Xiamen, known as a livable "paradise", is full of ease and tranquility, and many entrepreneurs leave here to start businesses in Beijing. What characteristics of entrepreneurs have been born in Xiamen's entrepreneurial environment? For this place, is it a paradise to promote people's progress or a negative effect to hinder people's progress?

In the eyes of most people, Xiamen is a livable "paradise": beautiful scenery, blue sky and petty bourgeoisie. Every year during the Golden Week holiday, millions of people flock to this small island (132.5 square kilometers), which is only a quarter of the area of Chaoyang District in Beijing.

Xiamen also has many internet startups that we are familiar with. From the early stationmaster gathering place to many large Internet companies such as Meitu, Meiyou, Feiyu Technology, Taqu and Sanwu Internet, according to statistics, 28 Xiamen enterprises have been valued at over 100 million yuan. "When 4399 just moved into the second phase of the software park in 2008, there was no one here, and now even the parking place can't be found." Huang Tiancai, the founder of his interest, said.

However, Xiamen is too comfortable and quiet. There are also many entrepreneurs who have left Xiamen to start businesses in Beijing. In their view, Xiamen's pattern and vision are insufficient, and it also lacks various elements such as talents to promote enterprise development. This is how local entrepreneurs in Xiamen, such as Milu and Billing, left.

What characteristics of entrepreneurs have been born in Xiamen's environment? For them, is such a beautiful and gentle environment a paradise to promote people's progress or a negative effect to hinder people's progress?

Low-key and pragmatic grass-roots paradise

Although it can't compete with the first-tier cities in terms of capital and pattern, the tradition of Fujian businessmen's "love to fight to win" has also been integrated into the blood of Xiamen entrepreneurs. Judging from the rise of grassroots webmasters in the PC era, this is their important spiritual pillar and a creed that many people believe in.

Many people know that starting a business in Xiamen may have started in Cai Wensheng. The flame of Internet entrepreneurship in Xiamen was also lit from then on. At the inauguration ceremony of the Xiamen Branch of the Black Horse Club, Cai Wensheng once recalled the scene when the Xiamen Internet Entrepreneurship Circle was formed:

"In 2000, when I first arrived in Xiamen, I rented an 80-square-meter house, next to Xiamen's Electronic City, which cost 800 yuan a month. The living room is our office. At that time, the most advantageous thing in Xiamen was the domain name business, and China, the predecessor of "Three Five Interconnections", was already an enterprise. But other than that, there are very few people doing internet in Xiamen, and I can't find a few, but I still found them all. For example, A Fei (Yao Jianjun, CEO of Feiyu Technology), a native of Quanzhou, came to Xiamen at 200 1; Wu (CEO of Meitu Technology) came to Xiamen in 2002; Kong Dejing, whose name was changed to China, also came to Xiamen in 2002. At that time, I mixed with them every day and formed a good circle atmosphere. "

Huang Tiancai, the founder of Interest, chose to start a business in Xiamen for a simple reason: to survive. 20 1 1 set up a group buying website in Xiamen. After the project failed, he considered starting a business in Beijing, but finally chose to stay in Xiamen. "We have no conditions to go to Beijing. At that time, there was no money in the account, and it was not enough to rent a house in Beijing for one year. Although we suffered a little in Xiamen (living in a village in the city), at least we can survive. " Today, the fun e-commerce "Taqu" (original cost performance) founded by Huang Tiancai has applied for listing on the New Third Board, and received 85 million yuan in financing in August last year.

In Xiamen, a city full of petty bourgeoisie, low-key and pragmatic is the most obvious label of these Xiamen entrepreneurs. Internet entrepreneurs in Xiamen in the early days almost all started from the grassroots: they may not have high academic qualifications and understand the user needs of grassroots people; Most people aggregate traffic through personal websites first, and then transform into Internet products. For example, Cai Wensheng, who started with the domain name business, later founded the navigation website 265.com, and sold the website to Google, which became one of the successful angel investors in China. A Fei founded the stationmaster's home, and later transformed it into a page tour "Fairy Road". Later, he co-founded Feiyu Technology with Xiaoyu (Chen Jianyu), who developed "Defending Radish", and went public in Hong Kong at the end of 20 14. Wu also started from the early domain name business. After making more than 30 products, we gradually developed a series of products and services around the huge user base of Meitu Xiu Xiu.

