Beijing gets its own Silicon Alley as bustling street becomes start-up haven
Beijing street becoming home to internet professionals looking to start businesses from scratch
Tucked in the heart of Beijing's bustling Zhongguancun area, the 300 metres of Haidian West Street, formerly filled with bookstores and small restaurants, was reborn on June 12 as Inno Way.
The Haidian district government sees it becoming home to dozens of incubators, internet cafes, funding and training institutions to help start-up entrepreneurs secure just about everything they need to build a business, from angel investment and free office space to media coverage and business partners.
People, money and market ... you can find them all here in Beijing
The operators of the website, which has focused on entrepreneurship since being founded by Wang and his friends four years ago, moved into the street about three months ago, before the name change, at the vanguard of the rebranding.
"People, money and market - the three most important things that a start-up company needs - you can find them all here in Beijing," Wang said.
Following in the footsteps of Silicon Valley in the United States, Beijing has in recent years become another hot spot for internet professionals looking to start businesses from scratch.
In Zhongguancun, where high-technology and internet-related enterprises are concentrated, the number of start-up companies exceeded 6,000 by the end of last year, almost a third more than in 2011.
The growth has been driven by people in their 20s and 30s who have decided to try to make their entrepreneurial ideas a reality, dreaming of becoming the next home-grown IT success story and emulating Tencent, Baidu or Alibaba in carving out a niche in local or even global markets.