The crowdfunding model of "500 shareholders in a coffee shop" has aroused heated discussion.

The picture shows the opening scene of Taizhou 500-person cafe

It's not just selling coffee, it's more about trying new entrepreneurial platforms.

Xinhua News Network News June 20, for Taizhou citizen Xu Xiaofeng, is a memorable day. With an investment of 2000 yuan, he became one of the "bosses" of Taizhou's 500-person cafe.

Taizhou 500 People Cafe, located at the west entrance of Wanda Golden Street, is no different from other businesses. "Five hundred people cafe is not only a brand, store name, but also tell people, our cafe has 500 'boss'." Xia Jun is one of the three sponsors. It took only more than a month from the end of February to the completion of crowdfunding by 500 people. The reporter learned that there is no threshold for this crowdfunding object. Everyone can participate as long as they are interested, but one person can only buy one share and implement equal distribution of equity. "Everyone is a shareholder, everyone is a boss." Xia Jun said. The biggest benefit of this rule is that everyone regards the cafe as their own business and does their best to help build it. From the initial site selection to the coffee shop decoration design and future profit plan, etc., it was all designed by relevant professionals among shareholders. For example, the owner of a decoration company in the urban area participated in crowdfunding, and his company helped the coffee shop to carry out free decoration design. In Yangzhou, 500 people each contributed 3000 yuan to crowdfund a cafe. Once the news was launched on the relevant platform, it attracted a lot of attention. Crowdfunding dates from mid-June to August 12,108 people have signed up in less than three days, nearly half of whom have paid earnest money.

In the face of the current situation of many cafes on the market, the operation of cafes is not satisfactory. Can crowdfunding 500-person cafes succeed? Xia Jun said that as early as he had the idea of crowdfunding cafes, he had already gone to Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou and other places for field research. The conclusion is that the reason why many crowdfunding cafes can't be opened is that they are just a cafe, while Taizhou is not. "Unlike ordinary cafes that simply sell coffee, our goal is to build crowdfunding cafes into platforms for entrepreneurship for all." Xia Jun introduced that now the state encourages mass entrepreneurship, especially e-commerce. In fact, one person can start a business with one computer, but many initial entrepreneurs suffer from not having a place to start a business. "It's too expensive to enter the office building, and it's too grassroots at home. We just provide a platform that's almost in between." According to the plan, the tables and chairs in the cafe will be rented, that is, entrepreneurs can rent a certain area for office, including business reception, product display, etc., the cafe will provide one-stop supporting services, and after the entrepreneurs get off work, the tables and stools will be restored to coffee shop consumption purposes. The reason why this plan was put forward was mainly because cafes were not like ordinary restaurants, which were often overcrowded. They were places for business exchanges and leisure. Under normal circumstances, the flow of people was not dense, and this could give full play to the maximum role of the venue. It is preliminarily determined that the monthly rent of entrepreneurs in cafes is about 600 yuan, and five entrepreneurial projects have been confirmed to settle in cafes, including two Taizhou college students entrepreneurs.

If 2014 is the first year of crowdfunding, then this entrepreneurial model has made rapid progress this year. Jingdong, Ali have tried to set up equity crowdfunding platform, traditional brokers are also rubbing hands, want to get a piece of the pie. In our province,"playing tricks" is not only spread in catering, beauty salon, intelligent hardware and other industries, but even tourism competitions have also played "crowdfunding". The popularity of crowdfunding mode has also heated up various crowdfunding platforms, involving agricultural products, catering, water purifiers, education and training, real estate agencies, etc. Looking at the national market, crowdfunding cafes are not uncommon, but few are profitable, such as Dongguan's "Many People Cafe" and Beijing's "HerCoffee", which ended in failure. And this cafe in the predecessors almost wiped out the background in the market voice, is the newborn calf not afraid of tigers, or business model innovation? Can this crowdfunding model survive in Taizhou and Yangzhou? How far can you go?

