Only a few weeks ago, there seemed to be absolutely no interest for tech startups in Shenzhen, China (or at least, among the English speaking community). As a startup guy, I was pretty upset by the seemingly nonexistent community. Of course, there was Hong Kong nearby with a vibrant community but I wanted something in Shenzhen. I decided I'd prove myself wrong by creating a "Startups and technology SZ" group on a popular expat social network called ShenzhenStuff.com. 

It turned I was wrong about the lack of interest! The group grew to 32 members within only a few days. Within the same time frame, Michael Michelini, an American expat, and his associates were officially launching a coworking space aimed at web workers and freelancers. Talk about timing! Michael from SZTeam offered to host and run a first "Startup Tuesday" meeting which turned out to be a huge success.

Michael wrote a nice outline of the event and published his slides. The ~50 (I suck at guesstimates) attendees came from all kinds of backgrounds (technical, business, finance, curious people, etc.) and the crowd was about half foreigners, half Chinese. 

For the upcoming events, many suggestions were made: invite speakers to talk about a specific topic, co-founder "speed dating", startup weekends, pitch nights, etc. I'm particularly interested in co-founder speed dating as I'm looking for a co-founder :)

This first meeting was a huge success and Michael deserves all the credit. I would also recommend SZTeam to freelancers or anyone who is working on a startup. The people are friendly, there is a nice conference room, free coffee and the pricing is pretty cheap: hot desk for 500 RMB/month (80 USD/month) and fixed desk for 1500 RMB/month (235 USD/month).

From now on, we will try to gather the community around the Shenzhen Startup mailing list and the Startups and technology SZ group. SZTeam will continue to host Startup Tuesday every Tuesday 7pm.

I think we are on the right path to build a vibrant startup community in Shenzhen!