I left the bank more than a year venture, more than 200 million in cash, if you count the opportunity to buy a house in Shanghai and other opportunities, the loss of up to 5 million or more. Talk about my first business accident. In 2012, 36 krypton, tiger sniff push the success story of the entrepreneurial team every day, entrepreneurial activities are held daily on Venture Street ... If I am not going to start a business, what can I do to support those people who can be aggressive? So, I quit his job at the head office of China Merchants Bank and started the journey of starting up the Internet. In early 2013, I returned to Shanghai to meet young people from many Internet companies and tell them what I was going to do, slowly bringing together a small team. The project was officially launched in June and two APPs came online before and after the National Day holiday, and two VCs have already made oral commitments before the Spring Festival in 2014. The first half seems pretty good. However, after the Spring Festival, one VC said it was not voted on and the other did not vote after due diligence. At this moment, the team has reached 15 and the operating cost is very high. I had to scramble to raise funds to keep the team running. After months of hard work, our product has gained tens of thousands of users, but it is difficult to form a closed-loop trading, had to seek restructuring, but time is running out.On August 2014, I decided to disband the team. At this point, it took a year and a half, a total investment of more than 200 million, a lot of pit trip, we learned that 'business is not you want to create, would like to create a record.' Although lost, but entrepreneurship is not regret .If you can come back, I will change the game, make the same input 10 times the value. I believe that all experiences will have a positive impact in the future, unless you never replenish, you do not know where you are wrong, you think it is irrecoverable failure, on the contrary, the failure is just a Wonderful foreshadowing. Behind the success stories of the bigwigs are usually hidden in many unknown 'accident', trial and error, trial and error, try the right .This is the brutal fact that entrepreneurship to face: Success is by chance, failure Is it normal? Do you have a big heart to calmly accept the failure? The following is my ten million real gold and silver bought 'ten learning'. No matter how good your idea is, it is probably worthless Like many first-time entrepreneurs, I felt like I thought very well at first, even asking investors to sign confidentiality agreements when chatting with investors, but in fact the original idea would not be for most entrepreneurs Really generate value. When you have an idea, usually 1000 people also think of it, but only 100 people really do, of which 10 people did well, and ultimately only two or three people have the last laugh.This is the entrepreneurial 'funnel model '. From a statistical point of view, no matter how good your idea is, it is probably worth nothing.Moreover, successful start-up companies are often successful after many transformations to succeed, which is not the original idea, so you have to The answer is: Who are you, why are you doing more easily? Your PPT is very cattle, but want to rely on this financing impossible If you are not a star team or a succession of entrepreneurs, you can hardly rely on a PPT to invest in professional investors.We often see the seed round, Angel round, A round of these financing phase, usually corresponds to your initial three Phase: the idea stage, the verification stage and the copy stage. Seed funding, usually from your own, of course, may also come from familiar with your friends, family. With this small money to make a demo, the user is not large but the data grow rapidly, the initial validation of the model, you will naturally welcome us Professional VC angel wheel investment. When your user base continues to grow, and you're sure your mode has been verified and you can drop money to copy it, A rounds will come to you to help you fulfill your dreams. And my mistake is that I did not verify the idea of the situation, organized a complete team, rented 5A office building, consume too much seed money. Entrepreneurship teams use their hands and feet to vote for their dreams, and professional investors vote for your dreams with money. Where does the trust of strangers come from? Step by step. What will be useful to work, you will lose no level of thinking If you work for a big company before starting a business and you are not really involved in the startup process, you're in danger. Because mature platforms usually go through a 'from 0 to 1' process, 'from 0 to 1' and 'from 1 to N' are completely different from strategy to play. What you're good at is just doing a lot of work, running a leadership intent on a low-risk platform that is quite different from what you need to start a business - entrepreneurship requires disruptive thinking. Back to myself - BAT The success of these platform companies made me see the huge imagination of platform thinking, so I think in the PC Internet to mobile Internet in the process of switching, there is an opportunity to create a new platform for the subdivision area. The original idea was to move the millions of merchants in the offline clothing wholesale market to cell phones to create a 1688 vertical mobile apparel. But in fact, this simple 'relocation' model is not disruptive. Although later we saw that the outbreak of social networks opened the huge demand for WeChat to open a shop and began to meet these needs, compared with the rise of 'micro-stores' and 'pocket links' in the same period, the value of tools was done under the influence of platform thinking Not enough extreme, missed the opportunity to become the leader in WeChat shop tool. 