SPARKLABS TAIWAN - Key Persons
Abby Hsieh Ogilvy Managing Director Have joined Ogilvy for 20 years and worked at every level in the organization on a wide range of clients. Responsible for branding positioning, strategy development, program planning and execution management for consumer goods, health-care related, government, and/or corporate clients focusing on marketing communication, public affairs, issue and crisis management, and social responsibility issues. Holds a master's in International Management from the University of Reading (UK).
Alan Lan - Managing Director
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Managing Director of Twitter Greater China
Alan Lan Twitter Asia Pacific Managing Director As the Managing Director of Twitter Greater China, Alan is responsible for the growth of Twitter's business in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan focused on export advertising and business development partnerships. He joined Twitter in 2014 as the first hire for Twitter's Greater China team. Under his leadership, Greater China has become one of Twitter's fastest growing businesses worldwide. Alan has over 17 years of experience in auto, technology and gaming industries. He most recently led the Asian business development for Konami Entertainment in Tokyo, established European operations for Gamania Europe in Amsterdam, and headed Japan and Europe divisions for Gamania Headquarters in Taipei. He also worked for Toyota in an earlier stage of his career. Alan graduated from National Taiwan University in 2000. ◎ Twitter's DRI (directly responsible individual) for its Greater China business. ◎ 300x revenue growth since 2014. ◎ Leading the fastest growing Twitter revenue team in the world.
Job Titles:
- Financial Holding Group Chief Executive
Albert joined CTBC in 2013 and is now the Chief Executive Officer of Retail Banking Division at CTBC Bank. Albert is a well-versed banker with 30 years of experience in retail, wealth management and private banking.
Albert started his career as a Management Associate at Citibank (Taipei Branch) and later spent the majority of his career with Merrill Lynch. Albert served in several executive roles at Merrill, including Regional Head of Private Client Group (Hong Kong) and the Country CEO and Chairman (Taiwan). After leaving Merrill in 2009, Albert became a Senior Advisor to Wealth Management Department of Nomura International and Threadneedle Asset Management
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Venture Partner
- VP Strategy, Marketing, and Partnerships at NEX Team
Alex Wu is currently a Founding Team and VP Strategy, Marketing, and Partnerships at NEX Team, a mobile artificial intelligence company comprised of seasoned, former Apple, Google, and Facebook engineers and second-time entrepreneurs, announced today the launch of HomeCourt, a basketball training App that uses the latest mobile Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to record, track, and chart shots for basketball players in real time. He is also Managing Partner at Cavalier Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with a focus on early and late stage technology and healthcare investments. Prior to starting Cavalier Venture Partners, Alex was Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Newsela, an education technology company backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Before joining Newsela, Alex led product marketing efforts at Uber, helping to bring affordable transportation options to thousands of small and medium-sized businesses all over the world.
Job Titles:
- Analytics and Insights Manager
- Entrepreneur
Allen Houng is an entrepreneur currently based in Taipei. After having founded Loopd in San Francisco and sold to one of the world's largest events management technology company, Allen is now leading a team in Taiwan to bring events and trade shows to the next level through Big Data and analytics. Allen's background includes a mix of IoT expertise, software development/management, and international marketing.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President
- Executive Vice President of Retail Banking Product Group
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President
- Financial Holding Group Executive Vice President, Group Head
Amy Yang, Executive Vice President, serves as the Group Head of Retail Banking at CTBC Bank, which is one of the leading retail banks in Taiwan with a surpassing penetration of over half the island's bankable client base and lion share of wealth management business in terms of the size of AUM, asset under management.
Ms. Yang is in charge of major aspects of business management in Retail Banking, including development of strategy and management in customer segmentation, business channel, digital banking, fintech opportunities and operation and information platform.
Ms. Yang has extended and solid experiences in retail banking. Prior to her current position, Ms. Yang has served various senior positions across CTBC, included Senior Vice President of Retail Banking Product Group, Senior Vice President of Retail & Consumer Banking OP & IT Division and Senior Vice President of Trust Division.
Her achievements in career as well demonstrate the journey of the rise of Retail Banking at CTBC. She pioneered with the team to build up wealth management product and business, customer segment management, financial planning business and the reputable SPACS end to end business mechanism to integrate the resources and talents of various functions from back end support to front line sales.
Her leadership has inspired the team to transform Retail Banking at CTBC to be the best retail bank not only in Taiwan but also in Asia. In 2019, the Asian Banker celebrates CTBC as the Best Retail Bank in Asia Pacific, the Best Retail Bank in Taiwan and the Best Digital Bank in Taiwan.
