US startups that have high hopes for expanding into China have found a home in San Jose, California.

Hanhai Investment Group, the largest multi-tech US-China technology incubator in Silicon Valley, held a demonstration day for its latest batch of startups on Tuesday at their San Jose headquarters. Eight companies showcased their work, which ranged from software to hardware.

Among the presenters was Sieva Kozinsky, CEO of StudySoup, an online course reader platform that allows students and educators to create, distribute and access interactive course content.

"There is no good way of sifting the tons of materials when educators try to create a course online and there are so many publishers, open-education resources that can be leveraged for classes," Kozinsky said. "The goal of StudySoup is to help faculty staff discover those materials, to self-publish material and delivery it to students."

Currently, thousands of students, educators and 40 colleges and universities in the US have signed up for the fee-based program and Kozinsky, who once studied at Hong Kong University, is eyeing the Chinese market as the next step in StudySoup's development.

"The Chinese market is a huge deal to us," he said. "I have learned how much the Chinese value education. We really want to bring StudySoup to China to allow everyone to discover better interactive materials."

Alex Selig, who has a master's in mechanical engineering from Stanford, also took the stage to make a pitch.

Selig said he grew up with hearing loss and had been using hearing aids most of his life. There are 600 million people in the world that have the same hearing issue as his and 550 million of them do not get hearing aids, he said.

That's why he created SoundFocus - to produce the next generation of hearing aids that offer revolutionary audio processing technologies to empower millions of people to hear better in their everyday lives at an affordable cost.

As of now, SoundFocus is primarily focused on building awareness of hearing loss through use of their app, which enables people with hearing loss to hear music in full fidelity through their iPhone or iPod Touch by tuning the audio to their hearing pattern, compensating for the sound frequencies they do not hear well.

"Today, you can download our iOS app from the App Store," Selig said. "We have at least 3,000 to 5,000 Chinese users already, even though we haven't done any marketing there yet. We are really excited about the potential there."

Selig believes Hanhai's reputation can really benefit his company, as they are going to start manufacturing in China in the next few months.

"Being able to better understand the clientele and make the right connections to the right people in China are extremely important, especially since China is all about relationships. So we are kind of creating allies on board here," he said.

"We will benefit from Hanhai's strong China connection when we are ready to reach into the Chinese market," he added.

Six of the day's eight startups presenting were Americans. Victor Wang, president of Hanhai Investment Group, said that of the 85 companies being incubated at Hanhai's US research headquarters in San Jose overall, about a third were US companies.

Wang said most US companies they house want to enter the Chinese market. In addition to providing those companies with space and regular daily services, "we can help them set up an office or relocate in China", Wang said.

Wang said that Hanhai regularly invited high-profile Chinese VCs to put seed funding in the Angel Fund here in the US. After they get funding here in US dollars, and RMB funding in China, then Hanhai can also introduce their clients to limited partnership funding as well.

"That means for US startups, they are served with space in both countries, all the necessary services in both countries, and three kinds of funding from two countries, all in one place," Wang said. "I don't think US incubators have those kinds of resources.

"I think it's entirely possible that the next Facebook could come from Hanhai," he said. "That is our ultimate goal."

yuwei12@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/26/2013 page2)