Jonbuford

We have a few cowork options, and expect some more spaces to open within the next 6 months.

BootHK (http://boot.hk) is my space I opened and is mostly hotdesk space for early startups. HK Commons is a little more for established companies that are still 2-4 people and growing. There are also more traditional serviced office type offerings, but that isn't quite as interactive with the general community.

I only know marketing agencies there, but haven't run into any groups of either hardware or software hackers. Would be interested to find out what is there as well.

Funding with experienced investors is not as common. We are seeing a big jump in investments over the last 6 months from investors that have started coming in and are really able to take their pick of deals. I think we will see more of this happen and continue to grow.

One thing that is lacking are founders of successful companies that are investing in new ones, but it takes time to grow the ecosystem.

If you are doing business in China, then Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen would be your best options. You really can't do a business for China from HK effectively, unless part of the business is connecting with the rest of the world in some way.

That being said, big differences are the ease in setting up a company and costs. Ease of getting visas and the general paperwork. Also, HK is much safer than any of the mainland cities. The big cities are probably about similar to New York in terms of safety, but Hong Kong is ridiculously safe in comparison. There are basically no areas that you really shouldn't go to, and the medical system is quite good and reliable vs. mainland.

Also, one nice feature, no corporate tax if the income is from outside of Hong Kong.

Also we have a hackerspace: http:www.dimsumlabs.com

I'm one of the founders for all of the above, in one role or another.

I'm one of the founders. For the FB group we try to keep it the immediate community active members. Send me a message on FB and let me know who you are.

One other problem we run into on FB is that people use random photos and user names so we have no idea who half of them are, even if we have met the people before.

Agree, hiring developers is going to currently be difficult, but I expect that this will steadily improve as demand grows. Coming here tends to be trivially easy, and there are a lot of things that being in either SF or NY would give a US focus to when there are a few other people globally that are potential customers.

Working in undeveloped markets tends to be both more difficult, but also can be much more rewarding.

Hong Kong is pretty much the same in those aspects, but larger population and more mountains. The government money for startups in Singapore has created an environment that is not entirely healthy or desirable in that there is little incentive to succeed or be that creative. Hong Kong has some government funding and space available, but tends to be in a matching funds arrangement.