When code meets caffeine, what kind of sparks will fly? Beta Coffee started in Hangzhou, founded by IT people Bai Ya and his partners, and quickly became a public living room for the internet circle. This trend then swept through Beijing's Zhongguancun, where Garage Coffee, 3W Coffee and others sprang up one after another, opening the "Internet Coffee Era." This is not just a place to drink coffee, but also a world where IT people network, recruit, and seek investment. This article will take you through the founding journey of Beta Coffee, its unique rules, and those warm yet persistent startup stories, so you can feel the internet spirit that connects infinite possibilities behind a cup of coffee. If you also enjoy exploring coffee culture, feel free to follow Front Street Coffee, where we continue to bring you coffee stories with warmth.

Beta Cafe: Why Should We Have to Know Each Other Even We Already Met?

When IT thinking meets coffee, what kind of sparks will really burst forth? It makes one imagine endlessly.

What kind of spark will come out when the culture of coffee meet IT world?

Text / Photography: Zhang Yue, staff reporter

Welcome to the “Internet Coffee Era”!

It is indeed very trendy for IT people to open cafes. Everyone knows perfectly well that this line of work is hard to make money in, yet they still charge in one batch after another.

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in 2009, Bai Ya and his “colleagues,” after repeated planning, did something practical for the IT circle—they crossed industries to open a cafe, as a public living room and kitchen for IT people. At first everyone wanted to name it “Obama Coffee Bar,” but for some well-known reasons it was not approved, and it was finally named Beta Cafe.

Beta Coffee began trial operation in Hangzhou in April 2009 and officially opened its doors in June, becoming the first IT-themed cafe. After only two months of operation, it was named “Best Gathering Place for E-commerce People” at the China C2C Summit Forum. As a senior IT designer and pioneer of UED (User Experience Design) in China, Bai Ya never imagined that an idea from a few buddies would create the hottest gathering spot in Hangzhou's IT circle.

In August 2010, at a drinking gathering in Beijing, “a bunch of guys said they envied the folks in Hangzhou because they had Beta as their den. So we began plotting to set up another Beta in Beijing.” Before the words had even faded, by the end of 2010, these “restless elements” found a suitable venue in the original Disanji Building in Zhongguancun, which was being rebuilt, and paid the rent. On February 26, 2011, Beijing Beta Coffee officially opened!

Beta Coffee's appearance in the heart of Zhongguancun made even more IT people unable to sit still, and “internet cafes” such as Garage Coffee and 3W Coffee were born one after another. The “Internet Coffee Era” thus raised its curtain.

The public living room of internet people

In November 2008, Bai Ya left Baidu and headed straight for Alibaba in Hangzhou. At that time he was already quite famous in the circle. Although he held the title of Chief User Experience Planner at Alipay, his business card simply read “Designer”; at the same time, Bai Ya was also a super connector, with an incredible “link monetization rate.” “Ninety percent of my good friends in real life now are people I met online.” This sounds unbelievable. The internet and gatherings intertwined and accumulated Bai Ya's resources. Gradually, companies asked him for help, and friends in the circle always asked him to introduce companies. Through this back-and-forth, Bai Ya became a resource-linking platform between upstream and downstream.

After arriving in Hangzhou, Bai Ya met even more friends. Every week everyone would go to his living room to gather, and over time, Bai Ya's living room became the “meeting point” of the IT Jianghu.

In 2009, after serving as everyone's “cleaner” for a year, Bai Ya finally “could not hold back any longer.” On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, “a bunch of guys plotted to open a cafe in Hangzhou as everyone's public living room.”

When IT thinking meets coffee, what kind of sparks will really burst forth? It makes one imagine endlessly.

Perhaps it was the decisiveness and efficiency innate to IT people that allowed this cafe, later named “Beta,” to go from planning, fundraising, site selection, and renovation to opening to the public in less than 3 months.

Hangzhou Beta Coffee had a total investment of 1 million, with 10,000 yuan per share, for a total of 100 shares. After Bai Ya and the other founders posted a share subscription notice, responses quickly came from all sides. In the end, there were as many as 20 shareholders, several of whom had not known each other before. “The most valuable thing about IT people is openness and trust,” Bai Ya said. “Although we had no idea how to run a cafe and knew we would definitely lose money, we still did it. Because we really needed a public living room that belonged to the internet. All our shareholders are heroes of the internet circle; they clearly knew it would lose money and still insisted on investing.”

