Grass-roots vs Tuhao: how can entrepreneurial coffee survive?

How popular is starting a business? Just go to Entrepreneurship Street for coffee! And when the cafe itself has become a start-up project, it is necessary to pay attention to origin and play! But in the final analysis, it is still a story that sells stories. Coffee always moistens the throat when telling stories.

(Wen / Zhang Shule)

This article is published in the Review Edition of sales and Marketing magazine, issue 07, 2015.

A joke: when you drink coffee on Beijing Entrepreneurship Street, you first put your old Air on the table, and in less than 5 minutes, someone will come and ask you: dude, what kind of project are you doing? Do you want to invest? Then, you replace it with Tuhao gold, and in less than five minutes, someone will come up to you and ask: Hi, I have a project here. Would you like to take a look at the investment?

Alas! How hot the venture capital coffee is.

Why coffee?

Many people have a question mark in their heads. Why coffee? Is there any inevitable connection between it and entrepreneurship?

This may be mainly due to a kind of cultural proximity. At present, the main entrepreneurs are "post-80s" and "post-90s". Compared with the previous generation who like to do business at the dinner table and wine table, cafes are more in line with the communication needs of these ethnic groups. This is actually a startup 2.0 version of a themed cafe. And Internet + model of coffee entrepreneurship platform, in fact, in the setting, also has very strict requirements.

The first is in an area where IT talent is relatively dense. Zhongguancun and Guanggu are exactly such places. Everyone can find it, love it when they are leisure, and always meet some like-minded people. A development model from "road market" to "supermarket" still works here.

The second is to be able to hold activities that everyone is interested in. Whether it is a keynote speech or a product presentation, or an entrepreneurial roadshow, on the basis of the masses in front, it naturally happens. The task of the venture capital coffee platform is just to undertake and push the boat along the river.

Thirdly, it continues to expand the myth of entrepreneurship. In fact, the magic of the coffee startup platform is that it is also good at storytelling, attracting more people to come here and look for opportunities through a variety of entrepreneurial stories that use it as a social platform, which is, to some extent, the same as the gold rush in the western United States.

To this level, it is not difficult to see the basic features of the Venture Coffee platform, that is, a distribution center of information and a gold rush for opportunities. In the grassroots "founder" experience, this grassroots venture coffee platform, in addition to selling coffee and providing venues, most of the rest of the stories need to be interpreted by the "founders" themselves.

In a word, the Venture Coffee platform itself is also in the process of starting a business, earning the money of entrepreneurs. Through the way of storytelling, expand their influence and the number of activities, so as to get rid of the simple state of selling coffee.

From "Prime Minister with the same money" to "JD Milk Tea"

It is said that in 3W Cafe, "Prime Minister's same style" coffee sells hundreds of cups every day. Along with this cup of coffee, there are 3W Coffee, which was only famous in the Internet circle, and the idea of coffee entrepreneurial platform accompanied by it.

According to Guan Lei, 3W Coffee COO, 3W has been transformed into a "high-tech Starbucks Cafe" across the country, with Lagu.com and 3W headhunters for the career development of millions of Internet people, incubators and funds for angel start-up projects, 3W Communications, an integrated marketing communication agency that helps entrepreneurial teams gain efficient access to users and brands, and provides one-stop entrepreneur services for Internet people and entrepreneurs.

It has become a salon with entrepreneurship as its core stock, and this form of salon has begun to "operate" in many first-tier cities. In addition to 3W, the more famous ones such as Beijing Garage Coffee, Hangzhou Beta Coffee, Wuhan Optical Valley Coffee and so on, all have several common backgrounds, such as grass-roots founding, youth gathering, entrepreneurial dreams, looking for support.

Of course, there are people who don't work in cafes. The day after the premier finished his coffee, JD.com 's JD+ intelligent milk teahouse opened and cut the ribbon. The business content of intelligent milk teahouse will include three parts: 1. Part of the intelligent hardware products that join the JD+ platform can get physical display opportunities in the milk teahouse. With the development of product crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding in JD.com 's financial business, it will also act as an entrepreneurial incubator. Intelligent milk teahouse will also provide milk tea, coffee and other catering services.

Of course, compared with the obvious grassroots venture capital coffee, the JD+ intelligent milk teahouse with strong financial support has a bit of a taste of native gold.

Intelligent milk teahouse: maybe it is the direction of grass-roots coffee creation.

