The angel one is called the National Development Fund for Angel Investments.

It is, so, three. One is the angel one. One is transformation and one is Taiwania.

The Angel fund, the Innovation Transformation fund, and then, the Taiwania.

The three funds, yes.

It’s not really buying out or taking over any of those SMEs. It is trying to get the SMEs an incentive to digitally transform themselves into a higher part of the value chain.

It’s trying to aim at small and medium enterprises, as I said, but also, more importantly, this is trying to get them to upgrade, to digitally transform, to maybe try to set up a new part in their existing operation branch to digitize or to taking use of the technologies ...

There is a press release associated with each fund. For example, the Innovation Transformation Fund, this press release says, first, that it’s not taking more than 20 percent of any particular thing that they invest.

Not really. For example, the IITF, the large one, the 100 billion one, they have an internal rule that they will not take more than 20 percent stock. They are more like a participant, but we’re not trying to turn all the SMEs into national operated entities. That is also ...

That’s the confusion because they’re both called angels, but this one is the investment fund. It’s not giving money. It’s more like investing money. So all these three are new.

This round of angel fund is actually new. It’s this March. There are other angel rounds before this, but they were not so much investments as they are grants. Then they changed that to angel investment.

Right. So I think the IITF, the Industry Innovation Transformation Fund, it’s set up around the same time as the ASVDA. It’s not after but it’s around the same time. It’s last July, I think. Taiwania is this year. IITF is last year. The angel one, I think, is around ...

Right. It’s fine.

I think it’s just July or something.

They’re looking more towards digital transformation than simply rewarding certain size of small and medium enterprises, so there’s more alignment between those funds but only Taiwania is new.

The Taiwania fund is new. The IITF and the Angel fund, I think, are both planned before the ASVDA. I think the NDC has, because of ASVDA, also shifted their use of these funds.

In total, about 110 billion. Something like that.

That’s one billion, yes.

Yeah, it’s already secured. The corporation has formed, I think.

That’s the initial funding and there may be more, but I’m not involved in the day-to-day operation. I just oversee the general direction of these efforts.

I think it’s about NT$10 billion.

That really needs a first mover’s advantage on a whole new field that’s sector defining. Whereas, the Industry Innovation Transformation Fund is mostly concerned about existing small and medium enterprises wanting to upgrade themselves to digital transformation, but, of course, there may be some overlaps.

Then Taiwania picks after the angel investment stage. It may overlap a little bit with the Industry Innovation Transformation Fund, but Taiwania is focused on segment defining, ecosystem defining, companies, specifically, on Internet of Things and maybe, next, biotech and so on.

The Angel Investment Fund. That’s the small one for the seed stage, about NT$5 million, at most. Then, the Industry Innovation Transformation Fund, that is a lot larger — it’s focusing on the non-seed stage of established SME, small and medium enterprises.

That is to say, larger-sized companies that makes strategic sense for the ecosystem. For the earlier stage, or for the seed stage, we have other governmental funds as well, such as the National Development Funds and joint investment fund, as well as, the Industry Transformation fund. That’s the two other ...

The general manager, David Weng, is selected by the ASVDA, because he is the Chief Investment Officer of ASVDA and Taiwania is this investment arm of ASVDA, but other than that, I think David has a lot of autonomy selecting what kind of investment to make. I should also stress ...

I think you need to check with the Taiwania Capital Management Corporation, because, aside from the fact that David Weng is general manager, I actually don’t have any access to the internal operations or day-to-day team size of the Taiwania Management Corporation. This is what we mean by "at arm’s ...

Right. Of course, with the usual conflict of interest clauses and a standard operations procedure that respects fairness and integrity, but they are also not interfered by political, like Ministers are.

It’s more grassroots. It’s more grassroots on the private sector level. It’s what we call peer-to-peer governance, only government to private to civil society relations.

Exactly.

The chart is here.

Many of them are having the government self-directing the investment lines, but, for us, the upcoming topics are actually suggested by this private sector consultation committee and then organized by the five chief officers, also coming from the private sector, and then, set as a national development agenda on the ...

Us, that is to say, the ministers that steers the ASVDA actually are at arm’s length so we don’t interfere with their day-to-day operations and the ASVDA’s direction actually comes from a think tank, the private sector consultation committee that is all the industry players. I think this is a ...

The ASVDA website lists the names of their organizational chart. The idea is that there is chief technology officer, a HR officer, an investment officer, a general counsel, and a public relationship officer. Those five officers all come from the private sector. They are not career public servants.

Yeah, it’s independent group but it overlaps with the CIO of the ASVDA. It’s a very close relationship to ASVDA. ASVDA itself is also run by this C-suite people that comes from Silicon Valley and are not career public servants.

That’s right.

It’s funded by the government, but it’s managed and run by professional. It’s not run by career-public servants.

I think this is also bidirectional. It’s mostly about giving more visibility to the industry building or ecosystem-defining companies on both sides of the Pacific Ocean to work with each other closely. Personally, I’m also invited to join some Silicon Valley start-up accelerators or boosters as an unpaid mentor of ...

On the other side, that is to say attracting foreign-capital investment, we’re also having plans to introduce for example during the traditional CompuTEX trade show, which is this very long recurring running show, we’re now having a branch called InnoVEX that is especially targeted at early stage, maybe series A ...

They’re keeping an eye on building the ecosystem so that the Taiwan’s missing places in the supply chain, for example, as I mentioned, analytics and information management on the Internet of Things or for example on the next step maybe on biotechnology as well as many other industries that Taiwan ...

The special thing about this is that it’s run and managed and overseen by expert private sector investors as well as private sector managers. It’s not something that career public servants manage. It is like an arm’s length from the government.

The idea is that we will have the head of the ASVDA as well as the CEO David Wong to run this new fund on perhaps 20 percent of return of investment and with the size of entity two to four billion. This idea is that we will look to ...

Right. There is a new capital that’s being done that’s called a Taiwania capital or in Mandarin it’s called 台杉. It’s a pretty large capital fund. There’s a preparatory office that’s just completed their forming of Taiwania Capital Management Corporation. There is several branches, but we’ll start with a national ...

We’re connecting them to their counterparts in the Silicon Valley. So if, for example, one of the Silicon Valley companies find a really good idea about virtual reality application or so on that came from Taiwan, they can very easily work with their counterparts in Taiwan to bring them to ...

We’re also connecting our local start-up accelerators, for example the Taiwan Start-up Stadium and so on. There’s this whole link on the ASVDA website.

Yes, that’s the incentive. It’s also to acculturate them with the Silicon Valley and make connections and then maybe bring some of them back to Taiwan if they’re considering to start a research service company in Taiwan and so on. It’s entirely bidirectional.

To a point. Then the competing companies is of course OK to add on top of it.

There’s an English PowerPoint there as well. I would encourage you to find the answers there.

You can see a lot of foreign talents providing their input during this consultation period.

There’s quite a few ways. I would encourage you to read the consultation, because there was a 60-day consultation on the joint platform about this, what we call the Foreign Talent Act. This act is one of the first regulations law that we publicly consult with a bilingual discussion forum.