article reprinted from the cast in the net, author: snow Ying
When the first batch of post-90s entrepreneurs enter the years of standing, they will face a more difficult test. Financing is even more difficult. It can become a thing of the past to get a million financing with a single idea in a startup cafe.
The dividend has reached its peak, and the dream of a product manager that can subvert an industry by creating an “extreme” product is over. Giants have taken over the hills and they are everywhere.
Before the test, Entrepreneurs after the 90s are no longer obsessed with business myths of the previous era . They remain optimistic, choosing to return to rationality, return to the essence of business, and return to the ground to do what is at hand.
Before the Spring Festival, China Investment Network invited three post-90s entrepreneurs. They come from different tracks and have very different growth backgrounds, but they also have a clear mark of this generation-eager to change the world and have suffered setbacks, but still choose to use entrepreneurship as a sharpening stone and sharpen themselves.
They want to talk to you, your own 2019, the industry’s 2019, and those short-term expectations for the future. From their stories, maybe we can find our own shadow.
Chen Zhuoquan, entrepreneur in the entertainment industry, former CEO of Super Energy:
This time, I chose to “stand on the shoulders of giants.”
In August 2019, I made a difficult choice: closing the company and ending a two-year startup project.
I decided to share the review of the entrepreneurship. The process lasted for more than a month. Sometimes I felt that I didn’t want to dig deeper into my pain. I would stop and rest for a while.
In September 2019, this article entitled “What kind of experience is entrepreneurial failure?” A series of companies with a valuation of hundreds of millions closed down, and the post-90s CEO still suffers from tumors. The article attracted a lot of attention in the venture capital circle. As the protagonist of the story, I did not expect to resonate with so many people.
In those days, I seem to see the strugglers of all walks of life in an instant.
HeSome of them were serial entrepreneurs, and some of them were seriously ill during the process of entrepreneurship, and one of them was suffering from leukemia. I saw his head pictured as a family photo at that moment, and my heart was touched and sad. Everyone usually encourages each other. He also said that if you have a good attitude, you will be half successful, and everyone is more optimistic.
I had a deeper understanding of the loneliness of entrepreneurs.
When faced with financing difficulties, I don’t want to pass too much pressure on employees and wives, so I can only carry it myself. In contrast, I was rather fortunate. I used to work at Tencent and later met a lot of entrepreneurs and investors. They helped me a lot. But for the majority of entrepreneurs, their situation is even more lonely.
Fortunately, in this lonely journey, my relationship with my wife has become deeper and stronger.
When I first went to the hospital for examination, some indicators were several thousand times higher than normal. The doctor said that there was probably a tumor in my head. After listening, I felt like I was kneeling. I did not expect the plot in the TV series to happen. In my case, I was thinking about how to share with my wife, so don’t disturb her.
Her reaction was shocked at first, but immediately she laughed and encouraged me not to be afraid. Miracles would happen. I know she doesn’t want to burden me too much. Later, it was found to be benign, and I felt that I had found it cheap, and I dared not complain.
Apart from not giving up on me, we have reached amazing consensus on many things now, like soulmate. I feel that sometimes you can know what the other party is thinking without talking.
On one occasion, I suddenly noticed that she had white hair, and then I was shocked, and I realized that I hadn’t seen her for a long time. She didn’t pay much attention to the price of clothes. After starting a business with me, she put a lot of things in her shopping cart.
I was determined at that time not to allow my wife to start a business together. I may be willing to eat these hardships later, but I was not willing to let her eat again.
As for my body, I do n’t think of myself as a patient. I can control my illness effectively. I only need to take 4 pills a day, and my mental condition is much better.
I believe in the development of technology. This disease can only be performed craniotomy 20 years ago. Now it can be done through the nose. The side effects of the medicine I took before are very big, but now I have found a foreign special effect medicine, maybe it can be cured soon. By that day, my illness will be nothing.
Although this road is extremely difficult,Forces people to grow quickly and look directly at their weaknesses.
The pain helped me face up to my impetuousness and blind optimism.
It was too easy to get money the first few times, which caused me to lose my awe. At that time, I felt surrounded by a halo and was easy to be proud. Once again, whether it is a small institution or a large fund, I have the money first, and focus more on the development of the business rather than on the amount of financing.
We must pay enough attention to talent, data, and technology. One of the CEO ’s easiest mistakes is that each department has no one who can stand on its own , so everything has to be on its own, which causes it to run financing and do it again. Product, but also technology.
Sometimes you spend 1x the price to find two people, but it is better to spend 1.5x the price to find one person.
At that time, there was a relatively large VC who chose a conservative attitude to my project. The reason was that I felt that my experience was too smooth and they were worried that the tuition fees would be paid by them. Now it proves that they are indeed established funds.
Why do many funds like serial entrepreneurs? Those who have failed know where the pit is.
