dashboards to foster information exchange and collaboration between the public and private sectors. “I believe that will solve problems faster because you need to collaborate with others in order to solve social issues in the city. You can’t do it alone,” he says. The road ahead is not without obstacles. As Raditya says, there’s plenty of work to be done to create smarter and more efficient cities. Empowering citizens to connect with their governments is a step in the right direction, as is building a responsible population that someday–if Qlue has any say in the matter–might inhabit one of the smartest cities in the world. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

Photos courtesy of LyraVR

Virtual Visionaries L yraVR D

espite years of capturing headlines and attracting waves of venture capital, we’re still far from using virtual and augmented reality (AR/VR) in our day-today lives. But companies like LyraVR are getting us excited for what’s to come. What began as a personal project by co-founders Dilun Ho, Ian Stead, and Jean Marais transformed into a mixed reality game that allows players to experience music in an entirely new way. You begin by selecting an instrumental ‘node,’ which can be duplicated or combined with other nodes to create a beat or melody. Other features–such as changing the pitch, pulling out a piano or drum set, and

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July 2019

adding sound filters–are accessible via the dashboard. The inspiration behind the world of Lyra is drawn from synesthesia, a rare perceptual phenomenon where one’s cognitive pathways are linked in unique ways. One common manifestation is when an individual perceives sounds as colors and shapes–known as chromesthesia. By conceptualizing notes and beats in a dynamic, three-dimensional space, Lyra is sure to inspire creativity and open doors for how we understand musical composition. The Lyra team believes that we’re only scratching the surface of AR/VR technol-

ogy, as its applications extend far beyond the entertainment realm. They are bringing Lyra into classrooms, recently launching a pilot program with the New South Wales Department of Education. –MC lyravr.com

Lyravr co-founder & ceo Dilun Ho

Photos courtesy of Misway

Product pioneers Misway

Misway Founder and CEO Sonic Chen

isway Tech Founder Sonic Chen isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. Self-confessed “cutting-edge gadgets addicts,” he and his team have developed a range of products that use AI and machine learning to provide real-time translation. Their products include the Smark M1 Modular Translator (bottom left), Smark M5 Handheld Translator, Aibuds P4 Translation Earbuds (bottom right), and T89 Smart Wristband with Built-in TWS Earbuds. Aibuds stands out as especially disruptive for its ease-of-use, facilitating communication for travelers and those looking to

learn a new language. Users simply connect the device to a smartphone, download the app, and speak into the Aibuds, which then generate the audio and written translation in two seconds. Chen’s hope for the device is to “keep people safe when they travel abroad.” Misway’s products use a Neural Machine Translation model, which allows the output to be more accurate and adjustable according to different contexts, such as accent and dialect. The company is the first of its kind in China and has obtained several patents for its speech recognition and synthesis technology, winning software and hardware awards in the pro-

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cess. The devices currently support 36 languages. Chen’s vision for the company in the next three to five years is to continually scale up their R&D to launch devices that are even simpler to operate and more convenient to carry. The challenge to realizing these goals is the significant development time and cost. Compared to other companies on the market, Misway is unique in its dedication to make translated conversations feel natural, making us feel one step closer to the kind of seamless experience we expect to see in science fiction movies. –MC miswaytech.com

The AI/ML space is full of magic and it’s an unknown world we’ve yet to explore. I think committing to research and development can get us there. Sonic Chen

July 2019

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Inspiring Youth Leaders Scott Millar

t’s one thing to found a startup while still in high school, but another to be able to scale it into a meaningful and sustainable business. At only 14 years of age, Brisbane-based Scott Millar founded his first company selling hashtag keyrings. By 15, he was selling thousands of keyrings a month, which provided him with valuable experience and ignited his passion for entrepreneurship. His next venture materialized after he came across a Youtube video tutorial about how to make holograms out of CD cases. Millar was immediately drawn to the technology and founded BOP Industries in 2015. The company has since become a leading provider of hologram displays for global brands, including Audi, NEC, and GHD. Motivated by how BOP impacted his life and witnessing the gap between classroom learning and the skills he gained as a tech entrepreneur, Millar founded BOP Education in 2018. With a focus on innovation and STEM education, the program has worked with over 16,000 students to

date, who hail from his native Australia and around the world. What’s inspiring about Millar’s story is not only that he’s a young a leader in the field of hologram content–a market that’s projected to be worth US$3.57 billion globally by 2020 (Markets and Markets)– it’s also about his drive to encourage other young people to take a risk and create something new. He believes it’s up to his generation to address the world’s most pressing problems, and that entrepreneurialism is the right place to start. Looking to the future, he wants to see BOP Education expand to reach students of all ages and hear entrepreneurs say that they got their start with the program. Millar has never allowed his age to hold back his ambitions, believing that young founders’ ability to give everything to their business is a reason for their success. While he doesn’t know exactly where he’ll be in five years, he hopes he’ll be making a difference in people’s lives. –MC iamscottmillar.com

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My advice for students who want to give entrepreneurship a shot would be to just start and to start small. There is never going to be a perfect time, and the sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to develop the skills you need to succeed.

