Entrepreneur Commons launch @xindanwei
Time: 2:00pm Sunday June, 20th
This is an Invitation Only Event, please send your name, title, contact information and introduction of your organization to xindanwei@gmail.com if you wish to receive the invitation. We will contact you shortly to confirm your participation.
What is Entrepreneur Commons @xindanwei:
Entrepreneur Commons @xindanwei is the China Chapter of Entrepreneur Commons (http://www.entreco.org), a not-for-profit program to help entrepreneurs find advice, mentoring, share resources and have opportunities to raise funding.
It includes several components:
- an international peer-support program, with chapters currently in 11 cities: San Francisco (5 chapters), Menlo Park, Oakland (CA), Palo Alto, New York, Miami, Chicago, Paris (2 chapters), Madrid, Shanghai, Seoul.
- a global peer-learning platform http://entreco.supercoolschool.com.
- moving forward, entrepreneurs will also have access to financial partners, including a fund (currently being raised) with a focus on debt financing rather than equity financing.
What is the format of the meeting?
The program consist of monthly closed-group meetings (5 to 10 entrepreneurs per group) where entrepreneurs can share successes and challenges, so that all can benefit from good news and all can contribute to resolve issues.
It also includes regular (semi-annual) open forums (Social Innovation China) with an extended group of partners from the entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as regular adhoc classes provided through the online peer-learning platform.
There is no dollar cost for attending, the real cost of the meetings is the opportunity cost of the time attendees invest. The meeting format and schedule is designed to foster deep relationships and comraderie inside the groups, which will foster openness, collaboration, and sustainable support structures over time. Participants will gain proportionally and directly from the time they invest.
Where we are today:
There are today approximately 200 entrepreneurs spread over 15 chapters in 11 cities, and we will be expanding further in Asia, (Shanghai, Bangalore) in Europe (Barcelona, Athens, Edinburgh), and new cities in the US.
What you get beyond the local meetings:
- Access to the EntrepreneurU training program, for more intensive learning and knowledge sharing
- As a social entrepreneur, you may apply for workspace funding provided by Social Innovation Center of China YouChange Social Entrepreneur Foundation to start your office among Xindanwei coworking community.
- Access to Angelsoft Deal management, which allows us to establish a pipeline that can be accessed by financial partners and that will be used to disperse money once the Entrepreneur Commons fund(s) have been established. Our funding model and goal is to establish several regional funds rather than one large fund, because investment is local business.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Discussion Outcome of Topic 3: (note done by @liuyan)
1. There was a question from participant in regards to the definition of social entrepreneur, i.e. who are the target audience of Social Innovation China? Richard Brubaker has explained his spectrum about social entrepreneur and social venture, the outline can be found at http://collectiveresponsibility.org/en/plotting-chinas-social-entrepreneurs
2. Another question is about the objective of the Social Innovation China event and the tool of measuring the success. The objectives should be more specific in order to help evaluate if the event has been organized in the expected way and created the expected impact.
3. Suggestion about integrating next Social Innovation China in the Social Innovation Carnival(august-september) organized by YouChange foundation in Shanghai is considered. This should bring a good starting point of collaboration between SI China and local foundation to get more local public and social entrepreneurs involved.
Discussion Outcome of Topic 2:
Recorded by Amy
一、 主题：一个业余的创业团队需要如何随机应变调整团队结构——首先，我们真的需要一个全职伙伴吗？
Topic: how an after-work social entrepreneurial venture should set up its own team structure. First of all, do we really need a full-time member?
二、 主题发起人：歪歪
Initiator: YY
三、 发言人：
Spokesman:
歪歪：如果聘用一个全职伙伴，目标是每周工作20小时，主要负责联络协调工作，以提高团队的整体工作效率。请问你们是什么时候开始雇用第一个员工的？
YY: If we hire a full-time member, he will work 20 hours per week and focus on liaison and coordination to improve the overall work efficiency of the team. When did you hire the first employee?
