Why did they choose third-tier cities to start their own businesses

Recently, a reporter from China Youth Daily participated in the "Discover the Stars of Mass Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship" event organized by the Government Information and Government Affairs Disclosure Office of the General Office of the State Council and found that success Entrepreneurs are always similar. They not only need to seize the opportunity, gather team strength, and make good use of policy support, but they also need to have a good attitude and not be afraid of failure in the face of setbacks.

Meeting the right people at the right time

Four Ph.D.s who received degrees from prestigious universities at home and abroad did not choose to develop in first-tier cities after graduation. Instead, they gathered in a small town in Jiangsu Started business in Lianyungang. They see the possibility of successful careers in things that others don't quite understand.

?There are many reasons for starting a business. The most important thing is to meet the right person at the right time. Xu Henghao, general manager of Lianyungang Zhicube Biomedical Research Institute Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhicube Company), summarized their entrepreneurial history in one sentence.

Xu Henghao said that the main opportunity for them to establish the company was the industrialization of fat cube technology in recent years. According to reports, lipid cube is a new technology for screening drugs. In the past, drug screening might involve randomly selecting dozens of candidate compounds with less side effects from millions of drug protein crystals, which was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Lipid cube technology can precisely achieve targeted screening and help researchers save a lot of time and cost investment.

The right time? The right person? Where to find it? Xu Henghao told a reporter from China Youth Daily that there are very few people in the world doing fat cube technology, but there are three Chinese people among them. These three Chinese people happened to be his senior fellow students at Wuhan University. ?Why don’t we just work together as a group to do this?

At the beginning, members of the entrepreneurial team were opposed by those around them. Xu Henghao’s mentor hoped that he would stay at Wuhan University to teach and inherit his legacy. Gao Song, the company's technical director, recalled that his parents didn't understand his idea of ??going to work in a small city after graduating from the United States and thought it was not respectable. ?However, after analyzing and explaining the development prospects of fat cube technology, they finally gained support from their relatives, friends and teachers.

After the team was built, Xu Henghao began to consider the location of the company. At first, the entrepreneurial team investigated high-tech development zones in Zhangjiang, Shanghai and many cities in Jiangsu, but Lianyungang gave them the most considerate reception. At that time, the Lianyungang Municipal Finance Bureau invited 12 pharmaceutical companies in the city, large and small, to listen to a report by Dr. Liu Wei, the team's chief scientist. After the report, 6 pharmaceutical companies in the country put forward docking needs, and the Finance Bureau visited them one by one with their entrepreneurial teams.

The positive feedback from local pharmaceutical companies not only encouraged the entrepreneurial team, but also allowed Lianyungang Runcai Venture Capital Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Runcai Venture Capital) with a state-owned background to see their vision development potential. Runcai Venture Capital decided to provide the entrepreneurial team with an angel investment of 10.8 million yuan, which enabled Zhicube Company to finally settle in Lianyungang.

In fact, not only Runcai Venture Capital, but also Huaihai Institute of Technology in Lianyungang also provided a lot of help to Zhicube Company. Benefiting from the cooperative relationship between schools and enterprises, Zhicube Company is able to use Huaihai Institute of Technology's experimental equipment worth approximately 20 million yuan at very low prices, thereby using limited funds to develop more projects. In addition, while undertaking the school's teaching and scientific research tasks, Zhicube Company also added a large amount of "fresh blood" from graduates of Huaihai Institute of Technology.

In the three years since its establishment, Zhicube Company has grown from five people at the beginning to more than 40 people today. Regarding the future, Xu Henghao said that he hopes to achieve sales of 100 million in the biological enzyme business within three years so that funds can be used to further promote lipid cube technology.

My father smashed a hole in my desk

When it comes to mass entrepreneurship and innovation, most people may think of high-precision technology. However, Liao Zhengjun, a young man from Yancheng, has made new breakthroughs in the traditional poultry breeding industry by studying turkey raising technology and conducting online platform sales.

When it came to raising turkeys, Liao Zhengjun had already tasted the taste of failure in his junior year. At that time, he not only lost his family's money, but also paid for his girlfriend's tuition, and finally watched his girlfriend leave him.

Therefore, when Liao Zhengjun gave up his job in Shanghai with an annual salary of more than 100,000 yuan and returned home to raise turkeys again, his relatives and friends felt that he was hopeless. In order to stop him, his father even used an ax to smash a hole in his desk.

However, for Liao Zhengjun, switching from art design to turkey raising was not a decision made on the head. By inspecting the market in Shanghai, Liao Zhengjun discovered that at that time, most domestic turkeys were imported from abroad and were expensive. If calculated based on the breeding costs in my hometown, each turkey can have a net profit of 30 to 50 yuan.

In this way, Liao Zhengjun bought 300 turkeys with only 4,000 yuan and started raising turkeys in an abandoned school. However, a few months later, Liao Zhengjun discovered that his turkey was obviously too small, and the male turkey was less than half of its normal weight.

