The Old Imperial City’s New Vitality
Through the teahouse, entrepreneurs from all over the country come to Hangzhou, to secure funding and support, and to start their dreams. As more and more entrepreneurial teams move in, the space in the original teahouse is obviously not enough. Soon, teahouses will be moved to the Fund Town in the south of Yuhuang or Jade Emperor Hill.
In a few days, the teahouse named Jiangnan 1535 in Phoenix Creative Park is about to move.
This is a special teahouse. People come here not to drink tea, but to start a business. Similar to a start-up cafe, Jiangnan 1535 is actually a co-creation space, a platform for building communication and docking resources for entrepreneurs, and an incubator for early entrepreneurial teams and projects.
Chen Yu, one of the founders of the teahouse, had first launched this crowdfunding program on the Internet.
Its first “investment” came from a vendor who contributed his entire income of the day—1535 yuan. So Chen Yu named the teahouse 1535. The amount of money also became a standard—as long as that amount is paid, anyone can become a shareholder of the business. If he comes to the teahouse, he will have access to the entrepreneurial space, the initial capital support, and the resources of investors.
In only one year, the teahouse has more than 7, 000 investors, and has raised more than 8 million yuan.
Finally, it opened at the foot of Phoenix Hill. 800 years ago, here was the site of the imperial palace of the Southern Song Dynasty. Now it is the central part of Hangzhou, under the jurisdiction of the Shangcheng District. In recent years, the former imperial palace site has become quite popular with entrepreneurs, having many of the area’s Jiangnan-styled houses and old factory buildings turned into cultural creation parks, art spaces, and co-creation gardens. This is a land where history co-exits with modern fashion, a land with strong innovation vitality.
Soon, teahouses will be moved to the Fund Town in the south of Yuhuang Hill. Fortunately, it is close — only 3 kilometers away.
The Fund Town, an innovation of the Shangcheng District government, is a new favorable place in Hangzhou’s venture and investment circle. At present, total assets managed by the Town exceeds 526 billion yuan. In the next three years, it will attract and cultivate more than 1,000 financial institutions of different kinds, with total assets of 1 trillion yuan under its management.