Wuhan Xiongqi: Give up one million annual salary, they went from Silicon Valley to Optics Valley
Wuhan was sultry and rainy at the end of May, but it did not affect the entrepreneurs on the road.
Last year, Wuhan announced the establishment of the Talent Recruitment Bureau, hiring Lei Jun, the founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, and Lu Zhong, the founding partner of Zhonghai Investment, as "recruitment ambassadors." Lu Zhong sighed to the investment community (WeChat ID: pedaly) that he no longer remembers how many times he came to Wuhan, and he has been helping Wuhan to introduce talents and capital.
In April this year, Wuhan Cultural Development Group, Zhonghai Investment, and Perfect World jointly established a 500 million yuan cultural industry fund, focusing on cultural and creative projects in Wuhan. Liu Gang, executive general manager of Shenzhen Venture Capital Group, also revealed that in the future, it is preparing to prepare a 5 billion-scale cultural industry fund of funds in Wuhan.
Since the outbreak of Volkswagen's entrepreneurship in 2014, Wuhan's entrepreneurial atmosphere has become more and more intense, and Optics Valley, which is thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley in the United States, is eager to overtake corners.
Race against time to retain talent
"Wuhan’s entrepreneurial atmosphere is already very hot, but in the next 20-30 years, there is still 10 times the room for growth. This is only the quantity, and there is still 30 times the room for growth in the future. The number of entrepreneurs in Wuhan is 5 times that of Silicon Valley. Wuhan's incubator has also grown rapidly, and the cost of starting a business is one-third of that of Beijing." Talking about the entrepreneurial atmosphere in Wuhan, Li Ruxiong, general manager of Optics Valley Venture Coffee, said with emotion.
There are a large number of colleges and universities in Wuhan, and there are millions of international students every year, but it is embarrassing that they cannot keep them. Most college talents have gone to Beijing, Shenzhen, and even Silicon Valley.
In 2014, the state issued the call of "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation", and Wuhan immediately launched the Qingtong Plan for college students’ entrepreneurship, focusing on supporting college students’ entrepreneurship. The enthusiasm for entrepreneurship among the people was ignited. This year, Wuhan had 71 venture capital projects. It is nearly 4 times that of the previous year. In the following years, this number is still rising on a large scale.
In order to create a more convenient investment environment for startups, the Hubei Provincial Government issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Equity Investment Fund Industry" in March 2016 to provide office housing subsidies and settlement incentives to newly settled equity investment companies. The settlement reward can reach up to 20 million yuan.
In 2017, Wuhan, where there are many colleges and universities but difficult to retain talents, realized that the retention rate of high-quality graduates cultivated locally was too low, and it was imperative to compete for talents. Statistics show that the retention rate of graduates in Wuhan in 2016 was only 62%, which is lower than the average of the new first-tier cities. For this reason, Wuhan took the lead in launching the first shot of the new talent policy: it proposed the implementation of the "Millions of University Students Studying in Han for Entrepreneurship and Employment Project", and it was the first in the country to propose "Let more students studying in Han buy affordable housing at 20% below the market price. Rent a rental house". .
Next, Wuhan worked out a series of policies to attract talents. In March, Wuhan announced that college students can pay the provident fund in their own name to solve the housing problem of college students in Han. In April, Wuhan comprehensively opened the threshold for college students to settle down; set up a talent housing construction fund; provide more than 10,000 grassroots society every year In June, 9 thoughtful policies and measures were introduced, covering various fields such as settlement, promotion of employment, and support for entrepreneurship; in October, relevant departments of Wuhan went deep into the group of university graduates, as well as universities, enterprises and other related units , To conduct research again to further improve and refine the policies for the settlement, housing and income of college students in Han, and optimize the population structure.
The Wuhan Municipal Housing Security and Housing Administration and other departments introduced at a press conference held on the 24th that Wuhan has planned and constructed 14 "Yangtze River Youth City" projects so far, with a total planned land area of ??more than 9,000 mu and a total construction area. About 8 million square meters. These houses will be used as housing for college students studying in Han, and they will be sold to college graduates at preferential prices.
