Taiwanese start-ups can look to their Israeli counterparts for inspiration to gain international significance, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman James Huang (黃志芳) said yesterday at InnoVEX — a special Computex Taipei section devoted to innovation and start-ups.
“Our start-ups have narrow mindsets, they lack a global perspective,” Huang told the Taipei Times, adding that emerging Taiwanese entrepreneurs often design products with only the domestic market in mind, while Israeli start-ups design products for the world.
Local start-ups also often face financial difficulties, he said.
“Taiwan’s VC [venture capital] scale has dramatically shrunk in the past 20 years due to changes in the ecosystem,” Huang said, adding that good start-ups are in desperate need of international funding.
Local start-ups are often short of good marketing strategies, which their Israeli counterparts excel at, he said.
“They know how to tell stories” about their products, he said.
While Israel has the highest number of start-ups per capita in the world, the nation faces challenges transforming into a scale-up nation, said Denes Ban, a managing partner at OurCrowd, during a panel discussion led by Huang.
“There are many similarities between Israel and Taiwan, but our economies are different,” Israeli Representative to Taiwan Asher Yarden said, adding that the manufacturing industry in Israel is not on the same scale as Taiwan’s.
This leads to Israeli start-ups exiting the market prematurely as they sell themselves to bigger companies, Yarden said, citing Mobileye NV’s 2017 sale to Intel Corp.
“Israel is very strong in the ‘R’ part of R&D [research and development], while Taiwan is strong in the ‘D’ part,” Ban said, adding that both nations should leverage their advantages through further exchanges.
“Taiwan and Israel’s business models should be complementary,” Huang said, adding that Taiwan could serve as a manufacturing base for Israeli start-ups, while local start-ups could assimilate business models from their counterparts in the Middle East.
TAITRA this year set up an office in Tel-Aviv to boost business collaborations, he said.
The cultural aspect might also play an important part in the way start-ups from both nations behave, Yarden said.
“We’re not afraid of failure,” he said, adding that Taiwanese start-ups are often less willing to take risks.
The overall business atmosphere in Israel is much less formal and this encourages innovation and exchanges, which are essential to the survival of start-ups, Yarden said.
NEW MARKET: The partnership opens up India to the Dutch company, which already has a strong hold in the semiconductor market of South Korea, Taiwan and China ASML Holding NV entered into a partnership agreement with Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd aimed at ramping up India’s goal to develop domestic chip-manufacturing capabilities. The Dutch company’s technology would help power Tata Electronics’ planned 300 millimeter (mm) semiconductor foundry in Gujarat, according to a joint statement from the two companies on Saturday. The signing of a memorandum of understanding coincides with a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Netherlands, which is looking to deepen bilateral relations with New Delhi. ASML, whose top customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co, makes lithography machines that can print
ROUGH RECORDS: Bonds in Japan, as well is in New Zealand, Australia and the US, are seeing the effects of a nervy market as stock exchanges across Asia edge down A deepening slump in Japanese government bonds added fuel to the selloff in global debt markets as rising oil prices stoked inflation fears and pushed yields to multi-decade highs. Japan’s 30-year yield yesterday surged as much as 20 basis points to the highest level since the tenor’s debut in 1999, before paring some of the move. Shorter-maturity Japanese debt was also under pressure, underscored by weak demand at a sale of five-year notes that offered a record-high coupon of 2 percent. Concerns over inflation and government spending rippling through markets including the US, Australia and New Zealand are being amplified in Japan,
The US has cleared about 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia Corp’s second-most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far, three people familiar with the matter said, leaving a major technology deal in limbo as chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) seeks a breakthrough in China this week. Huang, who was not initially listed in a White House delegation to Beijing, joined the trip after an invitation from US President Donald Trump, a source said. Trump picked him up in Alaska en route to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping
Wall Street is licking its chops over an unprecedented slate of massive initial public offerings (IPOs) set to arrive in the coming months, beginning with Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) next month. That is expected to be followed by artificial intelligence (AI) rivals OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. The trio of mega listings, each eyeing valuations around US$1 trillion or more, constitutes a heady period of elevated risk and reward. SpaceX is targeting an IPO that would raise up to US$80 billion — about double the funds generated from all IPOs last year. OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing IPOs raising US$60 billion. “We’re
RSS