EHF Fellow: Amarit Charoenphan
Bridging Co-working, Tech, Events, and Media Between Thailand and New Zealand
In June 2012, Amarit Charoenphan found himself feeling frustrated, trying to start a business from home and struggling with loneliness, boredom, and a lack of motivation and energy. Venturing outside his own home, he found noisy coffee shops with spotty wifi, poorly lit spaces, and back-breaking chairs.
Both he and his brother had been through turbulent years trying to start businesses, and had experienced first-hand the painful journey of entrepreneurship.
Amarit was coming to realise that what was missing in Thailand’s blossoming startup ecosystem, was a workspace that could support entrepreneurs, freelancers, and early stage businesses that was affordable, flexible and fully equipped like a dream office. In addition, he desired a space that offered a strong sense of community and friendship, with learning and sharing opportunities, and business services that could help entrepreneurs to succeed.
“My dream has always been to create a better world where people work with passion, meaning, and purpose while actively supported by an inspiring community and ecosystem.”
- Amarit Charoenphan
Finding such a space lacking, Amarit took it upon himself to build such a space. He opened HUBBA in Bangkok in June, 2012, to became Thailand’s first co-working space. With the space open, he needed entrepreneurs, creatives and freelancers to fill it, so he did want ever it took to bring people through the door, by hosting a number of events, including Thailand’s first hackathon to be held in a co-working space.
Following a rapid growth trajectory involving a seed round attracting investment from 500 Startups, Wavemaker Partners and Golden Gate Ventures, the vision behind HUBBA was to be a hub for global creators, providing stunning workspaces, a vibrant community, and business services to thousands of members from across the world. Their goal is to provide the infrastructure, services, events, and technology, so their members can focus on creating their life’s work.
The company has now become Thailand’s largest co-working network and has been racking up the accolades. It was featured in Inc. Magazine’s 6 Most Exotic Co-working Spaces of 2015, has been listed among the Top 10 Thailand Startups of 2015 by Bangkok Post, and featured as one of the Inspiring Businesses of the Year in 2015 by The Nation. With an eye on international expansion and relationship building, Amarit is now bringing his vision to New Zealand as an inaugural Fellow in the Edmund Hillary Fellowship.
After four years, HUBBA has survived through multiple political, cultural and economic challenges, including a military coup which saw them losing 50% of their membership, and generating a financial loss with no end in sight. Amarit credits the company getting through to creative problem-solving from their diverse team, relentless focus, rapid iteration, and a culture of being “patiently impatient”.
“The best way to fix a problem is to acknowledge the problem and take the first step towards solving it. Slowly but surely, if your team is functioning well, strong systems are in place and everyone is passionate, happy and energised by what they are doing, slow can become smooth, and then smooth can become fast.”
- Amarit Charoenphan
Amarit is evolving his efforts far beyond just co-working — the HUBBA model is now one of a “tech ecosystem builder” that helps entrepreneurs succeed via infrastructure (co-working space), technology (Hubba Connect, their internal social network and services platform), and a rapidly growing professional media and and events subsidiary Techsauce.
Techsauce is Southeast Asia’s fastest growing technology conference media and events company, and Thailand’s most widely-read tech media site. Under this company, Amarit runs the annual Techsauce Global Summit — Thailand’s leading technology conference attended by 6000 attendees from across the world in 2017, and projected to grow into a 3 day, 10,000-attendee conference in June 2018.
“For entrepreneurs, what never fades is the hope and dream that somehow our ideas, our team, our products, and efforts can create something people love, a business that we can be proud of, and to not only be able to change the world, but reap the fruits of our labour.”
- Amarit Charoenphan
Amarit recently read Big World, Small Planet: Abundance within Planetary Boundaries by Johan Rockström, Mattias Klum, and Peter Miller, which proposes a “safe operating space” framework for humanity to live on Earth grounded in scientific research. Concluding unequivocally that since the Industrial Revolution, human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change, the book draws on the work of thousands of scientists to define tipping points or “planetary boundaries”, after which there is a risk of “irreversible and abrupt environmental change that may lead to an extinction level event for humanity”.
The book had a profound effect on him. In order to safeguard the remaining beauty on Earth, and indeed a planet that is compatible with life, Amarit planning to elevate his work in building a global community of startups, corporations, venture capitalists and changemakers by setting up a new hybrid institution that combines venture capital, accelerators, startup studios and think tanks to explore disruptive ideas in a transnational yet turbulent world. His vision is to unite world’s leading edge entrepreneurs with a global sustainability mindset, and provide them with the tools, resources and markets to unleash scalable, commercially viable innovations and build resilient communities, cities and a world that operates within safe planetary limits.
With the help of the EHF community, he hopes to begin by focusing on five challenges areas: urban living & smart cities, digital governance and citizenship, food and agriculture, finance, and education, with a specific focus on emerging, exponential technologies like the Internet of Things, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence, in order to make the world a more interconnected, peaceful and collaborative place. Part of the plan for him is also to build a startup city, where up to 10,000 of the world’s brightest minds, entrepreneurs and investors can come together to accelerate their solutions together.
In service to New Zealand, he can act as a bridge to the Southeast Asian startup community, describing himself as “the go-to Asian guy for all things related to tech and Asia.” He is most excited about the opportunity to meet, learn and collaborate with bright minds, including potential new co-founders, business partners, investors, advisors, mentors and friends, and to give back to EHF and New Zealand.
“I plan to scale the impact of my work across different innovation hubs and communities, working towards a world where geographies and nationalities are irrelevant, and innovation and impact can happen from anywhere.”
- Amarit Charoenphan
If you enjoyed this story, please give us some claps. Just like real applause, you can clap more than once 😉 … Are you a visionary entrepreneur or investor building solutions to global challenges? You can bring your vision to reality from New Zealand by joining the Edmund Hillary Fellowship community. Apply here.
