Steve Chen, a Taiwan-born American entrepreneur, was the co-founder and chief technology officer of YouTube. He worked at PayPal and Facebook before founding the video platform and, later, helped lead its $1.65 billion acquisition by Google. After working on multiple other startups in Silicon Valley, Chen moved to Taipei in 2019 and has been investing in early-stage tech startups.
In 2023, Taiwan’s startup ecosystem ranked 24th globally, behind other East Asian countries, including Singapore, China, Japan, and South Korea. A lack of funding, a small population of 24 million, and the government’s long-standing focus on the semiconductor sector have challenged the growth of tech startups. Chen is trying to bridge the gap by connecting Taiwan with Silicon Valley investors.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
I had been in Silicon Valley for 20 years and had conducted just about everything, from joining a startup to working on a startup and co-founding a startup — everything from PayPal and Facebook to YouTube.
It just so happened that I was remodeling the house a little bit in Silicon Valley. So I thought, instead of renting a house next door, I would move to Taiwan, almost as a new startup experience.
I think one great experience I had was actually trying to create a startup on my own in Taiwan. It was called Brewing [designed to offer digital medical services]. It didn’t make it too far, but I think what was more valuable from that experience was being able to hire a team of startup engineers to try to create a global product from inside Taiwan.
In Silicon Valley, my experience with startups, especially with junior engineers, is that everybody is almost on equal footing as far as ideas go. In Taiwan, many of the employees have never really lived and experienced life outside of Taiwan. So it’s a bit difficult for them to come up with ideas for a target audience that they aren’t part of.
Every successful company, especially in its early stages, needs at least three things: good founders with good ideas, good staff, and funding. Taiwan by itself ranks near the top when it comes to the engineers, designers, product managers, but it lags behind on the venture capital and investment side. It lags behind when it comes to founders and entrepreneurs with global experience. When you have good engineers but they don’t have a lot of experience outside of Taiwan, you start moving more into the hardware side because it doesn’t require language or cultural knowledge.
I’m mostly working on the angel investment level, creating funds and connecting companies with funds. I’m also helping some funds in the U.S. make investments in Taiwan. And with established companies that I’m already working with outside of Taiwan, I’m making those connections to enable collaborations and partnerships. I’m also working with other entrepreneurs that have moved to Taiwan, including Kevin Lin, a co-founder of Twitch.
Taiwan has this Gold Card program [a government scheme to attract foreign talent] that brings in folks from overseas that have started companies before. We have started Gold Card networking events for serial entrepreneurs who are living here.
We have a wide network of connections with these entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, many of whom have Taiwanese-American roots. We can also explore funding from Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, and Dubai — places that have capital but lag behind in engineers.