Programme

Global venture investment looks set to scale new peak in the first half of 2021, seen by big money, significant amount of dry powder, fast deals, frothy valuations, and active IPO activities. FinTech, B2B services, cybersecurity and biotech sectors are topping the deal market, while ESG and sustainable investing are rising to the mainstream. In this session, Irene will dive into key findings of the latest KPMG Venture Pulse Report to decode the trends, sectors hotspots, opportunities, challenges on the venture market outlook.

The speech will focus on the key role that capital markets play in driving new economy and technology sector growth; and HKEX’s own vision for supporting a thriving tech innovation ecosystem.

The world is changing faster than ever, with start-ups and technologies emerging at an ever-accelerating pace. Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) lays out the technologies that will shape humanity in the coming decades - From fintech, smart living, AI, nanotech and extended reality, to brain-computer interfaces, self-healing circuits, invisibility cloaks, humanoid robots, and more! With visionary technologies come transformed venture investment. Hoffman will share the global investment growth predictions, as well as decode how investor appetites will gravitate towards next-gen technologies, and how new forms of alternative funding will fuel and provide liquidity to futuristic innovations.

Becoming unicorn is the most significant milestone in a start-up journey, upon years of efforts in building businesses, winning customers, managing talents, raising funds, and meeting challenges. As the pandemic brought down the global economy, unicorns, like any other start-ups, were back to struggling days, working on survival strategies and reimagining growth. In this session, Cyberport unicorns will share how they chart through the turbulence with determination – reinvent strategies, innovate quickly, bet on new opportunities and drive change to rebound, and strive to become stronger in the next normal.

Several new hotspots have emerged to capture investment from venture capitalists. Southeast Asia is on the rise, with action picking up in Singapore and India. Is this a long-term trend or here to stay? Can foreign funds duplicate their models successfully in this region? Will China continue to be a leading destination for venture deals under recent capital control? What are the emerging hubs in the U.S., and will they detract from Silicon Valley's long lead? How should investors and start-ups prepare for the next, unexpected chaos? Hear from world-leading VCs on how geopolitical developments and economic recoveries are reshaping the capital flows and venture appetites across regions.

The solid debut of the Wealth Management Connect (WMC) allows individual investors on the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macau to make cross-boundary investments in a wider range of wealth management products. This not only marks another crucial development in the ever-closer financial cooperation in the GBA, but also open up tremendous market opportunities for financial services and Fintech sector. This session will discuss how WMC further strengthens Hong Kong as an asset management hub, how the scheme drives WealthTech business to new heights and unlocks new market potential in terms of product, tech innovation and collaboration.

The non-fungible tokens (NFTs) transactions surged to new highs in the first half of 2021 reaching US$2.5 billion - multiple folds compared to that in same period last year. The exponential growth drives investors’ interests and innovation to further unlock the potentials of NFT applications in the metaverse. Mr Evan Auyang from Animoca Brands, a pioneering leader in digital entertainment and NFT gamification, will chat with the seasoned tech VC Bill Tai on how the “NFT+Games” are coming to lead the next wave of the industry, how strategic investors could capture the best value of this sector.

In this session we will discuss the role of the B Corp framework in assessing a company’s ESG performance in a standardized and transparent way, based on actual evidence of what they really do, not what they say they do.

For companies around the world the B Impact Assessment is an online tool that helps them measure their effect on people and planet and, for some, achieve the B Corp certification. In this session we will talk with Dorothy Lam, the co-founder of Dream Impact, a Hong Kong-based impact investment platform about impact measurement, how this is perceived by both investors and ventures and the B Corp assessment framework.

Liquidity can be a competitive advantage in hiring and retaining talent; and helps aligns investors from seed financing to IPO. Rachel from Gateway shares how companies can continue to focus on growth, while still proactively organizing liquidity options for shareholders.