It’s that time of year again – Startup Weekend is back at HKU for the third year running, and this time it’s bigger than ever.

The past two years saw exponential expansion in both the number of teams competing and the variety and depth of the pitches that were proposed. With this year’s SWHKU preceded by three pre-event bootcamps, we’re all looking forward to seeing what is sure to be an even better line-up of ideas and innovation.

Given the marketability angle of Startup Weekend, one of the pre-event bootcamps was on conceiving of viable startup ideas. The other two was about building the “MVP” (Minimum Viable Product), from designing a user interface to creating a responsive web app to show off at the final pitches.

Not only were the bootcamps intended to boost participants’ odds for the competition, they’re also aimed at building a startup community. The hope is that the bootcamps and the competition itself will combine to create a collaborative environment where engineering and non-engineering majors can work together and maintain their momentum to carry the idea forward.

Many other hackathons have been characterised by problems of communication and momentum, and this year’s SWHKU aims to solve this through the workshops, which addressed the basic techniques of UI/UX and mobile app building and gave a multi-disciplinary grounding to students of all majors. This will enable effective communication between business majors, developers and designers, leading to faster and better prototype design.

As always, participants of every major – not just computer science – are invited to join the competition, giving students from different majors a chance to meet and take ideas forward. The workshops are intended as a guide: you may be a business major or an arts major or an engineering major, and you may not even remember the exact techniques, but the idea is for you to come out of it with a knowledge of the tools available to you for idea-building. You may even meet your business/technical co-founders through the competition!

Ultimately, Startup Weekend is not limited to CS majors, nor does it exclude the many innovators who don’t have a technical background. As always, it’s a good platform for people of different disciplines to meet, create, and participate in the growing startup environment.

In previous years, TecHKU was the official media partner for SWHKU. This year, the SWHKU organising committee is mostly made up of our very own TecHKU writers and editors, along with a fresh team of undergraduates, who are all working together to kickstart the rise of HKU’s startup community.

–All of TecHKU’s coverage on past Startup Weekend HKUs
–Register for Startup Weekend HKU #3 Oct 14-16
–**40% OFF for developers**

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Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.

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Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

• From media partner to organiser: We are back at Startup Weekend HKU! - October 12, 2016
• The Quartz App: My New Favourite Thing - February 23, 2016
• Six Questions for Credit Suisse - June 19, 2015

In my Principles of Journalism class, we were introduced to the concept of ‘news bites’. People don’t have time anymore to carry around newspapers on their daily commute, especially when mobile phones are so much more portable. Here we introduce news bites. Think of it as taking a nibble of news here, a nibble of news there. Read this headline, read a little bit of the article for some more information, then move on to the next headline.

The app is laid out in a way that makes it look very much like iMessage. The Quartz team formulates short, 2-3 line messages that are sent to you after you send them one of their ready-made responses. For example, if I want to know more about the ‘possible smoking gun’ in the Volkswagen emissions scandal, I reply with a message made of the car, gun, and cloud emojis. If I’m not interested, I can skip to the next story by selecting ‘anything else?’

When there are no new stories to show, the app will say goodbye and send you a GIF, like this one of Picard waving goodbye.

It’s like catching up on the latest news with an old friend. And the minimal effort involved on my part makes it that much more attractive for me, since for a journalist, I’m pretty lazy about reading the news. Aside from the emojis, you can also send pre-scripted responses that are specific to the story and, as always, target the heart of the issue and provide you with the most interesting and relevant parts of it. You can also read the full article by clicking a little arrow to the right of the story.

Of course, nothing is without its disadvantages. The Quartz kind of content doesn’t involve hard reporting; you don’t get facts and hard news in double-time like you do with – for example – the BBC app. The amount of content is much lower than on a conventional news app, and not always entirely relevant, important or breaking.

App developers and outside services are increasingly using the chat interface as it proactively prompts actions and minimises user involvement. Examples include the SMS service Magic, which allows users to text operators exactly what they want and have it delivered to their door. Developers are focusing on making the user experience as hassle-free as possible, and outside entities like Magic are capitalising on this trend.

It’s worth mentioning that Quartz has had a news bite-kind of system for a few years already. Every morning, my phone buzzes and delivers my Quartz Daily Brief email, or what I like to think of as my morning newspaper. As I heave myself out of bed and fix a cup of tea, I scroll through the message, which includes everything from economic news, to interesting occurrences, to trivia and strange facts.