Photo courtesy of BOP Industries

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Photo courtesy of HelpMeSee

Grassroots Innovators HelpMeSee

ataracts are the leading cause of global blindness. Of the over 100 million people who experience cataract-related vision impairment and blindness, 90% reside in developing countries. Often, sufferers are unable to escape the cyclical marginalization brought on by their inability to work and provide educational opportunities for the next generation. Founded in 2010 by the late Al Ueltschi and his son, James Ueltschi, HelpMeSee is an international non-profit organization working to eliminate the backlog in cataract surgery. Before HelpMeSee, Al founded FlightSafety International (FSI)–the world’s leading aviation training company under Berkshire Hathaway– and co-founded Orbis International, a non-profit ‘Flying Eye Hospital’ that connects volunteer ophthalmologists with sufferers of avoidable blindness in developing countries. FSI’s simulation-based training program inspired the development of a VR eye surgery simulator to train surgeons to perform Manual Small-Incision Cataract Surgery (MSICS), which is a lowrisk procedure with an average cost of US$150. HelpMeSee launched their six-day Sclerocorneal Tunnel Construction Course (STCC) in March 2019, and is training surgical residents and practicing surgeons from top teaching hospitals in India and China to perform MSICS. Since its founding, HelpMeSee has facilitated more than 250,000 sight-restoring operations throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean–a number that’s set to take off through the STCC program. In addition to the organization’s tech-driven approach, what makes HelpMeSee exceptional is its efforts to create a holistic solution, which includes empowering local partners to carry out post-operation support and standardizing supply chain and evaluation practices among medical professionals. HelpMeSee’s mission is to train 30,000 surgeons to reach millions of patients, putting an end to this preventable public health crisis. –MC helpmesee.com

HelpMeSee co-founder Al Ueltschi

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July 2019

HelpMeSee co-founder James Ueltschi

Case S tudy Dr. Haddy Sohna

r. Haddy Sohna (pictured on the right) is a second-generation nurse in The Gambia. Sohna was trained by a HelpMeSee medical officer as part of her studies in Surgical Ophthalmic Nursing, and has since performed more than 500 cataract surgeries. She is now one of the country’s leading cataract surgeons. Sohna says that listening to her patients’ stories is the most fulfilling aspect

of her work. She is pictured with Iman Hussein, one of The Gambia’s leading educators, who, at 75-years-old, was still managing a school that he started in the

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city’s capital of Banjul–until he started losing his sight. His surgery was a success and he has since returned to teaching, which he considers to be his life’s purpose.

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I don’t need to rely on anyone. I can go on my own again. Iman Hussein

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Gender Game Changers Jane Sun

ntrepreneurial spaces within Asia still remain predominantly male, but women like Jane Sun are continually working to create opportunities for future generations of female leaders. CEO of Ctrip Group–the second-largest online travel company in the world–Sun cites female empowerment as a core part of her personal mission statement, and has long leveraged her position to that effect. Founded in 1999, Ctrip Group provides travel services, such as ticketing, accommodation and tours. Behind the scenes at this travel giant, more than half of the workforce is female, including one-third of the senior management. Progressive female-friendly policies have been introduced as incentives; not only are employees given education subsidies and taxi services, they are also reimbursed for egg-freezing procedures so they aren’t forced to delay their careers for childbirth. For Sun, the journey has not been easy; her gender

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has been a hurdle in the past. Recalling her first visit to Japan as CFO, she recounts how her counterparts overlooked her while greeting Ctrip’s executives: “They were not trying to hurt my feelings. They just thought that I was an assistant.” Ctrip Group has further consolidated its position as a socially responsible company through its heavy involvement in international charity work, having donated to hospitals in war-torn areas of the Middle East and instituted hunger-alleviation programs in West Africa. Sun’s efforts within these spheres cement her position as a game changer within the startup world. She is confident the company’s optimistic growth prospects will support its socially responsible business practices: “I know that we, Ctrip Group, will continue to give back to the world.” –KA ctrip.com

Photo courtesy of Ctrip

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As a female leader in the technology industry, my mission is to promote gender equality within the workplace, to inspire females to make advances in their career development, and to work towards female empowerment.

