Startup Island Episode One: How A Small Hardware-as-a-Service Startup Made the Leap from Silicon Valley to Taiwan

Over the past few years, early stage founders from around Greater Southeast Asia (GSEA) have found their way to Taiwan. We feature them in a series of interviews held at AppWorks Accelerator, an accelerator in Taiwan that assists the growth of GSEA startups in Blockchain and AI.

In the first episode of Startup Island, a podcast about founder stories and GSEA startup development, we talk to founder Andrew Jiang, who co-founded Soda Labs, a Hardware-as-a-Service venture builder. He has spent a significant amount of time in Taiwan and he has evaluated the qualities of the country that have made it a good choice for building a startup there.

There are really three reasons why founders have chosen to do this:

1. Talent Pool: Founders can work face-to-face with innovative engineers and the leading OEMs that have made the island nation famous for providing the supply chain in software and hardware for robust global tech companies like Foxconn, Apple, and Samsung, among others.
2. Digital First: This country of 23 million people has perhaps the most robust e-economy in SEA, at US$ 42.2 billion a year, a figure that has attracted software and web companies like Facebook and Google to set up R&D offices here.
3. Peers and Mentors: Fast-growing unicorns and other startups that started in places like Singapore have quickly set up operations in Taiwan to take advantage of its access to Greater Southeast Asia.

In this podcast, Andrew takes us through his learning curve in figuring this out after first starting in Silicon Valley.

In May, AppWorks will release its application for its 21st cohort for AI and Blockchain founders in Southeast Asia. Keep an eye out on our accelerator information page.