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Entrepreneurship can’t be a game that only touches you.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Egg Solution Startup” (ID: Manjiechuangye), the author of a thought.

How many deaths do you have in your business?

Pseudo-demand, indiscriminate burning, team guilt, fierce competition, poor product, capital game, missed slogan, policy risk, founder giving up, strategic mistakes…

There are too many pits in the business. There are countless predecessors’ “corpses” lying under each pit. Later, you can sum up experience from the predecessors and skip these pits. After all, no one wants to step through all the pits. But our sad discovery, until today, there are still entrepreneurs who rushed to the pit.

The reason is that these pits are confusing, and from the moment you decide to start a business, you are already in the deep fog. In order to “kill the encirclement”, we must “open the eyes and see the dust”. The first thing we need to see is the authenticity of demand.

Customization on pseudo-needs

Entrepreneurship is a very contradiction. Without ideal support, there is no incentive to start a business, but simply for an ideal entrepreneurship, it will eventually die badly.

Because consumers only pay to solve their own problems, no one is willing to pay for your ideals.

Ma Ling likes pets very much. She believes that pets and people have similar needs. Since people need to socialize, pets are the same. The reason for supporting her view is that her dog often interacts with other people’s dogs when she walks the dog.

So her entrepreneurial idea is to do pet socializing, socializing specifically for pets, not pet-based, socializing for pet owners. She wants to be a pet paradise, specializing in providing pets with an environment-friendly interactive venue.

But this demand is solved in a park near the community. Why spend money on her pet park?

Ma Ling likes pets very much and is willing to create a better environment for pets. But what does the pet owner responsible for paying get?

This is just a pseudo-demand that she imagined, and pseudo-needs are one of the main causes of entrepreneurial death.

Now, there are more and more entrepreneurs,But there are fewer and fewer winners. A large part of the death is due to pseudo-demand. Even some pseudo-demands have been used as a venture, and door-to-door car washing is one of them.

On June 18, 2014, E-Car Wash, a modern car wash platform based on mobile Internet and serving a wide range of owners and suppliers, was officially launched.

The appearance of E car wash is to solve the pain points such as the non-universal card in the traditional car wash industry, the risk of prepaid card, and the long queue time of car wash. It adopts the method of door-to-door car wash, and then cuts into the car repair through the high-frequency service of car wash. Maintenance, used car trading and other automotive aftermarket.

On March 10, 2015, E Car Wash received a $20 million Series A financing from Ping An Innovation Investment Fund. But less than half a year, in October 2015, E car wash broke out of the CEO, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the door-to-door car wash business was officially closed.

Image Source IT Orange

Not only E-car wash, in July 2015, only 8 months of on-line car 8 stopped the door-to-door car wash business; at the end of September, the car wash and the market-washed car wash announced the merger; on October 24, Kung Fu car wash announced the suspension of door-to-door car wash business . The development of the industry confirms that the door-to-door car wash service is a pseudo-demand.

The reason is that car wash requires certain site conditions and equipment requirements. Car washing in a community parking lot is not only inconvenient, but also has limited equipment that can be carried, and sometimes it is blocked by community security. The actual quality of service is not as good as washing a car at the store.

So the user who washes the car at home is more sensitive to price, and the platform subsidy is valued. In the few months of E car wash operation, the average monthly subsidy will be “burning money” for six or seven million. If the price advantage is lost, the user will easily lose and have no chance to cut into the aftermarket.

How to judge the authenticity of demand?

For entrepreneurs, whether you want to be ideal or to make money. As long as you want to succeed, you must judge what you want to do, whether it is a pseudo-demand.

However, the more common idea is that pseudo-demands are known after the trial, so entrepreneurship starts from trial and error. However, we have found that many people still do not think that their ideas are pseudo-demands even after many failures. It will be considered as a failure caused by other reasons, such as the lack of marketing, the incomplete team, and so on. When you start your business again, you may experience continuous failure.

Before starting a business, you have to ask yourself a question: What is your business for?

This is a question that we often discuss. Some people want to achieve self-worth for more financial income, and some people want to satisfy their own ideals. However, these original intentions are all centered on themselves. But entrepreneurship is about creating value for others, not making them cool.

• Are the solutions you provide, is it a real problem for consumers?

• Is there a better solution for this requirement?

• Why is your plan better than the others?

• How many people actually have this need?

For the group of “200 million empty nest youths”, “do not want to cook, do not want to go out to eat” is a problem that needs to be solved. Who provided a solution to this problem?

The first one that many people think of is the US group, hungry, and these take-away platforms. Because from the development of the industry, the demand for take-away is real.

But actually, takeaway is not the only solution to this problem. In addition to take-out, door-to-door cooking services, instant noodles, and self-heating snacks can also solve this problem.

The Internet entrepreneurship has spawned a lot of on-site services, and there have been cooking platforms such as cooking rice app, good chef I, and love chef. When the user places an order on the platform, he can make an appointment for a professional chef to cook. But today, these apps have not been searched in the app market.

Why solve the same problem, take-out is the real demand, home cooking is a pseudo-demand?

Because in the actual operation, all on-site services require certain scene conditions. Many of the “200 million empty nest youths” are renting houses, and they may not even have kitchens. This realistic condition determines that takeaway is a better choice.

In the average family, more is cooking by yourself. Ask the professional chef to go home and cook. This service is too extravagant for most middle class.

So even for the solution to the same problem, the door-to-door cooking service has been confirmed by the market to be a pseudo-demand.

So why is this solution better than instant noodles and self-heating fast food?

In fact, before the emergence of the take-away platform, consumers solve the “meal” problem, instant noodles is the most important choice.

But the instant noodles are obviously too simple compared to the variety of takeaways. Even with different flavors such as braised beef, white elephant bones, and old sauerkraut, it is still instant noodles. In the dining experience, the gap with the takeaway is too great.

From the self-heating fast food, the dishes such as Kung Pao Chicken, Curry Beef, and Taiwanese Braised Meat are made into vacuum-packed dishes, plus vacuum-packed rice and heating packs. With a simple operation, you can quickly eat delicious meals. This is of course richer than instant noodles, but whether it is from the taste, taste, freshness, or the richness of the dishes, it is still worse than the take-away. After all, the take-away is just made.

But actually self-heating fast food and takeaway, solving the problem of eating in two different groups. The take-out is mainly aimed at “200 million empty nest youths” and urban white-collar workers, while the self-heating fast food targeted user groups are more focused on friends. After all, the friends who travel on the road are not very good at takeaway.

So after comprehensive comparison, we found that for consumers who don’t want to cook and don’t want to go out to eat, takeaway is the most suitable solution at present. The “200 million empty nest youth” and urban white-collar workers also provide a very large user base for the take-away industry.