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July 2019

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Photo courtesy of Launchgarage

Startup BFF Jay Fajardo

deas don’t hold much stand-alone importance if entrepreneurs don’t possess the ability to execute them to fruition. According to Launchgarage CEO Jay Fajardo (pictured), these abilities can be cultivated through collaborative efforts with industry peers. After all, it isn’t only the ideators that lay the foundations of a successful startup, but also friends from the community who support them. Armed with the vision to “promote a culture of innovation from the grassroots,” Fajardo co-founded Launchgarage–a tech 64

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innovation hub that aims to rejuvenate the Philippines’ startup ecosystem by facilitating collaboration between aspiring and established entrepreneurs. As a co-working space, Launchgarage brings together a vibrant community of business-minded professionals, providing them with the opportunity to exchange knowledge and insight. It also boasts an extensive global network that its community can access; expert investors and entrepreneurs draw upon their own experiences to mentor young founders who are witnessing the Philippines’ digital rise. Fajardo himself is considered a thought leader within the Philippines’ tech startup ecosystem, with decades of experience under his belt. He has continually used his position as a serial entrepreneur to benefit the community, evidenced by his role

as a strategic adviser for multiple startups and his participation in tech conferences around the world. In addition, he is a staunch believer in mobilizing the youth to lead future growth, stating, “It’s important to inspire people to build solutions. Engaging the youth very early is important so that we can steer them away from a culture of complacency and dependence, and give them the skills and confidence to aim for audacious goals.” With an advisory portfolio of 25 startups to its name, Launchgarage has set itself apart as a truly supportive platform. In the coming years, it is gearing up to expand as an accelerator and grow its network of mentors, continuing to cultivate a culture of innovation and growth. –KA launchgarage.com

Fast-Track Accelerators

appworks founding partner Jamie Lin

AppWorks

hile many of us saw the proliferation of social media platforms as a leap forward in global connectivity, Jamie Lin (pictured) had already foreseen the threat that the conquest of software could pose to Taiwan’s hardware-reliant economy. Hardware commodification could very likely push many of its industries into obsolescence, which Lin was determined to prevent. He wanted to build a platform that would harness entrepreneurial potential to facilitate the country’s transition into software-based industries. Lin’s vision eventually culminated in the establishment of AppWorks, which is now one of the most active startup accelerators in Asia. Since 2010, it has fostered 328 startups and 925 founders, having collectively generated US$2.5 billion in revenues and created over 9,000 jobs. AppWorks’ success comes from its founder-centric approach; it prioritizes the people behind the scenes, rather than the startup itself. Teams have access to a tight-knit community of mentors and alumni that not only helps them refine their ideas, but provides support during crucial stages of growth. AppWorks recently scaled down its focus to AI and blockchain. While these industries may be in the nascent stages of their development, Lin firmly believes that they are going to bolster future economic growth. “We narrowed the focus to remind founders how important these paradigm shifts are, and we want to help support the founders that are working on building the future,” he explains. Continuing on this trajectory, AppWorks hopes to accelerate 300 startups within the next three to five years, with the ambitious goal of having four of these become unicorns. Given its history of success, this goal doesn’t seem far-fetched. –KA appworks.tw Photo courtesy of AppWorks JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

Co-working space champions Greenhouse

reenhouse co-founders Drew Calin and Vicknesh R. Pillay met in business school and found that they were both enamored with the co-working movement. They were also passionate about market mobility, especially within Southeast Asia (SEA), so they decided to combine the two and create one solution for brands entering and scaling within these markets. As a social impact-driven co-working space, Greenhouse runs several environmentally-conscious initiatives, including having a zero-waste policy providing locally-sourced vegetarian snacks in the pantry, and planting a tree for every member. They also frequently host sustainability-driven events. However, promoting sustainability in fast-growth markets is not always easy. Greenhouse faced many challenges when trying to segregate and recycle their waste. Additionally, the healthy food they provide is not always well-received. Nev-

“

ertheless, Greenhouse continues to push for environmental awareness and education among their members and the wider community. Shortly after opening their first location in Jakarta, Calin and Pillay launched the Greenhouse Booster Program to connect members with relevant and qualified business providers. The program covers everything from legal services to accounting, pitch deck reviews, customer relationship management, and more. Greenhouse aspires to expand across SEA in the coming years, as they plan to open locations in the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam. Simultaneously, the company has started looking into other emerging markets, including South America and Africa. Looking to the future, the founders will continue to strive for creating social impact in every market they operate, and ultimately, become a global company. –KC greenhouse.co

Our spaces are designed for wellness through an abundant flow of natural light and greenery, as we know that happier employees are more productive and that has a ripple effect on businesses and society as a whole. Greenhouse Co-founder and CEO Drew Calin

greenhouse co-founder & CEO Drew Calin

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July 2019

Greenhouse Co-founder Vicknesh R. Pillay

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Photo courtesy of Greenhouse

