About ASES
History
The Stanford Society of Asian-American Engineers (SSAE) was founded in 1998 by Alex Liu and Zhengyu Huang under the guidance of advisor Professor Richard B. Dasher, as an organization dedicated to exposing and enhancing students at Stanford University to the opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region.
The ASES Summit and the Asia Technology Initiative (ATI) quickly became the two most successful programs of SSAE. David Brunner is credited with the first-ever ASES Summit in 2000, which resulted in the marquee conference program which ASES Global is known for today. After a successful Summit in 2001, led by Directors Shih-Hung Chen and Rolland Yip, ASES soon filed to become an indepedent student organization.
Following the dramatic spinoff of ATI and the ASES Summit into independent entities in 2001, SSAE reorganized under President Yu-Kuan Lin to become the Asia Technology Group (ATG), undergoing an arduous rebuilding process.
After the ASES Summit 2001 at Stanford University, ASES Global founders Sherman Li and Rolland Yip collaborated with students from KAIST and Seoul National University in Korea to organize the first-ever international ASES Summit. Following the success of the ASES Summit 2001 at Korea, a model was developed for the collaboration of students all over the world. The ASES Global Committee was officially signed into existence on August 30, 2002 between China, Korea, and the United States. On January 1, 2003, Japan and Hong Kong joined the ASES Global Committee.
With the introduction of several new programs, and the recruitment of new officers, ATG merged with ASES-Stanford in 2003 under President Garry Tan to serve both students at Stanford University as well as participate in the global network of students being built by the ASES Global Committee.
ASES-Stanford is now dedicated to reaching the goal of ASES Global as a whole, to educate and network future leaders in business, technology, and the Asia-Pacific in order to foster a global entrepreneurship community.
Vision
The vision of ASES (Asia Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society) is to create an international entrepreneurship network, focused around the Asia-Pacific region, that helps foster a new generation of entrepreneurs ready to innovate in the ever-changing global markets.
ASES is an organization founded around entrepreneurship, and relating to that, business and technology. However, there is a much more important foundation to the ASES vision: ASES is a global community.
That is the vision that drives ASES, the belief that the future is a tremendous network of interacting individuals that are willing to do business and, more importantly, live life together in spite of cultural differences or societal barriers. In that sense, we are both networking in a conventional sense through this organization but we are also building an international community. The only way people will truly interact and understand each other is if they are friends, because friendship is a true social bond, whereas a business network is a bond of utility.
Each and every ASES organization and event is designed around that principle of bringing people together. Events themselves are not the utmost importance but rather the vision behind these programs that we should recognize. ASES as an organization, is not built around its programs, but rather built around our shared vision.
The goal of each ASES university organization is to build a small, tightly knit local community of students. Each ASES nation should bond all those smaller communities into a national community. ASES on an international basis serves to bring the international community together so that each and every member of ASES belongs to a global society of individuals who can see beyond the confines of ethnicity, society or culture.
Operations
In order to accomplish its vision, ASES puts on various events that promote entrepreneurship education through speaker events and hands on experience. Through our Speaker Series events, we invite renown entrepreneurs and industry experts to present their ideas and talk about their experiences to the reset of the Stanford Community. Students get the opportunity to meet successful entrepreneurs and learn from their experiences. We also host an event called VC-3 (Venture Capital Speed Dating) during Entrepreneurship week at Stanford. During VC-3, student teams get to pitch their ideas to the top VC’s.
We also foster a global network with over fifteen chapters in the Asia-Pacific region. In order to strengthen our network and learn about entrepreneurship globally, we hold two international conferences every year called Summit. One is held at Stanford every April and the other is held in a chapter in the Asia-Pacific region during the summer. During this week long conference, students get the opportunity to learn about how entrepreneurship is conducted in that specific country while networking with fellow students.
