Businessman with many faces seizes new frontier
Print Edition
SOMETIMES it’s hard to define success by the achievements in many fields by people like Shocann Chen.
Born in Taiwan, Chen migrated to Canada with his family, but moved to Shanghai in 2007 for his PhD at Fudan University.
Since then, Chen has built up multiple roles: a pop star who got his name in a TV singing competition, a popular columnist, a TV host, fashion designer, a curator, and now a business man.
In 2015, Chen founded LiYEAH co-working space, and also invested in an app, MY Station, that helps business people find alternative workspaces.
“I would describe myself as a slash on the road. Not the guitarist Slash, though we share the spirit of music, but the slash where people live multiple careers and identifications,” Chen told Shanghai Daily.
Two years ago, Chen met his business partners — an architect living in Japan, and the founder of China Lodging Group who owns a chain of hotels around the country.
“It is very important to find people who have the same tone as you, who can resonate with you,” Chen said.
Widely regarded as a solution to the isolation that many freelancers experience while working from home and providing an escape from the distractions of home, co-working, or office-sharing, has taken off since starting in the United States.
More and more such workspaces are being built in Shanghai.
LiYEAH has three locations—two in Shanghai and one in Wuhan. Several more are planned in Shanghai and Beijing this year.
LiYEAH Commune in Wuzhong Road is practically full right now. The work-sharing business is booming.
“Lucky for us, we entered not too late and now everyone is getting into this game,” said Chen, “I would say there are still big opportunities for co-working spaces, with high-end separate working areas with convenient commutes getting barely affordable in large cities.”
Most co-working spaces and incubators aim at the Internet industry. LiYEAH, on the other hand, is working with self-dependent companies and freelancers.
“The competition will be fierce,” Chen said.
Apart from the co-working space, he founded an app which connects all the space-sharing business in Beijing, named MY Station.
MY Station is born out of the online time-sharing booking platform of traditional office industry, helping users to go out of the traditional office buildings and spaces into cafes, libraries, co-working spaces and onto the streets.
The database on the app now has over one hundred locations in Beijing.
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