Workshop of the World: Manufacturing for IoT in China

Since its designation as a Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen has earned its reputation as the ‘Silicon Valley for hardware.’ While many hardware startups choose to base their headquarters in Shenzhen, ultra hands-on hardware accelerators Brinc offers its founders a comprehensive program with a base in Hong Kong and access to its platform in Shenzhen and Guangzhou to quickly accelerate time to market.

However, jumping into hardware and getting hands-on with product manufacturing isn’t easy, especially as a foreigner in China. Navigating Chinese factories and negotiating with factory bosses can be a sink-or-swim experience for expat entrepreneurs, depending on their cultural fluency, language skills, and connections.

Come hear from Brinc Co-Founder and COO, Bay McLaughlin and learn more about how Brinc is supporting IoT startups from around the world navigate the challenges with manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta to help them successfully build their first connected products companies.

Speaker: Bay McLaughlin, Co-Founder and COO, Accelerator

Bay is a co-founder of Brinc, a global IoT accelerator and platform based in Hong Kong with offices in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Having spent half of his career in or founding startups, he now brings his experience and operations abilities to connect the dots from Asia to Silicon Valley for IoT companies from around the world.

As a founding team member of Apple’s global SMB channel and founder of their first Entrepreneurship Evangelism channel, Bay has partnered with the world’s best founders, venture capitalists, and accelerators to identify and solve their most pressing strategic issues. With 8 software and 13 hardware portfolio holdings, he’s successfully made the transition from digital to physical and from San Francisco to Asia.

As a regular mentor for China accelerator, the Thiel Foundation, and other startup ecosystems in Asia, Bay is passionate about investing in founders with a global vision. He speaks regularly at conferences, most recently at Web Summit, Echelon, RISE and LAUNCH, Hong Kong’s inaugural consumer IoT Summit.