Andrew Wong FiduciaEdge Technologies Advisor to Co-founder Chairman/CTO Andrew is currently advising and help developing corporate strategy and operational changes in transforming a transportation systems provider to a mobility digital business. He is also helping a cybersecurity startup advising its GTM strategy and pre-A run fundraising. He has held various senior positions in large corporations and startups in Taiwan and the U.S., and across a wide spectrum of industries from telecom, technology, media, retail, to transportation; e.g.,Verizon/MCI, FarEasTone Telecom, Taiwan Mobile, ezPeer, Addaday, FETC International.
Arthur was co-founder and CTO/Product Lead of LearnBop Inc, an educational technology company that provides automated tutoring systems for mathematics (acquired by K12 Inc. in 2014).
Arthur was also co-founder and Product Architect at Elemental Path, the NYC-based tech startup that created AI-powered conversational smart toy line Cognitoys.
Ben Tsiang graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Department of National Taiwan University and acquired a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, specialized in Human-Computer Interface (HCI).
Ben Tsiang co-founded sina.com (Nasdaq: SINA) with two Stanford senior classmates in 1995 in Silicon Valley. He served as Vice President of global products, in charge of worldwide product planning & media alliance. In the year 2000 mandated as General Manager of SINA Taiwan branch. After two years, his duty extended to East China market. In 2003, Ben Tsiang moved to Beijing and took on General Manager of SINA Mobile.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Partner
- Co - Founder & General Partner at Spark
Bernard Moon is a Co-founder & General Partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures. He is also a Co-founder & General Partner at SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea. Previously, he was Co-founder & CEO of Vidquik, a web conferencing & sales solutions platform. Bernard was a Managing Director at the Lunsford Group, which is a private investment firm with holdings in real estate, healthcare and other industries. Bernard was Co-founder & VP of Business Development of GoingOn Networks, a social media platform for companies, and also led their product development where BusinessWeek recognized them in their "Best of the Web" list. Previously, Bernard was a Director at iRG, a leading boutique investment bank in Asia, where he focused on TMT companies.
Bernard co-founded a couple of other startups, raised over $50 million in venture capital, and enjoys helping other entrepreneurs as much as possible: He serves as a mentor to MuckerLab, a startup accelerator in LA, and SixThirty, a fintech accelerator in St. Louis.. He is a frequent guest writer to various technology journals, such as VentureBeat, Mashable, TechCrunch, and ReadWrite, and has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications.
Bernard has spoke and lectured about startups and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, Global Entrepreneurship Congress, American Chamber of Commerce in Korea and other organizations. He was selected as one of 8 global judges for EDF's innovation contest (EDF is the world's biggest electricity producer based in France) and serves on the Advisory Board for GAN (Global Accelerator Network), which is the global champion of the seed-stage, mentorship-driven accelerator model and includes over 50 of the most respected accelerators from six continents around the world.
He completed a post-graduate fellowship with the Coro Foundation. He received his MPA in Telecom and New Media Policy from Columbia University and a BA in English and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bryan Huang TaipeiLaw Attorneys-at-Law Managing Partner As the managing partner at TaipeiLaw Attorneys-at Law, Bryan's areas of expertise include Patent, Trademark, IP Rights Protection, Personal Data Protection, Corporate Law, M&A, Risk and & Startup Investments, Offshore Company Establishment, and Joint Venture Planning. He has assisted many renowned tech corporates in IPO, M&A, and International Litigation processes, and serves as a legal consultant for 100+ companies including FunNow, PagamO, 500 startups, Sunsino Venture Groups, Chunghwa Telecom etc. He is also Director of Bravovia Capital and provides legal consultation service to teams of accelerators, including 500 startups, SparkLabs, TSS, Taiwan Startup Hub etc. Currently, he provides legal services in Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai and ASEAN countries, striving to assist Taiwanese entrepreneurs to go global.
Candice Ong - Chief Commercial Officer
Candice Ong ShopBack Chief Commercial Officer As the Chief Commercial Officer, Candice Ong plays a critical role within the core business management team. Apart from leading country teams across the region, she also helms regional marketing to accelerate ShopBack's growing presence. Prior to this role, Candice was the Managing Director of ZALORA Southeast Asia. She was instrumental in the fashion conglomerate's rapid growth during her four- year tenure, spanning roles in Marketing and Procurement. In her personal capacity, she was invited to be a member of the sub-committee on Future Corporate Capabilities and Innovation in 2016 and chaired the Retail Panel for Asean Business Club Forum in 2015. She has also been invited as a keynote speaker in many industry events, including a panelist role for the World Chinese Economic Summit 2015, Young Women's Leadership Connection 2015 and Ministry of Trade & Industry 8th Economic Dialogue 2016 among others.
