Daylon Soh is a freelance photojournalist and is the editor of OpenBrief, an online publication about creativity and culture in Asia.
Liam Casey at Web Summit 2014 in Dublin
Shenzhen is Liam Casey’s favourite city in Asia. The Irish native first stepped foot in Shenzhen 18 years ago in 1996 when it was still developing as a first tier Chinese city and a leading technology and manufacturing hub in China.
“There are great opportunities in China in the consumer electronic space especially when you look at what Chinese brands like Lenovo and Xiaomi are achieving,” he says.
The first city he went to in Asia was not Shenzhen, but Taipei, Taiwan. He quickly followed his Taiwanese business contacts to their factories in Dongguan nearby Shenzhen and realised that their products were manufactured there.
In an exclusive interview with Tech in Asia at the Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Casey advised companies who wish to do business in China to take baby steps and lean in.
“China is much more about EQ than IQ. The Chinese desire personal interactions and value personal relationships,” he said.
“We get calls from people saying they want to do business in China all the time but they often have not defined whether their objective is to buy, sell or make something there. You cannot go into China to spray and pray. It’s important that you retain clarity and focus on your objectives or you will fail. You also need to be very targeted and clear about your distribution channels and business partnerships. ”
Casey says Shenzhen and San Francisco are different cities but equally exciting.
“All the construction you see that’s going on in San Francisco, it represents energy and that’s really positive. That’s what I see in Shenzhen.”
Casey cites Shenzhen as the most exciting city to steer creativity and innovation in building consumer electronic products, while San Francisco remains the best place to create innovative companies. However, Casey cautions against reading too much into rankings for the best place to build a company.
“In business today, geography is history. You can’t say that Cork, Dublin, New York, San Francisco, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, or Singapore is a better place to build a company. You need expertise in different areas from multiple locations. From 8am in Shenzhen to 6pm in San Francisco. That’s 26 hours across multiple time zones and we have people working throughout different parts of the business.”
See: Welcome to Huaqiangbei, China’s massive maker’s market (GALLERY)
Hardware is just software in a box
Casey flies to Cork, Ireland frequently where PCH headquarters is based. The company, founded in 1996, has offices in San Francisco and Shenzhen. It provides end-to-end custom manufacturing solutions for startups and Fortune 500 companies and has been running a hardware accelerator program, Highway 1, out of San Francisco since mid-2013.
Casey is on a mission to make help more hardware startups succeed. He shares some advice for startups eager to make their mark in hardware.
“Hardware startups need to think through the usability of their product and aim to create great experiences. Technology should disappear in order to make it easy for people to adopt it. At the end of the day, devices are just software in a box. What makes a difference is great software in a box and the box is beautiful. Design has a huge part to play in this.”
On a wearable technology panel discussion with Tim O’Reilly, Casey mentioned that raising money to fund inventory to be stored somewhere is a recipe for disaster.
“You will need working capital at the initial stage but once you get to a stage of scaling, you should engineer your supply chain to have negative working capital requirements. When the product leaves a factory, it should never stop until it gets to your customer. If you put a product on the shelf, it will cost money to put it there and take it off the shelf. Inventory should never end up on the shelf, if possible.”
Halving time to market
Casey reiterates that the US market is still a key market for hardware startups to launch their products. “They win or lose on the high streets in the USA,” he says, adding that part of the reason is the mature investor networks present.
“Investor community is very strong in Silicon Valley, the investors there have built great companies like Intel and Google. They’re confident investors who aren’t nervous about their stakes.”
Casey recognises the fact that hardware startups take a longer period to launch their product versus a software startup. He says PCH is working towards reducing the time a hardware startup is able to get a product to market down to six months.
His rationale: more hardware startups are delivering on their promise. That leads to more confidence in the entire supply chain from customers to investors.
“Confidence is more important than money or anything else you can put in. Once there’s confidence, fear turns to greed.”
This post Hardware never sleeps in China’s most exciting city appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Hardware never sleeps in China’s most exciting city
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