'Add' who will, you will do 'subtraction' it? Many entrepreneurs love to tell big stories, but the more complex the business model and product design, the more resources that need to be consolidated, the harder it is to make. A good project can often be said in a single sentence. Good products often come from one Pain point starting can be rapidly enlarged. I also made the same mistakes, such as the beginning of a platform to talk about the flow of the story; in the production of products, I like Taobao App, fully functional, but also with chat, business circles are typical 'Addition' thinking. In fact, with limited capital and time, our focus on tools can become a big company; investing 80% of our resources in the core functions of extreme, rapid iteration, trial and error with minimal cost, Will be able to rapidly develop. In the same period with us, the 'micro-store' has only become a tool to solve the problem of merchants opening and paying in WeChat, suddenly becoming a hot application in major application stores. In 2015, Tencent Investment was valued at several tens This is the power of subtraction. And the other one, which has millions of merchants and tens of billions of dollars of running water, has announced that it will no longer seek to become a 'platform for traffic' after trying for 10 months. So, you will do subtraction? Since to trial and error, when to insist, when to give up? There is a huge gap between what you want and what you do, because the seemingly consistent logic is often based on many assumptions that require market testing. During the promotion of our products, we found that wholesalers are reluctant to make public reserve prices online for fear of undermining the offline agents. Our platform traffic can not help them to generate large increment yet. Wholesale transactions are also hard to be completely online Completed, it is always impossible to form a demonstration effect of success stories. We have passed the stages of 'letting the user know us', 'letting the user recognize us', 'letting the user see many people in use', and it is hard to make breakthroughs in the most important 'letting the user see success stories'. At this point I should adhere to or should give up? Today I will choose to give up, but then I chose to persist, and pay a heavy price for this perseverance - and took another six months and millions of funds. The original product has missed the window of time, it is always difficult to reach a consensus on exploring the new direction of the transition, and even choose to outsource the project to maintain the survival of the team. In the end, the team decided to dissolve the team. Come back to the complex, my experience is that focus on the core needs of resources, rapid market validation, if your idea is right and your execution is strong enough, then the short term the user will grow rapidly and the retention rate is very High, you should stick to it, patiently waiting for the day the market broke out. You always want to help others transition, but you are doomed to failure We initially hoped that with the tide of mobile Internet, millions of offline clothing wholesalers in China will be transformed to embrace the online and offline business model. The problem, however, is that their decline is essentially replaced by the de-intermediary e-commerce model of traditional wholesale distribution. 1688 and Taobao from the supply chain and consumer strong squeeze in both directions, forming a huge online and offline price difference, while the traditional distribution and e-commerce model is completely different from the two kinds of play, require a radically different ability to transform means Left hand hit the right hand, contradictory. Therefore, our business looks very 'great' and very 'sentimental'. In fact, it is against the general trend of deintermediation. What are the most important things to open the door? Housekeeping needs seven things, what you need to start a business? Many entrepreneurs do not understand the technology, that a few good technical staff can find a business start, in fact, not enough. I think the three most important things to open the door are good ideas, good products, good PR. Strategy is always more important than tactics, wrong to do so; Easy to use than any product more convincing, there is no good product, good idea without posterior; Social networks provide us with a relatively fair battlefield, each 10w + is the same as an 'atomic bomb' to help you save a powerful army. Does your team both think, do, and say? Pig has been lying on the tuyere, but you can hold the wind to it? Everyone wants to be a pig lying on the tuyere, the problem is that even if you really find the tuyere, you have to get up late not too late .Once too early, the market will take three to five years to break out, you become a martyr ; Too late, several pigs have been stuck in the tuyere, the location of others than you, the volume is larger than you, the wind did not matter what happened. The play "Razor Edge" says in the article, "There is a victory from torment." Entrepreneurship is the case, you advance a card bit, and then have to 'boil', boil the wind of the moment.This boil, at least a year, it may be two years, depending on what boil? By cash flow. Business income is good, risk investment is good, there is cash flow to survive. Do you have the ability to generate revenue? You have the ability to find money? Murphy's law everywhere, what you are worried about will happen, how to save yourself? Once you start a business trip, you start the walking step like 'Super Mario.' Uncertainty is the only one that can be determined and which foot is empty. 'Murphy's Law' says that what you are worried about is bound to happen. The only way to save yourself is to be fully prepared, and planB if there are any surprises. For example, when I contacted more than a dozen agencies and two venture capitalists expressed their verbal intent, I was worried that it was not possible for both of them to vote. Then my capital chain could be broken. Sure enough, there is no surprise, what are you worried about what to do, but if we also communicate with 40 - 50 VC, 10 institutions have the intention to invest, then the probability of the final vote will be much larger? Entrepreneurship needs all in, but business is not gambling. You need to do your best on every important thing. The goal is to increase your winning percentage and increase it until you win.
Speed determines the height, time determines the space Finally, the important thing to say is that it can not be done several times: Speed! Speed! Speed! Time! Time! Time! Internet business is extremely cruel, in a subdivision area, often only the first two can live well, once you become a leader, all the resources will be gathered to you, on the contrary, the time window once closed, the opportunity to quickly return to zero! You Fast enough? If these have scared you, you really are not suitable for business, on the contrary, I want to bless you, you will certainly be harvested more than I venture business happy!
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