After the funds were raised, Bai Ya began soliciting cafe furnishings on his blog. Unexpectedly, many people again sent things for free. Someone brought wine, someone sent a sofa, someone sent a coffee machine and coffee cups, someone sent a SONY LCD TV, and someone else sent laptops and game consoles; even power strips and napkins were prepared by others, all of which could have logos printed and websites pasted on them. There were also chargers for all mobile phones, and Apple computers with the firewall already bypassed for free use, claiming to have the fastest internet speed in China. In addition, websites such as Sina and Sohu also sent dolls, and even limited-edition World of Warcraft toys could be seen at Beta Coffee. They even sold the naming rights to the two meeting rooms upstairs.

This “public living room for IT people” in Hangzhou really made IT people elsewhere envious and jealous! So, on February 26, 2011, Bai Ya and others successfully replicated Hangzhou Beta Coffee in Beijing, and by then the number of shareholders had increased to more than thirty. Bai Ya said: “Beijing Beta has a professional team operating it, so the taste and service are by no means amateur. We will build this place into the warmest den for Beijing internet people, a public living room belonging to internet people.”

“IT Jianghu”

We are all “IT people” at the ends of the earth; when we meet, why ask if we have known each other before?

On February 26, 2011, at the Beijing Beta Coffee shop, half of Alibaba's realm and representatives of most of the well-known IT companies in the IT Jianghu gathered here, and the powerful aura almost flipped the entire place over. Besides the various “O”-level bosses, there were also photographers, technical maintenance engineers, and businesspeople who came to share their experience.

Two years of operation made Beta Coffee truly become an entity where “IT people” gathered information and interacted, and it also gradually became a very good place for marketing and promoting brands. Online, Beta Coffee had its own website, Flickr album, and Twitter ID; offline, Beta Coffee organized countless formal and informal meetings. The recruitment wall had job ads from major companies, and even the restroom became an ocean of information.

Many people had already formed a habit of coming to Beta. On Weibo, Beta Coffee had become one of the places with the most check-ins by netizens, and people often posted that they had seen some corporate big shot at Beta Coffee and invited everyone to come and look. In the words of Zhao Ke'en, manager of the Beijing Beta Coffee store, the founders of Beta Coffee were “very Jianghu,” and Beta Coffee accordingly became “very Jianghu.”

Since it claimed to be a “Jianghu,” of course it had to set “Jianghu” rules. With the suggestions and ideas of many netizens, Beta Coffee launched three tiers of discount cards, namely the Iron Card, the Beauty Card, and the VIP Card. Interestingly, the validity period printed on the cards was 103 years.

The Beauty Card and VIP Card both offered a 15% discount, but the Iron Card was special—the Iron Card was made of pure metal and could only be obtained by true iron brothers. But the Iron Card's discount was not fixed. When business was good, the coffee shop would give food, drinks, and a discount (30% off), but when business was bad, it would charge even more—if you are a true iron brother, you have to take a knife in both ribs for your friend!

In addition, Beta Coffee stipulated that internet professionals could enjoy a 10% discount just by showing their business card. In Bai Ya's ideal, 80% of the cafe's customers should be people from the internet and related fields. As long as you bought a cup of coffee, you could sit there all day. Thus Beta Coffee became a gathering place for IT youth in Zhongguancun, and small teams of two or three often camped here waiting for “angels.”

The reporter heard that such a story also happened at Beta Coffee. Not long after the Beijing Beta Coffee store opened, a young man ran there before the cafe had even opened, holding a sign that said “Angel” and sitting at the entrance. Although he did not meet an investor, his persistence moved the “Beta people.” In the end, the “Beta people” introduced this young man to a senior entrepreneur who often came to the cafe.

What the final result was, the reporter did not know. Trying to get a high-profile answer from such a low-profile Beta Coffee really tested the reporter's ability. “Beta” did not want to be a hero. Even the list of more than 30 shareholders of Beta Coffee had never been published on public occasions, and it was even more impossible to know how many entrepreneurs had set sail from here.

Three years have passed, and Beta Coffee has consistently upheld its belief—the wonder of coffee lies not in its mellow fragrance and deliciousness, but in sharing it with others; the wonder of friends lies not in laughing and chatting freely, but in taking a knife in both ribs for one another; the wonder of the internet lies not in having the fastest speed, but in connecting infinite possibilities. Although Beta Coffee still has not made much money, it still welcomes new friends and old friends to come here to chat, talk about recent situations, discuss the internet, and talk about entrepreneurship. Most importantly, to be with friends!

(Editor in charge: Leo)

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.