Review of NextStep Shanghai Entrepreneur Mixers
Sometime in early 2007, some wise guy on ShanghaiExpat.com felt expat entrepreneurs in Shanghai could really use a community and network to support each other’s endeavors. He offered to set up some events and invited those interested to join his e-mail list, promising to notify everyone of when and where those events would eventually take place. I signed up and not long after, I began receiving e-mails with digital fliers from some organization eventually known as NextStep Shanghai.
I attended my first NextStep entrepreneur mixer over three months ago, when it was held at Volar on January 15th. Keen to network with fellow entrepreneurs to pick each other’s minds and swap business cards (you know, to feel important), I even dragged my business partner (who dragged his friend) to come along.
Unfortunately, we ultimately left feeling rather disappointed.
To be sure, there was a reasonable crowd, but for an “entrepreneur” mixer, it was sorely lacking in…well, “entrepreneurs.” Of course, like many professional mixers everywhere, there’s a high probability of meeting a lot of sales reps for various companies hoping to find customers, connections, or (mostly business-to-business sales) opportunities. You also run into a lot of individuals trying to network their way to some important person at some big-name company in hopes of landing a job that’ll look good on their resume. As anyone with experience with such professional events would know, these are often expected. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that such an environment isn’t exactly helpful for actual or aspiring entrepreneurs looking to discuss new business ideas or solutions to new business problems and difficulties. As such, I had a nice drink or so, and met a few decent people, but didn’t consider the event having been worth my time.
Not long after, Elliott asked me to guest-blog here at CNReviews.com. As I sat down to detail my experience, I realized it wasn’t quite fair to judge NextStep’s entire concept and execution on the basis of a single event’s results. Setting my notes aside as a draft, I resolved to give NextStep another chance by attending another event.
That draft sat untouched for months.
What can I say? I’m a busy guy. It wasn’t until April 15th that I finally made my way, through heavy rains, to another event. This time, it was held in The Collection at Shanghai’s ever-lovely Xintiandi.
I’m glad I went.