陈叙：新单位09年7月成立，当时3个人全职做，半年多之后，有了第一个全职雇员。我的观点是企业的长期发展，雇用全职很必要。
Chen Xu: Xin Dan Wei was established in July 2009 with three full-time members. More than six months later, we hired our first full-time employee. My view is that for the long-term development of the enterprise, it’s necessary to hire full-time employees.
Danny Chang：我认为当一个企业的现金流稳定时，就应该有专人去做了。问题是歪歪的企业目前的现金流是否是稳定的？因此需要做一个财务分析。
Danny Chang: I think when a company’s cash flow is stable, there should be one person to do the job. The problem is if currently your cash flow is stable. You need to do a financial analysis.
歪歪：所以说，在创业初期团队的结构取决于长期目标，需要多少人力以达到这个目标。
YY: So in the early stage the team structure depends on the long-term goal and how many people are needed to achieve this goal.
Alan Lee：作为创业的人，首先要想清楚自己的重点。目前歪歪的团队成员都是兼职在做，那么自己本身的那份全职工作是重点，还是自己创办的企业是重点？人力资源建设要先想清楚自己想做什么。
Alan Lee: Being an entrepreneur, you must firstly make it clear what your first priority is. The members of YY’s team are currently all doing part-time, so what’s the priority, your full-time job or your own business? To build the human resources, you must firstly think what you want.
Betty Zhang：我们的企业创办于06年，发展至今最大的难题之一是资金。
Betty Zhang: Our company was founded in 2006, currently one of the biggest problems is money.
Alan Lee：有想法无资金怎么办？找企业家！找从事NGO行业相关的企业家。要扩大找的范围和渠道。企业家到了一定的阶段，就有意愿做一些有意义的事，比如公益。
Alan Lee: what can we do if we have ideas but no funds? Look for the help from entrepreneurs! Look for entrepreneurs engaged in NGO related industry. We need to expand the scope and channels. Entrepreneurs will have the will to do something meaningful, such as common good, when they develop to a certain stage
四、 总结：创业团队首先要明确自己的想法和重点，团队的人力资源建设取决于企业的长期发展目标。
Summary: an entrepreneur team should make clear their own ideas and priorities. The building of the team’s human resources depends on the company’s long-term development goals.
The outcome of the discussions are:
Topic 1: (Notes provided by Elsie, third question was not covered due to the time limit)
1. As regards full-time employees, a majority of them would like to hire Part-time employees.
The pros of part-time: save money; the company can get the fresh idea all the time; the part-time co-workers can finish the work in time and also keep good quality of work; without the trouble of complicated Chinese labor law(invoice, cash, contract and so on.).
They expressed that if they want to hire full-time employees, it depends on the level of enterprise’s development. Contract is an important thing, not only the content on surface it represents, but also the safe feeling to the staff. And making a home feeling of the company is the entrepreneur wants to, no matter what the labor law is (Foreign law or Chinese law). Sometimes, people’s emotion and feeling can make sense.
2. As regards a small business’s IT dept. (in house vs. outsourced, etc.), a majority of them would like to choose outsourcing IT support. Nowadays, the new technology skill is pretty important. More and more small business entrepreneur pay much attention to IT aspect.
The reason for choosing outsourcing is as follows:
1) Control the deadline and economize the cost
2) Ensure the quality, much more professional
3) Effective work (In-house workers may delay the item and have many excuses for mistakes. If you want to hire an in-house and professional worker, it needs a huge amount of money.)
4) Core-tech.
But there is still some crisis, for example, the safety of the technology. We need to make an agreement for privacy policy with outsourcing at that moment.
The launch of Entrepreneur Commons China Chapter has given us, the Xindanwei team, a great learning opportunity to mobilize a house full of entrepreneurs to achieve peer-to-peer learning. This is truly unforgettable experience; I personally have learned some major differences between an open discussion with no direct requirement for concrete outcomes (which I have organized regularly before) and a real action-learning event. Because it is the first time, we have allowed us to make mistakes and didn’t set the standard too high for p-2-p learning outcomes. The sunny sides of the first attempt are: 1. we have gathered more than 35 entrepreneurs and some good sharing topics; 2. The event has generated some really good dialogues for further development of entrepreneur p-2-p learning.
