What kind of "garage coffee" does Nanjing need?

Nanjing "Entrepreneurship Cafe" investment tide is about to emerge, various district and county parks, enterprise institutions, angel investment, entrepreneurs have cast their eyes here. Nanjing's venture capital circle is about to usher in a upheaval.

Our reporter Shao Jing David

Intern Gu Shanwen reports

Can you afford the garage coffee first?

"the renovation and redesign of the first floor can open up an area of 1500 square meters, providing sufficient communication and communication space for entrepreneurs, investors, and entrepreneurs."

Che Ming, chairman of Nanjing Jiangning Technology Venture Capital Group, 319 Tianyuan Road, Jiangning, pointed to a design sketch of "garage coffee".

Che Ming believes that running "garage coffee" has to solve two problems: first, where are the coffee drinkers? Second, where is the money for coffee?

"it is relatively difficult to operate, so you have to pay for it first." Che Ming said that almost none of the three famous garage coffee, Beta coffee and 3W coffee in Beijing are really profitable at present.

Garage Coffee in Beijing is the first cafe in China with the concept of open office.

If you spend 15 yuan on a cup of coffee, you can stay all day, free to use Android/iOS testing machine, desktop touch screen, conference room and other office equipment. More importantly, investors stay during the day and fill up with venture capital salons at night and weekends, resulting in extremely low social costs.

Nowadays, garage coffee has become a special "symbol" and is synonymous with entrepreneurial cafes.

Su Thi, the founder, calculated that a larger house costs nearly NT $100000 a year on water and electricity, which is not a small sum for early grassroots entrepreneurs. I want to eat, I have to ask someone to talk, and I have to find a cafe. The office cost of the garage is more than 300 yuan per person per month, which is cheaper than the cheapest office, there are food, drink and partners, less than the investors around every day. He firmly believes that this move will appeal to the crowd, so he is willing to be a "waiter" and say good morning to Brin and Peggy who may appear at any time every day.

It is true that coffee is Su's concern, but the money for selling coffee is not enough to pay the water and electricity bill for the garage that rents the space.

To put it bluntly, this is only a pricing method and an additional service. Tea and water delivery is done by an investor who does not intend to retire, and that becomes a left-handed resource and a right-handed opportunity. Behind him are 10 angel investors, including Lang Chunhui, vice president of Investment Department of Innovation works, Bao Yueqiao, founder of Lianzhong, Lin Xianzhen, early investor of 58.com, UNITA, partner of Spring and Autumn Capital, and so on. It's like an angel society.

Lang Chunhui, vice president of Innovation works Investment, said: "Entrepreneurship Coffee is destined to lose money, and we don't expect it to make money. Su occasionally called to say that he had made a profit, but he did not calculate depreciation. "

Su Di said that now income and expenditure can occasionally be even in one or two months, but there has been a slight loss in the past six months. Although Su is confident about the future, he hasn't figured out his profit model yet. 20 yuan per cup can sit a day of coffee and 0.2 yuan per piece of printing business obviously can not make a family rich. It has been 10 months since the opening of garage coffee, and the financial situation of barely making ends meet has left Su without a salary. Passion can not fill the stomach after all, and the profit model has become a matter that Su has to consider.

"there are also PE or VC coming to invest, but we're not short of money yet, and I really haven't figured out how to make money." Su Di says he doesn't want to make money from entrepreneurs, so he can't accept institutional investment without coming up with a profit model.

It is understood that at present, several "garage coffee" opened in Nanjing are also public welfare. A cup of coffee, a few snacks and tickets for "garage coffee" worth 10 or 20 yuan are intended to provide a platform for many grassroots entrepreneurs to communicate and negotiate.

Find the right person, and the taste will be "right".

"We just want to create a gathering place for grassroots entrepreneurs and just want to do something meaningful." 'i really haven't thought of how to make a profit right now, 'said Zhang Chunlin, the founder of the startup bazaar.

But what can not be ignored is that only when it is profitable, can the "garage coffee" last for a long time and have vitality.