Photo courtesy of Giant Leap Fund 68 66

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July 2019

Impact investing Heroes Giant Leap Fund

iant Leap Fund is Australia’s first venture capital fund that is 100% dedicated to investing in impact startups. The fund was founded by Will Richardson in 2016, where his aim was to bring about a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable world through the medium of investment. Ultimately, the fund’s mission is to inspire the next generation to build purpose-driven businesses that work toward a better future. One of their most notable portfolio companies is Full Cycle Bioplastics. The company works on an elegant closed-loop solution that diverts harmful waste from landfills and transforms it into a plastic-like material. This material replaces the use of harmful oil-based plastics and can be broken down organically. Along with its tangible environmental efforts, the company also creates commercial value at the waste management and material production end. Hence, it embodies Giant Leap’s ideology brilliantly. In the long-term, Giant Leap’s goal is to make the phrase ‘impact investing’ disappear, as the firm hopes it will become the norm for all forms of investment. While the team acknowledges that this will take time, they believe the market is heading in the right direction, stating that the renewed focus on corporate ethics, from both companies and investors around the globe, is a crucial step for achieving this vision. –KC giantleapfund.vc

“

We’re confident in our hypothesis that impact-focused businesses deliver greater returns for investors over time, and feel we can prove this through our fund.

”

Giant Leap Fund Managing Director Will Richardson

Left to right: Managing Director Will Richardson, Analyst Charlie Macdonald, and Investment Manager Rachel Yang. July 2019

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COVER STORY

Jumpstart Awards Runners Up Startup of the year Tessa Therapeutics Tessa Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech company that is working to revolutionize cancer treatment through innovative immunotherapy. The company’s core platform technology uses a type of immune cells called the Virus-Specific T cell, which have shown early efficacy in

cancer treatment, and clinical trials are already being carried out in several leading institutions throughout the U.S. Tessa Co-founder Dr. Malcolm Brenner is an internationally-renowned clinical scientist who began exploring the potential of this type of treatment over three

decades ago at Baylor College of Medicine. He co-founded Tessa with Andrew Koo and Francis Chua, with the mission to introduce a portfolio of next-generation therapies that are accessible and give cancer patients a new lease of life. tessatherapeutics.com

grassroots innovators Bank of Culture Lighting up the sky with over 100,000 lanterns, the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival is a sight to behold and is deeply rooted in Taiwan’s history. Founded by Shao AiTing (pictured in the middle) in 2016, Bank of Culture is putting an eco-friendly twist on the tradition by creating lanterns that are made only of upcycled paper and peanut oil. They burn entirely in midair and could drastically reduce the potential harm on the environment and wildlife resulting from the hundreds of thousands of lanterns released at Pingxi and across Taiwan each year. bankofculture.com

Photo courtesy of Bank of Culture

Inspiring Youth Leaders Valerie Pang

Gender game changers Georgianna Carlos

Startup BFF Acceler8

A recent graduate of Yale-NUS College, Valerie Pang was only 19 years old when she co-founded SDI Academy–a social enterprise that empowers migrants and refugees by equipping them with the tools to integrate into their new communities. The organization provides vocational, linguistic, and technological training to shift the narrative of immigrant groups away from social and professional isolation. SDI currently operates in four countries and has trained over 6,600 students. sdi-academy.com

Georgianna Carlos has diﬀerentiated herself as a true innovator with the establishment of her her pet-care company Fetch! Naturals. Stumped by her pet’s persistent skin condition, which only worsened with chemical-laden mainstream cures, she decided to take matters into her own hands, and developed a line of sustainably-sourced products–now sold to over 30 locations in the Philippines. Her other venture is a shared workspace, MyOﬃce, which caters to over 500 members. fetchnaturals.com

Founded by Mikko Barranda, Carlo Coronel, Bryan Cuison and Albert Goh, Acceler8 by UnionSPACE is a co-working space and event platform located in Makati City. BlockchainSPACE is an event series that exemplifies Acceler8’s eﬀorts to elevate the country’s rapidly expanding startup ecosystem. Together with SCI, it organized 36 BlockchainSPACE events in one year, serving as a launchpad for those who are interested in entering the industry or want to learn more about the technology. acceler8.ph

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fast-track accelerators Accelerating Asia Accelerating Asia believes that “entrepreneurs are one of humanity’s greatest catalysts for positive change.” Founded by Craig Dixon (left) and Amra Naidoo (right), the early-stage accelerator and seed fund aligns its investment thesis with six of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations, including gender equality, decent work opportunities and economic growth, and innovation and infrastructure. The firm is the only independent startup accelerator program in Singapore and is known for its founder-friendly funding terms. acceleratingasia.com

