We were excited to meet the wonderful hardware startup participants that joined us on Asia Tour 2015 in Taipei, Beijing, and Shenzhen (August 16-24) and to learn more about the cool smart, connected devices that they are creating. During the tour we visited factories, including tier one manufacturers, leading eCommerce and IT brands, incubators, and investors. The tour began with a welcome dinner in Taipei to get everyone acquainted.
The selected participants came to us from 20 cities (Austin, Barcelona, Berlin, Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais), Boulder, Gijón, Hamilton (Ontario), Ljubljana, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York City, Oakland, Palo Alto, Paris, Portland, Provo, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver) and 9 countries (Australia, Brazil, Slovenia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States).
A number of the startups are alum or currently taking part in a variety of leading hardware incubators or accelerators including Boomtown, Fledge, HARDWARE.co, Highway1, R/GA, Startupbootcamp, StartX, and Techstars. They are award-winning: Best of CES 2014 & 2015, BetaPitch Global, ISPO Award – Product of the Year 2015/16, and many others. They’ve run successful crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
We are at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco and the Bay Area for a bit more than a week, connect with us to learn more about the tour and our other programs.
Understanding the manufacturing process from industry experts to scale innovation
The first leg of Asia Tour began in Taiwan where the participants had a chance to view assembly lines and gain firsthand insight into the hardware manufacturing process from leaders in the industry. The tour of manufacturers kicked off at Jabil Green Point’s facility at Taichung in central Taiwan, which specializes in consumer lifestyle, wearable tech, and mobile device manufacturing.
“I think it is incredibly useful for any hardware startup facing manufacturing issues––and in the age of crowdfunding, there are multitudes of new startups, including mine, that could really use this kind of exposure,” stated Arlene Ducao, of DuKorp, which makes MindRider Helmet that tracks your mental experience. “The tour is also a great firsthand introduction for any emerging product engineer or designer who wants to learn more about scaling their technology.”
After a tour of Jabil Green Point’s manufacturing facility and technology introductions the Asia Tour bus made its way to Hsinchu, Taiwan’s windy city, and to Holux, a manufacturer of GPS, RF, and more recently medical device products and solutions. We ended the day with a visit to Citrus (APCB), a multi-layer PCB factory, where we inspected PCB production lines and the Citrus team shared their tips on how hardware startups can most effectively reduce costs with PCB manufacturing in both Taiwan and China.
The second day of the tour began with a meeting at SGS, the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing, and certification company. Next up, the tour participants visited Quanta, one of the world’s largest contract manufacturers. They had a chance to individually introduce their projects and also be introduced to the capabilities and services offered by Quanta from leaders in various business units.
“This was a very rare opportunity for a startup company like mine to go inside some of the world’s top electronics manufacturers and learn how they can help new product developers,” said Burton Hamner, President of Hydrobee SPC, developer of the Hydrobee personal renewable USB power system. “We were all very impressed by the participation of the top managers of those companies.”
The second day culminated with the HWTrek Meetup in Taipei. Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Jason Yi-Bing Lin, spoke first at the event. The head of Google Taiwan, Lee-Feng Chien, gave a talk about the opportunities Software + Hardware development with Taiwan as a development hub. MediaTek Lab’s Mullen Wu introduced their development platforms and programs for hardware startups. The stars of the event, the startups introduced their projects to an audience of nearly 400. One of the highlights was Zack Bomsta, CTO and co-founder of Owlet Baby Care – developer of the Owlet Smart Sock for monitoring baby vitals, sharing of raising a $7 million series A round of funding hours before the company’s official announcement. The event ended with the opportunity to network with the more than 300 manufacturing and supply chain industry experts that attended.
Insights into Chinese consumer market for smart, connected devices from China’s innovators
After a day off for travel from Taipei to Beijing, we paid a visit to JD+ Milk House where JD Smart, the smart hardware ecosystem subsidiary of China’s leading e-commerce company JD.com, held an open house – JD+ Open Day – for the global hardware technology startups on the tour. HWTrek is working with JD Smart as a bridge to introduce innovative products from overseas hardware startups to the Chinese consumer on the JD+ platform.
Next up was a visit to Xiaomi, the innovative Beijing-based smartphone and connected consumer electronics company. Day one in Beijing ended with a visit to InnoConn, a division of Foxconn’s handset manufacturing unit FIH Mobile that helps hardware startups in the early stages through manufacturing of new innovative devices.
“I learned very good news, that most big companies realize that it’s time to give some attention to startups,” said David Chechelashvili, EVP of Business Development at NU.I.ON, developer of wide field-of-view 3D stereoscopic head mounted displays & heads up displays for Virtual Reality.
We began the second day in Beijing with a visit to Innovation Works, an early stage venture capital firm founded by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. The day continued with a visit to manufacturer and manufacturing services company Yandong Deli Electronics and ended at iResearch, an internet and tech market research firm where our participants learned more about the Chinese consumer market picking up from the JD+ Open Day.
“For us at H+, it was fantastic to come across all kinds of resources from VCs to manufacturers and even entering the Asian market,” said Dhruv Adhia, CTO of H+ Technology, developer of Holus – the world’s first interactive holographic platform and app ecosystem. “These are all mighty tasks and with the help of HWTrek, I feel very confident that it will immensely benefit us.”
About half the startups elected to join our optional day in Shenzhen the following Monday and assembled at HWTrek-Shenzhen, which will have its official opening this autumn, before setting off on company visits. First we visited Honpe Technology, a prototype manufacturing and product development company, and Sunrex, a leading manufacturer of Human Interface Devices.
Experiences shared, making connections with a vibrant hardware ecosystem
Raph Crouan, Managing Director and Founder of Startupbootcamp IoT (London) noted, “HWTrek gathered an amazing group of talented and passionate hardware entrepreneurs!” “Needless to say, I’d recommend this Asia Tour to anyone interested in grasping the complexity, variety and buzzing Asian hardware ecosystem”
“It has been an amazing experience – visiting some of the biggest manufacturers, meeting investors, and getting insights into the uprising Asian market,” said Felix Kochbeck, CEO and Co-founder of Luuv, maker of mechanical and electronic camera stabilizers. “All of that, together, in a group with other hardware startup founders is priceless. Great connections were made.”
“It is an eye-opening tour for us,” added Nattapon Chaimanonart, CEO and Founder of Ultra, Inc. maker
of Violet – a UV exposure tracker. “We had a chance to meet a lot of smart people and learn more about what and how they do things.”
Burton Hamner summed up the experience, “Finally, the mix of startup companies in the tour was great. I learned quite a lot talking with the other entrepreneurs. The time spent with the other startups is a very valuable component of the tour.”
We’ll be sharing more about the startups, their projects, and their experience during the tour in a forthcoming blog series.