Yang Wenhua, head of Nanjing Quanyuan Technology Co., Ltd., believes that the best model for this matter should be a "government-supported public platform." "many governments do not realize that now the administrative service system is one, and this kind of technical service is another in the process of enterprise operation. Nanjing is the most scarce in this area. Suzhou Wuxi has services for small and medium-sized enterprises all the way to the street level, but it is not called garage coffee, but we do not make it."

However, Lian Wenjie, a master of entrepreneurial counseling, believes that garage coffee is best run by society and supported by the government, rather than regionalization. "there is no shortage of money, but what is lacking is how to adapt it to the market. We should consider more from the aspects of strategic positioning and business model."

Li Xiang also believes that the service platform led by the government should follow the rules of government-led and market-oriented operation. The government can prepare the preliminary work and hand over the later operation to the market for inspection.

Only market-oriented institutions can meet the needs of the market. " Zhang Chunlin said. "if you really want to make garage coffee, the government will provide support and give everyone a place where it is convenient for investors and entrepreneurs to reach, and entrepreneurs in each district come here voluntarily." Garage coffee should be supported by the government and run by professionals, instead of always being led by government bosses such as Zijin Venture Capital and Venture Capital Association.

Yao Beining, deputy director of the office of Jiangning Technology Venture Capital Group, also expressed her heart: "to tell you the truth, I really want to do this well so that it does not become a face-saving project." The advantageous industries in each district are different, and each has its own array, so the effect can not be maximized. " Yao Beining suggested that when various district governments or individuals are preparing "quasi-garage coffee", on the one hand, they should combine their own advantages, on the other hand, they should cooperate with each other and learn from each other's strengths to make up for their weaknesses, so that 1: 1 is greater than 2.

Jiangning Technology Venture Capital Group is currently preparing the third cup of "garage coffee" in Jiangning, and is currently trying to find a partner who specializes in running the coffee shop.

"Professional market-oriented operation has to be handed over to professional companies or talents. What the government should do is to rely on advantageous industries, integrate network resources, provide convenient services, so that people who come to drink coffee can eat 'candy', so that the operation of cafes can be sustainable. "

Che Ming believes that there are many aspects of service. For example, they are contacting some professional training institutions to provide entrepreneurship training services for entrepreneurs; they plan to assemble a group of influential entrepreneurs and communicate face-to-face with entrepreneurs and innovative talents.

"find the right person, find the right person, and the taste of 'garage coffee' is right." Said Che Ming.

Make investors fall in love with coffee

Every Tuesday, Wang Jing, an investment manager at Xianfeng Huaxing Venture Capital, passes through the city from the East third Ring Road in Beijing and goes to the garage for a day of coffee. He called this method "on duty". He made a table and put it on a special seat to "wait and wait". He met 20 entrepreneurial teams in a record day. He usually leaves very late, because that night happens to be the veteran salon "IT Longmen formation" in TMT circles.

Occasionally on Thursdays, he goes to 3W Coffee's "Investor afternoon Tea" and finds that entrepreneurs there are more mature and large-scale, and all projects have been booked and screened.

In his spare time, he will meet with friends from the surrounding Internet companies to have coffee in Beta, where the coffee itself has a number one in the circle.

Beta is the first Internet-themed coffee brand, the first store opened near the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou. At that time, the famous product designer Bai Raven left Baidu to join Alipay, organized peer friends to party at home every weekend, and over time found that he needed a place of his own as a public stronghold, so he opened a cafe. Unexpectedly, this group of people were so energetic that they soon gathered the main force of the Internet in Hangzhou. Cheng Tmall's company here made his own mobile operating system, which was later acquired by Alibaba and transformed into an Aliyun mobile phone. Beta's name quickly became popular, and shareholders in Beijing and Guangzhou, on a whim, opened branches with similar positioning: private living rooms in a small circle.

