Entrepreneurial Cafe: an alternative practice of Entrepreneurship incubation

A cup of coffee, a collision of communication, a spark of entrepreneurship. This is the hot start-up cafe, a place where "as long as you come for a cup of coffee, we will help you realize your entrepreneurial dream".

A startup cafe that is open 24 hours a day

On Monday afternoon, the first floor of IPO Club on University Road was full of young entrepreneurs. Or thinking about business plans alone, brainstorming with partners, or communicating with IPOClub field personnel, a cup of coffee and a laptop constitute the essentials of starting a business for people in IPOClub.

Wang Jun, founder of IPO Club, is also hiding in this group, and he seems to be no different from other entrepreneurs. IPOClub is mainly aimed at entrepreneurs and investors in the mobile Internet industry, smart hardware, O2O, Internet finance, mobile health care, cross-border e-commerce and other industries. Entrepreneurs come here to participate in activities free of charge. There are a lot of people from afternoon to evening from Wednesday to Sunday, and there were entrepreneurs who worked at IPOClub until 4: 00 in the morning. " Wang Jun told East Real Estate Finance Weekly (hereinafter referred to as "East Real Estate", WeChat: dongdichan).

As the first 24-hour start-up cafe in the country, the environment of IPOClub is different from that of traditional cafes. When you come to IPO Club, you don't just sit around. The IPO Club team also communicates with entrepreneurs and discusses startup projects with them. "at this stage, the flow of people is not as hot as in the early days, more and more cafes, more and more incubators, start-up servers, will divide our flow of people." Wang Jun said.

Unlike many start-up cafes on Beijing Entrepreneurship Street, which only rely on providing venues to attract many entrepreneurs, IPOClub provides a lot of soft services for entrepreneurs. Such as providing entrepreneurs with a variety of forms, including company registration, banking, legal aspects, as well as talent recruitment and capital docking. IPO Club's unique business model is committed to bringing more added value. This is why IPOClub not only recommends high-quality projects to investment institutions, but also participates in co-investment incubation.

According to the team's positioning in the market, IPOClub is an early traffic portal that can serve entrepreneurs and venture capital institutions. For IPOClub, there is no competitor, with an open attitude, do the front end of all start-up services, there is no competition with the incubator, IPOClub can channel early traffic into the incubator.

Wang Jun believes that it is still in the stage of feeling the stones across the river, and try to do what entrepreneurs need. The core needs of entrepreneurs are nothing more than a few points: the first is to find investment and money, the second is to find people, the third is to find office space, and the fourth is to find industrial chain resources in their field. IPOClub makes some extensions on these points.

Scientific and technological coffee specially belonging to the IC circle.

Walking into the coffee-scented IC Coffee, a start-up cafe located in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, has a long history. Global 256 IC, IT industry chain upstream and downstream professionals, each contributed 20, 000 yuan, partnered to open this entrepreneurial cafe. Started in Shanghai, there are also stores in Beijing, there are incubators in Singapore and Silicon Valley in the United States, and second-tier cities such as Wuhan and Hefei are also under preparation. The existing entrepreneurial services and technology exchanges are mainly for chip electronics and other industries and entrepreneurs.

Hu Yunwang, founder of IC Coffee, is known by most acquaintances as "Lao Hu". "IC coffee, be sure to have a cup of IC coffee." This is an indispensable sentence for Lao Hu to receive visitors to IC Coffee every time. Lao Hu said: "IC Coffee is located in Zhangjiang, a high-tech gathering area. At first, it is hoped to promote scientific and technological exchanges and promote exchanges and communication between the upstream and downstream of the chip and the whole machine. Only when the upstream and downstream are unobstructed can the industry develop."

Compared with other start-up cafes, IC coffee industry attribute is relatively clear, with integrated circuit and electronic hardware industry network and the technology, market, management and investment resources behind the network to help entrepreneurs, forming an electronic information industry within the industry of mass entrepreneurship.

