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In 2017, Liu Guangyao chose to take a leave of absence to start a business when he was in his first year of graduate school. He studied for his undergraduate degree at Guanghua School of Management of Peking University and for his graduate degree at the Department of Finance of School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. "In an elite class, there are many excellent partners who have always been smart and excellent, but in the end they are restricted by this excellence," Liu Guangyao believes.

As early as 1999, Tsinghua University had a policy to support the first batch of college students who took a leave of absence to start a business. That year, less than 20 people from Tsinghua University took a leave of absence to start a business, includingChinese OnlineChairman and President Tong Zhilei, also includesKunlun WanweiChairman and CEO Zhou Yahui.

Today, Tsinghua Pioneer Park stretches from Tsinghua South Road in the east to Lanqiying University Teachers' Residential Area in the west, Chengfu Road in the south, and the south campus wall of Tsinghua University in the north. It covers an area of ​​25 hectares and has a construction area of ​​about 730,000 square meters. The value of this land was once described as follows. There are now more than 400 companies in the park, includingSohu、NetEase, Kuaishou. Their entrepreneurial stories have inspired many young people.

Liu Guangyao is now the founder of bosie, a "non-sexist" fashion designer brand. Building 2 of Hangzhou Yishang Town is Liu Guangyao's seventh office after three years of entrepreneurship. Liu Guangyao has three-dimensional facial features, is tall and thin, and entrepreneurship has made him more calm than his age.

Liu Guangyao

Among Liu Guangyao's classmates, entrepreneurship seems to have lost its luster. None of his graduate school classmates started a business, and most of them chose investment banks. There were also very few entrepreneurs in the same year of undergraduates and in the entire college. This is indeed the case. MyCOS data shows that the number of college students starting their own businesses has been gradually declining since 2015.

A few years ago, Liu Guangyao's undergraduate college produced a famous college student entrepreneur, Dai Wei, the founder of ofo. "Dai Wei's final defeat was a big touch for all young entrepreneurs. The impact of this event on young people may exceed our imagination of the event itself," Liu Guangyao said. "Zhang Xuhao is a model of successful college student entrepreneurship in the past decade."

Zhu Xiaohu, a partner of Jinshajiang Venture Capital, has invested in Zhang Xuhao and Dai Wei. "It is very rare for entrepreneurs to create hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of wealth. Most entrepreneurs' projects may be small and medium-sized enterprises that can support dozens or hundreds of employees. Such small and medium-sized enterprises can also help the society solve many employment problems," Zhu Xiaohu believes.

In 2017, Liu Guangyao received his first round of financing, 700,000 yuan. He was admitted to Peking University as the second-best liberal arts student in Shandong Province. During his undergraduate studies, he served as the vice president of the Peking University Student Union and was later recommended to study for a master's degree at Tsinghua University. Before this round of financing, Liu Guangyao had already spent 200,000 yuan.

The 200,000 yuan was the cost of an exchange student program that his parents had prepared for him at HEC Paris, a business school ranked among the top three in Europe. Liu Guangyao wanted to go, but after weighing the pros and cons, he decided not to go and chose to start a business instead.

Liu Guangyao's entrepreneurial track is the clothing field. He feels that he is a beneficiary of the aesthetic dividend. "The aesthetic dividend has two ends, one is the demand side and the other is the supply side. There is a huge demand on the demand side, but the supply side has not kept up. There are huge opportunities in this."

In Liu Guangyao's view, "If consumers only have a monthly budget of 1,000 yuan, how can we match their upgraded aesthetic needs? Information equality leads to aesthetic equality. We hope to give those with ordinary spending power the dignity of fashion and the right to pursue beauty. To put it simply, my taste has improved, but I still have no money, so what kind of things can I buy?"

So, Liu Guangyao started his own business with the 200,000 yuan given by his parents. He went to various student clubs and posted on forums. Soon, he recruited the first few partners, including those from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Donghua University, and Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he participated in a competition held by the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, and his brand won first place.

This competition gave Liu Guangyao confidence, and he felt that he could do this seriously. Liu Guangyao first found a senior from Peking University who was more than ten years older than him. The senior invested 700,000 yuan in him. Later, he found Jiacheng Capital and Angel Bay Venture Capital and got 3 million yuan in investment.

