BizSpark ✨ x Hong Kong Startup Community Leaders 👑 Series
Episode 3: Amanda Williams of nest.vc
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and Nest? What is Nest?
I’m Amanda Williams, the ✨Head of Programmes here at Nest. Nest creates platforms to support the entrepreneurial journey. We want to empower startups to solve the challenges of our time, and we do that through our 3 business pillars:
- Nest Ventures — We have a seed through growth stage VC fund.
- Nest Innovation — This is where I work as the Head of Programmes. Nest Innovation is about delivering transformational innovation programs to corporates. With our corporate partners, we match them up with startups that can solve some of their current problems. We run the program to help corporates talk to startups and vice versa.
- Mettā — A community for entrepreneurs. We have 2 bases — one in Hong Kong and one in Nairobi. Mettā is a place where entrepreneurs can come together to collaborate and share ideas. We also have a digital offering that we’re currently developing called Mettā Connect.
What would you like Hong Kong to explore?
During my time in London , I was in impact investing. I’m a huge believer in impactful businesses for profit and social enterprises. I’d like to see more activity in that space. There are some great charities here doing great things, but they’re all microscale. There is also a huge interest in FinTech 💸, but there’s not a lot of interest in other things (especially things that takes a little longer to develop — e.g. hardware or physical products).
So, what can we do to support these, startups who are interested in hardware, but don’t know where to get resources?
It is very difficult. There is really good support in certain niches coming out of Science Park and Cyberport if you’re in the “right” sector for hardware 🔧. Otherwise, you will need to go through US Kickstarter programs and such because it’s not as common to have that type of crowdfunding and riskier angel investing in Hong Kong.
What startups tend to miss out — common mistakes
I spent 3 years as an investor, going through applications, watching pitches, and going through the entire process. What I always look for is authenticity. A startup that really understood what their purpose was makes a huge difference. Everybody’s seen a massive hockey stick financial plan and projections where your “X” is going to be this many “X” by this year…. I don’t want to hear that. I want to know why you started it and what you are trying to achieve.
On pitching — People tend to forget that most of your investors are probably coming from a very different industry/ background. You really need to be able to talk about your business in layman’s terms. I think a lot of tech companies get a little too obsessed with “sounding smart”, but what they actually need to do is put them into clear terminologies.
What startups have to look in investors.
You always know how your investors will react in good situations. They’re gonna love you. You need to know how they’re going to react in bad situations. When you’re in a difficult situation, you want to trust your investor enough that you’re willing to speak to them quite early on when things are going bad for you.
You also need to know whether you want a passive or an active investor because they are one or the other, and they’re not going to change. Be clear of what the expectations are.
A lot of founders are interested in a building say, a tech startup, but they don’t have a finance background. However, when you do talk to investors, there’s a lot of talk about equity and all these financial terms. How can founders educate themselves?
A lot of investors are coming from a banking background. So that’s the language they speak (for better or for worse). Quite frankly, they probably haven’t built businesses, so they don’t know how to build one because they speak the language they’re comfortable in. There are so many resources 📚 out there available to startups in terms of getting yourself familiar with all these different terms, but you need to stick to your guns. If your investors are only talking equity and exit strategy, but not the business plan 📓 or who your customers 👪 are, it’s probably not going to be a good match. The investors need some education too.
When choosing on whether to invest on a startup, do you invest because of the product or the team?
It’s a package. We’re in a very unique position because for most of our investments, we’ve spent 12 weeks with the startups by the time we’re talking about investment. We work with them in the Innovation program, connect them to the corporate, and collaborate on potential PoC opportunities. Through this process, it helps us determine whether the startup is a good fit for our investment fund. By then, we know the team and the technology very well. We understand how it can be sold. The team is always important, but the technology and the market have their values too.
Best advice you’ve ever gotten from someone.
This is completely unrelated to investment, but it takes all kinds of people to make a world 🌏. Just that reminder that, you don’t have to like everybody, you don’t have to get along with everybody, but there’s value in them having different opinions.
Worst advice.
Someone told me that Hong Kong is a thriving social enterprise hub before I moved here. No, it wasn’t. Should’ve done more research.
Advice to survive to the next funding phase(s).
Sales. Sell, sell, sell. Show real customer traction. 😎
Advice to founders.
Be obsessed with the problem that you’re trying to solve.
Advice to fellow investors.
Don’t fall for a good pitch.
Great thanks to Sophia Dang and Amanda for doing this collaboration with us ❤️ 💛 💚 and thanks to all of you for reading until the end. We also welcome all kinds of feedback on the blog!
This series is to showcase Microsoft’s great support to the startup community in Hong Kong. If you are a technology focused startup that is aiming to explore the Hong Kong market in anything related to fintech, AI, or MR, go to 📍www.bizspark.microsoft.com to get the support you deserve. If you have questions on BizSpark, don’t hesitate to drop a message to and then put BS at the end, and say interested to partner with us? Please contact 📍hkbizs@microsoft.com.
