Without resources, no father, no money and no advantages, how to start a business after 80? How do startups find money? How to recruit?
Photo: Chuangchuang For a discussion session on "Young is the Power of Start-ups under 30"
[Chuangyebang News] The "2012 Chuangyebang Annual Conference and the" Chuangyebang 100 "Annual Award Ceremony" hosted by cyzone.cn was held in Beijing Millennium Hotel on December 1st and 2nd. Chen Ou, founder and CEO of Jumei Youping, Gu Zhicheng, CEO of Cool Disk, Shu Yi, CEO of Limei Interactive Advertising, Wu Xinhong, CEO of Meitu Xiuxiu, Xu Le, CEO of Game Matrix, Xu Dechen, co-founder of Chat network, Zheng Yaqi, CEO of Beijing Pipi Lu General Culture and Technology Co., LTD., attended and participated in the "Start-up under 30 years old, Youth is Power." These young people, all under the age of 30, have attracted many users and admiring stares with their companies and products. The secret of their success is also shown in the discussion.
How do start-ups find money?
How to get funded is one of the most important factors in starting a business. The idea of these young winners is not to try to "fool" investors with an idea first, but to do your own thing first.
Chen Ou, the founder and CEO of Jumei Youpin, is grateful to Xu Xiaoping. "How do you get the money to start a business? My first money was on my own, and it was hard work. After returning to China, I started my first business with angel investment from Teacher Xu Xiaoping. We had met many times before and he knew about my project intentionally, so the investment went smoothly. Later, after seeing the company's performance, traffic, product attention, it is easy to get VC."
Talking about the experience of getting the investment from Xu Xiaoping, Chen Ou said that Xu Xiaoping is very passionate and will be more supportive of young people. "His idea was to do it if he liked it. So I support you to try to get Xu's investment."
Wu Xinhong's entrepreneurial path is unique. "I'm a photography enthusiast myself. I majored in oil painting, fine arts. I have also started my own business for three times. The first time was in 2001 when I just graduated from high school. I earned 300,000 yuan by domain name and helped others design web pages. The second time is also to take a little money to do, but the first two failed, later in CAI Wensheng eldest brother's company to help him do products, Meitu Xiuxiu is a certain number of users after the independent company.
Xu Le is young, but he is a veteran of entrepreneurship. "I was an early entrepreneur. I came to Beijing in 2000 and made a little money at first, but my dream didn't work out. So I went back in '04 and finished the book."
Xu Le's second company, made 68 days, took a venture capital of IDG.
The third time, Xu Le got angel investment. But there is a small episode in this, when they do, do less than half a year, millions of burned out, and then on the verge of bankruptcy, at that time very painful, no one in need of help.
Xu Le, in the most difficult times, persevered and made about five or six million dollars. Since most of their revenue comes from advertising, they want to do it better. "All of our revenue comes from overseas, and we saw that overseas platforms were doing so poorly that we did one thing: we talked to all of our advertisers in the first half of this year and put them together."
Xu's company cost 100,000 yuan to register. "We did it for a year until last month, when we just closed our first round of financing. And every time we ran out of money, we often ran out of money, paid the staff, and then ran out of money to pay the rent, and the main way to do that was basically to borrow, which was quite a lot, but not that much."
How do start-up upstarts build core teams?
When companies find money, people become the most important factor. In fact, there is still a lot of hot money in China, but people are hard to find. Because after you set the direction, no matter how hard the CEO, it is impossible to write their own procedures every day, their own delivery, sales, so it is very important to have a good entrepreneurial team. An enterprise, including a lot of VC, angel investors, the first factor is the entrepreneurial team, that is, the people.
"It's not realistic to find a group of very, very strong people at the beginning of a startup," Chen advises. "That means power division. So the first people you look for are your friends, your brothers, people you trust, not necessarily the most capable people in the industry."
"I wouldn't recommend starting a business right out of college." "Said Gu Zhicheng. "Because I think when I first graduated, how can I find the right team when I haven't even seen pig run, let alone eating pork? Even if you do, there are a lot of uncertainties, and then feel the stones across the river, the probability of success is very low." So he thinks it's important to start a business by going to another company and having a little bit of a purpose to see what resources, information, and connections are available.
Talking about "people", Shu Yi also has a lot of emotion. "We're constantly figuring out how the team fits together. Our company is in the field of advertising business, to compete in several aspects: sales, operation, technology to compete, not a shortage. Our core sales team was put together five years ago. The first five years do not make money, everyone together, now make money, are still together. Many of our technical teams were poached from Google. Because the original they pay very high, want to pull them, you must not completely rely on money, but the dream, is to start a business. In fact, everything depends on the demand. Some young people around 30 years old, they may not compete in the company, he may also want to start a business, generally we hire people with dreams."
Most people would probably say that such a team is more prone to problems. Shu Yi said, "A few years ago, I told them what I wanted to be five years from now. After five years, I told them, 'Look what I said five years ago. Now you see what I said. If you are unreliable yourself, I guess no matter what you say, no one will believe you. In my case, in particular, I have a core group of people who are a lot older than me. Five years ago I was 24, this year I'm 28, and most people who are in their late 20s and married and have kids are willing to follow you. That's how you're proven."
How do start-ups position their products?
Chen Ou is an advocate of playing by the rules. "First, the opponent you choose is very important, for example, Tencent also has a lot of creative teams, but also business divisions, if you do not do his core team, you have time to make differences, when you make achievements, the other side to catch up with you is too late. Second, do not play his game according to the rules of big companies, but you can subvert him, for example, when the mobile Internet began to develop, you can change from large and complete to small and fine, or cosmetics recommendation, including Vipshop, their special way, is also a traditional mall subversion. So for the CEO of a small company, it's more about decision making, direction choices."
Wu Xinhong believes that between small companies and large companies, more is complementary. Compared to large companies, having many small teams has its advantages. Each year, the group of users and their needs are constantly changing, and small companies have the flexibility to accurately grasp the needs. So for small companies, start by doing something that you're good at and that you and your users find particularly interesting. Secondly, it is to attach itself to large platforms as much as possible, such as wechat and Weibo, to quickly gather users. And try to do something that doesn't cost money and can explode quickly. He said that Meitu, for example, has not spent any promotional expenses.
Xu Le is more concerned about whether this thing can be done well, to pick up what he is best at doing, a large team is also organized by a small team, a large team can do a lot of things, but a small company focus.
Xu said that their main users are not only cooperating with large companies, strictly speaking, this is his second venture, they cooperate with many middle schools and universities in Beijing, do free campus study abroad or English themed lectures, in the form of live streaming to schools, to gather students to watch, as their offline resources consolidation, At the same time, this is also the promotion mode of chat network.
Quotes from entrepreneurs:
Chen Ou: Entrepreneurship is a kind of life style you love.
Gu Zhicheng: Entrepreneurship is a little like running long at the speed of a sprint, the appearance is more bright, in fact, it is really bitter.
The chance of a startup going public is lower than the chance of you getting hit by a car.
Shuyi: If you just want to make money, or recommend work, really do not recommend to set up a company, the probability of success is too low.
Wu Xinhong: I think interest is the biggest driving force for entrepreneurship.
Xu Le: I'm just a boring person. This is my own kind. Entrepreneurship is my job.
Xu Dechen: The earlier you start a business, the better.