Most of these grassroots elites in Xiamen don't like to talk about what model to promote at the beginning, but like to concentrate on starting from a demand point and then slowly extend their business model. This is the view of Xiong Jun, the founder of synchronous push. He is very familiar with the development history of Internet companies in Xiamen: "In the big Internet companies in Xiamen, Meitu is now slowly extending from tools to social and e-commerce. So is grapefruit. Feibo Chuangchuang is engaged in social marketing. It uses various Weibo and WeChat public platforms with large fans to aggregate traffic to do business. Most of them have a feature that they don't say how big the model is when they come up, but start from a tool or a starting point and slowly extend outward. "

Wang Dandan, who worked in public relations at Meiyou, agreed. "The companies here are usually low-key and prefer to make big money. Outside, they rarely see their very intensive media campaigns. "

Xiamen has a rich history of Internet entrepreneurship and relatively successful Internet companies. However, in the calm and low-key entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurs here still feel the limitations of entrepreneurship.

Developing coral reefs in comfortable and temperate waters

Similar to Huang Tiancai, Liu Jinlong, the founder of Neighborhood Network, once founded a group buying website in Xiamen. "We started to do it in April of 20 10. By August of that year, we had established sub-stations in seven cities including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Chongqing, Suzhou and Xiamen, and the monthly sales volume was not bad."

But at that time, "Hundred Regiments War" was in full swing. In order to survive, financing was necessary. "But we were in Xiamen at that time, and we didn't have much experience in capital operation and didn't have this awareness. After we have this awareness, we found that companies in Beijing have already received tens of millions of financing. " In the case of losing the opportunity, Liu Jinlong had to choose to sell the website to Wowotuan.

Therefore, in retrospect, Liu Jinlong thought that Xiamen still lacked the financing environment and entrepreneurial atmosphere compared with Beijing, so he went to Beijing to start a business on 20 12. After arriving in Beijing, his feeling was, "In Xiamen, you can't reach so many investors, and you can't communicate with other entrepreneurs and investors on a regular basis. So in Xiamen, your sensitivity to financing and strategic thinking ability will be worse than that of entrepreneurs in Beijing. "

With similar views, there is also the secret method of Zheng's founder. "I feel that Xiamen is actually under the stage and Beijing is standing on the stage. From the stage, you can see farther things, exchange information more frequently, and broaden your horizons. " So, in the end, the lawyer chose to leave Xiamen. He believes that Beijing has a better entrepreneurial atmosphere and is more suitable for radiating its business scope to the whole country.

Xiamen, which had a large number of excellent personal webmasters in 2000, is still mainly restricted by one problem when developing the internet industry, which is also the general answer given by Xiamen entrepreneurs to I Dark Horse: lack of excellent talents.

In Xiamen, the lack of colleges and universities is a big deficiency. At present, there are only a few universities in Xiamen, such as Xiamen University, Jimei University and Huaqiao University, and the output of talents is obviously insufficient. Xiong Jun gave an example to iDark Horse: "Take the Software College of Xiamen University as an example. Since its establishment in 2002, it has only trained more than 2,000 graduates in ten years. Some of them went abroad to study, some went to Beishangguang, and there were not many left. "

In order to find outstanding talents, Xiamen entrepreneurs with financial resources began to choose to radiate outward, and also brought people to Xiamen.

