Alumni Shanghai Chapter Annual Event - Entrepreneurship

WRitten by Victor Wu (BASc '05)

The annual event of the University of Waterloo Alumni Shanghai Chapter was held on December 7, 2014. The theme was “Entrepreneurship." As UWaterloo is an incubator for innovations, we aimed to provide a platform for entrepreneurs to present their ventures and business ideas. There are alumni in the venture capital industry as well, so it was an opportunity for UWaterloo entrepreneurs and investors to connect.

The event was kicked off by a welcome speech by Victor Wu from the executive committee of the Chapter introducing recent alumni activities, goals of the Chapter as well as the idea behind the theme “Entrepreneurship." The Chapter participated in the Canada Day event organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce for gaining brand awareness in order to attract prospective students and potential co-op employers.

The stage was then passed to Sanford Browne, vice president of L’oreal who graduated in 1998 from the faculty of science with extensive work experience in the FMCG sector, presenting the concept of innovation within a multi-national company. It is extremely important to encourage innovation and internal entrepreneurship in an organization in order to win in a competitive market. Sanford believes the key to success is to combine scientific innovation (technology) and consumer trends (market). The balance of the push (technology advancement) and the pull (market demand) is an art to master. This is what makes L’oreal a successful company.

It was then “show time” for the UWaterloo entrepreneurs. They were:

1. Feng Zhang – presenting his venture Tao Tao English which is an education platform providing 1-to-1 English training.
2. Yen Tseng – presenting his venture Ding Taxi which is a travel/ tourism version of Uber.
3. Frank Hu – presenting his business idea of utilizing the innovation of wireless base stations a.k.a. cloud RAN.

4.Rick Ha – presenting his venture Keyway Innovations which has recently came up with an innovative product: the “Qi Teamaker”. A kickstarter event was also launched for this product.

5. Lin Yang – presenting his venture Little Adam which is an app for kids in the age of 0-6 learning both Chinese and English.

6. Ming Zuo – presenting his venture Transist Impact Labs which is a platform investing in social impact technologies.

7. Kevin Sure – presenting his Canadian venture Fruitex which was an online food delivery platform and a failure entrepreneurial case. Kevin shared his experience in the do’s and don’ts of entrepreneurship.

There were actually more than seven entrepreneurs who wanted to present at the event but some of them could not make it due to urgent matters and there were time constraints. It will be great if they can present next time!

The event ended with a group photo and a mingling session served with food and beverages.

We hope this can be a recurring event so that entrepreneurs have a platform to present and discuss their ventures helping them shape and refine their business models and ideas. The UWaterloo community in Shanghai is getting stronger and more alumni events of different themes will be organized. Go UWaterloo Go!!!