Photo courtesy of Accelerating Asia

impact investing heroes Endeavor Catalyst

Virtual VISIONARIES Hiverlab

product pioneers Origami Labs

Endeavor Catalyst is the co-investment vehicle of Endeavor, a non-profit organization that supports high-impact startups from around the globe. Led by Managing Director Allen Taylor, Endeavor Catalyst currently has more than $110 million under management, and has made 106 investments across 24 high-growth, emerging markets since 2012. By investing in startups from around the world, including Indonesia’s Bukalapak, Spain’s Cabify, and Colombia’s Rappi–which are all unicorns–the firm hopes to prove that innovation is global, and not just limited to Silicon Valley. endeavor.org

Founded by Shutao Jiang, Hiverlab is a virtual, augmented, and mixed reality production company that has worked with the likes of Samsung, Huawei, Alicloud, and Singtel. In addition to disrupting the tourism and communications industries, Hiverlab also strives to create social impact through storytelling and education. Encouraging the development of immersive technology and media, the team regularly conducts workshops in schools, companies, and other organizations to evangelize the medium and discuss the importance of social responsibility in technological development. hiverlab.com

Founded in 2015 by four MBA classmates (CEO Kevin Johan Wong, CMO Emile Chan, COO Marcus Leung-Shea, CTO Yan Shun Li) from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Origami Labs is a hardware company that aims to reinvent how we interact with wearable technology. The company’s first product, ORII, is a smart ring that uses bone conduction technology to allow users to make calls and activate voice assistants. Following ORII’s success, including closing a US$2.5 million round last year, the team is pioneering new tools for communication that are sure to surprise us. orii.io

co-working space champions Eaton Workshop Founded by filmmaker Katherine Lo, Eaton Workshop is a workspace and club for innovators, activists, progressive thinkers, and creatives. Eaton’s cultural and wellness programming focuses on creating a channel for socially-conscious leaders to share their ideas. Events include sunrise yoga, community meditation, and talks about thriving mindfully in the city. The club’s exploration of new-age practices geared towards the mind-body connection is a unique oﬀering in Hong Kong, where such experiences are not often visible, opening doors to those who hope to explore a new side of themselves. –MC eatonworkshop.com Photo courtesy of Eaton Workshop

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FEATURES

Our Brave New World The challenges of programming morality into artificial intelligence By KHADIJA AZHAR

ith AI permeating every imaginable aspect of our lives, the future conceived by 20th century dystopian literature no longer seems implausible. While these pre-modern narratives focused largely on red-eyed alien robots bent on destroying humanity, the issues underpinning AI ethics now extend far beyond Asimov’s three laws of robotics or Orwellian concerns about thought policing. Actions as simple as a Google search raise moral quandaries that most people couldn’t comprehend just a decade ago. Human decision-making mechanisms ensure that societies remain cohesive and functional. With AI becoming a more active participant in society, we expect that it will also conform to both the spoken and unspoken norms that govern our understanding of morality. But these systems don’t always follow our moral codes. In 2017, Amazon had to abandon its AI-powered recruitment system that seemed to favor men over women, replicating the gender bias pervasive within the tech industry. Even tools created by

AI is an exponential amplifier of all things human. It amplifies the good in us–that’s what we are trying to do–but it also amplifies the bad in us.

the justice system to institute fairer sentences have been criticized for bias against people of color. Of course, discrimination isn’t the only ethical concern posed by AI. Mass surveillance techniques have been labeled as breaches of privacy, and the use of AI in warfare is repeatedly criticized. The solution seems simple enough: program robots to make moral decisions and reject immoral ones. However, human beings are convinced that our ability to emote and empathize is impossible for a machine to replicate. This belief drives the common misconception that translating moral subjectivity into precise lines of code is necessary, yet impossible. Were that the case, the hope of creating ethical machines would remain a mere pipe dream. Fortunately, it isn’t. According to Dr. Dekai Wu, an ethicist who teaches Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), the assumption that morality and machines are incompatible couldn’t be further from the truth. “The real world is not rule-based. As soon as you try to write more than a few hundred lines of code to describe the real world, you find yourself completely tied Left: President of the Hong Kong AI Society Eric Thain. Photo courtesy of Eric Thain. Right: Ethicist and HKUST Computer Science and Engineering Professor Dr. Dekai Wu. Photo courtesy of HKUST.