Chen Fangyi, the founder of Meiyou, told iDark Horse that Meiyou had set up an e-commerce team of more than 70 people in Hangzhou to develop e-commerce business. At the same time, Meiyou also strives to attract BAT talents to work in Xiamen. "As long as it is a talent and wants to come to Xiamen, he will find a way to dig into our company. People who like stability will still be willing to come to Xiamen, which is very attractive to them. "

Xiong Jun turned its attention to Taiwan Province province. Xiong Jun has set up a R&D center with 65,438+00 people in Taipei to develop synchronous push Android applications. In his view, it is more convenient to recruit people or set up offices in Taiwan Province province than in the mainland. "Xiamen is very close to Taiwan Province Province, much closer than going to Beijing, and it can be reached by plane 1.5 hours. Moreover, both Taipei and Xiamen speak Minnan, and their customs are similar. Besides, wages in Taiwan Province Province haven't increased much in more than ten years. Recruiting people from the mainland, the annual salary increase may reach 15%-20%, and everyone will be satisfied, but Taiwan Province Province only needs an annual salary increase of about 5%, which is cheaper and more stable than hiring people from Beijing. "

However, not all startups have the financial resources like Meiyou and Synchronous Push.

"This place is not suitable for rapid expansion, and you have no impatient capital."

Is a comfortable and leisurely environment not conducive to entrepreneurial innovation? In this regard, Cai Wensheng has different views. He believes that such a comfortable and leisure environment can actually promote entrepreneurs: "At that time (after I sold 265.com to Google), I really wanted to adjust, because I worked hard every day during my four years in Beijing. In Beijing, there is almost no personal life except starting a business and working. I feel that when I work every day, I must have my own space and leave time for myself, so that I can by going up one flight of stairs. "

Xiong Jun has another metaphor. He believes that Xiamen is actually a bit like Seattle in the United States: "Seattle is in the north of Silicon Valley, where there are relatively few talents and it is more suitable for living, but Seattle still has companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Xiamen is not Silicon Valley, but it is more like Seattle. The people here are down-to-earth and pragmatic, which is very suitable for calming down and polishing a thing to a better result, and often these things are suitable for a relatively small and biased market at first, and then they are polished to a relatively large market. This is not suitable for companies that need to expand rapidly, because here, you have no impatient capital. Talent and other things are not enough. "

However, Xiamen is far from the level of Seattle. Here, Meitu is only a company with more than 600 people, which has not reached the scale of Microsoft and Amazon, and its talent export and demonstration role in Xiamen is still limited. A comfortable environment may be just a "filter" for entrepreneurs, leaving behind practical entrepreneurs who pursue a balance between life and work.

Huang Tiancai also believes that the Internet development in Xiamen is really starting to get faster, or in the era of mobile Internet. Compared with cities like Guangzhou and Hangzhou, they still started late, lacked background and had a lot of room for improvement. "Although there was a webmaster conference in Xiamen in 2007 and 2008, the Internet industry in Xiamen at that time was actually not formed. At that time, I can only say that what I can do is that these people have strong personal abilities and individual webmasters are well-known. "

In addition, the industrial agglomeration effect of Xiamen has not yet formed. For example, Hangzhou, with the development of Alibaba, has produced a large number of e-commerce talents. Alibaba's listing has also produced a number of local capitals familiar with the Internet, forming a virtuous circle and clear city business cards. As mentioned above, the largest Internet company in Xiamen is Meitu Technology founded by Wu, but Meitu Technology has not such a huge company scale, and its demonstration role is still limited.

Now, the internet entrepreneurial atmosphere in Xiamen is also heating up. Take software park investment as an example. From September 2005, when the first phase of the software park broke ground, to April 20 14, when the fourth phase was settled, the total construction area of Xiamen software park has exceeded 1636400 square meters, and the second phase is almost full. According to the data released by Xiamen Municipal Bureau of Statistics, as of 20 15 and 12, the operating income of information transmission, software and information technology services above designated size in Xiamen reached 190 1 100 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.0%.

Software parks are constantly being built, incubators, accelerators and maker spaces are constantly emerging, and the attention of capital is getting higher and higher. However, the general trend of Internet entrepreneurship in Xiamen still needs a period of gradual accumulation.

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