[2024 Pujiang Innovation Forum] Highlights of WeStart2024

SHANGHAI, Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As an integral part of the 17th Pujiang Innovation Forum, WeStart2024 was held at Dongjiao State Guest Hotel and Zhangjiang Science Hall, Shanghai from September 7 to 10. Under the theme of "Refactoring & Renewal", this year's conference focused on sci-tech entrepreneurship and investment, aiming to create a global entrepreneurship investment platform that bridges projects with capital. This platform leverages capital to bolster sci-tech innovation and economic transformation. The four-day event boasted two main forums, one symposium, 13 roadshow marathons, and multiple industry sharing sessions. Renowned investment agencies like CICC, Zero2IPO, and Shenzhen Capital Group were invited to delve into the innovative investment landscape, exploring avenues for global collaboration, building a new paradigm of entrepreneurship investment, and stimulating new drivers to sci-tech innovation.

Let's review the highlights.

Shanghai has been fortifying its position as a global sci-tech innovation center by intensifying element concentration, enhancing functions and services, and cultivating a comprehensive sci-tech ecosystem. This has turned Shanghai into a heaven for entrepreneurship and a magnet for investment. WeStart2024 brought together government bodies, experts, scholars, venture firms at home and abroad, sci-tech businesses, and nearly 1,000 audience professionals to discuss entrepreneurship investment and create an ecosystem for sci-tech innovation together through diverse sci-tech innovation stakeholders, transforming this ecosystem from a strategic blueprint into reality.

On September 8, WeStart2024 kicked off with main forums, featuring 13 keynote speeches and two roundtable dialogues. Key sci-tech finance terms such as "patient capital", "fundraising, investment, management and exit", "investment in early-stage, small, long-term and hard technologies", "angel investment", and "high-quality development of the capital market" were frequently mentioned, becoming the focal point of discussions and highlighting the future development of sci-tech finance. The roundtable dialogues unveiled the latest sci-tech investment opportunities and delved into trends, current statuses, and strategies of sci-tech entrepreneurship investment amidst new situations and transformative environments.

The exhibition hall housed a Start-ups Exhibition Zone, showcasing nearly 20 TOP100 roadshow projects and products and the investment ecosystems and achievements of three to five leading venture firms through the linkage of the Entrepreneur Joint Exhibition Zone, the Investment Institution Zone, and the One-to-One Negotiation Zone. There were boards briefing on typical sci-tech businesses in the fields of biomedicine and AI. Social scenes for entrepreneurship investment were also offered to facilitate direct communication between projects and investors.

WeStartTOP100, a new addition to the Startup in Shanghai International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, was launched in June. It selected 100 projects from over 2,000 global entries for on-site roadshows during the conference. The four-day event featured 13 marathon project roadshows with over 100 projects, focusing on six key areas: three in hard tech—biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing—and three in future industries—future information, future materials, and future energy.

A special roadshow for universities was also held, where Shanghai-based universities, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ShanghaiTech University, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai Ocean University, East China Normal University, Shanghai University, and Shanghai Polytechnic University, displayed high-quality research projects. Focusing on exchanges and investment and financing matchmaking in cutting-edge interdisciplinary areas and core technologies in key fields, this roadshow further propelled the commercialization of S&T outcomes in universities. The special roadshow for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology introduced top-notch innovative projects from Hong Kong universities to Shanghai, fostering a new chapter for sci-tech cooperation between the two cities.

In particular, the conference prioritized global vision and international cooperation. During the international roadshow, high-quality projects from countries and regions like France, Germany, Hungary, Zimbabwe, and Morocco, as well as Hong Kong (China), were selected to compete. This facilitated interaction between domestic and foreign entrepreneurship investment resources and explored new paths for global collaboration. A 365-day "never-ending" global entrepreneurship investment cooperation and matchmaking mechanism was established to effectively link international sci-tech innovation talent, technology, capital, and market, empowering the sound development of sci-tech entrepreneurship investment.

Furthermore, the conference collaborated with leading players in entrepreneurship investment, Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment Co., Ltd. and CICC Capital, to open special roadshows. Leveraging the expertise and resources of investment agencies, these roadshows directly linked both sides of entrepreneurship investment, working with numerous sci-tech players on-site to explore high-quality projects and fully support entrepreneurs.