AI Summary of 8 key ideas
1、The meaning and benefits of problem-driven
Problem-driven is to solve the problem itself and focus on real needs. For example, the original intention of Yidao Travel is to solve problems and pay attention to the problems around you, such as not being able to get a taxi when traveling on business. Solving real needs from the perspective of solving problems can help entrepreneurs clarify the key issues in entrepreneurship.
Problem-driven can make you have real concerns and experiences about this problem and become a long-lasting driving force. When you really want to solve this problem, it will become a long-lasting driving force in your heart in entrepreneurship. If your starting point is just to seize opportunities and take new concepts as the starting point, but you don’t have a real original intention, it will be easy to give up.
When thinking about starting something, it is best to be problem-driven rather than concept-driven. Now as an investor, I pay special attention to why entrepreneurs do this thing and what is the inner driving force of entrepreneurs. If he says that my project is VR (virtual reality technology) and AI (artificial intelligence), and there is only one concept, then the problem he solves is actually very vague, and I may think that he is prone to fall into the trap of concepts.
2、Identify the authenticity of demand
Entrepreneurs tend to have obsessions, thinking that when they come up with an idea, there will be a corresponding demand, but this demand may only be a very personal demand, or even not a real demand. I have a friend who said that he wants to start a business and wants to build a sacrificial garden on the Internet, but this is not a common demand. It is very important to judge whether a demand is a real demand or a high-value demand. For this, I have also summarized three standards, namely strong, universal and frequent. The first standard is strong, that is, whether the user is willing to pay for this demand and how much he is willing to pay. The second standard is universal, that is, there are enough people who have this demand. The third standard is frequent, and the demand itself should be a high-frequency demand.
If you judge that this is a product with mass demand, such as taxis, then in the later stage, this market is already mass enough, high-frequency enough, and rigid enough, you should clearly know that you will face super fierce competition, and then adjust your strategy accordingly to deal with the competition. As entrepreneurs, we should not always think that our needs are absolutely existent and absolutely real. An entrepreneur's own needs and personal insights may not be universal, especially now that entrepreneurs are becoming more and more savvy, your needs may be very personal.
3、Beware of the flat puzzle strategy
The flat puzzle strategy will face competition in every field, and whether the ability is sufficient to support it is a challenge. If a company uses the same methodology whether it is doing group buying, takeout, or movies, it is to find another equally large market to expand in plane, copy the ability, and form a big puzzle. Whether your ability is sufficient to support you to form a huge competitiveness against your respective strong enemies in each battlefield is a challenge. Successful companies have strategic restraint and do not do all kinds of dazzling things. Apple is the representative of excellent strategic ability, and its strategic ability is reflected in what it chooses to do and what it does not do. The reason why Apple chooses not to make TVs is precisely because it cannot form a subversive breakthrough in the user experience, so it simply does not do it. What did Apple choose to do? Headphones. When Apple released AirPods, the headphone market was already a red ocean. How does Apple think? It wants to provide a product with enough subversive power.
4、Competition is the norm
Competition is actually the norm, and it is not the Internet today that is the most competitive. As for the global commercial aircraft manufacturers, there are only two left now—Boeing and Airbus. However, from the successful test flight of the Wright brothers to today, the United States has also experienced a period when hundreds of aircraft manufacturing companies coexisted. From hundreds to two, it is the continuous merger, elimination, and demise in the cruel competition that has evolved into today's pattern. From a business perspective, the development history of all industries is basically a history of competition. Even industries with very high technical barriers will still face competition, such as the chip industry. The threshold is already high enough, but in addition to Intel, there is also the invincible AMD (American Advanced Micro Devices). You will find that no matter what the industry is or what the business model is, competition is always there like air.
5、Core issues of competition
Clear business essence, distinguish between technology-driven, product-driven, operation-driven, resource-driven, and brand-driven When shared bikes first came out, there were many debates about this field. An investor met me before he was about to invest in MB and asked me what I thought. I said that the thing is to put enough bikes on the road as soon as possible. Other issues are not core issues, such as whether the bikes are light or heavy, how to improve them, etc.
There can only be one key task in a period, not multiple. I have seen too many startups doing multiple things at the same time and concurrent multi-process tasks, which shows that they have not thought clearly about the essential issues. Concurrent multi-process tasks seem to bring many opportunities and possibilities to the company, but in fact, the company's resources are so few in total, and doing other things outside of key tasks is a waste of resources. Understand the key and essence of competition clearly, and determine the key tasks of a company in a certain period. Only by understanding clearly can you determine what the key tasks of a company are in a certain period. Only when the key tasks are clear can the company reach a consensus and put all the efforts of the company on this matter.
