From the Editor-in-Chief: Attending RISE 2015

The Typewriter attended the RISE Conference in Hong Kong this year and showcased its vision and mission to investors and entrepreneurs. Here is a recap from our Editor-in-Chief.

The Typewriter @ RISE 2015

To be completely honest, when I first started The Typewriter as a pet project more than two years ago, there weren’t any great ambitions or grand schemes to succeed. I was still a university kid, on exchange touring around Europe and making friends everywhere. I never thought that I was going to create the next biggest thing, or I am going to reinvent social media on a grand scale. All I wanted, was to create a movement/network to encourage real communication and dialogue between my friends and acquaintances oceans and continents away.

So when The Typewriter first received an invitation to apply for a tech startup conference’s seed programme (called the ‘RISE Alpha’ programme) back in early January, the first thought that came to my mind was that it had to be some sort of clerical error.

Back at the time, I didn’t know much about RISE (since this is just their inaugural year), but I have been paying attention to their sister event ‘Web Summit’ for quite a while. It’s like a TED Talk + trade fair for tech-startups and investors to meet up and share their experiences. Apparently, Elon Musk went to one of the Web Summits and Uber actually met investors and bloomed after Web Summit few years ago.

Knowing this, I said to myself that there’s no way that we are going to get selected, nor are we ready to attend an event like this one.

Scoring both the RISE Conference and the PITCH Competition

By now, I am sure you are aware. The Typewriter was eventually selected. We ended up with a free stall literally metres away from Facebook’s booth. For two whole days, we had countless of quick conversations with passersby, explaining what The Typewriter is and how we are disruptive in the current news media landscape. We met a lot of great people and possibly a few potential investors.

Most encouraging of all is that we also got shortlisted to attend the PITCH competition.

To those who watch a lot of television, PITCH is just like Shark Tank or the Dragons Den. You get on stage, you talk to investors about your idea for a few minutes, they ask you a few questions and then decide whether the idea is a good one or not. Unlike the television show, PITCH also has a live audience of around 100.

Frankly, talking to strangers about The Typewriter is not a challenge at all. Trying to give a speech which covers nearly everything about the Typewriter within a total of four minutes, however, was a totally different matter.

‘Nerve-wrecking’ was an utter understatement of my mindset before stepping onto the stage that day.

No matter how confident you think you are in public speaking; no matter how well you think you are in writing and giving speeches; no matter how many times you have rehearsed at home… your mind gets filled up with nothing but self-doubt, your feet trembles and your throat goes dry. Minutes before the moment arrives, you start asking yourself silly questions such as ‘will they even understand our concept?’, ‘is this really worthwhile?’, ‘what if this is all just a massive waste of time?’ or ‘perhaps we’re biting more than we can chew?’.

Then they called my name, I went on stage and everything happened in a blur. I only regained consciousness when it was all over and the assistants took the headset off met.

By now, I am sure you know that things went quite well after all and we even ended up in the semi-finals, so at the end of the day we were quite happy.

For me, I saw this as a great experience to learn how to pitch to investors, how to address tricky questions, how to get people’s attention and explain the vision of The Typewriter within a limited amount of time.

Talking about RISE, my general observations of the conference can be summed up in one line: Many tech talents, but many of their ideas are trying to solve a problem that does not exist. I guess this is what makes us different at the conference. Yes, we might not be the most tech savvy, but without a shadow of a doubt we have a real concept in trying to solve a real problem, and that was my source of confidence at the conference.

Lesson learned from RISE: believe in yourself

[embed]

During the entire weekend, I have learned a lot from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Everyone who heard my pitch and visited our stall agreed that we have a clear and meaningful concept. No one denies that both news media and social media are in decline, aiming for the gutter and click-engagements. Literally everyone, and I do mean everyone I talked to, said that our solution can actually address a major problem in the media.

However, the people who praised our vision were also the same people who doubted the financial-investiment feasibility of The Typewriter. In other words, many are skeptical on whether we can keep things afloat and make money.

Usually, my uncontrollable sense of self-doubt would kick in right away and start to rethink, analyse and perhaps reshape my project to address these criticisms. I guess that’s just the general rule in life. Every examination, competition, application or presentation is a chance for self-reflection. You can either continue to doubt yourself after each challenge in life, or you can stick to your guts and go full steam ahead.

However, this time I did not yield. To me it was very clear that The Typewriter simply cannot turn back to the old ways of pandering to the lowest common denominator of humanity just to get clicks online.

I knew from the start that The Typewriter’s mission will be always be an uphill battle, we are trying to be disruptive in an industry so entrenched. All the feedback received, may it be positive or negative, only further strengthened my resolve in continuing this project.

Connections and friends at RISE

The other great benefit of attending RISE (just like attending other conferences, e.g. Model UN, UN, PoliSci or Law conferences), is the abundance of networking opportunities during social events. As I usually do when attending conferences overseas, I often try to meet people from abroad, talk to them, ask them about their countries and listen to their own stories and perspectives. And I wasn’t disappointed at all this time around.

Perhaps we might not be able secure any angel investment funding after this conference, but I am quite certain that the connections and friendships we made will remain for a long time. May it be possible partnerships, co-working agreements, content sharing projects or just to keep in touch as friends of similar passions… there is no question that a conference like RISE has opened us up to a world of possibilities and benefits.

In short, I thank everyone on The Typewriter team for their support, I thank the conference organisers in picking us and giving us such a great opportunity and I look forward to meeting and working with all the friends I met during this wonderful weekend.

Originally published at The Typewriter.