Raised on an Irish dairy farm as a child, young Paddy Cosgrave followed his father's advice: 'stay in the house with the computer and away from the cows', said Cosgrove Snr, convinced technology was more likely to be the next big thing.
He was right. And today, just like his father, who also used to convince his farmer friends to use Excel instead of ledgers in the early 1990s, Cosgrave has become an evangelist for technology, by bringing the world's greatest minds together for his own tech conferences.
He founded Web Summit in Dublin in 2010, which is now one of the biggest technology conferences in Europe.
And after noticing an increasing number of web summits were being held in Asia, not the West, he was also drawn to the region by a vibrant startup scene.
So he created Rise－taking place in Hong Kong on 31 July and 1－a new tech event that Cosgrave says will give the region's new generation of tech leaders a place to congregate and demonstrate their expertise.
Calling Hong Kong "the obvious location," Cosgrave told an audience gathered at the local startup incubator StartupsHK at the start of the week, he considered the special administrative region as the prime location to be the "center of the Asian universe".
Despite his optimism, however, Hong Kong has hurdles to clear before it can truly be described as a regional innovation hub, even though the city already enjoys a flourishing startup landscape.
The obvious one is a lack of funding, and a disconnect between fund providers and startups, say insiders, and many in fledgling startups report struggling to access venture capital.
Benny Hui, founder and core member of a series of startups and now head of operations for Asian property listing platform, Spacious, said what's needed is a startup ecosystem.
He believes the local market is too small to attract major VCs, whose eyes are still fixated on Chinese mainland and the US.
Irene Chu, partner and head of the high growth tech and innovation group at KPMG China, agrees.
"One of the major complaints from startups is that getting initial funding is usually not that difficult－but once you get to the secondary round of financing, it becomes a lot trickier," she said.
However, she noted the problem often stems more from a lack of investor experience in funding local startups, than an shortage of funds or interest from the VCs.
Hong Kong is a well-established financial hub with abundant fund and investments at hand, she said, yet most of the sophisticated investors usually invest in more mature companies.
"They just don't know how they can invest," she said, especially those investing in the new economy, rather than backing older traditional types of businesses.
