The highly anticipated "Linkou Startup Terrace" was officially opened recently. Its settlement can be regarded as the most significant event of the startups circle this year. The Linkou Startup Terrace was transformed from the Universiade Athlete’s Village, occupying 59,188㎡. The hardware facilities include startup offices, conference rooms, joint working area, 495㎡of exhibition space and entrepreneurial residency, which offers accommodation for staff or business travellers .
Linkou Startup Terrace aims to become the biggest startup cluster in Asia. With the advantages of Taiwan's information technology industry, there are four key characteristics of the terrace: smart environment, smart office, smart life and smart operation. These four key elements thus create the most complete entrepreneurial life circle of the terrace. In addition, it is located nearby the Taoyuan Airport, downtown Taipei and industrial parks, as the conveniently international accessibility is another feature of Linkou Startup Terrace.
In addition to the hardware facilities, providing services is another strategy for Linkou Startup Terrace to actively attract investment. In terms of rent, the rent for the first year of stationing is free, and the rent for the second year is halved. In regarding to subsidies, for three specific types of new ventures: the new venture, the international accelerators, and entrepreneurial personal training, could select one of the subsidy: 50% discount of the total plan funding or the annual taxable income exemption of the profit-making business. The maximum of adjusted amount could be NT$30 million.
Different from the characteristics of other startup clusters, the "One-stop service" is the biggest advantage of Linkou Startup Terrace’s service. That is, if the international team needs to set up a company in Taiwan, they are necessary to complete the visa application process. Accordingly, the terrace offers a series of professional assistance, which is similar to GP services. Following the preferential measures policy, it aims to increase the willingness of both domestic and international startups/investors to station in, at the same time reducing time for foreign new ventures to enter new markets, and quickly make the business model be officially settled down. As for the one-stop service, what are the highlights?
Service I: Convenient Case Receip: Phone, website, and e-mail can all be contacted
Linkou Startup Terrace provides multiple contacting approaches in order to make the collection management more convenient. Telephones, websites, e-mails, Facebook community, and over-the-counter service can all be connected to the relevant personnel of management team of Linkou Startup Terrace. The receiving counters can speak both Chinese and English, which could reduce communication barriers and enhance the willingness of international teams to enter. As Linkou Startup Terrace is based on the plan of Internet of Things, therefore, whether the business center, community collaboration, operation management, and life services can all contribute to a smart startup park through IoT innovation technology.
Service II: Professional Consultant Teams: within 12-hour Response, Professional Project Consultation Case by Case
After completing the receiving process, each resident project is allocated with a personal secretary to respond to all the consultation within 12 hours. At the same time, Linkou Startup Terrace has consultants from different professional fields, which can answer various questions in response to the new group. Since February this year, the total number of the consulting questions has reached to 148. The consulting information includes laws, visas, finance, subsidies, stationing and financial industry related issues. The total of 58 cases have been solved.
Service III: Customized Service: Signing Contract, Financial Cases, and Customized Consultation
When the consultation is completed, the next step is to provide a customized evaluation service, which includes the establishment of business models, consultation on visa applications, referral of financial services,etc. At present, Linkou Startup Terrace has collaborated with professional law firms, patent and trademark agencies, accounting firms, and professional investment units to provide services and consultations such as tax laws, financing, mergers and acquisitions, general corporate legal affairs, corporate securities laws, labor laws, equity structure design, contract review/evaluation, park entry, visa application, and subsidies application. For the startups team at the early stage of its establishment, the mostly confronted issues are intellectual property rights. As a result, Linkou Startup Terrace provides the risk assessment service of intellectual property rights for the international startups in order to avoid future disputes. The scope of the risk assessment information includes intellectual property rights disputes, patent applications, patent layout, construction of business secret protection system and e-commerce platform consulting services, etc., which promoted the team's business model to be more smoothly established.
Service IV: Local Connections: Interdepartmental integration of Multiple Resources
After completing the consultation on relevant business models and intellectual property issues, when the startup teams officially start its operations, the next step is to find industrial partners, recruitment, connecting upstream and downstream supply chains, and further looking for opportunities of the collaboration of industry, official, and academy. In this regard, Linkou Startup Terrace also provides a corresponding resource chain and match. The current plan can assist startups to connect with government departments or non-government organizations, offering integrated services. Linkou Startup Terrace will also launch a series of programs to cope with interdepartmental communication and coordination issues, matching skilled people, understanding major government policies, governmental procurement, and facilitate collaborations between new ventures and accelerators, and private sector cooperation offers.
Service V: Regular Tracking: Proactive Report of the Weekly Progress
When the company completes the above procedures, if new needs are raised in the future, Linkou Startup Terrace will also track the progress of the project on a regular basis, and proactively report the related operations. With the advent of artificial intelligence, Linkou Startup Terrace aims to build a smart service system based on AI technology, and further develops personalized, just-in-time, and automated services. Through an exclusive intelligent action system, the two-way feedback mechanism will be strengthened, making functions of Linkou Startup Terrace be more completed.
In order to attract more international startups to join the Taiwan's startups eco-sphere, Linkou Startup Terrace provides NT$20 million amount subsidy for the teams related to the Internet of Things. For international accelerators and entrepreneurial business incubators, the total amount of subsidy is NT$30 million. To sum up, it is just the very time to join the Linkou Startup Terrace!
Translator: Yung-Hsuan, Chuang
【 經濟部中小企業處廣告 】
A Lazy Package for Exploring The Characteristics of Five New Startups Parks
