Hong Kong tech entrepreneur Lucas Cheung Wing-lung has suffered failure and relished success over just three years in the city’s fast-growing start-up scene.“That was an epic fail, but a valuable lesson to realise my capabilities and the reason for my failure – my lack of knowledge about handbag design and the market,” the 27-year-old said.
The ploy helped him net many clients before advertising veteran Aaron Lau, founder of Gusto Collective, acquired Cheung’s 26 Hz in November 2020 and made him managing partner. One setback is that the city’s workforce shrank by 140,000 over the past two years in a wave of emigration following political changes in Hong Kong and the stringent COVID-19 curbs.
His team developed a prototype with HK$1 million and went on to raise HK$3 million in seed funding, but persuading potential investors proved a daunting process as many poured cold water on their ideas and products. The spike in demand attracted new funding and orders shot up 300 per cent from 2020 to the end of last year. The company now has 26 staff and has opened a branch office in Japan.“The brain drain is especially serious among those aged 18 to 35, but I don’t see enough government support to retain and attract talent,” he said.PLENTY OF HELP, BUT ECOSYSTEM IS LACKING
On Thursday , the government released a policy blueprint on the development of the innovation and technology sector, including goals to increase the number of start-ups from the current 3,755 to around 7,000 in 10 years and the number of locally based unicorn enterprises from 12 to 30 over the same time frame.