Chih-Han Yu Appier Co-Founder & CEO Yu has authored dozens of research articles in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and machine learning, and has been awarded two US patents. In 2010 Yu obtained his doctoral degree in computer science from Harvard University, where he collaborated with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School to develop self-adapting robotics systems to help polio patients walk correctly. His doctoral thesis was nominated as the best thesis of the year in the field of multi-agent AI. Prior to Harvard, Yu earned his master's degree from Stanford University, where he participated in the school's champion DARPA Grand Challenge development team, whose winning prototype Stanley laid the basis for Google's self-driving car project. Most recently, Yu was named a Young Global Leader for 2016 by the World Economic Forum, making Appier the only Asian AI company to make the list.
Dan Wong is a veteran of the consumer electronics, mobile phone, and internet industries - with over 20 years of experience in Greater China and Silicon Valley. Mr. Wong is now a mentor and advisor to several startups in artificial intelligence, converged retail,and smart home industries. Most recently as CEO of artificial intelligence startup Rokid, Mr. Wong brought to market a cutting-edge home AI product that captured numerous industry accolades, including CES Innovation Award 2016 and 2017. As Vice President of Media Solution Center at Samsung, Mr. Wong was responsible for the software and services on Samsung mobile phones, tablets, smart TVs and wearables in China. Previous to that, he ran one of China's largest mobile ad networks as Chief Operating Officer of Madhouse.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO at Gogolook
Dr. Chien-Fu KUO (Jeff) is the Co-founder and CEO at Gogolook, The product of Gogolook, whoscall, once received the executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt's public praise. Gogolook has turned into a subsidiary company of Naver Corp., the biggest internet company in South Korea, and a sister company to LINE Corp. Jeff earned his bachelor's degree in Industry Design from National Cheng Kung University and holds a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from National Tsing Hua University. Enthusiastic about product design, human-computer interaction, and user experience research.
Ed Deng - CEO, Founder
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Co - Founder
- Co - Founder and CEO of Health
Ed Deng is the Co-Founder and CEO of Health2Sync; he co-founded Health2Sync after witnessing many in his family battle diabetes and learning what works in managing diabetes. Prior to Healt2Sync, Ed was Chief Marketing Officer of Hesine Technologies, an end-to-end push platform for mobile devices, which was acquired by NQ Mobile. Ed started his career as an Investment Banker at Lehman Brothers's Technology Mergers & Acquisitions Group in Palo Alto, CA. Ed obtained a BS in Finance from McIntire School of Commerce at The University of Virginia.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Managing Partner
- Partner
- Co - Founder and Managing Partner of Spark
Edgar Chiu is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of SparkLabs Taiwan, a startup accelerator and venture capital fund founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs with a vision and mission to help founders go global. Prior to SparkLabs Taiwan, Edgar was the founding COO of Gogolook. There, he headed global partnerships for the Whoscall app, a global caller ID service, developing major partnerships in Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In 2013, Gogolook was subsequently acquired by NAVER, the South Korean Internet Giant.
Previously, Edgar worked at IBM as a management consultant strategizing new market entry plans and discovering emerging business opportunities for top clients in the Asia Pacific. He received IBM's Value Role Model Award in 2011. Edgar is also the Co-founder of Jumpstart Global, a talent acceleration program with a charity fund behind, cultivating over 300 entrepreneurial leaders for fast-growing organizations since 2014. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Quantitative Finance from National Tsing Hua University.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- COO
- Co - Founder and COO of Yulore Technology
Edward Shen is the co-founder and COO of Yulore Technology, the world's largest phone number big data service provider. Founded in 2012, Yulore provides caller ID recognition and yellowpage services for smartphone brands including Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, etc, as well as security apps including Baidu and Tencent Security. Its service covers 1 Billion user base and receives 2.5 Billion requests per day, based on its 100 Million phone numbers of 80 Million businesses across China. Based on the accumulated recognition history, it developed a series of big data products for anti-fraud and risk analysis purposes for financial institutes. Its customers include banks and micro financing companies such as PaiPaiDai (NYSE: PPDF), Pintec, Cashbox, SPD Bank, and many more. Shen received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a master's degree in Computer Science, both from National Taiwan University, as well as a master's degree in media, arts and science from the MIT Media Lab.
