As a leading player in the global semiconductor industry, Taiwan is known for its innovation and development. Taiwan has claimed 12th place out of 141 economies in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum. In recent years, the country has seen an increase in venture capital investment, government initiatives, and sectoral reforms that encourage innovation and leading to more global entrepreneurs setting up their base in the country.

In order to build a growing and resilient startup ecosystem, creating a stable venture capital market is not only necessary but also creates a strong incentive for startup founders and investors.

Examples of this are the Startup Regulatory Adjustment Platform and the Taiwan Startup Stadium established by the National Development Council (NDC). In December 2019, Taiwan’s National Development Fund announced that it is primed to make investments of at least US$180 million in the next few quarters. Coupled with incentives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan is actively attracting international accelerators and venture capitals to open their offices in major innovation hubs.

Attracting international accelerators

International accelerators such as Rainmaking Innovation Taiwan has currently set up four offices in key parts of the country: Taipei, New Taipei City, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The latest Tainan office, Rainmaking Center of Excellence and Expertise (CEE), is located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) in which IC, optoelectronics, precision machinery, biotechnology, computer and peripherals, and communications industries are the major industries.

Rainmaking Innovation is dedicated to boosting the potentialities of entrepreneurship and to foster and tailor it best with preeminent enterprises and startups worldwide. “We work with our clients to build a clear view of fast-evolving markets so that we can identify the opportunities they’re best positioned to own,” said Sonia Chuang, the Director of Rainmaking Innovation Taiwan.

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Chuang has witnessed that a good number of startups encounter constant setbacks and have experienced difficulty in breaking that cycle due to their lack of experience. The solution to the issue is to customise different approaches for anticipated encounters.

Rainmaking Innovation supports startups by offering them tremendous tools to solve problems that may emerge during the process of either scale-up or while managing one’s corporation.

Inspiring innovation across many sectors

In addition, the National Health Research Institute (NHRI), known for its excellence in medical research and databases, is accelerating healthcare innovation by working with startups and industry leaders. For instance, the genetic testing company, Taiwan Genome Industry Alliance, founded by the NHRI’s incubation centre with support from industry leaders, is cooperating with the NHRI to develop next-generation sequencing, animal cancer models and other clinical technologies.

The development of startups in Taiwan has been bursting at the seams. Based on results from the World Economic Forum, in the last two years alone, Taiwan achieved first place in the Asia Pacific region and fourth in the world. Moreover, the honour of Super Innovator also went to Taiwan.

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The Taiwan government has been pushing policies and action plans since 2018, embarking on a journey to crack down on problems with funding, human resources, market, and setting up a united system that is capable of coming up with solutions to complex problems surrounding the tech ecosystem.

The National Development Council (NDC) has already held some 10 meetings and workshops with over 100 Taiwan startup communities to build up a brand for recognition. After all the campaigns and consultations, NDC and the Taiwan startup community has come up with the brand Startup Island Taiwan.

Onward to a brighter future

Finally, in May, the Chairman of Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), Tian-Mu Huang (黃天牧), has given the go signal to start planning the new transaction board for startups, rather than the available over-the-counter market, emerging stock market, listed stocks, or even the Go Incubation Board for Startup and Acceleration Firms (GISA board).

This brand-new idea breaks through the limits of business activities. Compared to the GISA board, established in 2013, which only allows fundraising with the exclusion of insurance that seeks to protect interested parties. Furthermore, the NDC suggested that the FSC should launch a small-medium scale firm friendly project designed specifically to facilitate capital and venture security, while encouraging more potential ventures to fundraise in the capital market.

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With almost 1800 startups operating in under five years that are recognised by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, accelerators are helping company founders to scale up their businesses and navigate their target markets.

According to the 2019 Taiwan Startup Ecosystem survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Taiwan (PwC Taiwan), nearly one-third of respondents are serial entrepreneurs, with almost half that are targeting the Southeast Asia and North America markets. Significantly, over 60 per cent had participated in accelerators in their early phase, and most respondents determined the challenge of funding, market expansion, and talent acquisition after working with quality consultation services.

Startups in Taiwan are rising rapidly amidst past challenges, and the country’s startup ecosystem is working tirelessly to continue attracting venture capital companies while maintaining overall global interest in recent years. Despite many challenges, Taiwan is on the road to becoming a new startup hub in Asia with more government funding and support from innovation-supporting laws.

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