Before working at my current startup (one of the best places to work in New York City!), I spent a few years working in a startup community on the other side of the planet, Hong Kong. I had come to Hong Kong direct from the Valley with very little understanding of what the move would mean for me professionally. What I found was a small but vibrant community of people trying to build technology and businesses in the midst of an otherwise very conservative and traditional city.

I hadn’t had reason to really blog about that experience, until recently, when two big and related events occurred.

Startup Sacrilege

The first big event was the release of Paul Orlando’s first book, Startup Sacrilege. This book was really fascinating for me to read, because it was the distillation of a number of discussions I remember from the Hong Kong startup community. But rather than being specifically about building a startup in a small urban Asian city, Paul’s book is really about building startups whenever you’re not some hot Y-combinator graduate in the Valley. It’s for the 99%, if you will.

So much of what he has to say is familiar to me, because, beyond being my downstairs neighbor, Paul was very much a member of the startup community in Hong Kong. The number of companies and individuals he worked with in his time in Hong Kong is really mind-boggling. Looking back at his farewell presentation writing this, I was struck again by how much one person contributed in so little time.

Taxiwise

The other event was far more unexpected and, in a way, far more important: Taxiwise got acquired. For folks outside of the HK tech community, I can’t convey how big of a deal this is. Why? Taxiwise is evidence that success is attainable in HK.

Acceleration

Specifically, Taxiwise is very much the product of some concerted efforts to build the Hong Kong startup community and have it produce real businesses. The guys came to Hong Kong from the Bay area to join Paul’s first startup bootcamp, Startups Unplugged. Their business evolved as did the community efforts to serve companies like theirs, so when they finished with Startups Unplugged, they went on to Hong Kong’s first startup accelerator, AcceleratorHK, founded by Paul and the incomparable Steven Forte. Steve deserves a post all his own, but he didn’t just write a book, so that will have to wait.

The bootcamp and accelerator programs generated a ton of excitement in Hong Kong. They really helped bring the community together around the concerted effort to build companies that might someday become real, profitable businesses. With the Taxiwise acquisition, I think that it’s clear to everyone now that it is very much achievable within the constraints of HK. What I think Paul’s book makes clear is that success is achievable anywhere.

Sacrilege Dissected

I do very much think that, if you found this post at all interesting, you owe it to yourself to spend some time reading Paul’s book and thinking it through. That said, I want to call out a couple of his points that I think were crucial in the positive impact he and Steve’s programs had on the Hong Kong tech community, and on the success of Taxiwise, in particular.

Skip the startup entertainment; talk your customers instead.

This is such a basic point that unfortunately requires reiteration in so many contexts. Reading about cool startups is not building a business. Going to pitch events and mingling with other startups in not building a business. Anything that’s not creating your product or going out and getting customers is not building a business.

I think that the startup entertainment industry is a huge sinkhole for people interested in startups, especially those working outside of the Valley. Thanks to the magic of the internet, all of these things feel so real and close, when they’re really, at best, just porn.

As Paul mentions in the book, the Taxiwise guys absolutely pulled away from their Twitter feeds and engaged with the real problems of transportation in Hong Kong.

Build your community; don’t chase celebrities.

This is a more constructive extension of the previous point. There’s no point in trying to get Brian Chesky, Dave McClure, or whoever to show up to your big event. If they’re not staying, they’re not building. You may get a ton of people to show up to the event and people sticking around until the bars close afterwards, but then what?

The people who help your community build towards being successful are already a part of your community. They live there, they care about what’s going on, and they’re the resources you need to be drawing upon.

In the case of Taxiwise, that meant specifically people like Felix Lam, who has a deep and legitimate tie to the Hong Kong tech community. He also had the capital, connections, and experience to help Taxiwise get to where they are today. Investors like that are superior to big names from the Valley, because they can and will contribute to the success of startups in your city.