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July 2019

up in knots by paradoxes,” he adds. As a result, probabilistic machine learning approaches have surpassed rulebased imperative approaches and even allowed scientists to map emotions onto machines. That means AI could realistically be taught how to make moral decisions grounded in empathy. Thus, the problem isn’t that ethics and algorithms are inherently irreconcilable; in fact, it’s far more complex than that. “AI is an exponential amplifier of all things human. It amplifies the good in us–that’s what we are trying to do–but it also amplifies the bad in us,” Wu explains. With the advancement of machine learning, AI has taken the form of a ‘black box,’ where it can function outside of what programmers can foresee. Its reasoning isn’t apparent or open to inspection. The most frightening part of looking inside this ‘black box’ is anticipating what might be staring back: a reflection of our shortcomings as a society. AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum; bias is fed into it through training data that replicates existing human prejudices. Amazon’s hiring mechanism failed because the AI was provided datasets that included resumes submitted mostly by men, so it internalized the idea that men were preferable to women. Similarly, judicial forecasting for recidivism is discriminatory because predictive algorithms use datasets that show higher arrest rates for people of color. Wu is hopeful that future AI will be self-correcting. In fact, research is being conducted on machine learning mechanisms that detect bias in data, circumventing the possibility of them internalizing unethical assumptions. However, eliminating the replication of bias within AI doesn’t do anything to tackle bias as a

standalone societal issue. This discrepancy implies that it isn’t the machines whose morality we need to police, but rather that of the people behind those machines. Recently, Google dissolved its Advanced Technology External Advisory Council [where Wu was a member] after facing backlash for the inclusion of Kay Coles James, the President of a notoriously anti-LGBTQ right-wing think tank. In addition, The Partnership on AI–a collaborative organization formed by Google, Amazon, IBM, Facebook, and Microsoft to oversee AI ethics–has faced scrutiny for its mostly Caucasian, male staff. Smart weaponry developer Axon has also received criticism for its ethics board, which includes numerous members of law enforcement, an institution that is famous for its misuse of the very same public safety technology that the company produces. Examples of such localized rulemaking are rampant within the sphere of AI ethics, despite scientists advocating for a globalized approach. That is not to say that the efforts made by these companies are entirely futile. With AI still in its nascent stage of development, it’s essential to formulate guidelines for its deployment that are both generalized and enforceable. While private companies aren’t fully transparent in their assessment of these internal ethics boards, they have started a long overdue conversation about ethics that was somehow overlooked in the global race to adopt AI systems.

Eric Thain, President of the AI Society in Hong Kong, remains skeptical. He advocates for codes that are not only fully transparent but formulated by independent institutions. “[Internal codes of conduct] are very self-serving. Any time there are controversies surrounding the big tech giants, they bring out their codes of ethics almost like a shield.”

At a time where humanity needs the tools to understand what AI will do to our culture and to ask ourselves the most fundamental questions about what humanity is and what we want it to be, we cannot be crippling our population intellectually.

The public sector also has a significant role to play in this space. According to Wu, the most urgent action it can take at this stage is to fund research to dissect the paradoxes that obstruct the development of ethical machine learning systems. He stresses the importance of questioning the assumptions that govern internal codes of ethics, and analyzing July 2019

the unintended consequences of the seemingly prosaic tasks that we assign to machines every day. Wu also proposes an overhaul of the education system to address the false dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences, which leads to myopia within the general population. He emphasizes that scientists and engineers need to study the humanist disciplines to tackle the repercussions that are coming into view as AI becomes “inevitably ascendant.” “At a time where humanity needs the tools to understand what AI will do to our culture, and to ask ourselves the most fundamental questions about what humanity is and what we want it to be, we cannot be crippling our population intellectually,” he adds. Perhaps individuals play the most critical role in the ethics of AI. The machines that we use on a day-to-day basis, from our phones to our smart coffee makers, are so influential that they have taken shape as members of society. Improper usage of such systems could lead to a disruption that threatens the preservation of our human dignity and rights. It’s imperative to understand that technology can embed certain assumptions through its interactions with us. The first step to ensuring the harmonious coexistence of man and machine is to address any and all of the questions that arise in the process of teaching values, many of which will involve challenging the assumptions that drive our morality. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

QUICK TAKES

Technology’s Effect on Childhood Brain Development The good and the bad By DHRUVIN PATEL

he human brain is the most complex structure in the body. Its journey begins in the womb and continues throughout the life of a person. However, it is during the early stages of life that the brain develops the most, and its effects can last a lifetime. The human brain consists of around 100 billion neurons at birth, most of which have yet to connect to networks (University of Maine). By the age of three, a child’s brain can create more than a million neuron connections per second–a progression that’s nothing short of remarkable (Zero to Three). The surrounding environment crucially influences children’s brain development. With gadgets permeating the modern environment, technology has undeniably affected children’s mental development, both positively and negatively. How and to what extent are essential questions that must be asked by society as a whole, and not just parents.

