Why Taiwan

I was never the guy to do business overseas. For me, traveling outside of the US meant vacation mode. While tons of people travel internationally for work and build businesses outside of their own country, I was happy staying put in America for my career.

I considered moving to another country when I spent a year in Beijing over two decades ago. Many saw China as the next big opportunity and set up shop there. However, I returned to the US, got a few jobs, launched a startup, and slowly forgot about the idea of going back to China or anywhere else for that matter.

There were moments when the potential to work internationally came up. There was an opening to transfer offices to London or Paris in my first tech role. Instead, I chose San Francisco (no regrets, I loved it there). I had several global banking customers that invited me to visit their European offices, but I never could make the timing work out.

Then two things happened eight years ago that sparked my curiosity about the world outside of the United States. The first was the rapid expansion of my Enterprise Sales Forum community, which opened chapters in Toronto, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore all in the span of a few months. I attended all of the launches, spoke with my local teams and community members, and gained a much deeper appreciation of the differences in sales culture and strategies globally.

My second awakening happened during my time at Stack Overflow. I had joined a small team tasked with launching an enterprise version of Stack Overflow for large corporations to manage their private, technical knowledge. By the first year, we were seeing significant traction, enough to launch a SaaS version. I also started to get curious about markets that we might be missing. As I dug into Stack Overflow usage data, I could not quite grasp what the data was showing me. Over the prior five-year period, the two fastest growing developer ecosystems in the world were Indonesia and Vietnam, and the highest per capita usage of Stack Overflow was in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Following my curiosity has usually been a safe bet during my career, so I booked a ticket to Asia to explore further. I had no existing network. I didn’t know anything about the business culture. I only had a vague notion of what I wanted to accomplish. Even though I stumbled and flailed about over those two weeks, I had learned enough. Just like in the Matrix, I had taken the red pill and could not ignore the future potential in Asia.

Taiwan was never in the picture as I plotted my course for Asia. Other places seemed to have more appeal. Hong Kong is more cosmopolitan. Singapore is the stable hub for Southeast Asia. Thailand and Indonesian have large foreign professional communities. Vietnam is experiencing massive growth. Japan is huge market and economy with plenty of tech innovation. What does Taiwan offer for a software guy other than semiconductors, xiao long bao, and boba tea?

I returned to Taiwan for the first time after COVID as a speaker at Meet Taipei in 2022. My only previous visit was for vacation to gorge myself on night market snacks and to hike the various trails around Taipei and Yangmingshan National Park. This time was for business to support my local AWS team, and they made the most of my visit with a podcast recording, a fireside chat, various interviews, and my web3 presentation on the conference main stage. I flew back to the US exhausted from a packed five days but impressed with what I had seen of the startup activity there.

It wasn’t until a year later though during the 42Geeks tour that I had my third awakening. The 42Geeks is a group of investors and entrepreneurs that travel across the world to foster global investment and collaboration. It was during the first day of the East Asia tour in Taipei that I listened to a talk by Jonathan Liao on the Taiwan Gold Card program, a visa program set up to attract global professionals to work and launch businesses in Taiwan. The next day at the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA), we met other Gold Card holders like Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, and Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, to hear why they came to Taiwan and about the opportunity to build software companies in Taiwan.

Fast forward another year, I am now the proud holder of a Gold Card and returning next week to Taiwan to speak at the Meet Taipei conference. Much appreciation goes out to Anita Chen, TzuJui Chang, and Preedanan (Dana) Liu for all their help on the process. I also very publicly announced my intention to move to Taiwan to launch a tech startup. In the month since sharing my plans about Taiwan, I received many positive comments as well as a ton of questions as to why I would move halfway around the world to start a business.

Building a startup in the country you are from and currently reside in is no doubt easier. Plus, the US is one of the top places for launching startups. There is more capital available, the market is larger, there are no language or cultural barriers, the legal system is fair and transparent, the colleges are the best in the world, and there is an abundance of talent. What would possess me to make the leap? Isn’t launching a startup hard enough?

Yes and no. It has gotten significantly easier to build a startup anywhere these days by using remote talent and scaling using the cloud. Setting up a corporate entity is getting easier. Information is readily available for most countries on sites like Reddit to help foreigners emigrate and get settled in their chosen country. Finally, more countries like Estonia, Malaysia, Spain, and Taiwan are creating visa programs to lure foreign talent to move to their countries.

