From international student to young entrepreneur: How to start a media company in the UK?
By: Spencer Zhang
Photo of Linda Zhang
The idea is driven by her student-hood. Zhang has passionate to anything related media industries: photography, direction. Luckily, the gap between business and media didn’t stop her pursuing interests. Creating student media club, producing films, planning television shows directing Spring Festival Gala in London supported by five local universities helped her friends and Zhang gradually gained attention from media industries.
Inspired by previous experience, she and her friends thought why not create a media company that can benefit students as well as media organisations. A company link media students and the industry, which allows students have better chance to find their preferred job, while media employers can locate suitable employees. That is how they start their own company UniFuture, Universities’ future.
But it’s not a single educational agency linking students to companies. Zhang explained the company has three layers. The top of the layer is an annual student forum that group top Chinese people together, which has been named as China Dream Academy where Zhang works as the vice-chairman. UniFuture introduces the academy members to educate students and use them to attract clients from the public. The middle layer is what she and her company are exploring currently: using top layer’s resources to give UK students more work opportunities and the third layer is television production.
“Rather than education company and production company, I would rather say we are the three-layer ecosystem. The difference from other companies is that we also produce our television show because that’s how we attract our best talents.”
She however also said “no one has really done this before. How we link each layer and how we bring the value to the top, to students from the middle and to the general public from the bottom are our real difficulty.”
On February, UniFuture recruited around 20 to 30 media students and produced their first reality show Debut Day in the UK, the singer competition where top three winners have chances to go to Chinese entertainment companies, media outlets, and TV stations.
Caption: winner of the Debut Day Photo credited: Evan Wu
Caption: Production team and performers of Debut Day Photo credited: Evan Wu
For Zhang, the success of the show has profound meanings: promoting her company brand by reaching 10 thousand viewers online and more than 400 audiences, helping her find the experienced media students and practicing her three-layer concept.
From 2016, UniFuture has built up the cooperated relation with prestige media organisations, such as Tencent and JD.com, two of the most significant technology and the Internet companies in China, China Central, Hunan, Zhejiang TV station, etc. The company also has cooperation with King’s college London and the University of Westminster.
“Media is a people business,” Zhang suggests that taking care of clients and team members is the reason why they can establish relationships with big Chinese companies even though they’re such a small company.
Speaking the challenge of being international, Zhang believes visa issue is the top trouble. “I haven't met a media student can stay in the UK after the government cancelled the post-work visa and reduced the scale of issuing the work visa. ” said by Zhang, “Visa is one of the reasons I’m staying in the Deloitte.”
However, being international helps her cooperate with Chinese giants. Zhang said, “Without her Chinese identity, the partnership between her company and these corporations cannot be built.”
To find more by watching the executive interview with Linda Zhang.