Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan 2017 Event Recap

On November 18th, 2017, the CCCT’s small business committee hosted the second annual Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan event in partnership with Meet Taipei and Business Next Magazine. Read more about Business Next’s write-up on Dragons Chamber Taiwan.

Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan is a competition where local businesses pitch ideas, strategies, and their own business models to a panel of expert judges. By participating in this event, local entrepreneurs are able to make connections with other business executives while also receiving valuable insights from experts in operating businesses in Taiwan.

Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan is open to a wide range of small businesses including, restaurants, start-ups, consulting companies, education, professional services, design, import/export, manufacturing, or any other organization — as long as they have a legitimate business model.

This event is especially useful to the foreign community here in Taiwan, as starting a business abroad sometimes poses many challenges. Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan essentially provides a forum for business executives to attract attention to their business, while also gaining new insights and perspectives about how to advance their strategies and business models.

This year’s Dragons (the judges) came from a variety of business backgrounds providing valuable commentary and thought-proving questions to this year’s contestants.

The Dragons were: Kelvin Sun – Vice President of WI Harper Group; Revital Golan- founder and CEO of Anemone Ventures; David Bostwick – Director of Trade and Investment at CTOT, and Elias EK- co-founder and CEO of Enspyre.

This year the Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan had five teams participating in the competition:

 MemePr  is an artificial intelligence marketing platform connecting enterprises with top global marketers. By using a computer robot, they are able to quickly and efficiently connect businesses to marketing influencers.

With partnerships in the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, and more, MemePr strives to save their members time by connecting business to these major global marketing networks.


Eatsmart is a company whose mission is to help busy people eat healthy on the go. By providing wholesome lunch boxes, their clients can select various menus to fit their dietary needs and goals.

Eat Smart’s chefs are trained in France and they offer a diversified menu specializing in European cuisine. Furthermore, the ingredients are locally sourced in Taiwan to ensure that the food is fresh upon delivery.


Woodpecker Learning provides a platform where the user can interact with online content to enhance language learning. This platform is designed for both teachers and students to make learning a language more engaging and practical.

It is also geared towards advanced learners who want to have a better understanding of digital content that is originally geared towards native speakers.

On this application users can learn English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese with lessons in Russian to be offered in the near future.


KP Kitchen Taiwan is the place to buy familiar Western cooking and baking DIY kits. In Taiwan many home cooks struggle adjusting to small and cramped kitchens and also finding familiar ingredients for the recipes they love.

KP Kitchen has solved this problem by providing DIY sets for making recipes such as brownies, muffins, cakes, breads, and more!

The best part is that all of these recipes are tested and adopted to be made in toaster ovens or other appliances that are common in Taiwan. KP kitchen also offers delicious spice mixes which are all produced locally with love.


 My Room Abroad is a platform that connects international student to certified landlords.

Finding an apartment in a foreign country can be difficult for students, so My Room Abroad aims to alleviate this problem by providing a one-stop website where clients can search for their room and pay deposits and rental fees online.

My Room Abroad originated in Taiwan, and they are looking to expand to other countries in Asia.


All of the teams labored arduously  on their presentations and they engaged in thoughtful discussion while answering some tough questions from the dragon judges. However, only one team could finish as the first place winner.

This year the grand prize was awarded to Woodpecker Learning, with second prize to Eat Fresh, and third prize to My Room Abroad. The KP Kitchen and MemePr teams were also awarded prizes for their efforts.

In an interview with Peter Sutton from Woodpecker Learning, he provided some valuable insights for those interested in participating in next year’s Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan.

I came here just in the audience last year, and it was very interesting and  I enjoyed it. So I would definitely recommend anyone who has a business to come. Even if they think they might not win, it is a great venue to promote your product, and it is a great way to get experience.

Peter Sutton also provided a comment on how he felt to win first place at the 2017 Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan event.

There were some interesting people in the audience today, both from the point of view from the education sector and also from the point of view of investing. So we would like to follow up with them for partnerships. And I think it is going to be good publicity to win this, and hopefully people will download or app.


On behalf of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Taiwan, we would like to give our thanks and appreciation to everyone who made this event such a success. First, a thanks to our Gold Sponsors: FutureWard, JusRegal, Anemone Ventures, and Musa Trademark who all donated prizes for the top contestants.

Also we would like to thank our Silver sponsors for their contributions: DDG, Geber Brand Consulting, and  Pachuco.

Finally, we would like to thank the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei for partnering with the CCCT to make the 2017 Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan a tremendous success.

We hope to continue to see more small businesses come and compete in Dragons’ Chamber Taiwan in 2018!

 

 

 

Business Interview – Clear Sky Communications with John Groot

Today we’d like to introduce a new interview series to introduce our Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan business members to the general community.

If you’d like to interview with us for our business interview series, please email us at info@cancham.tw with the subject line “CCCT Business Interview”.

To kick off this series, we have an interview for you with Mr. John Groot, owner of Clear Sky Communications based in Taipei.

CCCT: Thanks for joining us today, John. Can you tell us a little about yourself?John Groot

I used to be a journalist back in Canada. I’ve been working here in Taiwan as a trainer for 14 years. Last year I finished a project where I walked around the entire coastline of Taiwan.

CCCT: Can you tell us a little about your business?

We’re a small training and consulting company, a bit of a boutique business. We do customized programs that include business English training for teams with a specific purpose, like marketing teams, IT teams, sales teams etc., as well as some more interesting programs like cross-cultural communication. We also do writing and editing work, like technical editing, online articles, and also some curriculum design.

CCCT: How did you get started with Clear Sky Communications?

Well, I had been working as a freelancer for a while, and had a chance to do a big project for a major ICT brand. But I needed to issue them an official tax receipt, so we incorporated. After that, things just snowballed.

CCCT: Can you describe your customers?

They’re a pretty diverse group. I’ve worked for many of the biggest ICT brands, some less well known Taiwanese tech firms, big pharma companies, and lots of individuals. I’ve had some private clients who were newly arrived business people who wanted to get a cultural orientation to Taiwan. I’ve done training for the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei’s trade assistants. I guess the common thread is that they all have an international focus.

CCCT: Would you mind answering how you set your business up here in Taiwan?

I set up the business with my wife, as it was the easiest way to do it.

CCCT: Where do you see your business in the next year? In the next five years? In the next ten years?

Over the next 2-4 years we hope to become one of the top customized training companies in Taiwan. Our plan is NOT to hire more employees, expand, and compete for market share with established players, but rather to follow the small team approach and go for higher-level training opportunities.

CCCT: Is there anything about your company that you feel makes it special? Clear Sky Communications Taipei

We really take the time to get to know what senior managers want, what HR wants, and what the trainees want. Then when we deliver the program, it is almost always very close to what everyone actually needs. If it isn’t, we can correct course very quickly. This is actually rarer in the training business than you might think.

We can do all this because the trainer, the training program designer, and the contact window are one person, myself. So I can get to know everyone and don’t operate at a distance from decision makers or end users. I think this helps us deliver a special level of customized service.

CCCT: Thanks, John. We look forward to seeing you out at a CCCT event some day soon! Good luck!

Business Links

http://www.clearskycommunications.tw/

https://www.facebook.com/clearskycommunications

If you’d like to interview with us for our business interview series, please email us at info@cancham.tw with the subject line “CCCT Business Interview”.