Job Titles:
- Senior Special Assistant of Chairman
Eric Wu Wistron Corporation Senior Special Assistant of Chairman Eric Wu as Senior Special Assistant of Chairman in Wistron Corporation is mainly responsible for co-operating venture related initiative. One of his job roles is to co-work with start-ups to inline cooperate business development. Wistron Corporation is the leading Electronics devices OEM/ODM company in Taiwan.
Eugene was a Manager and Group Head of the Quality Assurance and Localization Group for NHN USA. He previously served as Project Manager of the Publishing Group at NHN USA and Assistant Manager of Global Strategy & Marketing Development at NHN Corporation. He began his career at The Contents Company, an SK company, in business development and played a key role in launching Korea's first pilot IP TV service with overseas partners. He earned his BA in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Michigan.
Eugene previously served as a Director of Global Business Development at Tencent Korea. He was responsible for the sourcing of Korean game titles to China and Tencent's global publishing network, headed the global sales of Tencent game titles, and he managed relationships with Tencent's global publishing partners. Prior to Tencent, Eugene was Director of Business Development and Marketing at Podotree, an online educational app developer in Korea. He was responsible for their marketing and launch effort into the U.S. Previously, he was with Vertigo Games as the Group Manager of the Overseas Business Group.
Roy Ang is the Regional Business Development at GrabPay. In his role, he assists in setting up payment operations in the South East Asia countries that Grab is in, with the aim of making GrabPay the default mobile payment wallet in the region. His responsibilities include strategizing payment experiences for Grab users, drivers & merchant partners and building up team & product for each local market. Through the Grab platform, he seeks to help unbanked mobile-first users and merchants to build opportunities for themselves while delivering trusted & safe payment systems to Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Grab, Roy spent close to 3 years as the GM of e27, overseeing sales and events operations in APAC, delivering startups and investor events for tech & IT industry. Roy holds a Bachelor of Banking & Finance from the University of London, and currently lives in Singapore.
Felix Hong has worked in the consumer electronics industry from both ends: manufacturing process development at Foxconn for Apple iPods, IoT startup experience as an early member of Nest, and management experience as part of Google Taiwan. He is experienced in consumer product development, team building, manufacturing operations, startup and resource strategies, and people management.
Job Titles:
- Social Investment Executive Director
An entrepreneur, angel investor and business advisor for early-stage technology companies in Hong Kong, US, China, Australia, and Taiwan. Felix is also the founding partner for #43 Ventures and director for WYNG 43 Social Investment, with a focus on the convergence of social innovation and technological impact.
Job Titles:
- Program Director
- Program Director of Spark
Flora Hsieh is the program director of SparkLabs Taiwan. She was previously the Head of Operation of Junyi Academy, an EdTech online education platform that provides K-12 students personalized learning tool, and was responsible for fundraising, recruitment and finance.
Prior to Junyi Academy, She got the return offer from J.P. Morgan and started her career at J.P. Morgan Corporate Bank, Investor Services, as a client relationship analyst.
Flora is also an alumni of Global Shaper community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum and is a global network of young leaders driven to make positive local impact and share a spirit of entrepreneurship in the global public interest. Her focuses are on impact investment and nonprofit sustainability.
She earned her bachelor's degree in Accounting from National Taiwan University.
With more than two decades of providing businesses (from three guys with an idea in a coffee shop to Fortune 50 companies) with services ranging from business strategy, product development, and project management Greg has a proven track record of bringing projects in on time and under budget.Having experienced both as an entrepreneur and consultants to startups, Greg knows first hand what it takes to deliver software and hardware products to market. Having made his first investment nearly ten years ago, Greg is an active member in organizations such as Tech Coast Angels and Monday Club mentoring and investing in entrepreneurs focusing primarily on enterprise software, SaaS, Fintech, and marketplaces.In addition to his activities as an angel investor, Greg also holds a position as Managing Partner of MXI, a global solutions provider specializing in improving the operational and technical infrastructure for companies of all sizes.
