Editor’s note: Zhang Siyu, male, 2014 School of Public Economics and Administration undergraduate student majored in real estate development and management, the current CEO of Shanghai Zhang Zhang Network Technology Co., Ltd., founder of JingTong China. He has served successively as the project manager of Coffee_Green, and was the founder of the Together. He has participated in Guanghua Entrepreneurship Competition and won the Special Award as well as the Best Popularity Award, won the second prize of 2016 "Guansheng Park Cup" National Financial University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, got the silver medal in Dream Training Camp, won third place in 2016 National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Jiangxi Division, third prize in 2016 National "Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Creativity" Competition. In January 2017, he won the 2016 Shanghai University of Finance and Economics "Jingjia Entrepreneurship Award".
Curiosity is a prerequisite for every entrepreneur
Eight years ago, 12-year-old Zhang Siyu walked on the way home from school, and was attracted by a special book in the roadside bookstore, which was a yellow book named - "Chinese Yellow Pages". He was just curious, and never thought that this yellow book, through which he learned Jack Ma and his eighteen arhats' entrepreneurial story, changed the trajectory of his life from then on. This was the first time that he knew the third way of the future direction, entrepreneurship, apart form being a white-collar in a company, or a civil servant.
In 2011, Steve Jobs died. Zhang Siyu read his biography, and the story that Steve and Wards founded the world's most valuable company in the garage, deeply shocked him, and Jobs’ business without threshold strengthened his entrepreneurial determination.
If you go all out, the whole world will make way for you
Zhang liked a girl in high school, but she said: "If you take the first in the examination I will be with you."
You know, at that time there was a genius who was good at sitting exams in the district, getting dozens of scores ahead of the second one every time.
Just for her words, Zhang Siyu spent the rest of the time studying, in addition to calling three hours a day habitually. A month later, he won the first place in the joint exam of six high schools in Chengdu.
He said he had only one idea at that time: If you go all out, the whole world will make way for you.
Taking risks to join Coffee_Green, benefiting a group of people
When he saw the bright red banner "Cradle of Chinese entrepreneurs" on the gate of SUFE, Zhang knew that he came to the right place.
Zhang joined Coffee_Green project, then they need to go to each coffee shop in University Road to collect coffee grounds. However a month later, he was the only one to do this hard but thankless job, and he had collected coffee grounds regardless of wind or rain for one year. He contacted with the Shanghai Jinshan Mushroom Farm to produce mushroom bag at the same time, and in that year, he and his group gave more than 10 Shanghai communities of a total of 800 low-income people about 5000 bags free of charge, which helped each family increase their income by 400 yuan per month.
Later, a coffee shop manager recommended Zhang Siyu a Hainan Maker, with who he chatted much congenially online. During the Spring Festival, regardless of the objection from his family, Zhang went to Hainan alone with the money that should be used to buy air ticket backing to Chengdu.
Zhang reached Hainan on a rainy day. Zhang Siyu stood at the airport entrance, waited for a black van with five middle-aged men in the car, and a man rolled down the window and shouted at him, "Hey, Siyu!" It was a lie that he did not panic at that time, and Zhang also felt afraid, so he pretended to tie his shoes and sent a text message to his mother, "if I did not give you a call tonight, call the police."
He trembled in the car, saw the car drive into an old neighborhood, followed these men into a shabby rented room, then his worry was growing. After all, no one knew where he went, nor what kind of person he met.
However, he was a lucky dog.
In that week, Zhang Siyu followed the group of Makers with an average age of 40 years old to run around, traveled more than half of Hainan to collect about ten types of agricultural products, started the entrepreneurial bazaar together, and invited the local media to report in order to build brands for Hainan agricultural products, to increase income of farmers in Hainan. Zhang got along with a group of more than 40-year-old social entrepreneurs like brothers, and they got together and dreamed together because of the same job and the same faith. It made him feel strongly that entrepreneurship is a very interesting thing, and the ability should be respected.
A new project was established on April Fool's Day
In April 2015, Zhang Siyu wanted to start his own project, a real entrepreneurship business.
So on April 1, he and five other like-minded people set up their project, hoping to provide an information integration release channel for national universities, and match the students to like-minded friends, hoping that every college student took part in more interesting activities instead of wasting time. It took them two days to stay up late and wrote a business plan of over ten thousand words, and they won 8,000 yuan as start-up capital, which made them encouraged. They sang together on Zhang’s birthday, and then proposed night riding to the Bund. His group, was looking for the route at the time, cold and sleepy in the wee hours, and took the wrong way, but finally rode to the Bund at three o'clock in the morning. This was just like entrepreneurship, that a group of people determined the same purpose, groped forward, and even if their equipment was not complete, even if they encountered setbacks, they were eventually move toward their goals.
At that time, few people in the Bund. They sat on the road with the largest traffic volumes during the day to take pictures, overlooked the brightly lit Lujiazui in the viewing platform, and this group of strangers blooded flowing in their heart when they looked at the Financial Center of Shanghai.