Even if nearly 20 senior shareholders in the Internet and venture capital circles are all invisible, it is difficult for Beijing Beta to keep a low profile. The building is a landmark, and all the big companies around like to hold activities. There are not enough conference rooms in the Innovation Workshop upstairs, so we naturally move down for the meeting. Tai long, one of the shareholders and vice president of a video website, said they don't care how many cups of coffee they sell. The cafe is just a platform, and the key is to help shareholders thread the needle and solve the problem.

He cares more about whether his friends like the taste of coffee than the financial statements. Ken, the store manager, used to be the manager of the repetitive coffee shop praised by artists downstairs on gallery today. Now he makes coffee for Internet bigwigs. Kaifu Lee also likes it, which is far more powerful than running water. In other words, if you are not one of your own and are not big enough, coffee is just coffee.

Can not taste the taste of beta, the new 3W opened in August is suitable for Internet people who are still on the road to study and get together. The sponsor Xu, an Internet investment analyst, initially wanted to open a small shop to facilitate the party. Unexpectedly, when the bosses shouted on Weibo, they responded one after another. in one week, he pulled out a list of 109 luxury shareholders, including Shen Nanpeng, founder of Sequoia Capital China Fund, Xu Xiaoping, co-founder of New Oriental, Zeng Liqing, one of the founders of Tencent, and Zeng Yu, partner of Heyu private equity composite fund.

The sign here is the salon, which has held no more than 28 theme salons a month. It is its way of life to eat, meet friends and listen to speeches after work. Of course, the probability of running into big-name shareholders is also high. Not long ago, at the e-commerce salon, the never-seen king of Taobao essential oil and the founder of "Afu essential oil", Diaoye sat in the hall to teach marketing secrets, and the house was full. Ye Bin, managing director of Qingke Venture Capital, also crowded in the aisle with everyone.

Comments on ■ Business Daily

Coffee and

Entrepreneurial culture

The emergence and popularity of garage coffee is not an accidental phenomenon. In fact, before the emergence of "garage coffee", Nanjing entrepreneurs "pile up" phenomenon has always existed, entrepreneurs in a variety of forms in a variety of places to exchange information and establish a network. Coffee shops, teahouses and many other places are places where entrepreneurs gather.

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs gather in almost all cafes. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of FACEBOOK, and Anderson, founder of Netscape, eat at a cafe next to Stan University every week.

In fact, coffee is just a medium for entrepreneurs and investors to communicate. Change it to wine or tea, either.

In Silicon Valley, there was a bar called Horse Wheel, which was later called the source of the semiconductor industry. In the era of the rise of Silicon Valley in the last century, every night, young men and women in the semiconductor industry would come to the place for a drink after work, spread rumors, blow their own trumpet, and tell stories of trade wars during periods of tension, fantasy integrated circuits, previous memories, etc., varied and talked about everything.

As people continue to move from company to company in Silicon Valley, today's colleagues may become tomorrow's rivals, and today's subordinates may become tomorrow's bosses. Interestingly, professional loyalty and friendship can survive in chaos.

In the end, this unique culture strengthens personal relationships and the value of the network-everyone here is more or less connected, may have been colleagues of a large company, may be alumni, may be peers, may come from some formal or informal organizations, such as the famous self-made computer club in the mid-1970s. Members include Apple computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who are committed to making computers more user-friendly and cheaper.

Taken together, these small networks form a huge network, with a wide range and high intensity. This rich and constructive relationship has been transformed into a great wealth, and its interaction is characterized by cooperation, competition and mutual feedback, which promotes the necessary flow of knowledge, creativity, people and capital.

A cup of coffee, a cup of wine or a cup of tea really embodies the entrepreneurial culture and atmosphere of a region, which helps to form a unique information exchange mechanism and innovative culture, which will really stimulate the rise of a region and become a cultural gene for the sustainable development of a region. Garage coffee is just a form of materializing and commercializing it, making entrepreneurs more consciously "clustered".

What we need is not just "coffee", but this culture and atmosphere.

(responsible Editor: Leo)