Start-up coffee "looks beautiful" to help excellent start-ups avoid detours.

Left: the reporter recently interviewed in FT Entrepreneurship Coffee, Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau also came to exchange.

Shenzhen Business Daily reporter Ji Jiewen / photo

On the first floor of the Shenzhen Financial Science and Technology Building in the Science and Technology Park, Meng Qingfang, an FT start-up coffee investor, will chat with some young entrepreneurs to ask about progress and answer questions whenever he is free. Her other identity is the boss of a senior investment institution in Shenzhen. as a self-made success from Shenzhen, she is well aware of the difficulties of starting a business, and now devotes most of her energy to serving young entrepreneurs.

On May 7 this year, Premier Li Keqiang came to the 3W Cafe on Zhongguancun Entrepreneurship Street to talk about starting a business while drinking coffee with young people. Since the "Prime Minister's same Coffee" suddenly became popular, it has also become popular with "Entrepreneurship Caf é".

According to statistics, at least 200 start-up coffees have been opened across the country. But in the interview, Meng Qingfang lamented: entrepreneurial coffee "looks beautiful", but in fact, survival is facing difficulties and is in urgent need of policy support.

Help excellent start-ups to avoid detours

FT Venture Coffee, established last year, is an one-stop entrepreneurial platform created by Shenzhen Science and Technology Park Entrepreneurship Incubator and Shenzhen Fett Coffee Management Co., Ltd. In addition to the cafe on the first floor, it also has an incubator base of thousands of square meters in the Science and Technology Park. "F stands for Finance (Finance) and T stands for Technology (Technology). We hope to convey the concept of finance and technology to entrepreneurs. We are a place where finance and technology meet. " Meng Qingfang said.

Although it has not been long since its establishment, FT Startup Coffee has helped incubate many excellent start-ups. ZTE WeChat is a typical example. Yesterday, in an office building in the Science and Technology Park, the reporter saw at the scene that ZTE WeChat has begun to take shape, a huge venue, and hundreds of employees are burying themselves in their work.

Zhou Hongfeng, founder of ZTE WeChat, a former ZTE executive, told reporters that start-up incubators such as FT are of great help to start-ups. FT Venture Coffee has a very professional team, which can help start-ups provide professional help in ownership structure design, financing legal matters, new third board listing and so on. Many founders do not have such experience, and FT helps enterprises take a lot of detours.

Like Zhou Hongfeng, Yang Chuan, general manager of Shenzhen soft Crystal Technology Co., Ltd., is also grateful to FT Venture Coffee. This is a start-up company that makes robot-related products. From the very beginning, Yang Chuan got all kinds of incubation help and guidance in FT Startup Coffee.

According to Meng Qingfang, FT has successfully hatched four enterprises, and at present, seven enterprises, such as Nami Science and Technology Materials and Giant Shadow 3D printing, are still incubating.

Five Entrepreneurship Committees serve entrepreneurs throughout the process

When the reporter was interviewed by FT Entrepreneurship Coffee, it happened that the deputy director of Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau led a team to study and exchange. After listening to the introduction, the first word of the Wuhan inspection team is "high-end and classy". First of all, there are nine members of the FT entrepreneurship service team, of which the co-founders are four young people, many of whom are studying abroad, and two are PhDs in Informatics from Nankai University and JD from the United States.

Secondly, the development process of FT entrepreneurial coffee for entrepreneurs is planned into five stages, namely, pre-entrepreneurial stage, entrepreneurial beginning stage, entrepreneurial stage, financing stage and publicity stage. Matching the five stages is the establishment of five entrepreneurship committees. The reporter saw that many of the members of these entrepreneurship committees are well-known experts in the industry.

Meng Qingfang told reporters that before starting a business, FT has a committee of entrepreneurial mentors to provide free training for entrepreneurs. At the beginning of the startup, there is a project expert committee to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the entrepreneurs' projects.

"our slogan is a cup of coffee, a communication, an opportunity." Meng Qingfang said.

Entrepreneurial coffee is generally facing the dilemma of survival.

In the interview, the reporter learned that start-up coffee like FT is facing a survival dilemma in Shenzhen. "the cost is too high, the investment risk is high, and survival is not easy." Meng Qingfang told the reporter that the daily coffee operation is far from being able to make up for the cost. The entrepreneurial service team and the coffee management team are two different teams. The entrepreneurial service team has a particularly high demand for talents, and these talents are highly paid in the market. Now the whole team is also doing it with an entrepreneurial mentality, otherwise these talents simply cannot be retained. At present, the well-known experts of the five Entrepreneurship expert Committees are all free to help entrepreneurs, and various salons and lectures are also done free of charge, which is also a big test of sustainable development.

"at present, FT start-up coffee is still in the loss stage, the pressure is also very great." Meng Qingfang said that at present, the profit model of start-up coffee mainly depends on incubation enterprise equity investment, but as we all know, the failure rate of incubation enterprises is also very high, so the investment risk of start-up coffee is also quite high.

Meng Qingfang led a team to visit many start-up coffee projects in China and found that at present, many private business incubators are struggling to survive, and there will be the possibility of large-scale closure in the future. Although the road ahead is difficult, Meng Qingfang is determined to go on. "We came to Shenzhen to start a business with 2000 yuan more than 20 years ago, and now that we have succeeded, we should go back and help these young entrepreneurs and see them as if we saw ourselves 20 years ago. So we decided to keep going. " Meng Qingfang said with a sigh.