When I wrote this, I was attending the TechSauce Global Summit held by my friend in Bangkok, Thailand. On the stage, the host introduced that our annual TC International City Event in China has attracted a lot of entrepreneurs from other countries in Asia. Below the stage, friends from Southeast Asia said: Hey, I have been to your TechCrunch events in China. There were also Chinese participants who told me that they knew this summit in Thailand when attending our TC Shenzhen event. For four years, from Shanghai to Beijing and then to Shenzhen, we made TechCrunch International City Event the top innovative event in China, even in the whole Asia! China to the World, and the World to China, this is one of the most important values of this innovative pageant.
Because of work, I have attended a variety of events. As you may know, there are many PR events held in China. Every event will only promote their speakers and the number of participants, etc. but ignore the quality of the speaker and the speech content, which makes Chinese internet summits become more and more boring and impractical. What is the expectation of coming to our event for everyone? This is what I think about every day. We are not the exhibition company; then as a Chinese-English technology media, what indeed we want to show to everyone?
Every TC event, we are adhering to our own attitude. Our guests and audience come from all over the world. They truly represent the future, the latest trends, and the latest and hottest innovation. So, we reduce the keynote speech as much as possible and replace it by using dialogue or roundtable discussion, guided by our journalists. We give more space to the startups and solemnly introduce more than 200 of the startup booths during the whole event. What’s more, all our sessions are designed for every part of the startup community, from Hackathon, Startup Competition, Startup booth, to the VC Meetup and Product Release. We value internationalization: every time you will see over 20% of attendees and companies from dozens of countries and regions.
This year in June, we brought the TC to Shenzhen for the first time, where we attracted 6000+ attendees, 170+ media professionals, 80+ domestic and foreign investment institutions and 200+ startups. Our friends say, we completely shocked the Shenzhen startup community. One and a half years later, we will return to Shanghai again, the city we are very familiar with, but has gradually faded away as the waves of the entrepreneurship reach deeper and deeper into china.
People always say that China’s Silicon Valley is in Beijing, the world’s hardware industry is in Shenzhen, the paradise of e-commerce is in Hangzhou. What about Shanghai? Shanghai wants to become an international innovation center; Shanghai also has a large number of international companies and talents. However, when we compare Shenzhen with Shanghai, it is surprising to find that foreigners in Shenzhen are more active. The most important reason behind this is that there are a large proportion of foreign entrepreneurs in Shenzhen. What is more, Shenzhen is closer to Hong Kong, which possesses the higher degree of internationalization. Shanghai, therefore, needs a new starting point!
Back to Shanghai, we will, as always, focus on those hot topics such as sharing economy, intelligent hardware, VR/AR, etc. We will also especially focus on the areas of innovation such as biotechnology, new retail, artificial intelligence, blockchain and ICO, and the industrial internet. We strongly expect the entire Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai startup community and international innovation influences to reunite in Shanghai.
Dr.Gang Lu
Founder & CEO of TechNode, Head of TechCrunch China
In this TechCrunch International City Event, there will be:
As a tradition of our events in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen over the past four years, the Main Venue will bring you 60+ top international tech industry figures, big companies, and promising startups to speak and share. Our past speakers have included Alphabet (Google) executive president Eric Schmidt, Tencent CEO Pony Ma, Sequoia China founding managing partner Neil Shen, investor and former Google China head Kaifu Li, and founders of popular startups like ofo and Mobike to name just a few.
TechCrunch Shanghai will include an exhibition hall, which, at our events in China, has housed more than 1000 startups and tech companies in total showing off a mix of hardware, software, and other innovation.
TechCrunch China’s annual Startup Competition is also back in Shanghai. We are welcoming early stage startups from across China and around the world to apply and compete for the prize. The judges include top VCs and seasoned entrepreneurs. Past competition participants include names like Ehang, Coding, videobang, Ruff, and KapBook.
Before the main event, we will kick off with the Hackathon, which has brought together more than 1000 attendees including coders, designers, and tech heads. This 24-hour challenge is full of creativity, energy, team work, and booze.
VC Meetup has become a signature part of TechCrunch China events since its launch in 2015. For entrepreneurs who are still shopping about from one venture capital institution to another with your business plan, we offer you the opportunity to meet a stack of VCs for 10 minutes of face-to-face communication. More than 3,500 pitches have been made since day 1, making VC Meetup one of the most popular spots at the event.
Aside from the Main Stage, every event we are also presenting Side Stage to give you in-depth talks of specific vertical topics. The past hosts include Google Play, Gobi Ventures, Taobao Crowdfunding, and Opera.
【Cooperation】
For business and sponsorship, please contact:
huhaoying@technode.com
For startup booth, please contact:
shengli@technode.com
For VC Meetup, please contact:
lock@technode.com
For Hackathon, please contact:
maofeng@technode.com
For media cooperation, please contact:
wangjuan@technode.com
For tickets issues, please contact:
xibaoxin@technode.com
Others, please contact:
shenkunqi@technode.com