With the Taiwan’s Entrepreneurs Visa, a New Yorker got the chance to introduce Taiwan to the world through an app
With great geographical location, complete infrastructure, and educated workforce, Taiwan is definitely the top choice for startups with no doubt. The fact that foreigners want to build their own career in Taiwan is no longer an impossible mission, becauseTaiwan’s Entrepreneurs Visa has been released since 2015. The simple process and few requests of Taiwan’s Entrepreneurs Visa draw more and more foreigners to chase their dream. Kevin Wolkober, with the special visa, built a brand-new app in 2016 to introduce Taiwan to the whole world.
Sitting at the center of the Asia Pacific region, it is easy for entrepreneurs in Taiwan to travel both domestically and internationally with airports and amazing public transpotation systems. Besides, Taiwan has a large and highly educated workforce pool which is especially abundant with R&D talent. Combining above factors and many other wonderful conditions, Taiwan is definitely a great place to set up an intruding app “like Eat Drink Taiwan”.
Kevin Wolkober first became interested in Taiwan through some Taiwanese friends he made while working in New York in 2008. With all the good things they had to say about their homeland, and the fact of never having been abroad before, he became more and more interested in experiencing it for himself. By 2011, his curiosity could be held back no longer – he visited Taiwan, and quickly came to love the environment and culture. After three years of travelling back and forth between the two, he realized that the image of Taiwan through other Westerner’s eyes was not the same Taiwan he was seeing for himself, and decided to do something about it.
“Because my background is in writing software, I wanted to use my own abilities to help introduce Taiwan to outsiders.” He easily identified a universal want for potential users: good food. And thus, Eat Drink Taiwan was born. Wolkober intends for this app to act as a substitute for a local guide, introducing the foreigner to real Taiwanese cuisine. “If you can’t speak Chinese, you can use these kind of simple tools to help you order food yourself…it doesn’t matter if you are local or foreign, we all need these tools to create that cultural bridge and get to know one another.”
Like many other foreign business owners today, Wolkober is in Taiwan under the Entrepreneur Visa. He figured it out with the help of FutureWard, a coworking space here in Taipei, and says the biggest advantage of the Entrepreneur Visa is the residency card, which allows him to stay in Taiwan longer and develop new products.
Furthermore, with the Taiwan’s Entrepreneur Visa, innovative entrepreneurs even don’t have to build an enterprise first, and get a residency for 1 year with unlimited entry. Moreover, the visa can be extended up to 2 years without leaving Taiwan, and if residing in Taiwan for 5 years, entrepreneurs are able to apply for permanent residence. With the visa, Wolkober no longer needs to travel back and forth between Taiwan and the U.S. Instead, getting residency for long makes him more concentrate on the development of app and also on Taiwan.
Eat Drink Taiwan has been available on the App Store for more than two years now, with popularity on the rise. Wolkober intends to continue adding more information to it, hopes to keep gaining viewers, and is open to collaborating with other travel companies in the future.