Helping Chinese entrepreneurs grow and go global

Editor’s note: This post comes from Bob Zheng, Founder of People Squared, a network of tech hubs supporting China based entrepreneurs in Beijing and Shanghai.

China, with a population of over 1.3 billion, has one of the world's most vibrant startup ecosystems. There are more ‘unicorns’ (private companies valued at more than US$1 billion) in Beijing alone than anywhere else in the world other than Silicon Valley. But the accelerating pace of innovation coming from China doesn’t end with the well known companies, like Didi Chuxing and Xiaomi. There is a rapidly expanding group of new disruptors, small local startups growing, trying new things, and increasingly looking for ways to go global. These are the entrepreneurs we’re passionate about supporting on their journey.

That’s why we’re so thrilled to be joining the global Google for Entrepreneurs partner network today, as the first member from China. With this tremendous support from Google, in the form of financial resources and expertise, we hope to make the journey for these Chinese entrepreneurs into larger domestic and increasingly international markets a little quicker and a lot more successful.

As China’s earliest established and largest domestic co-working space, our mission at People Squared has been to create spaces that connect entrepreneurs. We have 20 spaces spread throughout Shanghai and Beijing, including a new space in ZhongGuanCun. Here are a few pics of what these spaces look like:

Since 2010, we have supported more than 10,000 members, and have become the proud home-base for many well known startups, including Fotoplace, Xiaozhu, Mofang, Get, Where to go Weekend and many more. So far, the 300 teams based at People Squared have raised more than US$300 million.

We’ve been working with great partners to help make this happen. At our ‘Hero Center’ space in Shanghai, for example, we work with organizations like Xinchejian, China Accelerator and Techyizu to establish a community that supports and engages the broader startup ecosystem. But we’d like to become the place where Chinese entrepreneurs start on a journey towards growing not just in China, but globally as well.

As a member of the Google for Entrepreneurs partner network now, we think we are well on the way. We’re super excited to announce that effective immediately our community will have access to work from more than 25 member spaces globally, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo to Sydney to Seoul, including Google’s 6 Campuses. They will also have access to a host of great programs Google runs for entrepreneurs, such as Google for Entrepreneurs Exchange, a series of week-long, vertically-specific global immersion programs aimed at helping startups gain access into new markets and insights.

This is an important opportunity for us and our members to learn from and collaborate with the best organizations helping startups globally. We can’t wait to see what kind of impact it will have on our community and the local startup ecosystem.