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Evernote and Boxed founders join US Taiwan Startup Forum and share the experience
North American Taiwanese Engineering Association (NATEA) and Taiwan Tech Arena Silicon Valley office (TTA SV) collaboratively host the U.S. Taiwan Startup Forum (UTSF) 2021. The event not only invites the co-founder of Evernote and CEO of mmhmm & All Turtle Phil Libin and the CEO of boxed Chieh Huang as keynote speakers, but also showcases 16 tech startups that were founded by Taiwanese and Taiwanese American entrepreneurs.
“This is a community event that helps to bridge minority founders, U.S. and Taiwan investors and the high-tech engineers,” said Rex Chen, president of NATEA Silicon Valley. While there are many startup pitch events in Silicon Valley, it is rare to offer a safe space for minority founders to learn and exchange ideas between Silicon Valley and Taiwan startup ecosystem.
To help Taiwanese entrepreneurs grow, in this year’s event, NATEA and TTA invite Evernote cofounder CEO of mmhmm & All Turtle Phil Libin and the CEO of boxed Chieh Huang to share the management tips and founding stories. For the startup pitch section, NATEA and TTA also invite 10 top venture capitalists as judges and give feedbacks to these startups.
Phil Libin, co-founder of Evernote, founded his fifth startup “mmhmm” in 2020. During the Covid pandemic, people spend more and more time doing virtual meetings. Phil found that virtual meeting tools lack interacting functions and make attendees boring, so he established mmhmm, which is a product trying to make video calls less boring by letting people add custom effects, backgrounds, and animations in the presentation. They launched the beta product in 42 days, and gained popularity. How can Phil spot the product-market fit precisely? ”After I launched mmhmm, a person told me that he is a public speaker, thanks to mmhmm he no longer give a discount for his virtual speech anymore because his speech in mmhmm is even greater than in person,” said Phil, “that’s what product-market fit means, the product makes a material economic impact.”
Boxed is an American online and mobile membership-free wholesale retailer. Founded in 2013, they plan to IPO through SPAC this year. Co-founder and CEO Chieh Huang share advice on how to lead the employees. He mentions the importance of teaching the employees what are the company’s visions. For example, he always tells the employees that they are not just selling the products; they are helping people. In the speech, Chieh also encourages founders that now is the great era to start new businesses. “Electricity took 46 years to widespread; TV took 26 years, but the internet merely took 7 years to become widespread, which means people are getting easier and easier to learn new tech, and this is the reason I still get excited about startups too,” said Chieh Huang.
The selected 16 startup teams were founded by notable tech industry leaders. For example, Taelor, an AI-powered menswear rental subscription service, was founded by Anya Cheng. With a flat monthly fee, Taelor’s customer can get styling service by both stylist and AI and wear 8 shirts per month without the commitment of buying them. Another promising startup founded by Kari Wu, a former Adobe product manager, creates a video tool app that helps produce professional quality video clips from mobile devices within seconds.
Some other startups such as A.V. Mapping and Allies were recently part of Berkeley SkyDeck, was named in Forbes as one of the top five U.S. university accelerators. A.V. Mapping has won the Red-Dot Awards for AI design, helps video producers to find and license music directly from music owners. Another startup, Allies, helps people to find out if their food is gluten-free in minutes.
Meanwhile, startups from Plug and Play accelerator will also be joining this year’s summit. For example, BlockChain Security helps property managers with digital documentation using blockchain technology. AIPLUX facilitates companies to obtain foreign trade-marks and KryptoGo helps banks with anti-money laundering (AML).
U.S. Taiwan Startup Forum 2021 featuring these 16 startups
Taelor : An AI-powered menswear rental subscription that helps busy men to look good without the commitment of buying clothes. It’s founded by Anya Cheng, a notable former Facebook Lead.
Filmlt : A videographer software that helps people, such as real estate agents, to create videos for business purposes with AI-powered editing.
MAKAR by Mind & Idea Fly : An AR/VR content creation and editing tool for teachers.
Impakt : A computer vision platform for remote team play and activities
A.V. Mapping : An one-stop AI video and audio mapping and music licensing platform for media, video and game creators.
Moov Mobility : An electric mobility program management technology. Its smart mobility network consists of shared bicycles, scooters and e-bikes.
Allis by TFT : A portable biochemical sensor that helps consumers detect if food is gluten-free in minutes.
BlockChain Security : A blockchain technology that helps property managers win court cases and get rid of bad tenants by proving the authenticity of leasing documents and communication records.
Worca : A HR SaaS company that builds cross-border teams of elite talent and provides end-to-end global HR solutions.
Avalanche Computing : An AI development tool for companies to build AI faster.
Torkance Technologies : A technology for the memory industry for its thin film development, using new magnetic film measurement to enable rapid-turn around for STT-MRAM and SOT-MRAM technology development.
Lubn : A smart lockbox to help hosts remotely manage property access, even when the property doesn’t have Wi-Fi yet.
NADI : A 3D architecture solution that provides a realistic and virtual environment to improve the process of building a smart city effectively and efficiently.
KryptoGo : A compliance technology that helps financial service institutions, such as banks, to enhance money laundering prevention with Chinese language recognition.
Relajet : An audio technology that improves hearing-aid devices.
AIPLUX : A one-stop platform for everyone to file for cross-border trademark protection.
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