Garage Coffee: the way to start a Cafe

Our reporter Lu Yiwen

Because of the visit of Guo Shuqing, chairman of the Securities Regulatory Commission, the recent exposure of garage coffee is very high. When the reporter went to the garage coffee interview that afternoon, he met colleagues from TV stations and online media. Su Di, co-founder of garage coffee, told reporters that now they receive 80-100 visitors a day, including entrepreneurs, investors, government officials, financial institutions, lawyers, the media.

In fact, in the entrepreneurial circle in Beijing, garage coffee has gradually accumulated its reputation since it opened a year ago, and is gradually recognized as a "gathering place for grassroots entrepreneurs." Although the coffee shop is nestled on the second floor of a hotel in Zhongguancun, there is no street facade or conspicuous signs, but when you walk into the hotel, you can see the note on the elevator door saying "the second floor does not stop".

From the back staircase of the hotel to the second floor, the coffee shop is very common, with tables and chairs at the bar and simple furnishings, if anything, nothing more than the bulletin boards posted on both sides of the door, "looking for business partners", "asking for investors", and "self-recommendation". From here the reporter has begun to feel the entrepreneurial vitality of the cafe, and then after a few cups of coffee, whether it's mocha or latte. Reporters all tasted the taste of starting a business.

Get together in the garage, in the name of entrepreneurship

The name of the startup-themed cafe "Garage" comes from the entrepreneurial experience of two IT giants. It is said that Bill Gates, the father of Microsoft, first developed the Windows interface in the garage, while Steve Jobs, the father of Apple, also founded Apple computer in the garage and embarked on his legendary success.

It is not difficult to find that this cup of coffee called "garage" is for early entrepreneurs. "the idea at the beginning of the store was very simple. Several of our partners thought it was fun. There was no such place in Beijing, so we just did it." Wei Zheng, co-founder of Garage Coffee, describes their "career". "We open a coffee shop and do entrepreneurial services."

Exactly, entrepreneurs can enjoy a full-day open office environment with free Internet, conference rooms, printing, faxing and other office services as long as they come to the garage coffee and order a cup of coffee. There is no fixed closing time for garage coffee, that is, no matter how late the entrepreneur works overtime, the garage will not drive him out. "here is more to serve early entrepreneurs, the so-called early, is still solving the problem of food and clothing entrepreneurs. Here they design products, set up teams, complete the initial start-up, and if they are lucky, they can get an investment here and then move out to set up a company. " Wei Zheng said that at present, there are more than a dozen entrepreneurial teams "stationed" in the garage, and the basic entrepreneurial directions are concentrated in the IT industry, most of whom have many years of work experience and the ability to run projects.

If an entrepreneur is compared to coffee powder, the investor is the water that makes coffee. These two things are indispensable to a mellow cup of coffee, and entrepreneurs and investors are absolute protagonists in the garage. Wei Zheng met all kinds of entrepreneurs and investors here. He told reporters that the question that entrepreneurs ask most is: what about the lack of money? What should I do if I encounter problems in the product launch? What if the team can't fit in? And the question that investors ask most often is: where are the good entrepreneurs? Where's the good project? Where are the hot spots? Where are the profit opportunities?. They all hope to find the answer in the garage, and the garage does, which is why the garage is becoming more and more famous.

For many entrepreneurs, the process of registering the company is long and expensive, and the idea of collecting entrepreneurs in the garage is reflected to the relevant departments, and the process of registering the company is shortened to 2 weeks from the previous 2 months. The cost has also been reduced from 15000 yuan to 10, 000 yuan, which has really helped entrepreneurs. In the process of dealing with the government, Wei Zheng also felt the strong desire of the government to support entrepreneurship. "the government is also asking: what do entrepreneurs need?" In February this year, the Zhongguancun Management Committee awarded the official plaque of an "innovative incubator" for garage coffee and opened a registered green channel for start-ups entering and leaving garage coffee. Sue? I am proud to say that with this plaque, the entrepreneurial team stationed here can enjoy the same preferential policies of Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park.

For investors, garage coffee is not only a human resource bank, but also a project resource database. More importantly, it's free. Wei Zheng said that investors who came here were a little surprised at first, "you don't want anything?" Because in the general process of venture capital operation, the middleman who plays the role of "matchmaking agency" takes a certain percentage of commission, while the garage acts as an "intermediary" between the project and investors for nothing. Sue? According to a set of figures, Garage Coffee has helped 13 teams get investments since it opened, each with more than $2 million. For example, 36 krypton, a tech blog that focuses on Internet entrepreneurship, came out of the garage.