Entering the Kuangshi Class to accept entrepreneurship education
Zhang and his group spent a lot of time to discuss their project together every Friday afternoon, touched a lot of unfamiliar fields gradually. In the summer vacation, Zhang Siyu took his project to participate in the School of Entrepreneurship Kuangshi Class of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, to accept the systematic entrepreneurship education. During the time of the class, he found his company, and President Fan, President Liu and the teachers of the School celebrated the birth of their company together, which made him feel very lucky.
In the Kuangshi Class, he met his current partner Zhang Zhong. And a roadshow let Zhang Siyu met Mr. Dong Zhanbin in Qingsong Fund, who showed great interest in Zhang’s group and kept communication in the summer. Manager Dong thought that the market of college students private assistant was bigger, while the original direction need to expand the business around the school, the school communities and students. They could not afford the capital and human consumption in that way at that time, so they decided transition.
With the help of General Manager Dong, they successfully completed the financing of seed round with 500,000 yuan in October, and the project crossed the first milestone, which solved the problem of money.
At the end of 2015 Zhang and his group looked for outsourcing companies to develop the Demo of WeChat version, held an online product launch with thousands of people during the Chinese New Year. But because of poor user experience and the logic of the product also had some problems, so they gave up using it. Through this practice, they found that WeChat could not provide a good user experience and they must develop the APP.
Project positioning also had to be adjusted at the same time. They originally wanted to screen and train the students to be personal assistants for the middle and high-end personage in society, but found that both market need to develop user habits. Although the plan was full of gimmicks, it was difficult to operate persistently for a long term and generate revenue. It was better to focus on developing college students skills and then create value for the society, which not only settled the pain points that college students wanted to make part-time money and exercise their ability, but also solved the agency's employment problems.
They hired a full-time IOS, formed a technical team with several friends, and had been developing for more than two months. The APP would launch in Apple and Android platform soon, and the operation team found some reliable people in succession. Everyone stayed in the office all day, brainstormed, thought about product, about the future, and entrepreneurial atmosphere was strong. They found seed users to experience their product together, and verified their ideas. Zhang and his group prepared to test all of their ideas in SUFE, make SUFE a "model room", and then gradually attracted outstanding college students in other schools .
In terms of institutions, Zhang decided to aim at the start-up groups firstly, because their problems were most pressing, and need efficient as well as low-cost services. Then the high-quality students were great choices, for they could help start-up enterprises quickly. At the same time, if the enterprises found outstanding university students in practice, they could recruit him or her into their own teams. After Zhang and his group’s test, finding employees through Together compared to the traditional corporate recruitment, the quality of the candidates were much higher while the time cost was less than half the original one.
And students could really find what they want to do, which could not only exercise their abilities, accumulate social experience, but also could earn extra money, bring them lager imaginary space than the traditional part-time platform.
Recruiting followers, developing rapidly
Zhang Siyu achieved their goals with classmates around in the beginning. Since it was a part-time, which is low cost and low efficiency, they had to guarantee the completion of the work with large numbers of people. After their financing, with capital, recruiting was no longer a problem, and the original part-time student team was replaced by almost full-time team gradually. Their group basically hired followers through friends’ recommendation and Boss Recruitment. It was not exaggerated at all that they chose one in a hundred, because innovation, persistence, patience, were really indispensable on the way of entrepreneurship.
Wang Xingguang was such a operational director who experienced the fierce competition. The co-founder of the Part-time Rabbit, led the company financing 10 million in 2014, and later worked in Vanke Shanghai Branch as the Internet Crowd-Funding project operation director. Such a rare talent, after a meeting with Zhang Siyu, was willing to give up high salary, picked up the entrepreneurial passion, started a business and ate and lived with the like-minded little man. His joining soon brought the company's operations on track.
The birth of JingTong China
During the three months of practice, Zhang and his group found that students can provide the skills of 'To B' and 'To C' two categories. 'To C' mainly represented art related skills, and they found that this kind of skills realized with some issues such as low-frequency non-rigid demand, information clutter. Therefore, they focused decisively on 'To B' skills, in which cash flow was good, and the user viscosity was high. After one month of practice again, they focused on three categories: new media, design and video, and these three types just belong to modifying and branding, and related with each other. So the company was re-named "JingTong China", meaning "mining elite talent, unite with high-quality enterprises", positioned as a beauty salon based on sharing economy for start-ups. They hoped to provide a whole set of the highest cost-effective Internet marketing solutions for the entrepreneurial enterprises.
In order to enter into the market, Zhang and his group set up their own online new media matrix, publicized their product through the Internet circle, and registered and obtained customer orders on their own initiative at Witkey and part-time recruitment websites, such as ZBJ.COM. Offline, they took maker space as positional warfare and made their standardization services being value-added services of space, while entrepreneurship activities as guerrilla warfare and they often participated activities, sent business cards and three folding to communicate with start-ups. As a result, within two months, they reached cooperation intention with over 30 spaces, took part in 60 activities, and radiated about 5000 start-up teams.
Currently JingTong China has 15 full-time employees, more than one thousand elites, served over one hundred customers, and it would soon realize profit and loss balance with its flow reaching half a million.
Zhang and his group hoped to serve for 8,000 start-ups in Shanghai next year. In the future, JingTong China would really solve the Internet marketing problems of start-ups, making enterprises more sexy and liquidating elites’ skills.