Dragons’ Chamber co-organizers Canadian Chamber of Commerce wrote a fantastic article recap after Dragons’ Chamber 2017.
Link to the article: https://canchamtw.com/dragons-chamber-taiwan-2017-event-recap/
Posted on November 27, 2017 by Caroline Hosey
On November 18th, 2017, the CCCT’s small business committee hosted the second annual Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan event in partnership with Meet Taipei and Business Next Magazine. Read more about Business Next’s write-up on Dragons Chamber Taiwan.
Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan is a competition where local businesses pitch ideas, strategies, and their own business models to a panel of expert judges. By participating in this event, local entrepreneurs are able to make connections with other business executives while also receiving valuable insights from experts in operating businesses in Taiwan.
Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan is open to a wide range of small businesses including, restaurants, start-ups, consulting companies, education, professional services, design, import/export, manufacturing, or any other organization — as long as they have a legitimate business model.
This event is especially useful to the foreign community here in Taiwan, as starting a business abroad sometimes poses many challenges. Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan essentially provides a forum for business executives to attract attention to their business, while also gaining new insights and perspectives about how to advance their strategies and business models.
This year’s Dragons (the judges) came from a variety of business backgrounds providing valuable commentary and thought-proving questions to this year’s contestants.
The Dragons were: Kelvin Sun – Vice President of WI Harper Group; Revital Golan- founder and CEO of Anemone Ventures; David Bostwick – Director of Trade and Investment at CTOT, and Elias EK- co-founder and CEO of Enspyre.
This year the Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan had five teams participating in the competition:
MemePr is an artificial intelligence marketing platform connecting enterprises with top global marketers. By using a computer robot, they are able to quickly and efficiently connect businesses to marketing influencers.
With partnerships in the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, and more, MemePr strives to save their members time by connecting business to these major global marketing networks.
Eatsmart is a company whose mission is to help busy people eat healthy on the go. By providing wholesome lunch boxes, their clients can select various menus to fit their dietary needs and goals.
Eat Smart’s chefs are trained in France and they offer a diversified menu specializing in European cuisine. Furthermore, the ingredients are locally sourced in Taiwan to ensure that the food is fresh upon delivery.
Woodpecker Learning provides a platform where the user can interact with online content to enhance language learning. This platform is designed for both teachers and students to make learning a language more engaging and practical.
It is also geared towards advanced learners who want to have a better understanding of digital content that is originally geared towards native speakers.
On this application users can learn English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese with lessons in Russian to be offered in the near future.
KP Kitchen Taiwan is the place to buy familiar Western cooking and baking DIY kits. In Taiwan many home cooks struggle adjusting to small and cramped kitchens and also finding familiar ingredients for the recipes they love.
KP Kitchen has solved this problem by providing DIY sets for making recipes such as brownies, muffins, cakes, breads, and more!
The best part is that all of these recipes are tested and adopted to be made in toaster ovens or other appliances that are common in Taiwan. KP kitchen also offers delicious spice mixes which are all produced locally with love.
My Room Abroad is a platform that connects international student to certified landlords.
Finding an apartment in a foreign country can be difficult for students, so My Room Abroad aims to alleviate this problem by providing a one-stop website where clients can search for their room and pay deposits and rental fees online.
My Room Abroad originated in Taiwan, and they are looking to expand to other countries in Asia.
All of the teams labored arduously on their presentations and they engaged in thoughtful discussion while answering some tough questions from the dragon judges. However, only one team could finish as the first place winner.
This year the grand prize was awarded to Woodpecker Learning, with second prize to Eat Fresh, and third prize to My Room Abroad. The KP Kitchen and MemePr teams were also awarded prizes for their efforts.
In an interview with Peter Sutton from Woodpecker Learning, he provided some valuable insights for those interested in participating in next year’s Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan.
I came here just in the audience last year, and it was very interesting and I enjoyed it. So I would definitely recommend anyone who has a business to come. Even if they think they might not win, it is a great venue to promote your product, and it is a great way to get experience.
Peter Sutton also provided a comment on how he felt to win first place at the 2017 Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan event.
There were some interesting people in the audience today, both from the point of view from the education sector and also from the point of view of investing. So we would like to follow up with them for partnerships. And I think it is going to be good publicity to win this, and hopefully people will download or app.
On behalf of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Taiwan, we would like to give our thanks and appreciation to everyone who made this event such a success. First, a thanks to our Gold Sponsors: FutureWard, JusRegal, Anemone Ventures, and Musa Trademark who all donated prizes for the top contestants.
Also we would like to thank our Silver sponsors for their contributions: DDG, Geber Brand Consulting, and Pachuco.
Finally, we would like to thank the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei for partnering with the CCCT to make the 2017 Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan a tremendous success.
We hope to continue to see more small businesses come and compete in Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan in 2018!