In addition to providing office space, the "brainstorming" of garage coffee every afternoon is also a "retention program" that attracts entrepreneurs. On the shared platform made up of stages, big screens and projectors in the corner of the cafe, wonderful speeches are held every day, or entrepreneurs come to the stage to preach their own ideas, or investors come to "preach" to entrepreneurs. Or successful entrepreneurs to share their experiences. Sometimes, in the evening, there will be various "overtime" theme sharing meetings, attracting off-duty office workers to participate, among them may be tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

Cafes are becoming more and more popular, and Wei Zheng estimates that they will be profitable from this month, attributing his success to "luck-this is a point where you really need this thing." But the success of this "outbreak" made Su and Wei Zheng fall into another kind of distress. They describe the current situation like this: at the beginning of the store, they were ready to lose two years, but unexpectedly, the coffee shop quickly became popular, a bit like a 22-year-old who did what other people need to be 30 to do, from 1 to 5. Suddenly jump to 10, they are as confused as the entrepreneurs who come to the garage. What they think about most these days is that entrepreneurs are coming for the fame of "garages" while they spend less time serving entrepreneurs. "I have only been home once in the past 11 days. I want to spend more time with entrepreneurs. I'm afraid customers are full, but I can't get what they want. " Wei Zheng's exhaustion is written on his face. How can the garage team improve its "production capacity"? There is an unlimited supply of coffee, but what about entrepreneurial services? How to make the garage model develop healthily? The garage also wants someone to guide its entrepreneurial path.

A cup of coffee, feel the power of chat

In the garage, the way of drinking coffee is also different from that of other cafes. People drink from table to table with their own cups, and they can chat enthusiastically with strangers at every table. Some people tease that the garage sells seats rather than coffee, because it is more enjoyable to sit here and talk to people than to drink.

Sharing is not only the spirit of the Internet, but also what entrepreneurs are willing to do. In the garage, every entrepreneur is willing to share his or her entrepreneurial story with others.

Xiao Yi (a pseudonym), an entrepreneur born in 1987, returned home with 30,000 yuan earned by working abroad and found two friends to start a business together, the direction is to do a website. At that time, he lived in the East Fifth Ring Road, far from the garage coffee in the North fourth Ring Road, but he backed several cars back and forth every day for more than a month, during which time he set up the product architecture. He set a time limit for himself, including all expenses such as buying a server, paying his friends, and so on. If he spent 30,000 yuan, he would go abroad to work again if he had not received the investment. Fortunately, it was not long before he met the investor in the garage coffee. Now his small team has 10 people, earning 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a day.

This is the first entrepreneurial story that the reporter heard in the garage coffee, and it is also the story that happens every day in the entrepreneurial circle. If entrepreneurs used to run all over the street to "try their luck", but now there is a fixed place to "try their luck", of course, they are more likely to find investors.

"it was my first time here yesterday. I stayed from 10:00 to 6 p.m., and met three investors." Xiao Hu (a pseudonym), who has been involved in his second entrepreneurial journey, told reporters that it was unthinkable when he started his first business, when it was time to see how much effort an investor had to spend and how many roads he had to turn around. In fact, his second venture project has already received investment, he is not aimed at resources, nor with a strong purpose to come to the garage, but here suddenly attracted him. "I came back early this morning because chatting with like-minded people here can stimulate their creativity, and the chat process itself makes people very happy." In his view, the communication opportunities here are more valuable than the resources available. Of course, communication opportunities are also a broad resource, and chatting with some investors will not get money, but the chat process will benefit entrepreneurs a lot. "it is because of the huge demand that there is garage coffee, not in the 'garage', maybe in the 'car'." He said frankly that entrepreneurs need all kinds of support and even more pertinent opinions. He likens it to a "cultural center" where all kinds of thoughts and ideas can gallop freely.

About what? There's a story here. Who are you talking to? There's a story here, too.

On the day of the interview, the reporter met Cui, president of a branch of the Agricultural Bank of China in Beijing, in the garage. He participated in the chat with his willingness to support entrepreneurship. President Cui heard the story here that an entrepreneur ran six banks with 30,000 yuan in cash and failed to open a basic account because of the invisible capital threshold. Although some banks do not explicitly stipulate how much capital can not open basic accounts, but in business, banks provide the same services for each basic household, and naturally, banks tend to raise the threshold. Talking to President Cui about such a real entrepreneurial problem will help you to run more banks than a small entrepreneur.