Viewpoint 1: Crowdfunding means raising people, money, wisdom and resources.

"We don't welcome professional investors to participate." Xia Jun said that crowdfunding projects can't make a lot of money in the short term, and it is difficult to meet the high-yield requirements of professional investment. Xu Xiaofeng also admitted that spending 2000 yuan to become the "boss" of the cafe, in fact, does not care whether it can profit dividends, but looks at the resources between shareholders, the resources in this circle gathered together to start a business, may be more than a single cafe income. A detail is that investors have used these two platforms to carry out enterprise promotion and advertising propaganda in the WeChat circle and QQ group of Taizhou 500-person cafe just built, and have already recovered the investment of 2000 yuan. Xu Xiaofeng is more valued through the cafe activities to obtain entrepreneurial experience, he said,"From we became the first shareholders, Basically every week will meet, From industrial and commercial registration to site selection, Decoration, Everyone on how to open a good cafe freely, I think this experience is the most valuable."

In Xu Xiaofeng's view, crowdfunding is to raise people, raise money, raise wisdom, raise resources, most suitable for grassroots, young entrepreneurs, can help some entrepreneurs with projects, no funds, recruit "allies", start projects. On the one hand, it reduced the pressure on funds, put the project on the market in advance through crowdfunding for a feasibility verification, seized the market in advance, and won over a group of loyal "fans". Second, it can make some consumers change from purchase to investment. As shareholders, they can not only enjoy advance purchase and group purchase services, reduce consumption costs, but also bring a certain amount of return. Crowdfunding is also a good advertising platform. Whether or not the financing is successful, your project is showcased to potential investors and provides room for the next round of financing. Crowdfunding can not only solve capital problems well, but also allow investors to share risks.

Viewpoint 2: At the same time of boosting entrepreneurship, the problem of risk cannot be avoided.

"For entrepreneurs, crowdfunding mode will be a 'double-edged sword', and when used well, it will be invincible." Yao Bo of Taizhou a website feels that behind the rapid development of crowdfunding, there are also problems such as touching legal risks, insufficient professionalism, irregular information disclosure, lack of credit reporting system, etc. For example, if the number of shareholders is too large and unprofessional, it is difficult to solve the internal interest disputes after expansion; how to protect the legitimate rights and interests of all parties involved, how to prevent crowdfunding from evolving into illegal fund-raising, how to avoid fund fraud, etc. When crowdfunding, projects often reduce the amount of participation to a level acceptable to a single ordinary investor, but reducing the quota only lowers the entry threshold and does not reduce the risk of the project.

And most people overlook another risk: early-stage projects often require multiple investments in one area to pay off. Most angel investors in China, one or two out of ten projects can survive to the next round is already good. If you think investing $50,000 is nothing, think about whether you can afford $500,000. If you can only afford one investment, then profit is a very low probability event, and loss is not surprising.

Viewpoint 3: This is a new thing. I hope the regulatory level will further clarify the legislation.

Mao Xiaohua, who has been paying close attention to the "crowdfunding" entrepreneurial model, said that crowdfunding is an important financing means to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in the Internet era, which is of great significance to the development of small and micro finance and the construction of multi-level capital market. The personage inside course of study thinks, because crowdfunding in our country just started, relevant laws and regulations are not perfect, in crowdfunding activities, but also guard against the possibility of illegal fund-raising by crowdfunding activities, fraud investors behavior, sometimes even appear crowdfunding platform help or conceal fund-raiser fraud behavior. Therefore, in the current legal supervision is not perfect, investors should choose carefully, try to avoid investment risks. They believe that the crowdfunding industry is still in the exploratory stage, new ideas and management methods can be innovated, we can learn from foreign practice in fund custody, information verification and other aspects, delimit a clear regulatory bottom line, explore a regulatory system that takes into account financing efficiency and investor protection.

Xinhua Newspaper All Media Reporter Zhao Xiaoyong