Taipei City Government

Co-hosted by Taipei City Government’s Department of Economic Development (DOED), Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center, NARLabs, and Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Association of Taiwan, the XFail Conference kicked off on 12F of Syntrend Creative Park today (12/14). This year, the theme of XFail Planet was adopted to let all XFail planet explorers who have signed up for the event to embark on a land expedition. Furthermore, 2 XFail conquerors were invited to present stimulating speeches based on their real-life experiences. AirSig founder Chen Po-Kai shared the rise and fall of his company with a speech entitled ‘How I managed to launch a NT$600 million business empire from scratch and returned to naught’. Hope Bay Technologies’ Chairman Ben Jai shared with the explorers his challenges along the path of emerging startups as an entrepreneur. For the Distance Between Us and Failures forum, the first Taiwanese graduate of Singularity University, Dr. Ko Ju-Chun, as well as emerging we media celebrity Newbiebosscom (Hsu Hao), and American Angel Investor Greg (Hao Kuan-Ming) were invited to engage in a dialogue to share their thoughts and experiences in confronting failures. The speakers also explained how they managed to turn failure into success in front of a responsive and enthusiastic audience.

Compared to western culture, eastern society is less tolerant of failures, but as a matter of fact, failure is the key to success, and the loftier the aspiration and goals, the heftier the potential failure will be. The XFail Conference aims to create a new failure-tolerant culture to let everyone understand the meaning of failures. Although the speakers invited today may appear to be extraordinarily successful, they also revealed to the audience the frustration and agony hidden behind the halo of success. These are daunting challenges that require immense courage to overcome.

In recent years, the Taipei City Government has invested in resources to support startups and provide them with a failure-tolerant entrepreneurial environment. Through this activity, startup teams are encouraged to embrace challenges and re-engender the positive meaning of failure. Moreover, entrepreneurs are encouraged to uphold a sense of curiosity and adventure; when faced with failure, they should tell themselves that as long as they do not give up, the failure before them does not represent true failure, as they have simply not yet reached success. Today’s event intends to imbue failure with a positive meaning among the general public!

StartUP@Taipei Office offers startup-related consulting services, so citizens intending to become an entrepreneur in Taipei City, those in need of entrepreneurial resources such as preferential loans for startups, incentives, and subsidies or training courses, or if those who have startup-related questions and require individual startup consulting, please call the office consultation hotline (02-27208889 or 1999#6498/1431). You may also visit the StartUP@Taipei Office (1F, North Wing, DOED, No.1, City Hall Rd., Xinyi Dist., Taipei City). Alternatively, please refer to the Startup@Taipei official website or the official website of the DOED.