Liu Guangyao decided to drop out of school. He was 22 years old that year.

In fact, it is not news that students drop out of Tsinghua to start a business. In 1999, Tong Zhilei, Chairman and President of China Online, and Zhou Yahui, Chairman and CEO of Kunlun Wanwei, the top winners of the first Tsinghua University Entrepreneurship Competition, walked out of the Tsinghua student dormitory with 500,000 yuan in start-up funds and entered the office building of the Research and Development Building.

Liu Guangyao's decision to drop out of school was strongly opposed by his parents, but they decided to respect him. Liu Guangyao's father is a surgeon and his mother is a pediatrician.

"They are at the ends of life and death. My mother embraces life every day, while my father sees all kinds of tragic human situations every day. Therefore, my parents have very low expectations for me. They don't expect me to have great worldly achievements."

Liu Guangyao is part of the entrepreneurial movement among college students. The 2018 China College Student Employment Report by the MyCOS Research Institute shows that the proportion of college graduates in 2017 who started their own business six months later was 2.9%, the same as the 2016 and 2015 classes (both 3.0%). Entrepreneurial ideals are the most important motivation for college graduates in 2017 to start their own businesses.

But three years later, this phenomenon has changed a lot.

Liu Guangyao remembers that Bosie's first office was in a factory, renting an area of ​​50 square meters. The conditions were very difficult. He had never experienced that kind of hardship since he was born, but he still felt very happy.

Liu Guangyao stepped into the clothing industry and looked around. It seemed that he had no competitors, but competitors were everywhere.WaxbirdBrands like , Semir are all targeting younger customers, so we have to compete with them. But all this is based on his success of Bosie. Bosie, pronounced as "Boxi", is Oscar Wilde's nickname for his lover, a handsome man.

Starting a business is a life-or-death struggle, and fate did not give Liu Guangyao much favor. Ben Horowitz, author of Hard Thing About Hard Things, summed up his entrepreneurial days like this: "In the more than eight years as CEO, there were only three days of good times, and the remaining eight years were almost all difficult."

"The first wave of products didn't sell well. Our designers at the time were all students and hadn't thought clearly about what kind of clothes to make. We had a fluke mentality and thought that if the clothes were good enough, the videos could be shot cooler, and the brand promotion could be done well, we would be successful. We were quite naive at the time. Later, this approach didn't work out and the 700,000 yuan was all spent."

In December 2017, the company raised the second round of funds from Jiacheng Capital and Angel Bay. At this time, Liu Guangyao made a big decision: he decided to move the company to Hangzhou.

They summed up their past failures and found that the reason for their failure was that they had no characteristics. "Our genderless products at the beginning might have been sexually apathetic, but we thought genderless products could be made more fancy and more prominent." So they produced another batch of products and participated in an event at Shanghai Fashion Week, where they were spotted by Tmall's investment promotion team.

In the first month of the Tmall store opening, Bosie sold 1 million. The monthly growth rate was 40%-50% and it snowballed rapidly. Then capital came knocking on the door. At the end of the year, ZhenFund also came in. The financing was finalized and the funds arrived, but there was another problem with the supply chain.

In April and May 2019, at the beginning of the peak season for summer clothing, Bosie had problems with order delivery, and 20,000 customer orders were piled up online without being shipped. Customers began to criticize Bosie for being a black-hearted merchant, and the backend also received a lot of negative reviews. Liu Guangyao would check the comments every day before going to bed and getting up, and he was scolded by them for a month.

One day at noon, Liu Guangyao went to the cafeteria to eat. He ordered a plate of shredded potatoes, a plate of shredded pork with fish sauce and a bowl of rice. Both dishes were his favorites. After sitting down, he ate while crying, and his tears dripped into the rice. Liu Guangyao felt very sad and miserable. He saw his inability to control the supply chain and his lack of preparation due to cognitive problems.

Liu Guangyao saw his own limitations. He started looking for people, talking to the factory, and asking his colleagues to do after-sales customer service and appease customers. During the whole process of dealing with the crisis, Liu Guangyao saw his own boundaries. Since then, he has become more and more humble.

