Building on DTI and DOST collaboration in bringing winners of the regional competition of the 2018 Startup World Cup to the final pitching event in San Francisco on May 11 powered by Fenox Venture Capital, the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco, the Philippine Trade and Investment Center-Silicon Valley, and the Department of Tourism organized the 2nd IT-oriented “Philippine Startup MeetUp.”
The event was a platform for the six-member startup delegation to network and build partnerships with San Francisco based entrepreneurs. Mr. Earl Valencia, founder of Ideaspace shared his reflections on the developments in the Philippines’ innovation and startup ecosystem, while Georg Fuerlinger of Austria’s Go Silicon Valley provided some practical advise on how to capture the fast changing landscape of technology and innovation in Silicon Valley.
The Philippine Startup MeetUp series is part of the Philippine Consulate General’s push for the SPARK*CONNECT*EMPOWER movement, in close collaboration with PTIC-Silicon Valley and DOT by sparking interest in the country’s fledgling startup ecosystem among the Filipino Americans working in IT, and by connecting them not only with each other but also organizations both in the United States and the Philippines. Through collaboration, the empowered Filipino American community will be able to help bridge the divide between what the Philippines’ startup ecosystem is now, and what it could be; a Filipino American community that, in turn, empowers Kababayans back home.
The Philippine Startup MeetUp is just the beginning. Driven by the strong spirit of collaboration that is characteristic of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, a physical space at the Philippine Center in San Francisco would soon be a home for our FILAM technopreneurs.
The regional winner STORM Technologies, a benefits-based technology company, is representing the Philippines at the Startup Word Cup finals. The Philippines is likewise represented in the Conference by Techshake, a media startup, and regional finalists Ayannah, a financial technology startup which provides digital payment platform for remittance market; Qwikwire, another fintech startup which offers a cross-border billing and invoicing platform for firms to connect clients to international banking facilities with tools to manage clients payment; Zennya, an AI-assisted, on-demand platform that delivers high-touch home and personal care service providers, and BeamAndGo, a platform that allows overseas workers to purchase supermarket gift certificates and send it through mobile for their family in the Philippines to redeem at participating store. DOST representative heads the delegation for the Conference and Finals supported by PTIC-Silicon Valley.♦