Or other investors, yeah, but I don’t have the details.
I understand that there’s many people currently in talks with Taiwania.
That’s exactly right, by partnering rather than just going by ourselves, and by having the private sector actors manage those funds, and even in the Taiwanese case, accepting international investments. What we’re trying to do is that we’re trying to shape the local-venture capital market to be less risk-adverse, that is to say to be more risk-tolerant.
The angel one, because it’s been running a few years now, is easier. They run these regional explanatory meetings, let’s call them meet-ups, in north, middle, south, as well as east in Taiwan.
Every quarter, they have application rounds just like any other, and there is a public accountable rundown of all the different communication meet-ups, as well as the application forum and so on.
I think it was pretty transparent. I think the latest update was just four days ago about all their activities. Here is their website. I think the day-to-day operation for the angel one is run by the Taipei Computer Association, and the TCA is quite a lot of people. I don’t have the exact number of their staff, but TCA is pretty large.
You mean the review board?
There’s this paper review. There’s also this face-to-face interview. There is at least five people from the review committee.
Which five reviews which round of applications, I think they draw a lot. This is like random, so there’s a larger review board, but there’s like random five people reviewing each particular face-to-face.
If anyone thinks that the reviewers are not experts in their trade and so on, they may, of course, appeal and call the office and reapply for another round of interview. The five people together they have six different criteria that are pretty objective, and then they have also to convince each other.
They look for diversity in the composition of those boards in financial, in marketing, in management, and in technology. That’s the main branches of their expertise.
As of the names of the specific reviewers, I don’t think they announce that. If you ask the TCA, maybe they have more detailed statistics to give.
Yes.
If they run it quarterly, that means that it’s fast enough to be run every quarter. [laughs]
That’s right.
Yeah, they do that now. The link that I sent you actually has that. For example, if you look at July’s announcement, then it shows all the applications that has been accepted by the second quarter of this year, which means...
That’s fine.
All the details for the angel one are in the website. I don’t really have the latest information more than the website.
Each batch, for example, the previous batch, that is to say from the beginning of April to the end of June, they awarded the investment to 19 different companies, usually around a few million NTD each.
The angel one, by this year, I think it’s about 200 cases. It’s about 700 million or so, by NT dollars.
Yeah, something like that.
OK. Let me double check.
No, it’s just fine.
No, it’s fine. I’m just checking Asia Silicon Valley reports to get the latest numbers.
All right. I only have the numbers to the previous quarter. I was trying to look at the current quarter, but I don’t have those numbers, no.
It’s on their website. It just takes some adding up, because it’s posted quarterly. Every quarter, they very clearly say, "This is the 19 companies that we’ve given out," and so on, so there’s just some for that quarter.
Mm-hmm.
The second round is.
The angel plan itself was established early 2014, but it was a subsidy program. It turned into an investment plan last year. There’s 276 up to previous quarter that has been approved.
Until this March, it funded 276 companies.
No, until March. If you want the March quarter, I think that’s another 20. When you add it up, it’s about 300.
Yeah, but that’s the new round of investments. There was this old fund, that was a subsidy...
You don’t really want the old fund’s numbers?
It’s very technical, you see.
There is this old fund. Before it’s dried up, it switched from a subsidy to an investment.
Then it dries up, and then we set up an equally-sized fund that is purely investment.
There is a period where there’s the old fund, but it’s still investment.
That’s right. It’s just its operated differently. Cumulatively, it’s about 300 companies.
Sorry for all those technical details.
About 300.
About 900 million in total.
Right.
It’s mostly about toward what we call circulation economy. That is to say, environmental protection, green energy, and things like that. It’s most easy to get this fund. I think one in five green energy circular economy companies gets this funding.
Of course, it’s an angel fund, so they are small companies. Otherwise, it won’t be called an angel fund.
Something like that, yes.
The second one, the transformational one. Just a second, let me quickly find it.
The first case where it actually made the investment was actually in June, so not too long ago.