Taiwan does not get much credit as a startup ecosystem. Reports from Startup Genome and StartupBlink show that Taiwan lags when compared to more established startup hubs such as Beijing, Singapore, or Tokyo. On the other hand, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) placed Taiwan as the 8^th most competitive economy in the world. Does Taiwan have the fundamentals to be a true startup hub?

As I started diving deeper into Taiwan as a place to launch my startup, I realized the island nation has all the ingredients to be a leading global startup ecosystem:

• Thriving Tech Ecosystem – Already known as #1 globally for semiconductors led by giants such as TSMC, UMC & MediaTek, Taiwan also produces 75% of the PC's, 50% of the LCD's & 20% of the smartphones in the world.

• Digitally Savvy Population – Taiwan is a highly connected and online population of 23.6 million. 90% have access to the Internet, 98% have mobile phones, 67% have computers, and 29% have tablets.

• High-Tech Talent Pool – Taiwan’s workforce ranks #3 in Asia for its innovative talent pool and has one of the highest percentages of STEM university graduates globally. Programs like Talent Taiwan and Taiwan Employment Gold Card also attract international talent in critical fields like engineering, software & cybersecurity.

• Active Startup Community – There are an estimated 7,433 startups, including successes like Taiwan’s first unicorn Appier (AI-enabled digital marketing), CuboAi (AI-powered baby monitors), CyCraft (cybersecurity)​, Gogolook (AI-driven digital fraud prevention), Gogoro (electric scooters), and many others.

• Startup Hubs and Accelerators – Taiwan has 93 startup hubs across six metro regions with key centers like Taiwan Tech Arena, Startup Terrace & Taiwan Startup Stadium, as well as 78 corporate-led and private accelerators such as Appworks & SparkLabs.

• Abundant Capital – There are over 500 domestic and international VC firms active in Taiwan since 2015, funding $1.45 billion USD across 151 deals in 2021. Corporate VC is also very active, with $1.77 billion USD invested into 269 deals in 2022.

• Supportive Government – Government programs such as the National Development Fund have invested over $3 billion USD directly into startups and an Angel Investment Fund with $154 million USD has funded nearly 250 early-stage startups.

• National Innovation Policy – The “Fundamental Science and Technology Act" mandates the government craft vision, strategy, and budget to support tech innovation, spending $4.24 billion USD last year and creating subsidy programs to foster R&D across startup, SME, academia, and corporate sectors of the economy.

• Transparency and Stability – Taiwan has created policies to bolster the economy and innovation, ranking #6 globally for economic freedom in the Heritage Foundation report and #4 in Asia for patent and intellectual property protection.

• Strong Growth Economy – The economy is the 20th-largest in the world by purchasing power parity with a GDP of $755.1 billion USD in 2023 and a 3.9% projected growth rate.

• Strategic Location in Asia – Taiwan is within a five-hour flight to major business hubs like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, helping it to draw Google and Microsoft to establish R&D centers and AWS to open a data center in the country.

• Excellent Quality of Life – Foreigners rated Taiwan as the 3^rd best destination for expats, drawn by affordable living costs, lifestyle, excellent transportation infrastructure, and a healthcare system that is globally ranked #1.

All the above makes Taiwan a highly desirable place to work and build a business. Yet there are many countries and cities I could have chosen for my startup, including opting to stay in the US, that would have had comparable advantages. Even off-the-radar cities such as Fukuoka in Japan are launching compelling programs for startup founders.

Having traveled to over 30 countries during my tenure with AWS, I was able to go beyond the surface level facts to understand the reality of startup life on the ground. For me, the decision ultimately came down to these five factors:

1. Livability & Affordability – Taiwan, in particular Taipei, is not an inexpensive city to live relative to many countries in the region like Vietnam or Thailand, but is more affordable than Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and most US metropolis areas. However like other leading Asian economies, things just work as expected and you have the creature comforts of a modern city. Plus, it is easy to escape the city with the abundant parks, hot springs, mountain ranges, and beaches that are easily accessible throughout Taiwan.