Two months after the company was shut down, many teams threw olive branches to me one after another, but in the end I combined my professional field and strengths and chose to return to Dachang to be familiar with entertainment projects. Coupled with the fact that husband and wife have been in business for two and a half years, and the economy is also relatively tense, the premise of pursuing their dreams must also be solved by food and clothing.
After arriving at Dachang, I am really sorry that there are not many opportunities left for entrepreneurs working alone.
The resources, innovation and talents of Dachang are stronger than many entrepreneurial teams, and they work harder than you. For example, there is a technical accident in the team. Everyone reviews it very deeply. This kind of responsibility The atmosphere was not in my entrepreneurial team at the time.
Compared with the previous generation, it is easier to start a business after 90s, because in this era of VC everywhere, it is more difficult to start a business after 90s, because now it is an oligopoly era, resources, talents and capital are all moving toward Head tilted.
No matter what era of entrepreneur, I believe the most important thing is to have a belief to support it.
I remember the first year of senior and several seniors starting a business. Five of us were crowded in a small residential building. When we were working, a bed was erected against the wall, and we put it back when we were sleeping. A man squeezed into a bed to sleep and continued to get up at six in the morning.
What we were doing was a Taobao seller application. One of the sellers aunt appreciated the things we did, and came here to visit. She thought we were a big company and was moved by accident. She said that we were really amazing. I will buy everything and help us to promote it.
I keep this in mind. The joy of providing value to others, and the overflowing sense of existence that has come from it, have become a footnote in my early days.
We rarely live once, and when we come, we must enjoy it, have some influence on this world, and realize our own value. I have seen some outside comments that entrepreneurs always dream of daydreams and upstarts. I believe that those who say these words have never really experienced entrepreneurship. I always think that money is secondary. If you really realize your dream, these things will be there.
This time, I chose to “stand on the shoulders of giants and do things”, hoping to achieve the purpose of starting a business as soon as possible. I will come back.
Li Dongying, former founding partner of ofo USA:
Eager to change the world, but later discovered that this is not all.
The year I talked with Dawei, I was going to change the world.
I was just 18 years old and was a freshman at the University of California, Diego. When I was in middle school, I was deeply influenced by Jobs. “I live to change the world.” I used this as my life direction.
I think this has something to do with my personal growth background. If a person has no financial pressure since he was a child, this child may have no concept of money and they want to pursue more ambitious things.
In fact, I was prepared before I did OFO. I had an internship in a domestic venture capital organization. I still earned 100,000 yuan in a summer vacation from a mock commercial project in high school.
These experiences made me realize that it ’s easy to make a small profit, But to really change the world depends on the timing. In 2016, bike sharing was on fire, and I realized that this opportunity might come. I started planning to talk to Chinese companies and introduce this model to the United States. In December, I found Dawei through my family relationship.
We had an appointment at the cafe in Ideal International Building and signed the contract on the spot. We agreed to inject capital to set up a new company, the main business of which is the expansion of ofo’s campus in the United States.
The process of getting to know each other is very fast. I think David believes in people like him: those who are smart and excellent, but not necessarily experienced in the eyes of others.
He thinks these people have a chance to get things done. He gave me the impression that he was very mature, and many young entrepreneurs would be impetuous, but they were not on him, and they could feel that several other joint ventures were very convinced. I took the chairman of several student unions of American universities to study in Beijing for two months, and then flew back to the United States to prepare for “opening up the territory.”
The first yellow car of the United States ofo number 0001 was launched by us. In March 2017, we completed our first pilot at the University of California, San Diego. At that time, our strategy was to make a place and then replicate it in other universities. Ofo later went to other universities in California, as well as Stanford and Harvard. The school model was almost verified. Ofo began to enter the city. The company also hired lobbying companies for this.
In the second half of 2018, Ofo ’s US theater began to collapse across the board. After all, it is difficult to copy the Chinese OFO model to the United States.
After reviewing the defeat at the time, I think there is still a big problem in capital operation. Although I still admire Dawei to this day, to some extent, his idealism has also harmed ofo. In contrast, Sun Yuchen’s blockchain has become, which has caused me no Small shock.
In addition to the lack of research and management confusion, I think ofo ’s entry into the United States was actually a “gimmick” and more “story-oriented”. It was mainly for financing valuation and brand considerations. Exciting, even if it’s worth advertising.
Ofo’s experience in the United States has made me lose a lot of money and risked my studies, but I still find it very meaningful. Ofo can be said to be the first true export of the Chinese Internet model overseas. Previously, China studied the United States. From ofo to tiktok, the world began to learn the Chinese model.
For Ofo America’s LossI had expected it at that time. In February 2018, I switched to the blockchain and lost money on ofo and made a lot of money on the blockchain.
