Months before RISE landed in Hong Kong, we knew this was going to be a very big deal for Asia, much less Hong Kong. Web Summit, the renowned organizer behind RISE, has put together some of the tech world’s largest conferences, gathering huge names and thousands of founders, developers, marketers and reporters at each event. With an event this big coming to our home city, we had to make the most of it!
We started the week taking advantage of any opportunity to learn from the experts, meet visiting startups and simply enjoy Hong Kong with them - after all, it’s a place we often take for granted!
Once Friday came, we were buzzing with excitement built up from the week’s events. It was a fun experience to see familiar faces we had met over late night #startupsiuyeh and various pre-conference meetups. Moreover, it was truly incredible to have 500 startups from all over the globe gathered right here in Wanchai!While at RISE, we were able to get acquainted with both startups new to us and catch up with longtime startup companions. Here are a few we wanted to highlight:
Lamplight Analytics - We love what this team is doing in the analytics space: They’re building a powerful platform focused on listening to online conversations happening in Asia!
Nanoleaf - Creators of “the world’s most energy efficient lightbulb”, this team is lighting up the lighting industry. (Pun intended)
Floship - A logistics ally for HK startups! We’ve personally seen how Floship understands the needs of startups. They’ve even helped us with shipping for our own Kickstarter campaign!
Soundbrenner - The team behind one of the world’s most advanced wearables for musicians. Made by musicians for musicians, Soundbrenner has a lot of people talking about their work!
Ezeecube - The makers of the “smart media center”, Ezeecube has been unstoppable since their impressive Indiegogo campaign. Their modular media player is a game-changer.
Dragon Law - Every business needs good legal counsel, especially startups, and Dragon Law has been a great resource for the HK startup community.
For us it was also very cool to see bigger, international startups like Singapore-based TradeGecko, who are tackling the challenges of inventory software, as well as members of Australia’s Xero, the revolutionary cloud-based accounting software for small businesses (like ours!) and New York’s Canary, the Kickstarter-funded wireless security system that has singlehanded changed traditional home security.
We were so excited to meet everyone who came by our booth. We had a range of team members attend RISE (from app development to manufacturing to accounting) so it was a rewarding experience for each of us to share what we are doing at Ambi Labs. In just one day, we met industrial designers from Kiev, engineering students from Hong Kong, property developers from India, and entrepreneurs from Thailand, Indonesia, Israel and more! A big “thank you” to all who came to visit our booth.
We are also happy to share that we won the PITCH competition! We have been completely overwhelmed by the encouragement we have received in the last few days. We were up against stiff competition with Soundbrenner and Prenetics, both of which are HK-based startups with impressive products, plenty of industry experience and passion to match. It was an honor to be chosen for the PITCH finals among Danny and Florian.We have an outstanding network of support through the HK startup community and appreciate how RISE underscored just how vibrant Asia’s startup ecosystem is. We are also indebted to media like e27, TechinAsia, The Bridge and StartupsHK, who not only covered the PITCH event but covered the entire RISE weekend and have been instrumental in sharing startup stories like ours.In the next two weeks we’ll be shipping out all remaining Kickstarter units and our pre-order units will be going out as well. #RISEConf came at just the right time, giving us some added momentum to keep moving forward. We really loved meeting so many new faces and can’t wait to have everyone back in HK in 2016!
