How this Chinese co-working space plans to solve your lifestyle needs

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with The Jay Kim Show where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with top entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original show transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

I sat down with David Tai, co-founder of Chinese co-working space Bee+, and I had the opportunity to go up recently to Shenzhen to see one of their spaces. It was mind-blowing. There was a bunch of beers on tap, and the place looked like an Apple store. So, I was so intrigued I had to get him on this episode.

Here’s some of the things we talked about.

David Tai, co-founder of Bee+

How did you get into startup land?

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and I’ve been doing business in Shenzhen for about three years now.

When I was in university in Zhuhai, me and my friends decided to do something different. At that time, the tuition was so expensive, so we wanted to do something to earn our money back. We ended up opening a couple of restaurants and, luckily, we survived. We now have seven restaurants in Zhuhai.

When the number of our staff started growing, we saw the need for an office. However, we couldn’t find a satisfying one in Zhuhai since it’s a very peaceful city. This is why we decided to build our own, and it eventually got us into the co-working industry.

How did your F&B business help you jump into Bee+?

We founded Bee+ in 2015. At that time, we were just thinking of building an office for our catering business and maybe a small area that we could lease to other companies.

Our first space was built with shipping containers. It was fortunate that there was a software park in Zhuhai that supported students’ entrepreneurship projects. They found our project creative and our team trustworthy, so the boss of the park said, “Maybe I’ll give you land, and then you can build your own co-working space.”

We used 36 containers and steel frameworks to build our first co-working space. In that space, we had not only our office but also restaurants, a gym, event places, meeting rooms, and a rooftop bar. We positioned ourselves as the “lobby” of the software park because the space served not only the people working there but also the other companies in the area. When people got off work, they could come to Bee+ to eat, join events, and network.

Soon, we expanded to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And today, we identify ourselves as a space operator and builder. We’re trying to build different spaces not just for co-working but also for lifestyle.

How did you decide to use shipping containers?

We looked at many types of architecture around the world. We flew to different countries to see different offices, including Google and Airbnb. And it really inspired us that the people working in the US have very comfortable, relaxing, and chill places to work. In China, we were working in relatively boring and stiff places.

Then, we saw the concept of living in container homes in the US, and that gave us the idea to use containers to build our own office. Since no one in the team had a background in architecture and interior design, we used Legos to build our first model. Later, some of my teammates learned CAD and SketchUp to better draw the design. All the containers were custom-made from the factories.

Could you tell us about the business model?

First of all, we design and operate all the spaces. We also have a design school to design and build spaces for other companies. We are one of the two co-working spaces in China that have the ability to design our own spaces. The other one is WeWork.

Tell us about the facilities.

What are your future plans?

What’s you advice for entrepreneurs?