Wuhan's efforts have indeed paid off. In 2017, Wuhan attracted 142,000 college students to settle down, six times the number in 2016. By the first quarter of 2018, the popularity of university graduates staying in Wuhan for entrepreneurship and employment has not diminished, with nearly 100,000 graduates and 39,000 college graduates settled.
An entrepreneur in the AI ??field who returned from Silicon Valley said that the domestic entrepreneurial atmosphere is very good, and Wuhan's policies are also excellent. It has been agreed that the company will settle in Wuhan Donghu District, and financing is also under negotiation.
But at the same time, in 2018, the talent "war" between cities intensified.
Since March, the frequency of the New Talent Policy has become more intensive. In the first two months, 12 cities including Hefei, Changchun, Nanjing, Shijiazhuang, Tianjin, Shenyang, Hohhot, and Wenzhou have intensively issued new talent policies. Every city is stepping up its efforts to "grab people". The thresholds for "sending money", "sending house", and "sending household registration" are as low as ever, and policies are unprecedented. As a municipality directly under the Central Government, Tianjin is close to the capital and has obvious regional advantages. The enrollment rate of education is comparable to that of Beijing and Shanghai, and 300,000 intending applicants poured in within a day...
The graduation season is approaching, and major cities have frequent policies of robbing people, and Wuhan has a tough battle to be fought.
Leverage capital
The development of high-tech companies is inseparable from the support of capital. Statistics show that among the outstanding enterprises in Wuhan, the support contribution of local institutions is only about 10%. Not only in Wuhan, many domestic high-tech companies have only a small portion of local VC/PE support.
Since last year, people in Shanghai began to reflect on why they missed the golden age of the Internet, and people in Suzhou also began to reflect on why the momentum lags behind Hangzhou and lost the golden age of the Internet. In fact, people in Wuhan have long been reflecting on how to use the power of capital to innovate high-quality projects and develop a new economy.
In 2008, the first government guidance fund in Wuhan was born. At that time, the Wuhan Municipal Finance Bureau and the Science and Technology Bureau established the Wuhan Science and Technology Venture Capital Guidance Fund in accordance with the "Several Opinions on Optimizing the Entrepreneurship Environment and Vigorously Promoting Entrepreneurship for All" by the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government. Since then, Wuhan has opened the prelude to the reform of capital marketization and fund operation.
As shown in the figure above, for a long time, various districts in Wuhan have begun to set up a large number of guiding funds based on their own characteristics and industrial development. The government acts as an angel investor and establishes a guiding fund or business incubation fund to directly invest in early-stage enterprises. For example, Donghu High-tech Zone has set up funds to build "Optics Valley", "Medicine Valley", "Golden Valley" and "Smart Valley"; Wuhan Development Zone has set up funds to build "Car Capital", "Robot Capital" and "Smart Home Appliance Capital"; In the Airport Economic and Technological Development Zone, a fund is set up around the creation of a "city of airport manufacturing", "a city of cyber security industry", and "a city of modern health food"; the central city area has a fund around the construction of modern service industries with various characteristics; the new city area is around Build modern industrial parks, promote the integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and promote the establishment of funds for the development of clusters of enterprises...
For this reason, 70% of Wuhan's venture capital institutions are state-owned investment groups led by the government. In the context of state-owned investment institutions, Wuhan mainly invests in large and medium-sized enterprises, and most of them prefer traditional industries, which also determines the industrial map of Wuhan. Such as automobiles, electronic information, equipment manufacturing, food and tobacco, energy and environmental protection, as well as strategic emerging industries formed by information technology, biomedicine, and smart manufacturing.
In this context, Wuhan is isolated from the Internet circle. Entrepreneurs prefer to establish state-owned enterprises or large-scale IT companies, and have no awareness of investment institutions. Entrepreneurs want to take money and think of loans and government funds at the first impression. Until 2014, the country issued the call of "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation", and Wuhan launched the Bronze Plan for college students’ entrepreneurship, focusing on supporting college students’ entrepreneurship. The enthusiasm for entrepreneurship among the people was ignited, and Wuhan’s emerging Internet industry ushered in the spring. The capital market has also begun to pay close attention to Wuhan.
