A Famous entrepreneur in Silicon Valley of US, angel investor, CEO of Founders Space, the famous incubator in the Silicon Valley, Steven Hoffman, appeared in the Qingdao smart industry summit.

    Hoffman’s company is an accelerator and start-up incubator, which has over 50 partners worldwide, and the most important partners are from China. Hoffman explained: “This is because China and US are two super markets in the world, you have chances to let a very little start-up company to grow into a billion worth Unicorn company in a short time.”

    Hoffman said he is passionate to teach others to start business. Now he spends 40% of his time in China to work together with Chinese entrepreneurs. Recently CITIC publishing house released his new book, Let Elephant Fly. “Innovation development is a good but difficult thing, how difficult it is? It is just like letting an elephant fly. This book helps entrepreneurs to know the process of innovation with real cases.”

    How does an entrepreneur choose his way? Hoffman said: “Now an entrepreneur probably chose AI, AR, VR, or big data, and robot, IoT, something like that. But the thing that moved me most is he comes to me and share an idea I never heard before.”

    Hoffman said, financing is not easy compared with several years ago, but he believes environment is not the determining reason.

    “I have run a business for more than 10 years, I found even in the worst time the best start-up would be a winner. Google and Facebook have all started their business in the worst time.” Hoffman said: “In China, government supports entrepreneurs in entrepreneurship and doing innovation, this is the opportunity. I am optimistic about it.” (Zhang Hua)