Generally when it comes to reading news, I open up BBC or Al Jazeera with the jaded air of an elderly man who’s seen too much of the world. But Quartz somehow makes everything interesting in that they pick and choose the content they report with real diligence. They find the little tidbits of information that make a story interesting and summarise them quickly and concisely, with nice little hyperlinks that go to NYT or Reuters as well as the Quartz site.

In summary, I would definitely say that Quartz knows what the average news junkie wants. Or maybe they just really know what I want. Either way, their new app has changed the way I consume news – definitely for the better.

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Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.

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Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

• From media partner to organiser: We are back at Startup Weekend HKU! - October 12, 2016
• The Quartz App: My New Favourite Thing - February 23, 2016
• Six Questions for Credit Suisse - June 19, 2015

Spoiler alert! You might want to read our Day 1 blog before proceeding.

Natalie: Can I just start by saying how proud I feel for everyone involved? I was at the first Startup Weekend HKU, and I must say the quality of presentations and prototypes this time were at a whole other level. Perhaps the massive venue they booked and the cocktail bar they had this past weekend contributed to that.

Nayantara: HKU’s second Startup Weekend was definitely on a bigger scale than last time, with much more diverse and ambitious creations. I wasn’t around for most of the creation process, but it definitely looked like an exhausting weekend for some of the participants. Now that the 54 hours have come to a close, they’ll finally be able to get some sleep – and some of them have gone home victorious.

Natalie: All of them have gone home victorious with the new insights and new connections they have made. We live-tweeted all the 13 final pitches on Twitter, and if you haven’t heard already, here are the results:

Overall winner: ShopIG
1st runner up / Best business model: Botomatic
2nd runner up / Best customer validation: CollegePars
Crowd favourite / Special mention: I’M IN by InJoy@HKU
(FYI: Poll results)

Nayantara: I’m happy to say that the products I was most fond of made it into the top four, although one of my personal favourites, HappyCorner, didn’t. Their idea of creating an Airbnb-like platform for rooftop events and parties was something I really liked, but it might have been a little too niche market for the judges’ tastes.

I’M IN was something we were quite happy about, and they won the Crowd Favourite award by a landslide. Think Facebook events but tailored to your preferences, with a special little calendar showing all the events near you. Definitely something that could be used to create a good few crazy house parties (see Project X!) Their concept, bolstered by a snappy presentation and a well-designed prototype, definitely had the votes of most of the audience.

Natalie: I thought HappyCorner was a breath of fresh air among the fitness and social apps we have today. Rooftops are quite an integral part of urban culture in Hong Kong, yet their scalable business model allows for renting out under-utilised private spaces across the globe.

Let’s talk about our grand prize winner. The team of three at ShopIG offered a rather all-round solution to leverage the e-commerce potential of Instagram. Instagram shops are really popular among locals, but the app limits its own ecommerce capabilities because it doesn’t allow hyperlinks in posts–so no link to purchase or to more product information, unless it’s a sponsored post or the “link in the bio”. But the team took it to the next level by feeding Instagram content onto their own e-commerce platform, which makes much more sense with a Buy button and a shopping cart.

My concern, though, is that ShopIG is built on the assumption that Instagram would allow their own content and user database to be fed into a third-party platform for commercial purposes. Remember when Twitter cut Meerkat off its social graph? Ouch.

I do look forward to what these guys would create in the future. Nelson, one of the technical co-founders, told me he sees himself working with his business co-founder Louis, whom he had just met this weekend, in the long run. Looks to me the team has great chemistry for the #startuplife — and for that I am glad events like Startup Weekend exist.

Nayantara: I thought ShopIG was definitely one of the better ideas, and I wish I’d paid more attention to it during the initial pitches. The same goes for Botomatic, a multi-tasking app that allows you to do several things simultaneously by using a custom-developed ‘bot’. For example, a bot might allow me to tweet, send an email, post to Facebook and check Pinterest all at the same time. The group’s revenue plan was to charge a certain price for the API keys, so any programmers who may want to develop a bot would have to pay for the privilege. It’s also worth mentioning that the group’s prototype app was really aesthetically appealing.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of apps that some members of the audience felt were quite superfluous. Prof. Mandarin (learning purpose-specific Mandarin with the help of a specially selected online tutor) and CollegePars (aggregating job/internship opportunities and student-led initiatives specific to each university) were two of these apps, with some audience members claiming that TutorMing.com and Jobsdb.com respectively are more or less substitutes. However, the CollegePars team impressed me during their pitch, and they definitely seem to have impressed the judges enough to get through to third place despite the audience skepticism.

