Welcome aboard
The genesis of everything
Dipping my toe into the world of digital content creation, these words were written from a hotel room overlooking a superb urban vista of Hong Kong.
As of time of writing back in August, mandatory hotel quarantine for international arrivals in Hong Kong was reduced to a “mere” three days, a far cry from three weeks’ hotel confinement less than 12 months ago… this was my final day1.
Feeling bad for this guy…😅
Since returning from Europe around 10 months ago, Hong Kong, where I have relocated to, and indeed the rest of Asia, has changed dramatically since I left as a boy almost 18 years ago. Some things never change though, including the familiar whiff of humid, warm air straight off the plane, and being immersed in a boisterous sea of people at street level!
With friends and family in Asia all along, regular opportunities have allowed me to compare and contrast situations across both sides of the Eurasian landmass. This has taken on further meaning as I grew into a venture capital career crossing these very continents.
Now, many recognise Europe as a leader for the quality of its fundamental and applied tech research which creates wonderful innovations. However, because Europe is also rather perfectionist with the speed at which they commercialise and level of regulation, sometimes people fail to understand how big an opportunity exists is in their start-ups. Very encouraging signs are at play though, and Europe has worked hard to ramp up VC investment, particularly in deep tech (which involves major innovation to overcome significant engineering challenges).
>EUR30 billion has already been invested across the region 15 countries:
This ramp up in investment volumes and concentration across certain smaller European nations is intriguing (I can testify to this having been to Finland so many times over the past few years!). It’s a real testament to some of their institutionally-driven tech clusters, reminding us that Europe has always been a tech origination powerhouse.
On the other hand, rapid economic growth of Asian economies across China and South-East Asia has happened alongside speedy tech adoption and immense R&D spending. Asia has surprised many with domain leadership in areas such as electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, high-speed rail, and 5G. After all, they are already leaders in manufacturing and sophisticated supply chains.
Do we all agree technological leapfrogging is at play here? 🐸
According to McK, a whopping 52% of global tech company revenue growth, 87% patent growth and 43% of global VC investment growth has occurred in Asia - some stats!
So for me, this begs several questions:
🤔 What are the opportunities (and quirks) in tech across Europe and Asia?
🤔What is each other doing that is working well?
🤔How should the regions continue to work together?
Addressing these questions is a tall task, and I’ll do my best from the vantage point in the ecosystem :)
Of course, I don’t want to make this just about commentaries, stats and numbers! I would love to tell you more about my personal experiences navigating this transcontinental, multi-cultural and multi-talented continuum.
So, *taking a deep breath*, venturing forth: Europe, Asia… and all the tech, business and culture in between!
All views contained in this article are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organisation.
None of the above constitutes investment advice in any way.
PS. hotel quarantine on arrival in HK is now zero. Woohoo!
I worked and lived across the Nordics. Have an understanding from building a company in biotech, and deeptech. The robotics community in Odense would benefit from going to Shenzhen to prototype some of their robots.