Jacob Hsu is a Silicon Valley-based executive, advisor, and entrepreneur. Mr. Hsu is the CEO of Catalyte (www.catalyte.io), one of the largest software engineering services companies in the United States. Catalyte advances human potential for the digital revolution by using artificial intelligence to identify individuals, regardless of background, who have the innate potential and cognitive ability to be great software developers. With development centers in Baltimore and Portland, Ore., Catalyte has created a diverse and US-based technology workforce to help companies scale software innovation. Prior to Catalyte, Mr. Hsu was CEO of Symbio, a global software engineering, and R&D services company. He transformed Symbio from an early stage startup to a global diversified IT services company. Together with its parent company VXI, Symbio had over 23,000 employees around the world. Before joining Symbio, he was the founding CEO of Trilogica, a data aggregation software company, and the founding CEO of Epitome, a banking applications company. Mr. Hsu began his career in investment banking focused on mergers and acquisitions.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Founder
- Js Adways Media Inc
Mr. Wu has been playing active roles for the last 25 years as an entrepreneur, an investor, an advisor and a strategic visionary in the Pacific Rim, particularly the Greater China region. He started his career in the Silicon Valley as a corporate securities attorney, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture investments, global strategic alliance transactions and representation of both private and public companies. Thereafter, Mr. Wu parlayed his deal expertise directly into the industry side as head of corporate development (M&A and investments) for Yahoo! Inc. in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Wu's long career at Yahoo! Inc. culminated in his role as Global Vice President, International Mergers & Acquisitions. After the transaction between Yahoo! Inc. and Alibaba, Mr. Wu left Yahoo! Inc. and served as both global Vice President of corporate development as well as Chief Legal Officer and corporate secretary for another Nasdaq listed company, Openwave Systems, Inc. Mr. Wu's years of experience as a senior executive for public companies, coupled with his vast deal experience, transitioned him into his role as a private equity and venture investor, active in both the Silicon Valley and Asia, particularly focusing on the retail and retail services sectors in the Greater China region (including both e-commerce and traditional retail). In addition to his role as an investor and professional, Mr. Wu also founded both investment firms and retail businesses as an entrepreneur and CEO of both online and offline retail businesses in the Greater China region.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- General Partner
- Partner
- Co - Founder & Partner at Spark
Jimmy Kim is Co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs Global Ventures. He is also a Co-founder & Partner at SparkLabs, a startup accelerator in Korea. Jimmy is Co-founder and President of N3N, an IoT platform company and Cisco's first global IoT investment. They service numerous Fortune 500 companies and governments, such as Samsung Electronics, POSCO, Port of Singapore, The North Face, and Hyundai Motors. He previously served as N3N's CEO. Previously, Jimmy was CEO of Nexonova, a game development studio of Nexon Corp that specializes in Social Network Games. Prior to Nexonova, Jimmy served as Executive Vice President of Nexon Corp, and Head of Nexon's Portal (www.nexon.com, market cap: $5 billion) and Web Services. Nexon is one of the most successful online gaming providers, with games such as Maple Story, Dungeon and Fighter, Combat Arms, and Kart Rider. Nexon services over 20 games across 60 countries to an audience of 300 million.
Jimmy was the founding investor and active deal adviser of Studio Ex, an online gaming studio that was acquired by Disney in 2012. Jimmy is sought-after speaker on online gaming and technology and has spoken at various conference such as LeWeb, Ad:Tech, and Web 2.0 Expo. Jimmy received his B.S. in Bio-medical Engineering from Northwestern University, and also a M.S. in Bio-medical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Jimmy also completed the Stanford University's Graduate School of Business's Executive Management Program.
Joey Chung earned a Master's Degree in business administration from Harvard University in 2009, the youngest Taiwanese to be accepted into Harvard's MBA program. In 2011, he became General Manager of Sanrio China. He then returned to Taiwan and co-founded The News Lens in 2013, one of the fastest growing new digital news sites in Asia that focuses on facts and also offers diverse perspectives of news and voices. Joey has written several books and is also a columnist of Business Weekly. The News Lens is an Independent Digital Media Startup, now one of the largest independent media platform in Taiwan and Greater China with offices in Taipei, HK and soon, other parts of Asia Pacific. With 6 million unique readers monthly and investors from the Washington Post, 500 startups, we aim to be the go-to platform for the global Chinese millennial crowd regarding news, opinions, video and mobile content.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Co - Founder
- Co - Founder and CEO of Pic
John Fan is Co-Founder and CEO of PicCollage, making photos more fun and creative for millions of users around the world. John previously studied at Stanford University (Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering) and worked at a startup that was acquired by Qualcomm.
Kai Huang was co-founder and CEO of Blue Goji, an interactive fitness company that brings motivation and fun to health and fitness. Prior to Blue Goji, he co-founded video game publisher RedOctane and was President and CEO from 1999 to 2009. RedOctane was the publisher of Guitar Hero, which went on to become a multi-billion dollar global video game franchise and was acquired by Activision in 2006. Prior to RedOctane, Mr. Huang was co-founder and CEO of Adux Software, which was sold in 1999. Mr. Huang started his career as a consultant with Accenture in the San Francisco office.