Liu Guangyao's entrepreneurial dilemmas were also experienced by his senior brothers in their early years. In 2000, Tong Zhilei, who had just started his business for a year, encountered difficulties in his digital publishing business. The company only had three employees left. In order to survive, Tong Zhilei found a job with a monthly salary of tens of thousands of yuan, and relied on this salary to support the normal operation of the company.

Tong Zhilei offered himself a monthly salary of 1,200 yuan at the time, and his colleagues' salaries were higher than his, so the company was able to survive for a year. As for Zhou Yahui, he once described his feelings about starting a business like this: he often lived in despair, and could not see success or hope. Of course, for college entrepreneurs, the setbacks they experienced are also turning into strength to move forward in the future.

In 2019, in a meeting room at Qingshan Capital's office on the second floor of the Phoenix Hui office building in Sanyuanqiao, Zhang Ye, the founder of Qingshan Capital, sat opposite Liu Guangyao. The two hadn't seen each other for a year. Liu Guangyao came to Beijing from Hangzhou to raise funds. After chatting for an hour, Zhang Ye began to think about what kind of questions he could ask Liu Guangyao, who was sitting opposite him.

"Look at clothing. The first stage was driven by the supply chain. In the 1980s, whoever had the production resources and could produce the goods would sell them well. The second stage was driven by channels. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, in ten years, street shops, department stores and shopping malls blossomed everywhere in China. There were also subsequent traffic dividends from Taobao brands. Channels were king, and many clothing brands emerged as a result. What is the dividend of the era in which you are starting your business now?" Zhang Ye asked.

Zhang Ye believes that "the rise of any enterprise is due to the dividends of the times. This is a very difficult question. I think I should at least think about it before answering, or he will give me a Tai Chi-style answer." As a result, Liu Guangyao quickly answered me, "I seized the aesthetic dividend of the times."

"People are pursuing better aesthetics, and the transmission cycle of aesthetics has been greatly compressed. Behind the aesthetic dividend are many structural changes, changes in the population, such as young people becoming the main consumers, and changes in channels, such as the popularization of social media," Zhang Ye explained.

Although Zhang Ye did not stump Liu Guangyao, he was still very excited. He felt that the boy had a clear idea about the direction of his entrepreneurship. He did not hesitate any more and made a decision to invest in Bosie that day.

Zhang Ye of Qingshan Capital met Liu Guangyao in 2018. A junior introduced Liu Guangyao to Zhang Ye. "Guangyao was too young at that time. He just wanted to start a business in the clothing field, but he didn't know much about the clothing industry and the supply chain. He didn't think clearly about what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a trendy brand."

At that time, Zhang Ye did not invest in Liu Guangyao, but kept observing him for a year. Since then, Zhang Ye has kept in touch with Liu Guangyao regularly through WeChat and phone calls. In 2019, Liu Guangyao officially came to Sanyuanqiao Phoenix Club and talked to Zhang Ye. At that time, Bosie had already started selling, and Liu Guangyao also found the concept of gender-free clothing.

Zhang Ye was very surprised by Liu Guangyao's learning ability. In just one year, he had already understood the entire clothing industry quite well. He was very proficient in clothing supply chain, inventory system, fabrics, processing, and downstream dealer management. He also discovered the concept of gender-neutral clothing.

Of course, the growth that Zhang Ye saw was enough for Liu Guangyao to spend time and energy on, but the truly difficult growth is the spiritual training. In the second half of 2019, Liu Guangyao and his partner Li Qixian had a major disagreement on the company's strategy. Liu Guangyao hoped that Bosie would grow into a popular brand, while Li Qixian hoped that Bosie would maintain its sharpness and serve a specific niche circle.

Because of their different directions, Liu Guangyao and Li Qixian had more and more disagreements, and the final result was that Li Qixian withdrew. "This was a very difficult decision. I cried during the supply chain crisis in the first half of the year. This time I didn't cry, but it took me a year to get over it," Liu Guangyao described.

Entrepreneurship has always reshaped these young entrepreneurs. Tong Zhilei and Zhou Yahui, who were the first batch of Tsinghua students to take a leave of absence to start a business, have experienced this. When the capital chain was tight, they moved out of the Xueyan Building.