The "foreign" capital that smells the wind is intensively "invading" Wuhan. Data from the entrepreneurial matchmaker shows that in the three years from 2015 to 2017, 148 financing projects have been promoted through the platform. Among these projects, investment institutions in Beijing accounted for 26%, and investment institutions in Shanghai accounted for 26%. 22%, while local investment institutions in Wuhan accounted for only 13%. Many well-known investment institutions, including Zhenge, Meihua Angel, Shunwei Capital, Morningside Capital, Innovation Works, Sequoia Capital China, and Zhizhuo Capital, have come to Wuhan for investment.
Zhou Kui, a partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund, said in a media interview earlier that there are many entrepreneurs in Hubei, and there are also many outstanding companies. There are innovative companies ranging from IT to medical and consumer. In the environment of "double innovation", more outstanding enterprises will grow up in the future. Sequoia Capital has also invested in nearly ten companies in Hubei. IT categories include Dolphin Browser, Douyu, etc.; medicine categories include Wuhan Asian Heart Hospital, BGI, etc.; consumer categories include Today convenience stores...They are all industries Among the top companies.
The investor Yang Peng also said that Wuhan has its own industrial outlets, which are technological innovation and consumption upgrades. In the field of consumer retail, Wuhan has chain enterprises such as Zhou Hei Ya, Liangpin Shop, Qianji Cake, etc., all of which are outstanding in the subdivision field.
There are more than 2,000 Internet companies, and 50 companies with 100 billion yuan will be developed
In recent years, Wuhan has undoubtedly become a national strategic focus city. East Lake High-tech Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone, National Comprehensive Reform Experimental Zone, Yangtze River Economic Belt, Central China Rise and other strategies are superimposed, including Xiaomi, HKUST Xunfei, Xiaohongshu, Musheng Technology, ofo shared bicycles, GSX, Jiangmin Technology, Suntech, Ape Coaching, Oriental Dream, Uber, Qihoo 360, Mobike, Digital China, Huafa Group, China Medical Equipment Corporation, Qingteng Cloud Security, Flight Butler, Hujiang Education, Megvii More than 20 well-known Internet companies, including technology, have settled their "second headquarters" in Wuhan.
In June 2017, Xiaomi's Wuhan headquarters was officially unveiled. The founder Lei Jun also announced when he participated in the Xiaomi mobile phone global core supplier conference that he would invest 23 billion yuan in Wuhan in the next few years; in November, Xinzhongli Group announced the enterprise Huazhong The headquarters will be located in the Wuhan Development Zone. The founder Wang Chaoyong said that in the next three to five years, Xinzhongli’s investment in Hubei will reach tens of billions; on May 20, China Chengxin Group also announced that it will move its corporate headquarters to Wuhan... …
Today, Wuhan is already the "City of Entrepreneurship" in the new economy. There are more than 2,000 Internet companies, and more than 30 companies have raised more than 100 million yuan. A total of 272 companies are listed on the New Third Board, ranking first in central cities. In 2017, there were 70 NEEQ companies with an annual operating profit of more than 10 million yuan, of which 39 had an operating profit of more than 20 million yuan.
And Wuhan is obviously not satisfied with the status quo. Chen Mingquan, Deputy Secretary-General of the Wuhan Municipal People’s Government, introduced at the GAIS meeting: "Wuhan had 20 companies with 10 billion yuan last year. In the East Lake Development Zone alone, there were no less than 200 Internet companies and 5 unicorn companies have been cultivated. In the future 3 —In 5 years, Wuhan will develop 50 enterprises with 100 billion yuan and vigorously develop a batch of invisible champion enterprises."
In order to fully obtain the support of the capital market, the relevant person in charge of the Wuhan Municipal Finance Office stated that in addition to encouraging domestic IPOs to list A-shares, Wuhan also encourages companies to land on the Nasdaq in the United States and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through the red chip model to achieve overseas listings. Of enterprises strongly support. Companies can choose their own way of listing, and the Wuhan Municipal Government will provide financial rewards to local companies that are listed overseas.
According to the "2017 China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report", Wuhan accounted for only 5 of the 164 unicorn companies in China in 2017. However, it is undeniable that Wuhan, which is changing every day, is eager to try, overtaking in curves. Return to Sohu to see more