Kenny is the finance manager at SparkLabs Taiwan, mainly responsible for day-to-day operation, tracking fund performance, and financial reporting. Kenny is experienced in FP&A, risk assessment, and resource management.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Co - Founder of Twitch
Kevin Lin is a co-founder of Twitch, the world's largest live social video platform for gamers and creators. As its long-time COO, Kevin brought live social video to hundreds of millions of people around the world, helping thousands of creators make a living building their communities around live, shared experiences. As one of the most respected and adored entrepreneurs and executives in digital media, Kevin and Twitch function as a center of gravity to the multi-billion dollar esports industry that is reimagining gaming, traditional sports, content, and other interactive technologies. Since graduating from Yale in 2004, Kevin has worn many hats in a variety of industries, from working at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species to running major events and promotions for the NYC & Company, New York City's official marketing, tourism and partnership organization-to managing sales and operations at a San Francisco beverage company. Having sold Twitch to Amazon in 2014, Kevin is the co-founder of Gold House, a nonprofit collective of diverse leaders dedicated to forging stronger relationships that empower Asians to have more authentic, more successful, and healthier lives to, in turn, advance all of society. As an avid angel investor and advisor, Kevin is also a consistently deep patron to his hometowns of New Orleans and Taipei, as well as to founders and creatives.
Leland has built several fast-growth businesses in both Asia Pacific and Silicon Valley. phireGEN specializes in C-level strategic consulting and business development execution in the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) space including IoT, drones, VR, video streaming, governmental policies, non-profit, among other sectors. Over the years, our boutique firm has delivered engagements spanning Spain, Kazakhstan, Korea, Brazil, Greater China and Hollywood USA. Leland is currently advising SBIE2's (formerly a SoftBank company) private placement business and guiding a client through the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Prior to this, he headed Facebook's Telecom infra Project and led GSMA (trade association for 800+ mobile carriers) through a major strategic pivot that grew Mobile World Congress Shanghai by 3658% over 7 years. Leland was part of the 2007 Terayon executive team (Nasdaq: TERN) when Motorola acquired it for USD 140M, and part of the 2001 eOn Communications' IPO team (Nasdaq: EONC). He began his career in 1990 at Hutchison Telecom (SEHK: 2332 / NYSE ADR: HTX). Leland was a recipient of Award for Excellence in TMT from WI Harper, and was named an Executive to Watch by Fierce Wireless Magazine and a Conference Ambassador by Shanghai Municipal People's Government. He holds both an MBA and a BS in mechanical engineering from UCLA, and was selected as a Coro Fellow in public policy by The Coro Foundation. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and is a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensed pilot and an American Sailing Association (ASA) certified bareboat captain.
Mallory is a Program Manager at SparkLabs Taiwan and mainly supports the operations of the accelerator program.
Job Titles:
- Head of Digital Finance Division
May has over 20 years of experience in the banking industry, her experience spans across branding, marketing, PR, products, CRM, e-products, data-mining, etc. At her current role as head of Digital Finance Division, May is responsible for constantly challenging the existing ways of banking and bringing innovations to better serve CTBC customers. Some of the more recent innovations include utilizing "eyeball tracking" technology to enhance the functionality and user experience of CTBC e-banking site, rolling out cardless ATMs with finger vein technology and several blockchain-related products and awards. In her earlier years with CTBC, May helped introduce "event based marketing" model which increased marketing efficiency through 66 event marketing activities. May was also in charge of the "We Are Family" branding campaign and rolled out Taipei 101 co-branded credit card, which generated the highest spending per active card.
Melody Koh is a Venture Partner at NextView Ventures based in its New York office. Prior to joining NextView, Melody was Head of Product at Blue Apron (NYSE: APRN). Melody joined Blue Apron as the first product hire when the company was 18 months old with 20 HQ employees. She helped scale the business through hyper-growth (25x in 3.5 years) and to its IPO, building and leading a 35-person team across Product Management, Product Design, and Analytics. Previously, Melody was a Product Manager at Fab.com leading marketing & analytics products. Before joining Fab.com, Melody was the founder/CEO of a seed-funded wine subscription e-commerce service. In addition to her operating and entrepreneurial roles, Melody was also a venture investor at Time Warner's strategic VC group and was one of six inaugural members of First Round Capital's Product Co-op initiative. Melody began her career as an investment banking analyst at Evercore Partners. Melody holds a B.S. in Commerce with Distinction from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School.