For Tong Zhilei and Zhou Yahui, the time they took a leave of absence to start a business seemed to be just a business exercise. Zhou Yahui said: "I think college students starting a business is like going to the battlefield with a wooden gun. They think they are heroes, but in fact it is just a wooden gun. One shot will kill you, and you can't kill others."

With just a few words, they summarized the past period of time. It was not light and breezy. Only those who have experienced it know how much they paid.

In 2010, the iPhone 4 smartphone was born, and the world truly enteredMobile InternetThe iPhone 4 brought a lot of space to mobile Internet entrepreneurs. During this period, two university student entrepreneurs' projects were very popular.

One is Zhang Xuhao, who founded Ele.me in 2008, and the other is Dai Wei, who founded ofo in 2015. These two projects have made college students' entrepreneurship very popular. "Dai Wei is a watershed in college students' entrepreneurship," Liu Guangyao believes. "His experience is a height that others may not be able to reach in their lifetime, but most entrepreneurs may care about the outcome."

Zhang Xuhao and Dai Wei started their business in the context of mass entrepreneurship, and they encountered a hot project, which increased the supply of capital in the market.

According to the statistics of Zero2IPO Group's Private Equity Channel, in 2014, VC/PE institutions raised a total of 745 new funds that can be invested in mainland China, which is nearly 10 times the market size ten years ago. This is because China's economy is in a period of transition. "In the past, funds generally flowed into the high-profit real estate industry, but in 2014, traditional industries such as steel, petrochemicals, and coal had overcapacity," said an analyst in the venture capital industry.

The abundant capital provided ammunition for the shared bike industry. This period can be regarded as the golden age for college students to start their own businesses. There was no shortage of opportunities or capital. In 2015, when Dai Wei started his business, according to MyCOS data, more than 200,000 college students in 2015 chose to start their own businesses, and the proportion of self-employed people was on the rise.

Time has washed away the dross, and Dai Wei and Zhang Xuhao, one of them had his shared bike dream shattered, and the other cashed out and left, but also in glory (in 2018, Zhang Xuhao's Ele.me was sold to Alibaba at a valuation of US$9.5 billion). Tong Zhilei's Chinese Online has been listed for many years, and Zhou Yahui has started investing and became famous in the investment circle with his investment notes.

As for the story of college students' entrepreneurship, here comes Liu Guangyao. Capital has long lost the craziness of the shared bike era and has returned to rationality. There seem to be fewer and fewer entrepreneurial opportunities that are in the spotlight. This period can actually be regarded as the Bronze Age of college students' entrepreneurship.

Zheng Yi, partner of Wanwu Capital and Qianshi Venture Capital, and former vice president of operations of Momo Technology, told Deepnet, "I have participated in some university student entrepreneurship competitions organized by schools and local organizations. Frankly speaking, most of the current university student entrepreneurship is still based on model innovation. It is still difficult for college students to incubate some cutting-edge technologies from the perspective of the laboratory."

"It has become a trend that the threshold for starting a business is getting higher and higher. If we look at the 100 entrepreneurs in 2010 and the 100 entrepreneurs in 2020, there are definitely more entrepreneurs who come from prestigious schools and have relatively good family backgrounds. The formation of this trend is complex," Zheng Yi explained.

Zheng Yi explained, “First, the circulation of information and the maturity of infrastructure have expanded the dimensions of competition; second, before 2015, the investment preferences of US dollar investment institutions were grouped together. They liked to invest in McKinsey,Procter & GambleEntrepreneurs who come out of institutions like these usually have an education background from Ivy League schools, and what they do is basically the Chinese version of Facebook and Google. Thirdly, the booming RMB funds after the mass entrepreneurship and innovation have also encouraged the diversity of entrepreneurs’ innovation. The current silence of RMB funds has reduced the innovation of entrepreneurs to some extent.”

"After the PC Internet and mobile Internet, opportunities for innovation such as information matching are very rare today," Zheng Yi pointed out.

Today, however, the topic of college students’ entrepreneurial projects has lost its former glory and is rarely mentioned.