Natalie: I like the fact that CollegePars included job listings for student-led initiatives alongside jobs on the market. Student groups like TecHKU mostly rely on Facebook, physical posters, and mass emails for recruitment (from my personal experience, those are methods with pretty low ROI). Our message could have better reach on a college-oriented careers platform like CollegePars; Facebook’s news feed algorithm can leave Page owners disappointed at times.

(And yes, TecHKU IS indeed recruiting. Shoot us an email if you are interested to join us as an editorial contributor / video producer / branding strategist, covering the burgeoning tech & startup scene in HKU and beyond! :D)

Nayantara: Can’t have a tech event without at least one vaguely sexist app, so I had my dose of that with Fitland, an app for women’s health that combines fitness with a game by a team called Hello Fitty. Cute idea. Very cute, had the team not opened their pitch with “Women complain a lot about their appearances, but never really do much to fix it.” In my humble opinion, if you need to make a joke about women to sell your app, it’s probably not a great app.

Natalie: If I may interrupt — Regardless of what you say about the nature of their app, Fitland had hands down the best original graphic designs out of all the prototypes. Props to their designers.

Nayantara: Then that’s great for them I suppose…

There was also a product called Micro Probe, which we were very skeptical about during pitching, as you can see in our Day 1 blog. The final pitch did not make me any less skeptical, to be honest. It’s a great idea in theory but developing something like that would take a seriously intense research budget and a lot of time. I really do admire your ambition though, guys, although I was a little confused about whether you were selling the Micro Probe or an insurance plan.

Natalie: Let’s talk about Tour4U. I am surprised they pursued the original idea from the first pitch on Friday. This travel app is definitely one that’s on the creative end. People who cannot travel, perhaps due to their disability or financial ability, could log onto their platform and join tours by local tour guides in the format of “follow-me-around” live video. A lot of attendees I talked to agree that it is a unique way to experience the world without setting foot outdoors as you get to interact with your tour guide, but I can foresee several problems when it comes to implementation. First, since the quality of these tours depend highly on live stream quality, it would not be feasible for users to have guides visit remote terrains like Mount Everest for them, however exciting that might sound. Perhaps better QC has to be done to ensure that guides have stable Internet connectivity when conducting tours. This leads me to the second point: Can the monetary return from the app cover the guides’ costs of having a good cellular data plan?

I do appreciate the team for letting their imagination run wild– they hope to integrate their service with the 360° camera and VR headsets.

That sums up the final pitches at SWHKU #2. We believe we will be around to witness a third SWHKU in the future, hopefully with even more participants and exciting product developments. (Organisers said it might be held at a joint-university level.) We wish all newly-admitted Startup Weekend alumni the best of luck in their future endeavours!

Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page as we will be posting video recaps of the event (with exclusive interviews) over the next few weeks!

Disclosure: TecHKU was a community partner at Startup Weekend HKU.

Related posts:
Blog: Startup Weekend HKU #2 Day 1
For HKU, Startup Weekend HKU is just the beginning
See more Startup Weekend coverage on The Lion Post!

• About
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Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)

• Blog: Final Pitches at Startup Weekend HKU #2 - October 19, 2015
• Blog: Startup Weekend HKU #2 Day 1 - October 16, 2015
• Four Engineering Undergraduates to Represent HKU at First Ever Amazon Picking Challenge - May 27, 2015

• About
• Latest Posts

hit me up

Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.

hit me up

Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

• From media partner to organiser: We are back at Startup Weekend HKU! - October 12, 2016
• The Quartz App: My New Favourite Thing - February 23, 2016
• Six Questions for Credit Suisse - June 19, 2015

The opinion and views in this article are that of the authors’ and do not reflect the opinion or views of The HKU Journal of Technology, or the TecHKU Editorial Team. You can comment below to let the authors know what you think.
To submit an opinion piece of your own, send an email to techkueditors@gmail.com or use the contribute button on the top right of this site.

