Recently, RISE took over the 3rd level of the HK convention centre for three days. More than 15,000 people attended talks, roundtables, and debates, and met hundreds of start-ups. Technically the conference showcased start-ups of all kinds, but there was definitely more focus on e-commerce, fin-tech, and software- or marketing- “as-a-service”.
I’ve never been to a conference before that was so focused on showcasing young companies, many of whom won their places through regional pitching competitions.
Their “microstands” rotated companies over the three days, allowing hundreds of early stage companies to pitch to potential customers, investors and fellow founders.
The energy was intense.
I was also impressed by RISE’s attempts to address the blatant gender gap in the tech space. There were discounts for women in tech, special roundtables and a concerted effort to have women up on stage. I left with a powerful new group of women in my corner.
Sadly though, there were only a handful of social or environmental impact businesses on display each day. They did include a few names that will hopefully become more familiar to you all in Season 2.
Hong Kong’s two female-run crowd-funding businesses, SparkRaise and Next Chapter, were both involved in RISE events. The young ladies of TechnovationHK, and their mentor extraordinaire, Brian Tang, got to pitch in front of the famous Gary Vee.
There was a bit more proof that young talent is being inspired to define success as more than being acquired by Google or HSBC.
MM Community (www.mmcommunity.co) is looking to leverage the concepts of social impact bonds and peer-to-peer lending to bring community-originated development to Myanmar. Strength India (http://strengthindia.org) is transforming from a charitable to a sustainable for-profit model to deliver feminine hygiene products to rural India.
Impact-minded start-ups may have been scarce on the expo floor, but the experts on stage from the traditional commercial world talked a lot about mission and impact. The language varied a bit, but the intent was the same as you’d hear from an impact investor.
Bay McLaughlin of brinc.io, an internet of things accelerator here in Hong Kong, urged founders to become obsessed with the problem they’re trying to solve, not their solution. In impact investing speak, that’s focusing on the social or environmental problem you’re trying to solve and developing a deep understanding of your beneficiaries.
You can see how this works in action by listening to the upcoming new episodes of Season 2, with extraordinary founders like Jeff Rotmeyer of ImpactHK.
Amr Awadallah, CTO and co-founder of big data software firm Cloudera, told a crowd of founders to “…find a mission, a purpose and get the whole team behind it” to ensure success. This is what we call being a mission-led organisation.
Wear your mission on your sleeve and make sure everyone is focused on achieving it. And that just might get you a stand at next year’s RISE.
About the author:
Amanda Williams joined #impact Podcast to help promote the social innovation sector and provide more content for changemakers. She arrived in Hong Kong from the UK where she worked in start-ups, innovation and impact investing. She is passionate about equality, the ocean, renewable energy, and baking.
