The past few years have been seeing the proliferating of startup-themed cafés in China which serve as a platform where entrepreneurs exchange and sparkle their ideas. We’ve written Shanghai’s startups handout, including 6 startup-themed cafés. Today, we’ll bring you to Beijing and visit five cafés, including 3wcoffee, Big Bang Café, QianXun Café, Betacafé and Garage Café.
1. 3wcoffee
Since: August 6th, 2011
Address: No.1 Shan Yuan Street, HaiDian District, Beijing (near Microsoft’s Beijing headquarter in Zhongguancun)
Shareholders: nearly 200
Shareholder Background: well-known Internet entrepreneurs, senior executives, famous investors. For example, Mr. Xu Xiaoping from Zhen Fund, Mr. Shen Nanpeng from Sequoia Capital, co-founder/COO of Tencent Zeng Liqing, founder of Qnar Zhuang Chenchao, founder of Lefeng Li Jing, to name just a few.
Fields Concerned: TMT, Internet, mobile Internet, gaming, eComm
Positioning: Promoting startups, targeting at communicating and sharing knowledge about Internet industry and helping startups grow faster. It organizes an ‘Expert Club’ consisting of executives from top Chinese Internet companies. It also hosts events frequently.
Service:
High-quality salons like ‘3w Open Course’ and ‘Star Investor Night Talk’. In an event dubbed ‘Afternoon Tea with Investor’ held on Thursday afternoons, entrepreneurs gets to have a face-to-face talk with an investor for half an hour. Members from ‘Expert Club’ will sometimes join discussions as well.
Direction:
1) Keep building an offline platform sharing knowledge about the Internet. 2) Funding excellent startup groups and publishing NextBigPlan. 3) After 1.5k square meters new area becoming available in summer this year, providing co-work space for more teams.
Source of Income: Operating revenue.
Profitibility: Breaks even.
For more details, please refer to our previous report here.
2. Big Bang Café
Since: Late 2011
Address: No.39, Dong San Huan Zhong Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing
Shareholders: around 20
Shareholder Background: Lumipath Angel Investment is the initiator and the biggest shareholder, with other 20 investors, mostly are famous angel investors, VC investors from different institutions or successful entrepreneurs.
Fields Concerned: Lifestyle, Cultural Creativity Industry, TMT
Positioning:
1) Targets at people with some work experience and networking and now want to start own business.
2) It has two floors, the ground floor just serves what a regular café can serve while the second floor is more of a co-working space for small startups. Investors frequent this place as well.
Service:
1st Floor regularly hosts salons, like Bigbang DemoDay. Outsiders also organize events here, such as China Mobile Developer Network’s events and Sina’s Big Data salons, to name just a few.
2nd Floor is an open office. After careful selection, those potential startup teams are eligible to work there. Lumipath will also invest seed money and provide all-around service without charges.
Direction of development: Investing more into well-developing business
Source of Income: food, event, station fee and return-on-investments
Profitiblity: Breaks even.
3. QianXun Café
Since: May 3oth, 2012
Address: No.768, Xue Qing Rd., Haidian District, Beijing
Shareholders: 3
Shareholder Background: From media and commerce industries.
Fields Concerned: Internet, media and design
Positioning: QianXun Café aims at bridging investors and entrepreneurs and discovering the next big idea. It holds a monthly salon called ‘Qian Xun Hui’. At each event, one top figure in the industry will be invited to give inspiring speeach. Journalists from Chinese press, investors and entrepreneurs will flock to the café to share top-notch Spanish cuisine, entrepreneurial experience and the cutting-edge IT dynamics with the celebrity.
Service: In addition to coffee, it also serves Spanish cuisine, holds various salons, business meetings and small-sized wedding ceremonies, etc.
Direction of development: Endeavoring to become the gathering place of insiders from Internet, media and design circles and to keep in touch with the latest industry information.
Source of Income: operation of restaurant
Profitablity: It has not yet generated profit.
4. Betacafé
Location: Zhongguancun of Beijing
Shareholder: unkonwn
Service: serving coffee and hosting events
Betacafe has been a long time meetup palce for people in the Internet trade, though it’s ‘entrepreneurship’ is not as strong as its other peers.
5. Garage Café
Address: 2F, No.48, Hai Dian Xi Street, Haidian District, Beijing
Feature: open offices
Shareholder: around 10
Service: Serving as co-working space for startups. Investors and lawyers station here from time to time. Every week, different investors come here to source ideas and help founders. Members of a Lawyer League also work here on Fridays to offer startups with free consulting service. For more details, please refer to our previous report.