Relatively speaking, the JD+ intelligent milk teahouse with JD.com e-commerce background, no entrepreneurial pressure and strong capital is more leisurely and thematic than grassroots venture coffee, but the key word is not entertainment and exposure of milk tea, but intelligence.

JD.com JD+ incubator will recruit and organize reviews at home and abroad within two months after the official opening of JD+ intelligent milk teahouse, and the first batch of projects are expected to be officially settled in July. At the same time, the training for entrepreneurs of JD+ Intelligent Milk Tea House will begin immediately. In the next 2-3 months, Jingdong will invite entrepreneurial mentors to provide courses in both intelligent hardware design and investment.

Obviously, compared with the grassroots entrepreneurial platform of "free market", JD+ intelligent milk teahouse has added more content of project planning, control and audit. As for selling milk tea or coffee, whether the taste is ideal or not is no longer an important content. It is actually more of an offline experience store and incubator for JD.com 's intelligent products. JD.com will play the role of a start-up Bole.

The Xiangma mechanism of JD+ incubator is: smart home, smart health, other projects related to JD.com business; compared with the existing products have obvious innovation, market prospect is clear; entrepreneurial mentor or founder space, incubator recommendation. All this actually gives people a sense of deja vu. In other words, this is actually the landing version of the content presented by the intelligent channel on JD.com 's e-commerce platform, a naked externalized performance of Internet +.

What JD.com has to do is to examine and approve the people who come to the milk tea store to tell stories, and help those who have potential and products to realize their wishes. JD+ has become similar to the existence of millet ecology, that is, around the upsurge of intelligence in traditional industries, to build an intelligent product world of JD+. In fact, this is also a materialization and extension on the basis of crowdfunding on JD.com earlier. At the very least, let investors see and touch real products, or a real opportunity to listen to the stories of entrepreneurs face to face. To boost investor confidence, it may be the "milk tea" that milk teahouses really want to sell.

From this point of view, the zero threshold of the grassroots venture capital coffee platform and the specific product direction of the JD+ intelligent milk teahouse have their own advantages and disadvantages for the "founder". In the end, the success of the founders will become a long tail of the success of the venture coffee platform. It's just that with really good ideas and good products, there is always a better chance of success.

At the same time, the JD+ intelligent milk teahouse, which has more organization, execution and implementation, will also be the future entrepreneurial direction of the grassroots venture coffee platform after completing the primitive accumulation. After all, coffee drinkers need more "success learning" to motivate them.

Precision: addition and Live method of Venture Capital Coffee

As a landing experience hall, JD+ intelligent milk teahouse not only provides more connecting points between entrepreneurs and investors, but also serves as a "fitting room" for consumers. That is, all the product features of smart life are actually shown to interested consumers, rather than staying on the web to watch pictures and videos.

In fact, this is not the first idea of venture capital coffee. As early as early 2014, 3W Coffee partnered with Truss to display a Model S in front of the cafe and accept reservations on the spot. Similar to this kind of business cooperation and geek experience display, it is becoming more and more normal to release it through the venture coffee platform.

This is precisely a direction for the approachable venture capital coffee platform to achieve the real Internet +, especially when this kind of venture capital coffee platform is currently limited to a few "entrepreneurial streets" in a limited number of cities. In the homogenization competition, the influx of venture capital coffee is bound to fall into the battle to grab entrepreneurs and investors. And in the absence of the necessary investment, entrepreneurial security mechanism, poorly managed venture capital coffee will leave the market sadly.

At that time, who will survive? Let the venture capital coffee platform theme, achieve entrepreneurial service differentiation, so that entrepreneurs can better show their results, so that investors can quickly find their ideal product theme "experience store", perhaps more vitality.

Only rely on the "same coffee" or "milk tea sister" brand effect and marketing role, can not last long. This in itself is not a question of making a cup of coffee or running a coffee shop, but a question of how to accurately locate, focus and aggregate in the era of mobile Internet, so as to maximize the effect. Even if you are just making a physical version of an accurate, niche social network without providing any financial or intellectual support, this is the basic principle that you must follow in the current venture coffee boom.

At least after a round of shuffling, there is something down there that can really taste delicious for entrepreneurs and investors-thirst-quenching drinks.

-author's new book-

Author: Zhang Shule WeChat account: zsl13973399819's new book, "Crossing the Borders-- A big defeat that must be understood in the Internet era", this is a book about the failures encountered by five well-known Internet companies, Baidu, Ali, Tencent, Xiaomi and Shanda, across their original fields and into other Internet industries and traditional industries.