Entrepreneurs in Hong Kong

Abstract: In Hong Kong, the jewellery and jewellery retail brand Chow Tai Fook has 90 stores, the average single store sales of more than 35 million HKD per year, employing tens of thousands of employees. Cosmetics retailer Salsa has 98 stores, average single store sales close to HK $35 million, employs nearly 500

In Hong Kong, the jewellery and jewellery retail brand Chow Tai Fook has 90 stores, with an average sales of more than 35 million HKD per year, employing tens of thousands of employees. Cosmetics retailer Salsa has 98 stores, the average single store sales are close to 35 million Hong Kong dollars, employs nearly 5000 people.

In West Kowloon, from Mong Kok to Tsim Sha Tsui, their shops are visible, and tourists from mainland China are tons, waving UnionPay cards to buy and buy.

As of June 2014, Hong Kong's retail employment accounted for 272 000 people, accounting for 9.9% of all private sector employment, and more than 22% per cent of total GDP in the retail sector. Another economic pillar of the financial sector employed 228000 people, accounting for 6.9% of total employment. However，

"All Internet startups in Hong Kong may add up to three thousand or four thousand people,"

Steven Lam, founder of Lin Kaiyuan Software Gogovan, told 36 Krypton. Even if all the Hong Kong government has been identified as a combination of employment in the hi-tech sector, this figure is only 30,000.

Everybody's talking about Gogovan.

So Gogovan last month announced a 10 million dollar investment in Renren, a news that cheered the entire Hong Kong business circle. "Everyone is talking about Gogovan," The investor Ping Wong said to me, "I sometimes go home at night without a car, I will buy a big bag of things in the neighbourhood, call a truck with Gogovan and let the driver carry me home by delivery."

I went to Hong Kong from Shenzhen last weekend and talked about four Hong Kong entrepreneurial teams, and I could feel the weight of Gogovan in their hearts. It is true that everyone is talking about Gogovan, as everyone in Shenzhen is talking about DJI. The difference is that the former only received tens of millions of dollars in financing, the latter has been valued billions of of dollars, is expected to usher in the IPO next year.

"Every investor in Silicon Valley is asking us when we are going to the mainland market, and there is a story in China that valuations can rise 10 times times," said Shopline co-founder Fiona Lau, who provides the power provider's rapid-build station service, to 36 Krypton, Shopline was hatched in the United States for some time before being selected as a 500Startup item.

Shopline, a fast-growing electric-power platform like this, has not been rare in mainland China for the past two years, but it has barely survived under intense competition from the electricity dealers. But shopline such a platform can be called the 2.0 version of the rapid construction station. Not only do they create web sites for customers in a simple and aesthetically pleasing way, they also get users through a push, and dock with payments, logistics, retail and social networks to help users get traffic. This has the taste of Airbnb in the inside, help users solve problems, not just show the merchandise.

Well, this generation of Hong Kong start-ups has gone straight into the Airbnb and Uber era, bypassing the advantages that Beijing and Silicon Valley have accumulated on a purely online line. The advantage of leapfrog development is that it avoids competition from powerful rivals. The disadvantage is that truck drivers and small shopkeepers, respectively, need Gogovan and shopline to cultivate the habit of using mobile internet. Fiona had a telephone call from a Hong Kong shopkeeper in Silicon Valley three o'clock in the morning.

Fortunately, Hong Kong is a small single market, from the end of August to the 9 weeks of November, shopline users increased by 6 times times, paying users increased 14 times times. In Hong Kong, where the offline business system is mature and the community is stable, the Shopline model solves two problems:

the first is the original telephone service defects, Hong Kong's offline merchants are very dependent on the telephone to obtain orders, users door-to-door pick-up, now using Web pages instead of telephones, the efficiency of a lot. This shopline and Gogovan is the same, Gogovan two months to win the original freight call platform 20% orders. The second is expensive rent.

Vanishing Store

"Rents are getting more expensive, many ordinary businesses can only move upstairs," Shopline can be said to be the beneficiaries of rising rents, because these upstairs shops need to put marketing and merchandise display online. At the same time, Shopline is also a victim of high rents, and as part of the Swire Properties Blueprint Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, they currently share space with 10 start-up companies.