It turns out that the turkey seedlings Liao Zhengjun purchased in China were all inbred species. In order to obtain pure turkey hatchlings, high-quality hatching eggs must be imported from abroad. For this reason, Liao Zhengjun spent all the 20,000 yuan he earned from selling turkeys on imported hatching eggs. The eggs are expensive, 200 yuan each. Liao Zhengjun imported 100 eggs from the United States.

The effect is really good. In one year, Liao Zhengjun raised more than 2,000 turkeys, and they grew to a weight of more than 20 kilograms. Relying on this batch of high-quality turkeys, Liao Zhengjun immediately opened up the market.

Having achieved initial success, Liao Zhengjun continued his efforts and significantly increased turkey sales by creating Thanksgiving concepts and developing new dishes. At the same time, Liao Zhengjun also won the heart of his girlfriend Lu Man.

Previously, Luman had worked in foreign trade in a large company for two years. Her arrival brought new changes to Liao Zhengjun's career. After Liao Zhengjun's company became famous, many competitors targeted his employees. ?I trained a talent, and someone else poached him with an extra salary of 500 yuan or 1,000 yuan?

Under Luman’s suggestion, Liao Zhengjun decided to adopt a decentralization approach, splitting the company’s main business into a new company, and handing it over to the business backbone of the original company. Liao Zhengjun stepped out to build resources and provide technical and financial services to the following subsidiaries.

Jiang Haidong is a successful representative of the company’s incubation projects. He graduated from Nanjing Art Institute and originally had a good job in a military industrial enterprise, but he refused to return to the countryside. Under Liao Zhengjun's persuasion, he first came back as the design director, and later became the head of a newly established design company, specializing in helping fellow villagers who didn't understand the Internet plan and package agricultural products.

In addition, Liao Zhengjun has also successively established 7 subsidiaries, with the company's backbone as legal persons, responsible for aquaculture, agricultural training, e-commerce, self-media and other businesses. ?If you want to keep talented people in the countryside, you have to make them feel that they are valuable in the countryside and have a platform to realize their dreams. ? Luhmann said.

Understand the policies

Also starting a business in a third-tier city, Wang Jinhe, chairman of the Gold Rush Era, found the "window" for the rapid development of China's e-commerce, and finally settled in the e-commerce operation service segment. The field makes the career.

In 2010, Wang Jinhe, who worked in Alibaba’s Nantong District, discovered a phenomenon. Due to the deterioration of the foreign trade environment, many foreign trade personnel wanted to sell textile products on Taobao, but they did not know much about online sales skills. Wang Jinhe decided to start a company specializing in e-commerce services.

The so-called e-commerce services refer to the IT systems, operations, warehousing and logistics services provided by third-party service providers to individual sellers and brand merchants on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com. Wang Jinhe values ????this aspect of online store operation. Through processes such as brand planning, online store decoration, operation promotion, and customer service outsourcing, his company can provide one-stop solutions for small and medium-sized merchants.

The idea is good, but customers don’t buy it. Initially, Wang Jinhe had only four to five million yuan in start-up capital, which was the money he planned to buy a house. Due to financial constraints, the entrepreneurial team set up an office in a university with an area of ??only 20 square meters. ?The customer thought I was bragging. After visiting the office, 80% of the originally negotiated order would be lost. ?Wang Jinhe said.

Fortunately, the Nantong Municipal Government’s support policies for entrepreneurs have come in handy. Through the policy of "delay first and then delivery", Gold Rush Times was able to occupy 1,028 square meters of office space rent-free. Slowly, the number of orders increased, and the company's development entered a virtuous cycle.

In less than 5 years, the number of employees of Gold Rush Era has grown from 4 to more than 700 today, with 13 branches across the country, and it has also become a national recognized by the Ministry of Commerce. Level e-commerce service demonstration enterprise?, ranking among the top three in the field of e-commerce operation services.

With abundant manpower and funds, Wang Jinhe began to expand upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. For example, by collecting and organizing data from Taobao and Tmall, Gold Rush Times can determine the best-selling products online and pass the analysis results to merchants to avoid homogeneous competition among merchants. In addition, they have integrated the front-end supply chain and serve as suppliers for many merchants engaged in cross-border purchasing.

Seeing that the state’s support for “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” is gradually increasing, Wang Jinhe decided to transform the company’s business model and expand the original e-commerce operation service into an entrepreneurship service integrating venture capital services. platform. In the entrepreneurial base built by the company, the company will provide early entrepreneurial training for entrepreneurs, and also provide 2 to 10 square meters of entrepreneurial space for project discussion, evaluation, roadshows and incubation.

At present, Gold Rush Era has deployed three types of entrepreneurial bases offline, including O2O entrepreneurial incubation centers for college students in universities, youth e-commerce entrepreneurial incubation bases established with governments in many places, and community service centers place for entrepreneurship. There are more than a dozen venture capital companies currently incubating in the base.

Talking about the reasons for the change in the company's business model, Wang Jinhe said: When I read the policy, I look at the business model, market opportunities and future direction. At least this path is not wrong. The policy makes it very clear that this entrepreneurial space must have space for office, networking, social networking, and resource sharing. And he also said that he would be a cloud service and public service platform for entrepreneurs. ? ;