Together we grow

Young Hong Kong and Chinese mainland entrepreneurs have struck the right note by teaming up and leveraging their strengths to succeed in business. Ao Yulu and Zeng Xinlan report from Hong Kong.

It was all about business and the prospect of finding the right entrepreneurial partner.

When Vince Poon and Arthur Chen met up in a coffee shop in Shenzhen, it was a lively two-way discussion with a lot of give-and-take. Both were convinced they had found the right person in each other, and decided to give the idea of starting a logistics software business a go.

“We speak the same language although my Mandarin may not be up to the mark. It was the first time we had met. I proposed getting the business off the ground and Arthur was on the same page,” recalled Poon, co-founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based ZhenHub Technologies.

“We really got excited about it. We talked for hours. I was already in the business and his (Poon’s) ideas were very similar to mine. So, it was almost an instant decision,” said Chen, who’s chief technology officer of the cloud-based logistics operating system provider.

Poon, who’s from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and Chen, from Shenzhen, are among a growing number of entrepreneurs who’ve been actively seeking partners from either side of the border in pursuing their business dreams. They believe that, by taking advantage of their respective strengths, they could create a “one-plus-one is greater than two” result.

The trend has become more evident as interaction between young people in Hong Kong and on the Chinese mainland grows, greatly increasing their understanding of each other and laying a solid foundation for cooperation.