6、The key issue of the product itself determining the traffic
The product features determine the value of traffic, traffic value = DAU × duration × transaction coefficient WeChat has 1 billion users, and the average user uses it for 90 minutes a day. What a terrible data. Toutiao has more than 500 million users, and a user reads for 60 to 70 minutes a day, which is also terrible, so the user usage time is very important. A product with transaction attributes that can directly generate transactions naturally has more valuable traffic. For example, Taobao, although Taobao's traffic is not as good as WeChat or Baidu in terms of the total volume of the entire network, each traffic it generates has transaction attributes, so Taobao's traffic is very valuable.
The characteristics of the product determine the value of traffic, and the strength of product demand directly determines the cost of purchasing traffic. If a product itself is a rigid demand, then the conversion rate of purchased traffic must be high, and the traffic cost is relatively low. Since the first day of its birth, WeChat has never bought traffic from outside except for the internal traffic from QQ. Luxury e-commerce itself is a niche, low-frequency, high-priced, and decision-intensive field. Such product attributes determine that their costs when purchasing traffic are very high because of the low conversion rate.
7、Choosing the timing of financing
Raise as much as possible when others are optimistic about you. When Yidao raised its C round of financing in 2014, it only raised $100 million for various reasons. Only three months after the completion of the C round of financing, its rival successfully completed the largest financing in the history of global private equity. When a company is in a bad situation, it often gets half the result with twice the effort. When a company is in trouble, it is almost impossible to raise funds. Many people asked me why you sold Yidao to LeTV in 2015? Did I have a choice at that time? I had no choice.
Don't judge financing by valuation. What really determines the scale of financing is your core business needs. Financing is not only for business expenses, but also for the worst situation. You need to foresee how much money you will need to face competitors. Whether you can raise funds or not is a matter of ability, but the financing plan and goal should be prepared for the worst situation, even if it means selling some equity. When starting a business in the Internet industry, you need to remain sensitive to competition. When facing competition, you must not be lucky, because it is an important factor that you must consider in financing, because it may become the worst situation you will face in the future.
8、Leadership is first about being yourself
There is no unified model for leadership, and everyone can form their own leadership. The leadership of entrepreneurs is different, and there is no unified standard model. Lei Jun is a very hardworking entrepreneur who works from 8 am to 9 pm. Jack Ma's eloquent and infectious power can mobilize everyone's passion. Ma Huateng is a person who makes decisions slowly, especially when he faces complicated things that may embarrass others, he often doesn't know how to deal with them. People with different personality traits are likely to form their own leadership. My brother has very good interpersonal relationships and is very good at taking care of others, while I am more self-centered and don't care much about people. Ma Huateng's tolerance of marginalized departments is actually the result of his slow decision-making.
The first secret to gaining leadership is to be yourself first, and be your true self as completely as possible. There is no need to imitate anyone, no need to learn from anyone, everyone has his own leadership. Only by being your true self can you lead others better.
9、Learn to show weakness
To grow, you have to learn to show weakness. Good CEOs are good at showing weakness, always saying "I can't do it, tell me what I should do". After showing weakness, not only will more new knowledge come in, but more people will be willing to help you. People are naturally good at teaching others. If you take the initiative to ask others for advice, they are generally willing to tell you. At a dinner party, a friend took the initiative to ask questions from a senior boss, and thus got a lot of help. The friend kept asking questions from the boss: How should this be done? How should that be done? I don't know much about this, can you tell me?
Professor Zeng Ming said: "Since you founded Yidao, you haven't contacted me for four years." He said: "Do you know? You have missed a lot of opportunities and a lot of resources that can help you because of this."
10、Minimized startup
When resources are limited, the product should be deliberately made small, which is called "minimized startup". What really allows you to survive is that you can create clear enough user value. In the startup phase, the product should be deliberately made small, rather than forced to be big. Most people think the latter way, always thinking that it is right to be big. In fact, being big is the final result, not the method. Minimized startup practice and cases Taking Yidao as an example, we should make things smaller and less, and don't need to pay attention to the doubts about whether there is a business model. The first thing is to match the needs of drivers and users. Other functions such as billing and payment can be put aside for the time being.
In the 0 to 0.1 stage, entrepreneurs should first consider whether there is clear user value, and then whether the growth rate is fast enough. Even if many investors will ask you what the business model is, I want to tell you that as an investor, I care less and less about this issue, because I know that it is useless to care. For a company in the 0 to 0.1 stage, there is actually no so-called business model. The reports and models given by entrepreneurs are all made for investors to see, which are essentially meaningless. Therefore, at this stage, only user value and growth rate are what entrepreneurs should care about most.