Lao Hu mentioned in the interview that there are two major difficulties in starting a business in the IC world: on the one hand, the upstream and downstream of the IC industrial chain is very complex, and funds are difficult to obtain; at the same time, the threshold of IC technology is high, which requires long-term experience accumulation, so generally, IC people who are able to start their own businesses are too old, coupled with the characteristics of introversion, many start-ups have encountered difficulties in obtaining venture capital, company promotion, and product promotion. IC Coffee relies on the creation of "IC circle" and brings together a large number of professionals. Whether it is the long-term strategic planning of the enterprise, or the immediate technical and financial problems, IC Coffee can quickly prescribe the right medicine for entrepreneurs.

Survival and profit problem

Both IPO Club and IC Coffee are start-up cafes with "activity as the main body". They use project activities and roadshows to attract more resources, as well as advertisements put up by some partners in the cafes as one of the sources of revenue. At the same time, ordering a cup of coffee here takes the place of all expenses, which is not just talk.

Entrepreneurial Cafe is leading entrepreneurs to realize their entrepreneurial dreams in another form. Shanghai may need a place to unite entrepreneurs more than the strong entrepreneurial atmosphere in Beijing and Shenzhen. Start-up coffee, coffee is just props, want to rely on props to survive or even earn more is impractical. As a result, all start-up cafes face problems of survival and profitability.

Lao Hu said frankly that IC Coffee is still at a loss stage since its inception, and only by taking the road of capital can it survive. In addition to maintaining the advantage of its original incubation function, IC Coffee is also actively exploring new models that are conducive to incubating start-ups. IC Coffee is preparing an incubator, ready to raise a venture capital fund, through the venture capital fund to invest in some projects, after the benefits to feed back.

The opening of the Pudong Creator Center "Core Home" next to IC Coffee has also given young people who have come up with business plans in IC Coffee a direct office entrepreneurial space, including the launch of IC Coffee Shanghai Entrepreneurship College, which has also led to the development of IC Coffee.

For the young IPO Club, survival has been achieved, how to develop is the second step. Wang Jun mentioned that IPOClub itself is not profitable, but it can be made in many other ways, and IPOClub will do its own fund later. At present, there are two ways to make money, one is to hold media conferences for some companies that need to spread, with an average price of 60,000 per game by making use of the media resources in hand. The second is the annual cooperation signed with some enterprises, such as Huaxia Happiness. They have a 300000-square-meter e-commerce park in Jiashan. IPOClub holds an activity for him every month to guide him, so that more e-commerce enterprises can settle there and pay IPOClub corresponding fees a year. If we sign 20 such agreements a year, then the IPO Club team can expand and operate normally.

According to the strategic planning of IPOClub operation team, IPOClub will cover the Yangtze River Delta in the future. In addition to regional coverage, IPO Club collects more BP in terms of activities, hoping to become an early traffic portal and project portal. When IPO Club becomes the entry point for early projects, the service for entrepreneurs will also be one-click.

Chuangjia Road: the future may form a group.

A large number of entrepreneurial cafes across the country have collapsed one after another, so that Lao Hu and Wang Jun also have new thinking about the market.

"from the perspective of Beijing, 3W has opened incubators everywhere, and he is also exploring the way forward. For IPOClub, it is also in Shanghai to explore, our version may have iterated to 3.0. For example, the first step is to organize activities to attract resources, and the second step is to sort out these resources and use them over and over again so that they can turn around and help more people. " Wang Jun said thoughtfully, "the form of cafes in the future must be like this. Entrepreneurs come to us to enjoy a full range of services, and we can provide any resources he needs." As a front end, we will also provide resources for other creators. "

Lao Hu, who specializes in building start-up cafes in the chip field, said that in the future, start-up cafes must follow a professional path, because every entrepreneur in his field must be very professional in order to be outstanding. If you can talk about entrepreneurial services for 360 lines, this entrepreneurial service is a very basic babysitting service, that is, a public lesson. To really give enough real help to entrepreneurs is to give them professional lessons so that they can specialize in the technical industry.

Entrepreneurial Cafe itself is also a business model, and the market will eventually survive the fittest. In the view of Wang Jun and Lao Hu, the future entrepreneurial service organizations must be in a group, and it is impossible to work alone, and there must be no way out. Shanghai needs a number of entrepreneurial servers to gather together and serve entrepreneurs, and the future development trend must be an alliance in the entrepreneurial server industry chain.

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