We are at the second Startup Weekend HKU, a three-day event for participants to meet like-minded peers to take their startup ideas to the next level. They will be pitching, validating, and prototyping their ideas all within 54 hours. The organisers just wrapped up the initial round of pitches– here are our thoughts and insights.

Natalie: What did you think of the ideas pitched? I can definitely sense a recurring theme here – matching apps, i.e. Uber for X apps. Amongst others, there was an app matching fashionistas with those who may not have the sharpest fashion sense when choosing outfits, a platform to find an owner for your old furniture, and an app to find someone with free time to clean your house.

Nayantara: Yeah, and there were also some ideas that were similar enough to be streamlined. They could integrate their ideas and business models and make something really great. The Surprise app combined with the Plannable app for example – a surprise event planning platform mixed with a way for busy parents to plan their children’s birthday parties more easily. I actually really liked Surprise in particular; I thought their idea of “gift-giving consultations” was really cute.

Mass-market oriented things like this are all good, but there were a lot of ideas that seemed super unrealistic though, don’t you think? For example, ProCram, or as the would-be creator describes it, “Reddit with an academic twist”. In theory, I like the idea. I like it a lot. Who wouldn’t want teachers and TAs on standby to answer questions that the lecture slides and textbook can’t? The issue I find with this though, is that why would professors and TAs even be on standby? They would almost definitely have better things to do.

Natalie: Yes. There was an idea for a biomedical startup to detect and offer treatment for different stages of cancer. Finding a cure for cancer has been a long-time challenge for the medical field – How would the team here be able to prototype this idea in two days? And they hope to offer treatment- that’s what hospitals are for, right?

Another problem I noticed across the pitches was that they were super niche. A rating platform for dog salons only caters to dog owners. Perhaps this team could upscale it by rating vet clinics or grooming centres in general. So OpenRice but for pet care.

I liked the idea of a platform for sharing mistakes. Experience –not Google– is the best teacher. What better way to learn than to learn from others’ mistakes? But I am not sure what their business model is. After all startups got to be sustainable and earn profit. We haven’t heard a lot about monetisation from the participants.

Nayantara: A lot of the pitches seemed very hardware-oriented as well, so I’m interested to see how they’re going to implement them. One of my special favourites was the idea to create a vending machine with ‘fun’ food: pizza for example! Look and Taste would let users select their food and watch it being made. This pitch came from the frustration of being on campus until late and having absolutely nothing to eat – a frustration I can definitely understand when writing this on campus at 10:20 pm! I can definitely see a lot of robotics going into the ‘Look’ part of it though, so let’s see if the group refines their plan to just the ‘Taste’.

Smart bands are also featured heavily in this year’s pitches. Eric, the man behind I-Care, pitched a medical smart band with basic biometric sensors for blood pressure and heart rate, and also special features like reminders for taking medicine and a way to automatically alert hospitals to any medical emergencies.

I think another thing that really stood out to both of us was one of the last pitches, one that proposed to produce menstrual products for women in developing countries. Cost-effective to produce, reusable and supposedly with fewer health risks, the proposed products could really make all the difference to women on their periods. As a supporter of both feminine hygiene and the use of the word “vagina” in public, I loved the pitch, but unfortunately I don’t really see how it’s a startup, and I really don’t see how it relates to tech. It’s an R&D-intensive, biology-related project and in this case the R&D has already been done. Which leads me to ask, what exactly is the group planning to do with this idea?

Ideas we liked

Natalie: Ricky’s Seat Finder uses the WiFi access points at computers or smartphones in the library or a canteen to generate a virtual map of the space, so that students could easily find vacant seats once they enter the premise. In fact the official HKU app has this feature implemented for the Main Library, the Oval, and the Chi Wah Learning Commons. It would be cool if Seat Finder could provide the same solution for virtually any public space– I totally see myself using it.

I’M IN would sound exciting for those who want company at an event, like watching a movie or having hotpot. You get to propose, browse, and join events by saying I’m In on the platform. I personally don’t mind experiencing things alone, but it would suit those who want to make new friends, especially when you are in a new country or environment, as the creators have mentioned.

There was this feel-good app that gets people to think positive by sending encouraging messages when they check-off items on their to-do list. It may well be just a to-do list app, but it does help restore my faith in humanity, a bit.

