(Source: https://www.startmeup.hk/event/startmeuphk-festival-2020-startup-impact-summit)
Catherine Chen, founder and managing partner of AvantFaire, moderated a very lively panel at the Startup Impact Summit 2020 held on 8 July 2020.
The discussion, titled “Impact & Entrepreneurship in a World of Change”, was highly engaging and succeeded to present the various opportunities and challenges that entrepreneurs face the world over. The panelists, who are the up-and-coming thought leaders in their respective fields, discussed how to build impactful, scalable, and resilient businesses from the ground up. The key takeaways of the discussion were:
- the determining factor to attract capital to fund new ventures is the presence of a bustling ecosystem enabling knowledge building and transfer, flow of ideas, and collaboration
- forward-looking and flexible working environments have proven to be an asset in challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic
- Impact investing looks at markets and future trends from a brighter, more positive perspective, which enables to more effectively capture the J-Curve potential value creation
- businesses that integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects into their enterprise risk management system tend to be more resilient, and thrive also in times of crisis (e.g. COVID-19). These businesses tend to attract capital no matter what is happening in the world, and their quest for good and brave actions shines through in difficult times
- Investors look at Theory of Change and how to measure it, and use this is as a primary screening to understand what measures companies have in place to cope with change
Thank you to all the panelists Lwazi Wali Amra Naidoo Nguyen Phi Van to make this happen!
A big thank you also to Jo Chan, and the AngelHub and WHub communities!
Happy to connect via LinkedIn @AvantFaire or @Catherine Chen for any questions we did not manage to answer during the Q&A session!
