in time
1) The market space is large.
I still speak a little. First of all, I think the first market space is large enough at the beginning of starting a business. If you do one thing, the intelligent hardware will still cut in from the hardware. First, I hope there is enough market space. What is the concept of this large enough market space? From the investor's point of view, I think this matter will have a market scale of10 billion RMB in two to three years. On this scale, investors may be interested in this direction.
In the direction of intelligent hardware, from the perspective of market space, I feel that at present, I personally prefer to give timely help in investment and solve problems that could not be solved in the past. For example, I may be very interested in health and medical treatment. As long as it is a product that can solve problems that can't be solved in the past, I really want to solve problems. I think such products will be of interest. Another icing on the cake, I think it is good to be useful, such as smart watches, bracelets and backpacks. Personally, if you look at it from the perspective of early investment, you can also go to see it now.
But in a market like China, in fact, the per capita GDP of China in 2065,438+03 was more than 6,000 US dollars, and in 2065,438+04 it broke 7,000 US dollars. The per capita GDP of the United States1970 is over 7,000 dollars, and the gap between China and the United States is very large. China still has some special mainstream needs in some relatively basic links, so I think it's very good for users to use it to solve other problems if they can give a gift in the snow. If it is from a higher level of aesthetics or some value-added needs, this kind of intelligent hardware may be worth seeing and investing in the early stage, but its real outbreak will wait until a few years later.
2) The timing is good enough
What I just said is market space and some directions. The next day was a good time to cut in. As mentioned above, if the problem is solved immediately, there is still a chance that such products will break out soon. But if it is icing on the cake, users' aesthetics may be improved, and such products may not break out until two or three years later.
So the timing is very good. If the timing is too early, a product may become a martyr of the industry. If the timing is just right, as Lei Jun said, you may become a pioneer in the industry. This is actually a very crucial thing. The cutting time is at the second point of the weather. Moreover, in this era of mobile internet intelligent hardware, it is even more demanding to quickly reflect the needs of products and quickly iterate ahead of giants.
3) Tian Ji's horse racing style.
Another point, from the weather point of view, is to do horse racing in Tian Ji as far as possible, and not to compete directly with the giants. There are still people making smart phones, so we have to weigh them. There are so many companies, such as Xiaomi, who want to be smart TVs. It can be seen that there is a smart TV similar to microcrystalline this year. Only such giants can cut into a particularly mainstream Red Sea market, but for a small entrepreneurial team, it may still be looking for a relatively subdivided product direction with rigid demand, rather than the direction that industry giants focus on, which may become their main direction in the future.
Geographical advantage
1) the second thing about starting a business is geographical location, that is, what core competitiveness it has.
This core competitiveness is in intelligent hardware. I think the requirements of intelligent hardware for the team will be higher and higher. In industrial design, software and hardware user experience, hardware production capacity, supply chain, marketing and other aspects of the requirements are very high. So the entrepreneurial team can think about what is the strongest point in the composition of the core team.
Of course, I think that the entrepreneurship of intelligent hardware is actually different from the general App. APP only needs to focus on products and technologies, and intelligent hardware will have the final product. Can your supply chain production keep up? Can the secondary products be sold? Marketing channels are equally important, and it is a more balanced and demanding team.
Let's start with our strengths. Maybe we have strong industrial design ability. For example, Firebird and Firebird Haibo, which I also invested in, used to be very strong and had industry leaders in industrial design. Their team can help some teams in terms of user experience, supply chain and marketing.
2) The founders have their own strengths.
If the first few founders of an entrepreneurial team need to be particularly strong in all aspects. The core composition of a team, what is your strongest place, and relative balance, all aspects of ability are not bad, to play your strongest point to start a business, the first concern is your core competitiveness. If the market is big enough and the timing is good enough, a market like China will definitely enter the Red Sea soon.
In the Red Sea, your team can win and become the first and second in the industry. You must have a particularly strong core competitiveness. This kind of differentiation and advantage makes your opponent far behind.
3) What kind of special resources are there?
Secondly, I think it is still what kind of special resources you have. This is not the most important thing for a market-oriented investor. It is good to have it, but it is not a big problem to have it. You have some special abilities, for example, you are particularly strong in industrial design, or offline sales channels are particularly strong. Some past experience and some unique resources will help the company's development and sales. The core of geographical location is two points, one is core competitiveness, and the other is better if you have unique resources.
