IT Entrepreneurship

Speakers:	Professor Vincent SHEN
                Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST
			and
		Dr. Shan CHEN
		WebNova Limited

Title:		"IT Entrepreneurship"

Date:		Monday, 1 March 2010

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theater F (near lifts 25/26) HKUST


Abstract:

Entrepreneurship is an important business strategy. IT entrepreneurship
was particularly popular during the "dot-com" boom days around the turn
of the millennium, which ushered in the "new economy" through the
Internet. It was easy to set up a company to seek investors for some
special computer applications, since the start-up company did not normally
require a large investment in capital equipment. However, since there was
not enough revenue to sustain most of these companies, they soon ran out
of funds and caused great losses to the investors. But in the years since
the "dot-com" bust, solid companies in IT were still being started and
many sustained healthy growth.

This talk will cover the basic elements of entrepreneurship, from idea to
prototype to seeking funding to support a commercial launch. We shall use
WebNova, a company formed by several former PG students to commercialize
some research results, as an example. The first product of WebNova, which
is a Web application to facilitate mobile browsing, will be "soft"
launched at the talk for free use by members of the CSE Department. There
will be a demonstration of the technology and audience with smart phones
can try it before its commercial launch later in March.


*******************
Biographies:

Vincent SHEN received the PhD from Princeton University in 1969. His
start-up experience includes founding of the Computer Science Department
at HKUST, commercial ventures Hong Kong Supernet Limited and eCyberPay.com
Limited, and the Hong Kong Mandarin Bible Church.

Shan CHEN received the PhD from HKUST in 2009. He is a Founder of WebNova
Limited and is currently the company's Director of Research and
Development.