After that, I started thinking about the meaning of entrepreneurship. I found out that Jobs had said something before he died. Although I don’t know if it was fabricated, it touched me. For example, it wrote:
“ Now I understand that as long as you have enough wealth in your life, you should pursue other things that have nothing to do with wealth. It should be more important. Maybe it ’s emotion, maybe it ’s art , Maybe just a childhood dream …
I ca n’t take away all the wealth I earned during my lifetime. What I can take away is only the innocence moved from the memory and the love and emotions that have nothing to do with the material. Real wealth. “
I think the significant difference between us and the previous generation is that more of them are “workaholics” and put the meaning of life on success, and our generation may know more about balancing career and life.
But no matter where you are, there may be gains and losses. A good family is more resources, but it may make people less fighting spirit.
Especially in the environment of our generation, with a lot of impetuousness and hedonism. For example, if I have a friend, he likes to play games. He moves like a furniture at home every day. He also went out for his girlfriend. He went to bed together every day, drove Bentley to shopping, all kinds of luxury goods. When he entered the store, he often spent four or five thousand dollars, and then went home to continue playing games.
But I think this is not the ideal life I want. Although I spent a lot of time on my life this year, I was no longer in a hurry to start a startup project. But I still think that people must have at least a career of their own. If they do n’t do anything all day, they will not get the respect of others.
Frankly, what will your children think of you in the future?
In the future, I am still eager to grow, make breakthroughs, and rely on my own abilities to gain respect.
Lu Jian, CEO of Job King:
The previous generation took the elevator, and our generation, we have to climb the stairs by ourselves.
Should you continue to be a small and beautiful company, or just let go and open up new directions? In the face of this problem, from consideration to determination, it took me only three days. But behind the three days is thinking about starting a business for two years.
My track is Internet vocational education. This track is narrow and crowded. The size of the market determines that it is difficult to grow a large company. It is not easy to become a medium-sized company with a bonus.
I ’m taking a small team of about 10 now, and I ’m going to do it. In the future, I may be able to make millions of millions of dollars in revenue a year, but the ceiling is too low. At the same time, in order to barely live, there is no more Experience to explore new areas.
Stop, turn around, and explore new directions, perhaps the best strategy of the moment.
Looking back on the entrepreneurial journey in the past two years, I can’t think of any sensational plots, unforgettable moments, and more in the process of recognizing myself-seeing my own narrowness and prejudice, and then continually grinding through my life. Practice yourself.
Anxiety can make a person unbalanced, and it prevents you from making the right judgment. Through our project, many small white users knocked on the doors of big Internet companies and became new product managers. This is something that happens to me almost every time, but I do n’t have Feeling too much sense of accomplishment, this is what will happen within expectations, and more often, it is surrounded by anxiety struggling on the line of life and death.
Entrepreneurship made me realize that people are often trapped by their own prejudice and do n’t know it. How to let go of prejudice through active thinking and review is very important. People are so easy to escape Real thoughts, including myself, are actually some of the decisions that were made at the beginning. If you think more carefully, the situation may be very different.
Looking back, I also made a problem for entrepreneurs with a lot of product technology backgrounds. I’m too focused on finding innovation, and it’s more pragmatic. Maybe the “sales model” is better. Release the existing productivity first, come up with a convincing data, and then use the money to expand the scale . Every day thinking about changing the model, as a result, his own plate is getting smaller and smaller, but he is dying.
When communicating this decision with the team, in fact, I didn’t have too many waves in my heart. This may also be the change of entrepreneurship to people. You will quit unnecessary emotions and become more rational. I worked hard to give the team the best accountability, help them push in, change their resumes, and borrow money to pay everyone for compensation. In December last year, I decided to change the training team operation mode to personalStudio mode.
As for the next direction, education is my original intention.
Because education changed me, it allowed me to come out of the lower-level family. In the future, education is still the main way to fundamentally change a person’s destiny.
If you are an e-commerce, you can help users enjoy high-quality products, but as an education, you can influence a person’s life trajectory. From a social level, as Ren Zhengfei said, education is the best national defense. So, the latter makes more sense to me, but this time I will understand more clearly the importance of choice.
Our generation must be more difficult to start a business than the previous generation.
The previous generation was taken by elevator. A person wants to climb to a high point and has his own talents. More often, he is “motivated” to lift people up. In this era of our generation, the straight ladder has been closed, and you have to climb the stairs by yourself.
The head effect is obvious now. It is difficult for entrepreneurs to work in large companies. With fewer resources and opportunities, entrepreneurs have to rely on their strengths and brains to get ahead.
The original success story is very exciting. It seems that it is normal to become rich overnight. It is normal to be a company with a market value of billions of dollars in three years. Putting the myth story aside, today ’s entrepreneurs should probably keep Good mindset, Less a little irritable, return to business itself, do your own business first .