Michael is currently serving as a chief financial officer at Bravovia Capital, spearheading its impact investments in agricultural/aquacultural technology, renewables, and educations. He believes in investments where a measurable social and/or environmental impact should be generated alongside a financial return. With more than 10 years of experiences in equity research at top-tier investment banks and various roles at FMCG, Michael is adept at identifying potential startups with the scalable business model, where Bravovia Capital is able to help to streamline the resources while accelerating the startups' growth.
Job Titles:
- Government Relations Manager
Prior to SparkLabs Taiwan, she was an Minister's assistant and an Executive Officer at MOC. During her 10 years cultural and governmental career, she participated with the establishment of Ministry of Culture, where she conducted strategic external negotiation plans to pursue constant organization for potential partnership in the early stage of forming government policies. She served as a Senior Project Leader at Taicca afterwards, where she led market-related analysis, strategic decisions-making and a cross-functional communication internally, piloted the fellowship program for Taiwan contents industry especially for publication.
Milly is Government Relations Manager at SparkLabs Taiwan. Mainly supports the operations of governmental projects and communications. She began her governmental career with Ministry of Culture(MOC) and Taiwan Creative Content Agency(Taicca) since 2011.
Job Titles:
- Shopify Regional Commercial Lead
Mr. Ian Chu currently works for Shopify as APAC Commercial Lead, focusing on market expansion and partnerships in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Shopify is a world leading eCommerce SaaS platform, with its mission of making commerce better for everyone. Throughout Ian's career, he has been focusing on growth strategy, Go-to-Market strategy, digital transformation, and M&A projects. Before Shopify, Ian was working on Go-to-Market initiatives in a Peter Thiel backed startup in Europe, a management consultant in Accenture Strategy, and a product owner of different tech companies.
Job Titles:
- Chief Digital Officer
- Chief Digital Officer at Condé Nast Taiwan
Mr. Jeff Chang is the Chief Digital Officer at Condé Nast Taiwan. He is also the Founder and CEO at Yeeda, a fashion O2O startup. He is also the founder of F Camp, an incubator that aims to spur innovation within the fashion/lifestyle industry ecosystem by incubating promising startups. He currently sits in the Board of Directors of P1, China's top fashion web, and being an advisor to various startups in the fashion & lifestyle area.
Jeff was VP of Strategy and Business Development at Trends Media Group, China's largest fashion media group, in charge of venture investment. He had invested 10+ startups globally, including New York-based Shoptiques (a YC company), and London based ASAP54..etc.
Before immersing himself in the venture investment world, he worked at various leading strategy consultancies (Oliver Wyman and Arthur D. Little), to help global TMT clients to design the China strategy.
Jeff graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his MBA.
Felix Hong has worked in the consumer electronics industry from both ends: manufacturing process development at Foxconn for Apple iPods, IoT startup experience as an early member of Nest, and management experience as part of Google Taiwan. He is experienced in consumer product development, team building, manufacturing operations, startup and resource strategies, and people management.
Pei-Chen Lin is a motivated and competent board certificated emergency physician experienced in biomedical informatics and medical device regulation. After she finished her clinical training as an emergency physician, she got her master's degree in Translational medicine at the University of California, Berkeley in the US. This program enriched her knowledge in engineering, business, as well as health economics, and regulations for medical technology. From 2018 to 2022, she joined a medical AI startup, aetherAI Co., Ltd, and helped the company to develop several AI-related medical devices, to conduct clinical trials, and to file for premarket approvals in Taiwan and overseas countries, including the US, Europe, Japan and China. Meanwhile, she also got her Ph.D. degree in biomedical informatics at Taipei Medical University.
Powen is Head of Tech Vertical in Twitter Greater China, based in Singapore. Before joining Twitter he spent 3 years in Samsung Korea headquarter as Senior Global Marketing Manager and Project Leader in Global Strategy Group. Powen graduated from the International Business Department of National Taiwan University and acquired an MBA degree from Kellogg School of Management. Passionate about how technology shapes and improves our life, Powen has spent 10+ years in the industry to build extensive experience and network in both Asia and North America. One of his goals is to bring knowledges to young start-ups and nurture a healthier entrepreneurial environment for them."