Imagination he evolution of toys and entertainment is the first place to start when looking at how gadgets can modify a child’s environment. In the past, childhood activities consisted of playing hide and seek, riding bikes, and make-believe; the canvas of playtime was so blank that children became experts at invention. However, the modern child does not have such tools for play. Instead, most outdoor games have been replaced by their digital counterparts. Not only can children play sports or find treasures on screens, but these games also create imaginary worlds for children to inhabit. The American Academy of Pediatrics’s guidelines for children’s media use recommends less screen time because “they desperately need more free time to ignite their imaginations, develop a sense of wonder, and discover their passions and purpose.” On the flip side, video games prime the brain to develop higher visual-spatial reasoning capabilities and faster reaction times. Research conducted on adolescent girls who play video games have found physical increases of cortex thickness in two related regions (BMC Research Notes).

Attention n the past, children spent considerable time taking part in activities that required active participation, such as reading. It was not only possible, but necessary, to develop and sustain focus on one task. Further demand for recollection by such activities would prove to be sufficient stimuli for memory development. Typical activities in a modern child’s environment,

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such as streaming shows on Netflix or gaming, encourage constant distraction. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that we become increasingly reliant on “the Internet to support and extend our memory” with more use, which is known as ‘cognitive offloading.’ But according to some researchers, this decrease in memory retention in children may not be all bad. They found that not having to remember information frees up the brain for higher process functions, such as contemplation, critical thinking, and problem-solving (Psychology Today).

Addiction any video games and mobile apps are built around routine and reward interaction. The rewards can be the number of ‘likes’ or followers on social media, or high scores in a video game. Dopamine and oxytocin, which are associated with neurological reward systems, are released each time the interaction occurs (International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine). This fact, paired with the devices’ deliberately-structured interfaces that encourage routine engagement, leads to faster and more severe addiction, especially among children. Research has shown that amygdala-striatal systems are more sensitive in children who frequently use social media or play video games, which is indicative of higher susceptibility to addiction (Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging).

Sensory development echnology has played a significant role in the inactivity of children, and decreased interaction with their physical environment can delay sensory development (Moving to Learn). Sensory stimulation by gadgets is limited to audio and visual engagement, typically occurring chaotically. However, there’s a silver lining, as such stimuli are used to aid sensory development in autistic children (Indiana Resource Center for Autism).

ike most technology, devices are intended to benefit their users. We must, however, recognize that their effects have not played out exactly as planned. With knowledge of the influence of technology on children’s brain development, informed and balanced decisions can be made about their future.

QUICK TAKES

Revamping Retail Smart Retail incubator Eureka Nova wants to reinvent the consumer experience By NAYANTARA BHAT and KHADIJA AZHAR

he future of consumerism and retail is often imagined as a world where our needs are anticipated and met, customized to suit our exact preferences. This vision means more than online shopping: think stores with curated sounds and smells, fitting rooms with AI personal stylists, and even cashier-less stores where facial recognition technology allows you to pay for your purchases. Some of these technologies are already in use. Skincare brand SK-II recently announced a smart retail integration that can scan a product picture from a shopper’s smartphone and direct the customer to the right part of the store. From the retailer’s side, many are using beacons that can send product or promotional information to smartphones in the area. As is often the case with disruptive innovation, startups are left to fill gaps in the industry. In the case of the cohort of startups from Eureka Nova’s Smart Retail incubation program, they’re targeting everything from creating custom apparel using body scanning technology to VR-powered interior design. The program is backed by one of Hong Kong’s leading conglomerates, New

World Development (NWD), so the startups have been able to take advantage of NWD’s department stores and industry connections to pilot their technologies. This is Eureka Nova’s second cohort, and the first in partnership with Chinese tech titan, Tencent. Featuring 15 startups (pictured on the left), this cohort hints at the promising future of smart retail. ConfigReality has developed a “mixed reality redirected walking algorithm,” which allows users to physically explore virtual spaces by altering their sense of direction and location. It uses VR to transcend spatial constraints and enlarge a given area, regardless of its physical boundaries. Such technology can potentially improve marketing mechanisms within the retail industry. For example, interior designers can use it to design spaces for their customers to interact with in a virtual setting. Homey also uses virtual environments to help customers design their own spaces with products they can purchase within the app. It promises an immersive VR experience that renders location immaterial; customers can alter any aspect of their virtual showroom to fit their preferences. Once satisfied with the design, they can then purchase their preferred furnishings, completing an effortless O2O experience. Online fashion platform Kalon Couture is another startup working to transform the retail industry. Traditionally, online shoppers are often met with sizing and availability issues. Kalon intends to sidestep this pain point by using 3D body scanning and automatic patterning technology to create made-to-measure garments. Each customer is given a personal 3D avatar that they can use to try on outfits virtually. Not only does the company promise a perfect fit, but it also allows July 2019

access to designers from all over the world, providing all designers an opportunity to profit from their craft. Other startups in the cohort include: •

