OnTheList at Web Wednesday (V116)

Calling all bargain hunters!

The Christmas shopping season is fast upon us. Just when we've recovered from the mania of Double 11, Black Friday and Cyber Monday...it's now time for Web Wednesday!

For our 116th social mixer, we'll be talking flash sales and how a young couple of French entrepreneurs, Delphine Lefay and Diego Dultzin Lacoste, are shaking up the luxury retail industry in Asia.



Launched in Hong Kong in 2016, OnTheList has grown from a few pop-up shops to over 150 flash sales and partnerships with over 250 premium brands including Armani, Clarins, Diane Von Furstenberg, Ferragamo, Havaianas and Ted Baker. They have cleared over a million items of previously unsold inventory and have recently launched in Singapore, another shopping haven!

Topics will include:

• best practices for enticing new members and keeping them coming back 
• how to use content and social media to built a loyal community of active shoppers
• the value and challenges of online-to-offline commerce
• how to expand into new markets without putting your business at risk
• how to work with global brands that aren't as nimble as startups
• effective ways to engage millennials
• the role of blockchain in omni-channel retail

OnTheList will also be making a special offer to our members so make sure you bring a friend or two along in the spirit of Christmas!

Hosted at The Hive Sheung Wan, 3/F Hillier Building, 33-35 Hillier Street, Sheung Wan.

Doors open at 6:30pm, with the fireside chat starting at 7:15pm. The entrance fee of HK$100 gives you one complimentary drink and access to top quality networking. We will be donating 10% of the ticket sales to Operation Santa Claus.

Pre-book your tickets on Pelago.

See who else is coming from our diverse communities across social media: Facebook Group, Facebook Page, MeetUp Group and LinkedIn Group.

Twilio at Web Wednesday HK (V115)

Calling all multi-tasking, multi-channel messengers!

For our 115th Web Wednesday social mixer in Hong Kong, we have the pleasure of interviewing Angie Bell, Head of Asia Pacific & Japan for Twilio, the $7.4 billion company that helps apps and websites send texts and make calls.

Known for its simplicity of use and facilitating customer communication across voice, text, chat, and video, Twilio has recently boosted its unified offering by acquiring email marketing platform, SendGrid, for a handsome US$2bn.

We will be talking about the appeal of plug & play customer engagement tools in a world growingly dominated by chatbots, virtual assistants and voice recognition software and how rapidly growing startups are expanding their operations using their cloud-based offerings, such as Flex, Autopilot and Pay.

There is more to Twilio than meets the eye as they provide the "intelligent omni-channel plumbing" to the likes of Uber, Zendesk, Didi, Grab, Gojek, Bytedance, Dominos and Marks & Spencers.

Hosted at The Hive Sheung Wan, 3/F Hillier Building, 33-35 Hillier Street, Sheung Wan.

Doors open at 6:30pm with the hot seat interview kicking off at 7:15pm. An entrance fee of HK$100 gives you one complimentary drink, a captivating talk and high quality networking.

Open your APIs and share the invite!

See who else is coming from our diverse communities across social media:
- Facebook Group (4,907 members)
- Facebook Page (1,498 members)
- MeetUp Group (872 members)
- LinkedIn Group (1,586 members)

A visual sampling of the Twilio offering:

The Fight Nation at Web Wednesday (V114)

Feeling physical? Enjoy a good punch up?

Mark your diaries for our next social mixer on 29th August. Our special guest speaker will be Matt Eaton, Group Publisher and CEO of Tap Media. We'll be talking about how to build and monetise a cross-media sports empire under his new mixed martial arts (MMA) brand, The Fight Nation. (find them on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram).

Topics include tapping into the passion and excitement of live MMA fights, embracing streaming video, launching new pay per view models, addressing mobile viewing habits, cracking ecommerce opportunities and building fully engaged fan bases in an omni-channel world.

Doors open at 6:30pm with the hot seat interview kicking off at 7:15pm. An entrance fee of HK$100 gives you one complimentary drink, a captivating talk and high quality networking.

Save time and pre-book your tickets online (thanks to Pelago).

See who else is coming from our diverse communities across social media:
- Facebook Group (4,916 members)
- Facebook Page (1,492 members)
- MeetUp Group (860 members)
- LinkedIn Group (1,586 members)

Venue is the Hive Sheung Wan, 3/F, Hillier Building, 33-35 Hillier Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.



Matt is kindly offering our members a HK$200 discount for the inaugural Asia MMA Awards, to be held on 14th September at the Qube at PMQ 元創方. Use the code "webwednesday" when you register via the event website.

Tap Media was also selected as one of the promising startups in the Betatron Startup Accelerator Programme (Cohort 3):

NexChange talks Blockchain at Web Wednesday (V113)

"To ICO or not to ICO?", that is the question!  But was is the answer? (Watch the video at the end of this post for one possible answer).

There's so much buzz (and froth) around blockchain, crypto-currencies and initial coin offerings that we decided to debunk some of the myths by inviting Juwan Lee, the co-founder and Director of the Blockchain Centre of Hong Kong to the Web Wednesday hot seat.

Mark your diaries for our 113th social mixer at a cool new venue, the Hive Sheung Wan, 33 Hillier Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. (Find on Google Maps).

