3W Coffee: an alternative Business Ecology

When coffee was first popular in Britain, cafes were called "penny colleges" because people discussed academic issues with each other while drinking a penny cup of coffee.

In China, cafes are more often used as places for leisure friends. As large coffee chains such as Starbucks, COSTA and Pacific Coffee continue to conquer the territory, independent themed cafes are beginning to emerge, either advocating an attitude towards life or creating a special social atmosphere.

3W Cafe looks different. Not only its three co-founders have Internet background, but also more than 180 shareholders; the first floor is a traditional cafe, which receives individual visitors, and is equipped with office facilities such as HP printers; the second floor is the meeting venue and VIP area, which mainly hold Internet-related forums, salons, training, lectures and activities. On the third floor, there are 19 start-up companies, which are "start-up incubators". At present, it has formed diversified brands such as cafes, 3W innovative media, Internet vertical recruitment website "pull recruitment", as well as incubator "NextBig", headhunting services and so on.

It is more like a circle of Internet people than a cafe.

3W Coffee: the Circle of Internet people

The three founders of 3W Cafe, Ma Delong, Bao Aile and Xu Shan, all came from Tencent and did not know each other before doing 3W. A former employee of Tencent once set up a QQ group called "Forever Family". At that time, he wanted to bring people from the Internet industry together to open a cafe. After sending messages in the QQ group, three like-minded people got together.

"it was the second half of 2010, when Weibo was the most popular. When we put forward such an idea on Weibo, a lot of CEO and senior executives responded and thought it would be good to invest tens of thousands of yuan to be a shareholder. That's where our first batch of money came from."

The first sum of money was raised smoothly, but the second step is the dilemma that cafes generally face today, that is, how to make money and get back their investment. "when 3W first started, we were very happy and did a lot of fresh things. After opening it, the pain increased with each passing day. 3W Cafe is in serious debt. In the first 30 days of the month, we stayed in the cafe for at least 25 days and went home at 11:00 in the evening, almost for a year. I want to work hard to make money, but it is difficult to make money. At that time, we were faced with a big choice: whether to go on with the work or turn it off? " Xu Shan once recalled.

After continuous groping and adjustment, 3W Cafe came over.

The first group of shareholders of 3W Cafe was 104. later, more and more people wanted to become shareholders, so the three people discussed and set some thresholds, such as a minimum investment of 60, 000 yuan, such as four categories of people who are mainly listed company executives, fund partners, startup CEO and well-known media people. As of September 2013, 3W Cafe had 183 shareholders.

"after these shareholders came in, many people from start-ups came to us in the cafe and asked if they could introduce investors, financing, and so on. One of the most prominent needs is to find investment, find people, such as some people have entrepreneurial ideas, but no one to do it together. Because 3W Cafe is a gathering place for Internet people, many people want us to introduce contacts, including office locations, registered companies, industry exchanges and other needs. In response to these needs, we have integrated resources and done a lot of things. " Bao Aile said.

For example, "Investor afternoon Tea", 3W Cafe invites investors to chat with entrepreneurs and provide guidance. For example, open an open course, invite executives of large companies to give speeches and get in touch with grassroots entrepreneurs. 3W has also set up expert clubs, shareholders' clubs and so on. "executives from large companies are invited to train entrepreneurs once a week, such as' how to build APP and external channels', 'psychology of losers', 'lawyers train intellectual property', 'product design and operation', etc., which have been scheduled for December this year." Madelong said.

NextBig: next stop, boss.

Now, 3W has gone further and started offering NextBig--, a startup incubator, and Madelong joked that the acronym is "NB".

3W Cafe provides some startups with limited and relatively cheap resources, such as rent. " We took the house from the landlord for 30,000 yuan per square meter, and I will transfer it to the entrepreneur at this price. It is not realistic for you to find a house of less than 60,000 yuan per square meter in Zhongguancun. We are public here, a person is 5 square meters, if he rents it himself, it will cost 20 square meters anyway, we are cheaper here because it is public use. Equivalent to 100000 yuan only needs to spend 10, 000 yuan here, 90, 000 yuan can be spent elsewhere. " Madelong said.

"do you know the initial fees that startups have to pay? To rent a decent workplace, to have network bandwidth, to register a company, to have printers, cloud hosts and other office equipment, to have administrative, financial, legal advice, and so on. But if it's just a small team of two or three people, it's not worth the perfect match, and there's a lot to share in the 3W incubator. "

In order to get these cheap or even free resources, Madelong contacted many office facilities companies, such as Hewlett-Packard. Not long ago, 3W joined Hewlett-Packard's "print hot business program". HP provided a smart seven-in-one multi-function laser machine free of charge, allowing entrepreneurs or customers to enjoy document printing services even in a coffee shop, through wireless hotspots, wireless direct printing, cloud printing, and AirPrint printing documents.

"like Hewlett-Packard, we do these things without making a penny, which is tantamount to doing public welfare, and now we can use the 3W brand to influence companies and get them to respond to us in a free way. For example, the deployment of wireless devices, in addition to the bandwidth we spent money, all the equipment did not spend a penny, are free from the enterprise. Now we have dozens of service providers. " Ma Delong believes that the significance of hatching is to cultivate and hatch together, and then divide the interests after making the cake bigger together.

For startups, in addition to the network and servers, there is also a crucial issue is the law. Ma Delong asked a partner from the commercial law firm to come over every two weeks to solve problems for entrepreneurs, such as equity issues that everyone is concerned about. "the initial structure is very important for startups, otherwise it will be very troublesome to get big and go wrong in the future. Facebook is a good example. The people we hired know a large number of cases and can provide very good help to prevent them from falling apart because of equity issues in the future. Therefore, whenever entrepreneurs raise funds, they will come for advice. "

"basically, we hold two events, one training and one chat for the founders of these 19 teams a week, and we hope that these founders on the third floor of 3W Cafe will be like alumni reunions." Madelong said with a smile.

For entrepreneurial teams, 3W Cafe has its own selection criteria.

First of all, the number is strictly limited to 2 ~ 10 people. "more than ten people will go out. Because we think it is unreliable for one person to start a business, and if a team develops to 10 people, we think it already has the ability to resist risk, because we provide anti-risk ability to relatively fragile teams. and we have talked to matching funds and consultants that when a team has seven or eight people, it is basically in a relatively stable period, and then it will enter a period of rapid growth. We want a team to send to 10 people to go out, because a team of 10 people takes up space for two teams, and after you go out, other people come in, and we want to give this place to people who need it more. So the incubator is also called 'early project transfer center', which is' hatching', and the incubation must be completed after six months. We hope that in the most vulnerable part of starting a business, we can use our most favorable cost and venue to help entrepreneurs grow and complete the process of turning an egg into a chicken. " Madelong said.