Moodie: Research engine that analyzes customer responses to supplement survey data

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Smart Retail: IoT automated retail, interactive marketing, and big data platform

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GoodScan: Smart logistics and warehouse management system

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Egaga: Smart hotel services

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Yanwei: Beverage platform that solves the last-mile problem of dining

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Yundong: Cloud service operator for offline merchants

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Vision Intelligent: Smart image-recognition technology for the retail industry (pictured on the right)

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C-Radar: Commercial intelligence platform based on big data and AI

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Coolhobo: Mobile AR platform used in stores to make shopping effortless

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Infinite Innovation: One-stop solution for unstaffed retail store operators

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Square Ark: Social commerce platform and marketplace

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Loop: Free-to-use digital marketing platform for SMEs

Photos courtesy of Eureka Nova. JUMPSTART MAGAZINE

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July 2019

Birds of a Feather Inntech brings its interpretation of co-living to Hong Kong

hile a strong network doesn’t guarantee success, it certainly bolsters startup growth. The startup ecosystem has already made great strides in community building with the emergence of co-working spaces, but companies like Inntech believe that there’s still more ground to cover. Inntech provides entrepreneurs with co-living spaces that are not only affordable, but conducive to their professional growth. Founding Partner Ivan Ivanov breaks down his rationale for bringing the Silicon Valley model to Hong Kong. How did you come to found Inntech? I lived in a co-living space in Silicon Valley for a while. A couple of investors, a guy sitting on the boards of seven companies–all of them were living in this shared house. When I asked them why, they told me it’s all about the community. They could meet new people, get new projects, and exchange ideas, so it was no longer about sharing the house. When I came back to Hong Kong, I realized there was no co-living space like this. I talked to people from the startup ecosystem and they seemed excited about the idea, but were skeptical because of Hong Kong’s real estate prices. Luckily, I found a house with a suit-

able layout and affordable rental price in Ma Wan, the small island between Lantau Island and Kowloon, and a partner and investor in just three days. Why would people opt for co-living spaces over traditional residential arrangements? Anyone can start a co-living space, but what we want to do is to build a community of startups and entrepreneurs. People are coming, not just to live, but to access the networking opportunities, and meet potential partners, mentors, and investors. We are also planning events and workshops for residents that introduce them to the local ecosystem, and to educate them about the kinds of opportunities and support that can be obtained in Hong Kong. It’s hard to build a startup from scratch; you need a network that can help you. Why do you think Hong Kong is a good place to introduce co-living spaces? The concept of the project, which is not only applicable in Hong Kong, is to create co-living spaces in areas where capital flow

meets talent flow, and where prices for real estate are high. In Hong Kong, there are numerous incubation and acceleration programs, but not many provide accommodation for their participants, as living costs are really high. Hong Kong is only a starting point for the global co-living platform and community we are going to build. More locations in Asia–Taiwan, Japan, Mainland China– as well as collaborations with our U.S. partners are coming. We will also build a platform using blockchain technology, where potential tenants can book rooms and access additional services by purchasing credits or tokens. They can pay for accommodation and the services of local partners using these tokens, regardless of which space in the world they are based. We also hope to use this technology to develop electronic keys to enter the houses and rooms. What are the challenges of making co-living spaces in Hong Kong? We were lucky to find the house we did, but we’re also considering spaces in other areas. What we’ve found is that even if the premises are suitable, the prices are really high. This isn’t ideal because we want to provide startups with affordable accommodation. Do you have an application process or is it a normal tenancy agreement? Potential residents have to fill out a form and then I interview them to understand their background. We want people that can contribute to the community and are interested in the experience of living together with other entrepreneurs. If it’s just a person looking for accommodation, we tend to reject them. We want to keep the quality of the community intact. –KA inntechasia.com

Inntech Partner Ivan Ivanov (top) and the company’s co-living house in Ma Wan, Hong Kong (right). Photos courtesy of Inntech. July 2019

Jumpstart Issue 26: The Jumpstart Awards Issue

Articles inside

The Great Internet of China, 20 Years On

How Lifestyle Branding is Eating the Tech World

Your 2019 Blockchain Survival Guide

Co-working’s Coming-of-Age

How Lifestyle Branding is Eating the Tech World

Power of the Collective