"When I was young, there are a lot of interesting shops in Hong Kong," when he was a young man who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010, "when he was a child, he was still in primary school," and now only Chow Tai Fook and Sasha can afford to rent the pavement More like a barbershop. "

Many Hong Kong fans from mainland China have come to Hong Kong complaining that Hong Kong is no longer a "Hong Kong flavor" and may be related to these vanishing shops.

Unlike Shopline, Gogovan is now "rich and capricious" and has just rented thousands of square metres of office in Guantang. Plans to enter the mainland market have allowed them to get enough ammunition in the capital markets. Steven is not afraid of rivals on the mainland, such as just getting 5 million dollars a round of fundraising. But he is still worried about the fierce competition in the mainland, "a lot of investors come over and say that they are not serious about financing, but to inquire about you."

Steven, who had studied for half a year in Fudan University five years ago, finally chose Renren instead of a more forthright bat or 58, a fair for business cooperation, because "everyone is a friend." In addition to Renren's friend, Steven does not reject the business and 58, the market, such as the flow of the entrance to make friends, after all, in the mainland more people in the life Service site rather than the call platform to find goods vehicles.

And Shopline did not find friends on the mainland, so they did not dare to enter the vast land, but chose to enter the cultural and business environment more similar to "Taiwan, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries."

Bat, come on.

Shopline is the investor Ping Wong emailed to 36 Krypton, one of the 10 Hong Kong local start-up companies, she has almost covered the city's entrepreneurial circle, which is unimaginable in the mainland's first-tier cities. No YC in Hong Kong, no 36 krypton, entrepreneurs are very lonely. A lot of people choose to go west or north, and I have a team from Hong Kong to every hardware incubator I visit in Shenzhen before arriving.

"The opportunity cost of starting a business in Hong Kong is too great, house prices are high and prices are high", and Steven graduated back to Hong Kong, rejecting the offer of all the big companies and being considered a freak of the same age, "[they] work in investment banks or consultancy firms and spend decades exchanging small apartments for a few years."

Hong Kong's elite STEM graduates have plenty of opportunities to go straight to Silicon Valley if they are unwilling to choose a financial or consulting industry. Ordinary graduates also tend to opt into retailing or tourism.

Even the students in the school did not provide the soil for the start-up company. Shopline this model is very suitable for the campus market promotion, but because many students to do shopping, far more than their own open shop returns faster, so there are only a small number of design and brand awareness students on their platform.

So Steven admires the young people of the mainland, "I'm not afraid of bat coming to Hong Kong to do more business, even if we have some competition." I hope they will come soon and let the young people of Hong Kong see that there is another way.

Fiona agreed with Steven that before starting a business, Fiona worked in Goldman Sachs and Disney Hong Kong, "the Internet in Hong Kong is so out of place, what E-commerce is there, EBay?" Yahoo？ "But Fiona is very confident about the future," the next line and online will be more integrated, Hong Kong will have some advantages.

The anger of the young

At the end of the meeting with Fiona and Ping Wong, I recommended to both of them 36 krypton on a very hot article, "Why does the wise not come to entrepreneurship", and agreed to pay more attention to some Hong Kong start-up companies.

From the café in the Admiralty corridor, the eyes of the eye, and saw the Cotton Tree drive viaduct on the dense tent, can not help but walk through the footsteps. "It's always OK to take a look," I thought. Is thinking of the mobile phone pop-up CCTV news push: "Hong Kong three ' in the ' sponsor to police surrendered."

The angry young people are going to go away after all, just wondering, what kind of road will these students take after they graduate? Are they still the same as their predecessors in the past more than 10 years, into the financial, real estate, retail or tourism industry giants, doing step-by-step work, for decades diligently only a small apartment.

It suddenly occurred to me that Hayek's assertion in the path to slavery:

"Being financially controlled means being controlled everywhere ... Without freedom on the basis of the economy, there is no other freedom to speak of.

"Young people in Hong Kong have been spoiled and have been free for too long to know how we got here," the last meal in Hong Kong was a fork-goose meal at the roadside stall in Jordan, where an elderly man learned that I was traveling from Beijing and told me with a familiar port, "now Li Supen (Li Ka-shing) is going to be scolded, We all respect Li Supen, but after all these years, Hong Kong still has only one Li Supen, and it has to go.

Yes, if young people do not start a business, where the next Li Supen Ah!