After 30 years in the finance world, Juwan's primary enterprise is now NexChange, a  innovation platform that builds ecosystems around fintech, insurtech, blockchain, AI, healthtech and smart cities.

Here's a short video about his network of finance professionals...



In just two years, his organisation has launched influential communities for "Fintech O2O", "Block O2O" and "Healthtech O2O".

Come join us at the Hive, 33 Hillier Street, Sheung Wan on Wednesday 25th July, 2018. Doors open at 6:30pm, with the talk kicking off around 7:15pm. Entrance fee of HK$100 includes one standard drink. Happy hour drinks until 9pm.

Sign up and see who else is coming via our communities on Facebook (4,913 members), MeetUp (850 members) and LinkedIn (1,581 members).

 Pre-book your tickets and the first drink on the event page on Pelago.

-------

ICO Explained (nothing to do with Juwan Lee or NexChange, just useful).

Goxip at Web Wednesday HK (V112)

We all know that ecommerce has shaken up the world of fashion retail and marketing. Oddly enough, we've returned to an era of celebrity, where each purchase decision is highly influenced by the people whom you follow and adore, dahling!

Our guest this month is Juliette Gimenez, Co-founder and CEO of Goxip, a Hong Kong-based online marketplace that uses image recognition to help buyers find their desired items. The like to describe themselves as "The Shoppable Instagram".

According to her LinkedIn profile, "Goxip is a mobile first application which allows users to snap a photo of any fashion item to find the exact or a range of similar ones with its image recognition technology. All products can be purchased instantly on the platform which Goxip offers over 2.5 million worldwide shipping items with 30,000+ designer brands for users to choose from.

Goxip is also a community for fashionista to create styling posts or follow others for fashion inspiration. Goxip is the shoppable Instagram which not only allows users to interact with each other socially on the platform, but also give them the power to purchase their desire outfits at the same time".

Here is Juliette with her co-founder, YC Lau, who is know for his success launching HK Golden, one of Hong Kong's first and more popular internet fora.

Goxip was previously a breakthrough winner at RISE in 2015 and raised a US$1.6M seed round from Ardent Capital, which at the time was one of the largest seed-round fundings in South East Asia.



In January this year, Goxip raised US$1M from the The Mills Fabrica 南豐作坊 fund, the "techstyle" incubator of the Nan Fung Group.

In February this year, Goxip secured US$5 million from a group of investors including Meitu美圖 and high society stars, Sabrina Ho and Chryseis Tan.

Along with her boundless energy, Juliette has a successful track record in ecommerce, driving multi-million dollars sales for uBuyiBuy (Hong Kong) and LivingSocial (Thailand) and was involved in Cdiscount Thailand’s IPO in November 2014.

As you can imagine, we have plenty to talk about!

Come join us at Levels on Wednesday 30th May, 2018. Doors open at 6:30pm, with the talk kicking off around 7:15pm. Entrance fee of HK$100 includes one standard drink. Happy hour drinks until 9pm.

Sign up and see who else is coming via our communities on Facebook (4,916 members), MeetUp (846 members) and LinkedIn (1,569 members).

Web Wednesday - Hong Kong Facebook Group · 4,917 members Join Group Join Hong Kong's most established networking community for internet startups and digital media executives. We meet once a month (on a Wednesday!) in...

Rebirth of Digital Advertising at Web Wednesday HK

Now that Mark Zuckerberg has testified in front of the US Congress and Sir Martin Sorrell has resigned from the helm of WPP, the world's largest advertising group, we thought it would be the perfect moment to discuss the rebirth of the digital advertising industry at our 111th Web Wednesday Social Mixer on 25th April, 2018.

I've invited two speakers from the cutting edge of online advertising:

- Dominic Powers, CEO of CtrlShift, whose mission is "to fix a broken industry and give control back to brands and publishers"

- Adrian Teh, GM of iPinYou International (品友互动, China’s largest programmatic ad buying DSP provider

We'll be talking about how data is changing the way that people trade our attention and where it is all going in a world of increasing privacy awareness and consumer empowerment.

Come join us at Levels Club, 2/F On Hing Building,  No. 1 On Hing Terrace, Central, Hong Kong. Doors open at 6:30pm, with the talk kicking off around 7:15pm. Entrance fee of HK$100 includes one standard drink.

Spread the good word and see you there!

A meeting of the bays! Silicon Dragon is back in Hong Kong (April 19th, 2018)

Over the past eight years, Rebecca Fannin has been linking up the venture capital investment community across the globe and has built a network of 15,000 startups, emerging companies, venture capitalists, angel investors and startup stakeholders under her publishing and events group, Silicon Dragon Ventures.

This year, I'm thrilled to be interviewing Soul Htite, the Founder and Executive Chairman of Dianrong, China's leading peer-to-peer lending platform (recently valued at US$1 billion) along with his early investor, Figo Zhang, Partner at Northern Light Venture Capital.

The tickets are not expensive (under US150) but you can save 25% using discount code "SDHK2018WebWed" when you register for the event. See you there!

Some recent tweets from Dianrong:

It's five years since Dianrong first began bringing Chinese borrowers and lenders together. More than 48 billion RMB in loans have been originated and there are currently 4.3 million retail lenders. Thank you to all of our loyal borrowers, lenders and employees. pic.twitter.com/Jl1dM0jgxi

— Dianrong (@DianrongChina) March 23, 2018