Another entrepreneur who developed APP met the head of China Unicom in the garage. As soon as he chatted down, Unicom immediately decided to invest in the project, put in staff and be responsible for underwriting. This is the "surprise" that will happen in the garage.

Sue? He said that when he was busiest, he talked late every day, for more than ten hours, when he had no energy at all, and he knew everyone in the store. Su also revealed the scene when Guo Shuqing came to the garage for research. "We didn't prepare anything, so he sat down and chatted with the entrepreneurs and investors here."

It can be seen that chatting is the greatest productivity here. Many entrepreneurs also laugh that the process of chatting with people here has also exercised their eloquence, and you have to tell people in a very short time what you do and what the commercial value of this thing is. "treat the stranger in every conversation as a venture capital, because when the opportunity comes, the investor will give you no more than ten minutes."

Help each other to start a business, entrepreneurs are not alone

In most people's mindset, entrepreneurs are a group of people who have dreams, passion and enthusiasm and can work endlessly. But in fact, the unknown side of entrepreneurs is that they need to persevere and endure loneliness. But in garage coffee, entrepreneurs are not alone.

Su said frankly that it was impossible to imagine the level of mutual assistance between entrepreneurial teams before opening the garage coffee. They work together, give specific business advice, and help others create value that is sometimes more satisfying than their own.

Reporters can't help but wonder that entrepreneurial ideas need to be shared to the greatest extent in order to get the most authentic opinions and advices. the question is why entrepreneurs are willing to open up. Don't they have any concerns? For example, among the entrepreneurs who are "stationed" in the garage, the largest number of entrepreneurs currently focus on mobile apps, who are not worried about being imitated or even pre-empted after sharing? Wei Zheng replied: technology has secrets, business has no secrets. Business models are open to the public, and their respective technologies cannot be learned. In any case, sharing and mutual assistance complement each other. With mutual assistance, people are more willing to share, and more frank sharing can get more valuable help.

Not long ago, an entrepreneur came to the garage with a magical sound board, which can limit the frequency spectrum and range of sound transmission, and achieve the effect of directional sound transmission without a hood. Applied to real life, it can be made into a TV set with special functions, and the sound will spread along a straight line, so that staying up late at night to watch TV is not afraid to affect the family around you. During the demonstration in the garage, many entrepreneurs thought it was an interesting project and made suggestions one after another. some thought that the project should not find investors, but should find manufacturers and integrators to cooperate and put into production directly; some give suggestions on how such a project should operate to make it easier to "get immediate results".

Voice software and board games, these two seemingly irrelevant entrepreneurial directions have also found an "intersection" in the garage, while the two entrepreneurs are "connected" by another entrepreneur, Xiao Zhang (a pseudonym). Xiao Zhang has talked to two entrepreneurs who make voice software and desktop games respectively and feel that they can work together to create an online "creative game" that they can play with netizens. This good idea sounds particularly interesting. Let's see how the two entrepreneurs bring "creativity" into reality.

Mutual assistance among entrepreneurs is also an important force on the road to success. Because, in Sue? It seems that to achieve success, entrepreneurial must have the characteristics of "persistence", entrepreneurial direction can be adjusted, products can be improved, but perseverance is indispensable. It is hard to imagine that if there is no one to help in the difficult time of starting a business, the word "persistence" is not easy.

In the view of entrepreneur Xiao Han (a pseudonym), three types of people are most likely to succeed in starting a business: patent holders, professional managers, and the rich second generation. Entrepreneurs who start a business for the first time are often too fanatical, and he does not approve of starting a business as soon as college graduates graduate, because in the current domestic environment, starting a business requires a lot of social experience, or accumulate some working experience and be ready to start a business again.

In the afternoon of garage coffee, in the process of experiencing "wheel chat", in addition to strongly feeling the passion of entrepreneurs and the vitality of innovation, there is nothing more impressive than everyone's evaluation of the domestic entrepreneurial environment. The more consistent point of view is: the entrepreneurial environment is improving, and I believe it will continue to develop in a better direction. Governments at all levels and all kinds of institutions have devoted attention and enthusiasm to entrepreneurship.

The taste of starting a business is sweet with bitterness, bitterness and sweetness like coffee, chocolate from mocha and milk from latte. Entrepreneurs love this sweetness and know that only after drinking bitterness can they taste it.

China Coffee Trading Network: www.gafei.com