By Li Zheng Chen Miaolin
The “Creating the World · Sailing to the Future” Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition for Overseas Talents 2024 · Hangzhou has showcased how Hangzhou provides fertile soil for the development of innovative and entrepreneurial talents and projects. Since its inaugural edition in 2015, according to incomplete statistics, nearly 400 projects have set up companies in Hangzhou, with a total registered capital exceeding 3 billion yuan, and nearly 10 of these companies have achieved quasi-unicorn status. These achievements not only showcase Hangzhou’s outstanding accomplishments in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship but also inject new vitality into the city’s development.
Liu Ling: Silicon Valley’s Chip Dream Blossoms in Hangzhou
In Hangzhou, a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship, Liu Ling’s story is unfolding with brilliance, with her innovative project blossoming like a spring flower.
After working in Silicon Valley for 22 years, Liu Ling chose to return to China to focus on developing high-quality chips, an area with significant growth potential domestically. She accepted Hangzhou’s welcoming invitation, saying, “Hangzhou has the beauty of Jiangnan and the warmth of its people. It’s a uniquely appealing environment.” She added, “The city has been proactive in embracing high-tech industries. We all know that industrial transformation is not an overnight success, but several large-scale companies have already taken root here. Our venture is still in the startup phase, like a little baby, but I aspire for us to grow and join their ranks.”
In early 2023, she participated in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition for Overseas Talents 2023 · Hangzhou and won the second prize with her project. Subsequently, she established Reach Higher Integrated Circuit Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., dedicated to developing high-quality analog chips.
Transitioning from a researcher in a well-known Silicon Valley semiconductor company to the founder of a startup was not an easy task for Liu Ling. She compared a startup to a thatched cottage, vulnerable to the elements, yet it is these very challenges that unlock the team’s true potential. With confidence, she said, “We seize every opportunity as if it were our last.”
Reach Higher Integrated Circuit Technology’s flagship product, the high-performance automotive-grade CAN interface chip, is engineered for excellence, boasting high reliability, and is exceptionally energy-efficient, tailored for the demands of automotive electronic control systems. The company’s automotive-grade CAN chip has advanced to the sampling phase and has garnered acclaim from a prominent player in the automotive sector. Her journey with the chip project mirrors her own, leaping from the heart of Silicon Valley to Hangzhou, with the ambition of establishing itself as a premier domestic supplier of high-quality analog chips.
Wang Mengqiu: Innovative Seed of Aerial Cameras Bears Fruit in Hangzhou
Wang Mengqiu’s story is a vivid example of Hangzhou’s success in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. As the champion of the first Competition, his project has gone through nearly ten years of trials and tribulations and is now thriving and fruitful.
At the end of 2012, he returned to Hangzhou with a doctorate from Stanford University and honors from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for outstanding papers and engineering awards. Here, he not only found the soil to realize his dreams but won the championship in the “Creating the World·Sailing to the World” Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition for Overseas Talents 2015·Hangzhou with his project “Computer Vision and Intelligent Control Integration Technology”. After that, he founded Zero Zero Robotics (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., becoming the first company to launch aerial cameras.
Wang named his venture “Zero Zero Robotics”, a name that embodies the concept of “originating from nothing and aspiring to the infinite (∞),” signifying a realm of boundless potential. In December 2022, Zero Zero Robotics made a splash with its Hover Camera X1, raising over $1.8 million in crowdfunding on Indiegogo and securing a top-two global ranking. Fast forward to October of this year, the launch of the X1 PRO and X1 PRO MAX in China marked another milestone. Internationally, these new offerings shattered crowdfunding records by amassing over $1 million within a mere 145 minutes, a testament to the company’s innovative prowess and market appeal.
Wang acknowledged the myriad challenges that accompanied the entrepreneurial journey, yet it was the nurturing environment of innovation and the supportive policies in Hangzhou that enabled Zero Zero Robotics to remain steadfast in its pursuit of research and development. He hopes to make aerial cameras an essential part of everyone’s daily life.
The two entrepreneurs’ stories showed us Hangzhou's exceptional capability in catalyzing the success of innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors. The city has magnetized a cohort of top-tier talents, whose projects have not only found fertile ground but also flourished and yielded rich rewards. There is a growing conviction that Hangzhou, with its distinctive approach, will continue to draw and nurture a diverse array of global innovators, collaboratively penning the next thrilling installments in the saga of innovation.