The article is from the public account: , author: Dai Yusen, title figure from: vision China.
Many people often ask me, what are the characteristics of a good entrepreneur? Of course, the answer to this question, with different perspectives, everyone has different answers.
After ten years of entrepreneurship and investment observation, my own current summary is:
The three elements that a good entrepreneur should have are: vision, leadership, and execution.
Specifically, good entrepreneurs should see the future (vision) before most people, and be able to unite a group of like-minded people (Leadership) to make this vision a reality (Execution) < / span>.
This article starts with the first element: vision.
01 What will happen to the world in five years?
I have asked many people the same question: What is the big change that you think will happen in five years?
Note that there are three qualifiers in this question: five years later, high probability, big change. Of course, many different answers were obtained.
What’s the correct answer to this question is actually not that important. Importantly, I think if you have a convincing answer to this question, then you should create this change, or enter the industry corresponding to this big change, or invest in the target of this big change.
If you have n’t done so, there are two possibilities. Maybe you have n’t seen or believed this change, which is “I do n’t know”; or you do believe it, but you do n’t have enough action to do it. Less than “integration of knowledge and action”.
Five years is not a long time. Perhaps many people ’s reaction is that it is not difficult to predict the big changes after five years.
But now is the end of 2019. If you return to the end of 2014, you can foresee the rise of short videos, takeaways become lifestyles, the rise of domestic consumer product brands, live e-commerce, personalized information flow instead of portal news, pop-ups, WeChat Payment, electric vehicles, online celebrity e-commerce, social e-commerce, a lot of fights, sinking markets, Hanfu out of the circle, popularity of freshly ground coffee, milk tea has become a daily consumer product …, seize any of these opportunities to start a business or invest, you may get Outperform returns.
Of course, driving from the rearview mirror makes everything easy.
Now many people can say that with the popularization of 4G and smart phones, the speed of mobile Internet has greatly increased, traffic has become cheaper, and consumers have become increasingly impatient, and of course short videos will become a trend.
But if you recall, or look through the articles in 2014, everyone’s view of 4G is often too fast, resulting in too fast and too expensive data consumption. 3G is already quite good, 4G is not necessary; the barrage is just one Help kids with inexplicable gadgets; online celebrities bring goods too low; today ’s headlines without editors can guarantee the quality of information; takeaway is just an unhealthy lifestyle for students without the money to choose …
To tell the truth, it is really not easy to predict the big changes after five years!
Why five years?
This is a length of time that allows most people to plan and prepare, but not too far away to predict effectively; it is also the time it takes for innovation to occur and mature to land at the current level of technological development.
Of course, time can be scaled to three or eight years, but the future after three years is often already clear, and the future after ten years is indeed difficult to predict. It’s really too difficult to see Douyin Fast in 10 years in 2009.
02 What do you believe that most people do not agree with?
It’s not enough to see the future; entrepreneurs also need to see a different future.
A question that Peter Thiel often asks is: Is there anything you believe in but most people disagree with? This is actually a difficult question, and you can try to answer it.
In a previous article, “Why Good Entrepreneurs Sometimes Look Unreliable” I wrote:
In the ideal case, We should invest in projects that look like bad ideas, but are actually good ideas; and avoid projects that look like good ideas, but are actually bad ideas.
Those things that seem and are actually good ideas are often too expensive. And those projects that look rotten and actually rotten are certainly not worth investing.
Whenever an opportunity for innovation comes, there are usually two kinds of people who laugh at the end: innovators who are on the first side, pre-emptive innovators, or late-comer big bosses with asymmetric resources or capabilities.
For entrepreneurs who did not initiate innovation in the first wave and do not have asymmetric resources, the probability of success is very low.
So for 99% of entrepreneurs who are not big bosses, the first-mover advantage brought by innovation is the biggest advantage. When one thing has become the accepted correct answer, the opportunity basically does not belong to the new entrepreneur. Already. Imagine how difficult it is to make a short video platform like Douyin Faster now?
We have seen the same trend over and over again in the past: that is, new fashion trends and cultural trends tend to first emerge from university campuses, and then spread outside the campus, or enter the workplace society through college graduates .
Internet, e-commerce, e-sports, takeaway, barrage, mobile games, social networks … and more. Because college students have a high degree of education, are willing to accept new things, have more collisions in thinking, and have sufficient disposable time, as well as certain economic freedom.
So if you’re still a college student or just out of school, the big changes after five years may be sprouting around you. If you are already an old driver, it is also a good way to get inspiration by observing what college students are doing now.
I am very fortunate that I have been surfing the Internet since 1998. When I was very young, I was obsessed with the new world opened to me by a child in a small fourth-tier city. The big change is clear to me: the Internet.
After 1980, you may still remember that Internet addiction was once regarded as a disease that needed to be treated, and even was regarded as “electronic heroin”. Even a top Chinese school such as Tsinghua also required freshmen not to bring a computer. . As for working at an Internet company more than a decade ago, many people would consider it unworkable, and some even asked: Is your job just to go online?
However, after 20 years, I went back and looked at the Internet.