Early this year I started toying with the idea of creating an artificial emotional brain. After playing around with many algorithms, experimenting with emotion detection from faces, text, and audio, and even creating a simple prototype on a Raspberry Pi, I gathered enough feedback to feel confident about turning my ideas into a product. Having just graduated from Ph.D., being a father of two, and living in a foreign country (Taiwan), my resources both economical and in the form of professional network were limited, so I decided to leverage the power of a local accelerator.

So in early June I submitted my application to Taiwan’s AppWorks, one of the biggest accelerators in Asia. Later that same month I was officially accepted to be part of the batch #13 of the prestigious accelerator. I was happy and full of expectations, but also worried and full of fears. My main worries came from the fact that most of the accepted teams were composed of about 2–4 people, whereas I was alone. There were about 8 non Taiwanese teams, but they were mostly from Hong Kong so they could speak Chinese. The only other person apart from me that could not speak Chinese had two Taiwanese members with her. So yes, I was scared because I did not have the numbers nor the language (and the money, and the network, …).

A week into the program my fears have almost faded. While most of the talking happens in Chinese, virtually everybody both in batch #13 as in the entire AppWorks “mafia”, speak a good deal of English. There is always someone willing to translate the key points to me, and the invited speakers and staff are very open to answer my questions in English. But probably the part of the program that is increasingly making me confident in what I am doing is the unique opportunity to connect with some of the most exciting, talented, and motivated people and companies in the island.

Being a founder is a hard and lonely path. Being a sole founder is the scariest thing in the world. Many don’t recommend it, early investors avoid us. A common phrase among startups is the Chinese proverb “If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk together”. I used to take this literarily in the startups context, I was anxious about finding a co-founder. But something that my short experience in AppWorks has taught me so far is that you can interpret this saying in different ways. I may be the sole founder, but thanks to all the feedback and support from the “mafia”, I am no longer walking alone.