Hsinchu County Government has joined hands with Taiwan’s largest accelerator enterprise, StarFab Accelerator, to implement the Bringing Youth Entrepreneurship to the Finishing Line: Hsinchu Golden Dreams Come True youth innovation and startup project. This is the fourth year of this AIoT-themed accelerator. Yesterday (June 30), the startup pitch enterprise matching event was held, bringing together seven leading enterprises and 21 potential startups. Through a pitch exhibit and in-depth one-on-one interviews, ten startups successfully entered the co-creation and mentoring phase. They will move on to explore field demos, value-added technology, co-marketing, and business and collaboration opportunities.
For this fourth edition of the Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator, seven indicator enterprises were invited to act as the innovation topic mentors. The companies are Coretronic; CHD Tech; Hwa-Hsia Glass; Keelgoal Energy; Systex; Might Electronic; and GlintMed. Together, they proposed needs in industrial trends such as smart factories, ESG, AI, generative AI, and smart medicine. Guided by real issues, the mentors will navigate startups through creating solutions that they can get off the ground, and further promote technological integration and collaboration opportunities.
Hsinchu County Magistrate Yang Wen-ke stated that, since the Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator was founded in 2022, it has been dedicated to building bridges of collaboration between established enterprises and startups. This year, the Accelerator has seen a great injection of international resources, including participation in major startup exhibitions; holding international market-matching meetings; connecting with technological resources from major overseas manufacturers; and more. In August of this year, the Accelerator will also bring outstanding accelerator alumni of the past to Singapore to find overseas business opportunities. This will assist startup teams more quickly grasp international trends and strengthen their practical capacities, helping youth with entrepreneurial dreams use Hsinchu County as their foundation for reaching out into global smart tech markets.
Magistrate Yang specifically mentioned that, with this being the fourth year of the Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator, we have helped more than 30 startups and 13 medium and large enterprises to work together and develop. The County Government also invited Google Taiwan’s Project Hatcher program team to provide dedicated workspaces and other such technical resources for this year’s new startup candidates. This will assist startup teams to more quickly grasp international trends and strengthen their technical capacities. Hsinchu County is a startup haven; all young people with the will to start a business are welcome to arrive and thrive in Hsinchu County.
For yesterday’s event, 21 teams who had passed the initial selection were invited to take the stage and give a presentation. Each introduced their startup technologies and application scenarios. This was followed closely by one-on-one matchmaking interviews, in which corporate representatives engaged in practical questioning and exchange focused on the startups’ solutions. The full-day schedule was brisk and packed to the brim. In the end, ten startups won the favor of the corporate delegations, and thus entered the co-creation mentoring phase. In the second half of the year, through a “large (corporations) leading the small (startups)” mentoring mechanism, they will verify their technologies and strengthen their business models in the real market environment. This will quickly get them aligned with the wider industry.
StarFab COO Jack Hsu noted that the Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator has seven corporate mentors this year participating and helping to promote the platform. He hopes that it will help integrate Hsinchu’s local enterprise resources and collaboration with startups all over Taiwan. Of special note is that this year there are teams from Singapore and the UK, with all sorts of domains such as biomedicine and AI. Hsu hopes that this will attract more startups to collaborate locally, while aiming for the global market.
Hsinchu County Education Bureau Director Yang Chun-tzu stated that the Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator is aimed at bringing together startup ecology resources – both governmental and enterprise, both domestic and overseas – to make innovation not just a concept, but solutions that can really get boots on the ground in industry. Something noteworthy is that two of the startups to enter the matchmaking this year came from the Hsinchu Startup Hub. This means move-ins have seen significant growth under the Hub’s guidance. The County Government will continue working hard to make sure that the resource investments in the Hsinchu Startup Hub and Hsinchu AIoT Accelerator mean industry demand and technology solutions for enterprises and startups.
The Hsinchu County Government will continue to integrate startup resources, deepen domestic and international innovative resource connections, and make Hsinchu County a major cluster where youth startup development can really take off. For more program information and follow-up events, please see the Hsinchu Youth Startup (HYS) website.