On Saturday, we were glad to have Loïc Kobes, Co-founder of Coolhobo as well as Justin, from China Accelerator to share more about their company and startup experience. Part I : Loïc Kobes, CEO/ Co-founder of Cool Hobo Loïc was born and raised in middle Europe. He enjoys travelling and previously worked for Siemens, Lufthansa, Ole and more before starting his own startup with his close friend, Flo. A combination of food and virtual reality, Coolhobo targets food scandal problems in China by providing consumers diversity in food purchases. Their two-sided platform allow consumers to easily source for food products from credible European brands whilst giving European brands the opportunity to establish themselves in China in the long run. On top of that, each food box they deliver comes with a complementary VR headset that gives consumers a peak into the European lifestyle and food production process of the food they ordered. In his sharing, Loïc shared 5 important takeaways he had from his startup journey. 1. Why you shouldn’t be overly excited about China market Firstly, China is a complicated and expensive market, where customer acquisition cost is high. Contrary to popular belief, customer acquisition and setting up a business is difficult here due to heavy red tape, stiff competition, spoiled consumers and the country’s unique ecosystem of apps and technology. Speaking from his personal experience, he shared that he spent 8 months settling the paperwork for setting up Coolhobo. As a foreigner, he also had to adapt to the Chinese ecosystem and learn how to use the different apps and sites unique to the country like Baidu and WeChat. 2. Networking Tips Network matters. Loïc emphasized the importance of finding a mentor that sees value in your startup. He also talked about the consistent effort required to build your network. Building networks is not an one-day affair, but the result of accumulated efforts over an extensive period of time. 3. Lean Startup Model Ideas are shit. Instead of building your ideas based on assumptions, use the lean startup model and test your ideas as soon as possible. This is to allow you to further improve upon your idea and validate it with data. 4. Networking Tips Data is king. When establishing a startup, it is important to build analytics and metrics to help with decision making. This allows for accurate and sound decision making when coming up with your product or service. 5. Team-building Lastly, building a great team is very important. Whilst gathering the right people for your team is a complicated process, Loïc shares his two methods in finding his team. The first way is through friendship, and another is through attending startup events, where it provides you the platform to see how people work and the skills they have. Part II : Justin, China Accelerator Justin, from China Accelerator then shared about his company. China Accelerator is a send funding program under SOSV, an early stage venture capital firm created by Sean O’ Sullivan, the founder of internet mapping. China Accelerator provides the opportunity for non-Chinese companies to enter the Chinese market. With a high return of investment of 38%, it provides resources and mentorship to startups, allowing them to build up their products and services. Its sister company, MOX, is a mobile-only accelerator in Taiwan that enables mobile apps, platforms and services from around the world to reach hundreds of millions of users. We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank Loïc and Justin for taking time off to speak to us about their companies and startup experience. We hope that future NOC speaker series will be as fulfilling as this. Follow NUS Overseas College (NOC) Shanghai on Facebook for more recent updates.
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SHEN
申城 (shen cheng) is an ancient name for Shanghai.
As a group of NUS and NOC students who are in Shanghai for a year-long internship programme, we have named our student organisation as SHEN (Shanghai House of Entrepreneurs). Archives
November 2017
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