Job Titles:
- Regional Business Development at Grab
Roy Ang is the Regional Business Development at GrabPay. In his role, he assists in setting up payment operations in the South East Asia countries that Grab is in, with the aim of making GrabPay the default mobile payment wallet in the region. His responsibilities include strategizing payment experiences for Grab users, drivers & merchant partners and building up team & product for each local market. Through the Grab platform, he seeks to help unbanked mobile-first users and merchants to build opportunities for themselves while delivering trusted & safe payment systems to Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Grab, Roy spent close to 3 years as the GM of e27, overseeing sales and events operations in APAC, delivering startups and investor events for tech & IT industry. Roy holds a Bachelor of Banking & Finance from the University of London, and currently lives in Singapore.
Sarah is a Program Manager at SparkLabs Taiwan and mainly supports the operations of the accelerator program. Prior to SparkLabs Taiwan, she was a co-founder at Twin Oaks Education, a startup that develops oversea project-based courses for Taiwanese students.
Silvia is capable of leading cross-functional and technical teams to connect idea generation to product innovation and market communication. She has abroad experience in leading intercultural and multilingual projects. In 2014, Silvia established Red Peak Asia in Taipei, Taiwan, with the founder Michael Birkin to bring Asian brands to the world and to bring the world to Asia. Over a span of three years, Red Peak Asia has assisted brands across multiple industries to shine on the global stage and to engage with local markets.
Stacy is an executive assistant at SparkLabs Taiwan and supports the managing partner by handling critical administrative tasks.
Job Titles:
- Event Manager
- Events Manager
Sylvia is a Events Manager at SparkLabs Taiwan and responsible for planning accelerator program related events.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer
- Chief Technology Officer Role of CTBC Financial Holding Group
Titan joined CTBC in 2018 as the Chief Technology Officer role of CTBC Financial Holding Group. Titan is responsible for overseeing and integrating the IT functions within CTBC Group and serving as an internal consultant for Fintech developments and applying new technology to better enhance CTBC's product and customer experience.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Managing Director at Silver Lake Partners
- Venture Partner
Tony Ling was formerly a Managing Director at Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm focused on investments in the technology, tech-enabled, and related growth industries. While at Silver Lake, Tony led investments across a range of technology sectors including internet, semiconductor and hardware-related companies. Previous boards include GoDaddy (NASDAQ: GDDY) and IPC Systems. After Silver Lake, Tony co-founded IQ License, a marketplace connecting brands with licensed manufacturers, where he served as COO and CFO. IQ License customers included global brands across fashion, sports, and entertainment such as Christian Siriano, Chinese Laundry, Remington, and Alessandra Ambrosio. Tony has been an active angel investor throughout his career and enjoys supporting startups in the technology and health tech sectors. Tony received his BA in economics from Harvard University (1996) and MBA from Harvard Business School (2002).
Wesley Kuo is a serial entrepreneur. He founded i@soluiton Inc in 2000, covering 40% market share of Java phone market with world-leading J2ME tech solution in Asia region. Japan-listed company Aplix (T.3727) merged i@solution with USD 70 Million in 2004. Later, he served as the president and board member of Aplix group to lead global business and conclude all tier-one handset manufacturers deals including Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG, etc. from 2004 to 2007. Wesley found Ubitus Inc. in 2007, focusing on interactive streaming and GPU cloud virtualization technology. He led strategic investments from NTT docomo Venture and Samsung Venture. Ubitus now owns the world-leading N-screen cloud gaming platform and is building up new GPU cloud business with AI/machine learning capability. Proven game cloud partnership record with Google, Nintendo, NTT docomo, NVIDIA, AMD, Alibaba, and Samsung. Wesley earned a Bachelor degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Taiwan University and has dedicated his career in cloud computing, GPU virtualization and interactive streaming areas for years.
Job Titles:
- Financial Holding Group Chief Investment Officer
Winston heads the investment business of CTBC Financial Holding Group, a listed company in Taiwan with total assets over US$180 billion. Winston started his career at Lehman Brothers (HK) and prior to joining CTBC in 2010, he served in several senior executive positions. Winston managed a leading TV-based shopping business in Taiwan and co-founded a fintech business in Korea. With more than 25 years of experience in business operation, direct investment, and asset management, Winston is an expert in building a company from ground up, as well as deal sourcing for new business and investment opportunities across the US and Asia. Winston received his BA in Economics from University of California, Berkerly and MBA degree from University of Pennsylvania, the Wharton School.
Wretch Chien created wretch.cc, the first and biggest blogging website in Taiwan. He built and led the team serving 6 billion page-views per month before selling the company to Yahoo!. He spent the following 4 years with Yahoo! and led teams located globally. Wretch earned his MBA degree from Stanford. He is now a venture capitalist at Jerry Yang's investment arm AME Cloud Ventures.