This event is over subscribed in terms of number of participants despite of our filtering effort. In order to keep the discussion more intensive and interactive, we divided the participants into three subgroups three days before the event and tried to get an entrepreneur with their specific topics (questions) to host a subgroup.
After my introduction of Entrepreneur Commons, the host of each subgroup presented their subject in public, and then continued the discussion in separate room for 40 minutes with the interested participants. At the end of the event, the summaries of the subgroup discussion are shared in public.
At the end of the event, we have had an open discussion on how to improve entreco meetup of next time, there are a few concrete suggestions from the participants:
1. Shorten the introduction time. People tend to spend too much time on introducing themselves and “advertise” their company or project. And because of the language issue, everything need to be said twice.
2. The sharing should be more intensive and more productive.
Firstly, it took a long time for the participants to really figure out what the question really is.
Secondly, Some hosts lacked experiences and preparation in dealing with peer-to-peer learning and open discussion, the formulation of the “problem” was not clear enough, the discussion got easily distracted and wasn’t always focusing on the questions itself, and the task of summarizing discussion was not completed fully.
Thirdly, commented by Elsie, one of the coordinators: “when people meet with each other for the first time, they may not really want to say some deep things of their company with others. Everyone is an entrepreneur, the biggest reason they come here is to develop their own business. So some communications just like a chat, not a technical discuss. Maybe somebody prepared well and had good presentation about their company’s information, but what the audience really learnt was the surface thing. What the audience really got was just in an promotional way from another entrepreneur.” She suggested further “as one point for the long-term development of “Entrepreneur Commons” to be considered, what is the core point to attract and hold these entrepreneurs together for a long time shall be considered.”
What can be done better?
a. Provide a concrete format of introduction, just name, organization, no more than three words about your expectation for the event.
b. The subject needs to be sent out to the participants before the event takes place so participants will have chance to prepare.
c. Choose the host and subject more carefully (maybe an online forum to let everyone vote?), there should be a clearer communication in advance with the host about how to brief the problem to your peers, provide them basic tools to host a discussion and the self evaluation for improvement.
d. Assign someone in advance to take note for the discussion
e. use some playful way and tools to build trust and intimacy with each other before starting to share.
f. Establish a direct link among the participants via social media tools to allow regular communication beyond the monthly meet-up.
活动当天照片即将上线~~ photos are coming~
初创期企业和小企业们，大家有福啦！！7月的茶话会，我们将邀请律师为大家普及和解惑企业经营中所遇到的法务问题，敬请期待！also have a little announcement for July’s chitchat. we will have a session for start-ups and small businesses, delivered by a lawyer who is specialized in corporate law, employment regulations etc.
We had 3 subgroups and the topics of these three subgroups are:
Topic 1: (by John Pasden and Song Shen of All Set Learning)
1. How do you decide when to hire full-time employees? Are there any tips for dealing with Chinese labor law?
2. How do you develop a small business’s IT department? (in-house vs. outsourced, etc.)
3. What does a realistic plan for offering key players equity look like? Are there any viable alternatives to equity for small businesses?
Topic 2:(by Wu Yuanjing of Warmfund.org)
How an after-work social entrepreneurial venture should set up its own team structure. First of all, do we really need a full-time member?
Topic 3: (by Mark Evans of Social Innovation China)
Social Innovation China is an unstructured and open event bringing together the local and international community of: social entrepreneurs and changemakers, innovators, artists and geeks who use technology and creativity for good people interested in social responsibility and making a difference. This event is a platform to network, exchange ideas, explore collaboration and Get Things Done. The first event of Social Innovation China was held on April 24, 2010. What are going to happen next? How can we change the format to make it a more successful event?
Wonderful event!
Happy to meet many young people with their dreams!
hey have some pic thatday?
What do you think about our 1st session and what is your further comments? Please leave it here!
sounds interesting, would love to join!