Taiwan versions come online
The innovation of crowdfunding has made its way from the US to Taiwan, and Taiwan-style “kickstarters” have appeared one after another. In 2011, a group of scholars specializing in media and communications, including Chen Shun-hsiao of the Department of Journalism and Communications Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University and Hu Yuan-hui of the Department of Communications at National Chung Cheng University, founded “We Report,” following the model of applying crowdfunding to citizen journalism. In 2012, Light Lin, the originator of the blogging website Wretch, Quake Hsu, an architect who lived for several years in the UK, and Rio Peng, son-in-law of Taiwan Glass Group CEO Lin Po-Shih, all jumped in, each creating their own crowdfunding site.
After Wretch was acquired by Yahoo!Kimo in 2007, Lin became head of social blog products for the Asia-Pacific region. In 2011, having identified the potential of crowdfunding websites, he began his second phase as an Internet entrepreneur. As he is concurrently senior VP at Maxwell Capital, he understands very well the venture capital world and the criteria for evaluating the profitability of startup companies, so he knows that small-scale entrepreneurs with low-cap micro-projects are never going to get much attention.
Having founded his own firms, Lin knows how hard it is to find investors. He hopes to help micro-entrepreneurs who have dreams and ideas of their own, just like he had, to find a source of capital outside the traditional channels of bank loans and venture capital investment. “This is a new approach, whereby people who have few resources can assist one another to get a leg up,” he explains.
In the second half of 2011, Lin founded FlyingV, which formally went online in April of 2012. Currently FlyingV has nearly 10,000 registered members, has collected nearly 100 proposals, and has raised more than NT$7 million.
At the current stage, most of the proposals on FlyingV are notional, and as yet offer no tangible products. Light Lin hopes that in the future FlyingV will move beyond intangible concepts to actual product manufacturing that will take the original ideas to the next step. “It could be that proposals that get funded will all turn out to be just a flash in the pan, we don’t really know yet. But in any case, there can only be follow-up action and ideas if somebody takes the first step,” he says.
The promotion of crowdfunding has already begun to have an impact on entrepreneurship. For example, Eric Chiu, founder of the creative design website Ch+U Daily, who raised a record high NT$3.54 million on FlyingV, is now planning to mass-produce the watches from his initial proposal. Former rock-band front man Liao Zhiwen, whose initial proposal for “dining tables among the rice fields” (given a thumbs up by Wowprime Group chairman Steven Dai) succeeded in getting funded, has recently come up with a second proposal.
Another figure who wants to help others realize their dreams is Quake Hsu, who has founded the crowdfunding website “Zeczec.” Prior to creating Zeczec, Hsu, a city planner by profession, lived for several years in the UK. As part of his work, he often traveled to design exhibitions throughout Europe. He observed that in Europe, the environment for cultural and creative industries is quite mature. Designers are able to assess market trends by observing the purchasing patterns of large-scale retail outlets. This reduces the risks for going into mass production.
In Taiwan, on the other hand, there is no evaluation mechanism for designers to turn their creative ideas into commercial products, so designers have to absorb the risk that sales will be stagnant. As a result, it has not been easy to industrialize Taiwan’s creativity. Hsu adds that the absence of a sound environment for cultural and creative industries undermines the willingness of Taiwanese designers living overseas to return home.
How can a mature environment for cultural and creative industries be generated? The question kept coming back into Hsu’s mind. Then, at the end of 2010, he happened to hear that someone had successfully raised capital on Kickstarter to manufacture wristbands to mount iPod nanos. It seemed that he had finally found his answer. In 2012, Hsu gathered together five founders from the UK and Taiwan and they established Zeczec here in Taiwan.
Quake Hsu (right), who worked in the UK for several years, and his business partner Wayne Lin (left), returned to Taiwan to found the Zeczec crowdfunding website, offering a fundraising alternative to Taiwan’s cultural and creative community.