Nayantara: Look and Taste, once they’ve solidified their concept – I could definitely do with some hot pizza in the middle of my midnight studying. At this point, it’s unclear how they’re going to achieve what they’re envisioning, especially if they’re set on having the vending machine cooked from scratch. There’s this and a hundred other problem points to consider, but hopefully they get it together and we’ll see a prototype on campus soon! I can definitely see myself single-handedly making up half their revenue.

There were a lot of ideas that seemed great in concept but would be tough to implement – for example, there was an idea proposing selling warm, home-cooked meals to people. I can definitely go for a warm, home-cooked meal at any time of day, but not personally knowing the cook would be awkward. Not to mention, the person cooking the meal might not want to let strangers into his or her home in the first place. And there’s just something very secure about knowing (or at least hoping) that a restaurant is only operational if it follows government-mandated health codes. So I’ll put this idea down as a maybe. Again, if they can figure out the kinks in their model, then I’m all in.

(Side note: apparently I’m only interested in food-related apps. Huh.)

Natalie: I’m looking forward to how these ideas would pivot in the coming two days– after all participants had only 60 seconds to pitch their idea. It wouldn’t surprise me if we end up having a whole new set of startup ideas from the teams on Day 3. Follow us on Twitter for live updates at the final presentations. Goodnight!

Disclosure: TecHKU was a community partner at Startup Weekend HKU.

Related posts:
Thoughts on Final Pitches on Day 3 here
Recap of first Startup Weekend HKU back in March

• About
• Latest Posts

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)

• Blog: Final Pitches at Startup Weekend HKU #2 - October 19, 2015
• Blog: Startup Weekend HKU #2 Day 1 - October 16, 2015
• Four Engineering Undergraduates to Represent HKU at First Ever Amazon Picking Challenge - May 27, 2015

• About
• Latest Posts

hit me up

Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.

hit me up

Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

• From media partner to organiser: We are back at Startup Weekend HKU! - October 12, 2016
• The Quartz App: My New Favourite Thing - February 23, 2016
• Six Questions for Credit Suisse - June 19, 2015

The opinion and views in this article are that of the authors’ and do not reflect the opinion or views of The HKU Journal of Technology, or the TecHKU Editorial Team. You can comment below to let the authors know what you think.
To submit an opinion piece of your own, send an email to techkueditors@gmail.com or use the contribute button on the top right of this site.

As part of TecHKU’s innovative tech leaders series, we talked to two tech representatives at Credit Suisse about the employment of cloud computing, intra-business communications, and security technologies and corporate culture.

Credit Suisse. You may have seen this company sponsoring art and cultural events, classic cars, sports, and even professional tennis player Roger Federer – it is also considered a reputable global financial institution. Established in 1856, the bank specialises in private banking and investment management and boasts offices in over 50 countries with over 46,400 employees.

“Private banking” and “investment banking” might not make much sense to many students outside of the Faculty of Business and Economics, but Credit Suisse and other similar companies offer plenty of opportunity for students from STEM fields. TecHKU’s interview with Lawrence Beck and Ofer Halevi aims to shed some light on why Credit Suisse should be of importance to HKU students.

Lawrence Beck is a Managing Director of Credit Suisse in the Information Technology division, based in Hong Kong. He leads the Investment Banking Technology team in Asia Pacific. In addition, he has responsibility as the Head of Equities Technology and Head of Fixed Income Technology for the Asia Pacific region. Lawrence holds a BA degree in Mathematics and Quantitative Economics from Tufts University.

Ofer Halevi is a Vice President and Technical Fellow of Credit Suisse’s IB and CCT IT division, based in Hong Kong. He is Equity Derivatives IT APAC Architect. Ofer joined Credit Suisse in December 2009 from UBS. Over his 23 years in the software industry, Ofer has worked on a wide array of technology projects including quoting and execution platforms, risk management, advanced visualization platforms, reinsurance trading platforms, mobile application development platforms, artificial intelligence systems, and cross-platform rapid application development systems. Ofer’s specialist technical areas are User Interface and User Experience design and development, Advanced Data Visualization, Web Technologies and Software Architecture.

• About
• Latest Posts

hit me up

Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.

hit me up

Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

• From media partner to organiser: We are back at Startup Weekend HKU! - October 12, 2016
• The Quartz App: My New Favourite Thing - February 23, 2016
• Six Questions for Credit Suisse - June 19, 2015