I’m Benjamin Joffe, General Partner at HAX. Ask me anything!

Dear TIA folks,

I’m Benjamin Joffe, General Partner at HAX, the first and largest accelerator focused 100% on hardware & IOT. My job is to find startups to invest in, and advise them during and after our programs in Shenzhen and San Francisco. My focus is strategy, communication, PR, marketing and fundraising. I also regularly share ideas about hardware startups with entrepreneurs and media (I wrote or co-wrote about 10 long-form guest posts on TechCrunch and published several reports on slideshare). I am also an angel investor in a dozen startups including Gengo, TokyoOtakuMode, Cmune and Elysium Space.

A few things about me:

• I was born in France and lived mostly in Asia since 2000, in 9 countries so far including China (Beijing & Shenzhen), Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and San Francisco.
• I founded and ran for 7 years a consultancy named +8* researching innovation across Asia. Harvard and IDEO were once my clients.
• I speak English, French, Japanese and a decent amount of Mandarin. My Korean and Spanish are rusty. I am NOT good at languages, I just spent lots of time on them and the result could have been much better.
• I am French but don’t drink much and don’t watch football. I like cakes, fortunately? However it’s not easy to find good and affordable ones in Asia.
• I visited North Korea, the Galapagos islands, trained a few days in a wushu school near the Shaolin temple and completed a 10 days Vipassana retreat in Indonesia.
• I practiced several martial arts such as Karate, Shorinji Kempo, Aikido, Hapkido and Wushu but am good at none ;p these days I go to the gym and do the occasional yoga.
• Because I had done over 200 talks in events and like comedy I tried standup twice. It’s not the same ;p

Fun facts about HAX:

• HAX is located in the heart of Shenzhen’s electronics district, Huaqiangbei. We see hoverboards, solowheels and “segways” on the street routinely. We also have the best prices 🙂
• The elevator of our old office was so crowded many of us were walking the 10 floors to avoid waiting for 10 minutes and being packed in such a small space. The office was also equipped with critters and rodents.
• We live in the future: some of the projects we work with will not be mass market before 2 years or more.

You can ask me about:

• Any of the above
• Innovation ecosystems
• Hardware & IOT
• Entrepreneurship & Investment
• Who will be the next Steve Jobs

Ask away!

Note from Daniel, TIA’s community manager:
The host may choose at his preference to not answer particular questions. The AMA is moderated by the community managers, so let’s keep the questions friendly. 🙂

Read more about HAX here:

• Shenzhen is rivalling Silicon Valley in hardware, says Hax founder
• These 10 fun, new gadgets just came out of HAXLR8R’s hardware accelerator