2. Optimizing Runway – Things are more affordable in Taiwan as salaries are generally lower than comparable economies. When weighing talent quality, AI engineering needs, and employee costs, Taiwan is the perfect balance to help keep burn rate low while still shipping quality product quickly.

3. Global Connectedness – Because of the semiconductor and electronics industries as well as firms like Foxconn, Taiwan is well connected to the US and the rest of the world. There are also plenty of direct flights to the West Coast US (and some to the East Coast), making it easier to reach customers and investors.

4. Affinity for the Culture – Having lived in China studying Mandarin, I have a deep appreciation for Chinese culture. My language skills need brushing up, but I am familiar with how business gets done and how to build relationships in Taiwan. Of course, there will always be much to learn, but I am not starting from zero.

5. Vision for Taiwan – Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said in a recent interview that, “Taiwan is a fantastic country, whose software is terrible.” While he acknowledged the hardware is “amazing”, I think he will be proven wrong on the software comment. I’ve seen how developer ecosystems have emerged out of nowhere over the past decade. Taiwan has the benefit of already being a high-tech nation with many passionate and skilled software engineers building great software products. The government is helping as well, allocating $311 million USD from the National Development Fund to establish an "AI Ecosystem." I see huge upside for Taiwan in the next five years as this talent base creates the next generation of global, AI-first tech startups.

Are there disadvantages to building a startup in Taiwan? For one, the country does not have the culture of risk taking and acceptance of failure like Silicon Valley. Taiwan is a more conversative country with a hierarchical management culture, which can stifle innovative ideas and prevent bad news from surfacing. There is a language and culture divide between Taiwanese and foreign entrepreneurs (including overseas Taiwanese returning to Taiwan) that fragments the startup community from collaborating more closely. Then there is the constant anxiety about China.

I am bullish on the future of Taiwan’s tech startup ecosystem. Despite the challenges, I am placing my bets on Taiwan. I firmly believe it’s a nation that can become a greater incubator of globally significant startups, more than Singapore, most Western European nations, and even Israel, otherwise known as the Startup Nation. I am excited to start building in Taipei and being part of this rising startup community. And hopefully, you see Taiwan in your future too!

Mark Birch

Note: Thanks to Startup Island TAIWAN for doing the legwork to pull together much of the information I gathered for this post.

Last week was full on Cape Town and I left inspired! I attended the AfriLabs Annual Gathering to speak on the panel "From Startups to Unicorns: The Path to Successful Exits in Africa", with investors discussing the lack of unicorns and large exits in Africa. However, I viewed it as a promising sign that there are 8 African unicorns showing the need for greater digitization across the continent, particularly in FinTech, AgriTech, and HealthTech. With Africa projected to reach 2.5 billion people and 29 trillion in GDP by 2050, expect more startups!

Two of those promising startups that I met at AfriLabs come from the Innovate Durban startup program. First is mfanelo S'phelele Calvin Ndlela of Electri-Coal Technologies that enables safer water systems through a patented smart monitoring to track water usage and pH levels. Second is Sphiwo Peace Mjwara of MKAZI CONCEPTS, creating IoT-based hand sanitation stations “Sansani” to better track the spread of communicable diseases and improve safety compliance. I think the future is bright for both of these startups that are building solutions that not only solve African problems but can also work in many other regions globally.

The next day I spent at Innovation City Cape Town to participate in a Business Speed Matching event. I met so many awesome startup founders during the session building cool solutions across EdTech, FinTech, and PropTech. Thanks to everyone that made time to meet as well as Sandra Buckingham, Michelle Kleu & Kieno Kammies for the kind invitation to participate.

Next week I am heading back to Taiwan for a full week of events, including the biggest of Taiwanese startup events, Meet Taipei.

• AiSalon Taiwan at Appier w/ Blitzscaling Ventures on Tue, Nov 19

• Tech Gold & Friends Social November 2024 on Thu, Nov 21

• Dragons' Chamber Taiwan Pitch Event on Sat, Nov 23

• Nomad Meetup by digitalnomadstaiwan on Sat, Nov 23

If you will be in Taipei next week, let’s plan to meet at one of the above events. Also glad to set up a time outside these events to chat. See you next week!