Unity and coordination within one's team
1) What is the CEO of a good founding team?
The third so-called investment is actually the core of investment in people and teams. Generally speaking, the hope is a team combination, and the requirements for CEO are very high. I certainly hope your CEO is strong. If your team has only one core, you own 65,438+000% of the shares, and the following small partners are all your employees, it is generally difficult for such a CEO to invest from the perspective of investors.
We still hope to have at least two or three core groups, each of which is good at it and has the highest requirements for CEO. In addition, there are two good partners with their own advantages. Maybe the CEO is a product manager with strong CTO technology and strong marketing ability. There is a combination, which may be better. Personally, I prefer the CEO or product manager in the intelligent hardware startup team. He knows the needs of users very well. This is the most important thing in all Internet or mobile Internet times.
2) In addition to the CEO, the combination of start-up teams
A management software, a management hardware, plus a marketing partner.
As I said just now, the first one is the CEO, the product manager and the second one is the CTO. The CTO can be in software or hardware. It is best to have two people, one is in charge of software and the other is in charge of hardware. Both of them have rich experience. From the software level, I suggest being the CTO of the back-end server. He has agile development ability, large-scale massive concurrent processing experience, and can do data mining. UI and UE can recruit front-end engineers and technical partners of hardware. I think the requirements are also very high. It is preferable to have previous hardware experience and be very familiar with manufacturing and supply chain. Because everyone knows that making a first edition is very different from mass production and mass production, such hardware partners are also very important.
There is also a partner, probably at the marketing and operational levels. Once your product is made, the first batch of 2000 and 3000 will be produced. If it is good, when tens of thousands of pieces are produced in the later stage, if they cannot be sold, inventory will be formed. Once the cash flow of the inventory company is formed, it will be cut off and dangerous.
Therefore, in the intelligent hardware industry, marketing has become very important. You should put your own brand and products in the hearts of users and enter their minds. I can produce quickly, sell quickly, and even achieve hunger marketing like Xiaomi. At first, Xiaomi's hunger marketing stopped because of his supply chain. Finally, because of Li Wanqiang's strong marketing ability, it became hunger marketing, which was very powerful. Therefore, people in marketing and cloud operations in such a team are also very important.
3) the ability of industrial design
One more thing, no one has bought an ugly hardware product since Apple's mobile phone came out. In this case, industrial design actually becomes very important. If the product you produce is produced by a technical team, no one will buy it. Industrial design will also become very important in the intelligent hardware team. You can see that the requirements for the entrepreneurial team of intelligent hardware are actually very high.
Entrepreneurial syllogism
Of course, below, I may briefly talk about my own entrepreneurial syllogism. The core of entrepreneurship is people, things and money. Liu Chuanzhi said, build a team, formulate a strategy and lead a team. First of all, we should have a good core team, that is, build a team, then formulate a strategy, a specific direction, a very clear and huge vision, and then tackle key problems with the team.
1) The CEO's task is to find someone to change money.
Lei Jun also said that when he said that he wants to set a goal and find someone to find money, the CEO must set a lofty goal. If he had one or two partners at the beginning, he would even spend 70% of his energy looking for people and talents. An excellent talent is 10 mediocre talent. Even if Lei Jun is so awesome, he spent 70% of his energy to find seven or eight partners. Besides, he had to get enough money. Now is the winter of capital, and investors will have many doubts about the entrepreneurship of intelligent hardware. What to do in this case? Getting enough money is also to ensure the better development of your company.
2) Set goals in stages and implement them quickly.
Another point of syllogism is that entrepreneurs had better set a vision and decompose it into specific stage implementation goals and strategies and tactics needed to achieve stage goals. These three points are syllogism and methodology. To put it simply, I have another logic. How do you say the syllogism of this matter? Look at the past and the future, who they are now, what kind of user groups you are targeting, what problems and pain points these user groups have in the past, and where they come from.
Where to go is how to solve this problem and pain point, and how to make money and what kind of company to become. On intelligent hardware, many people's hardware itself has a low gross profit. Maybe he has enough data to make money by selling consumables. It is also important to think about how to make money in the future.
The people who start syllogism are still who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Who Are We? Our team is a complementary team, not a person fighting. What is the experience of this team in the past, how to support it now, where to go, what is the competitiveness of the team, what are the barriers to winning in the Red Sea and becoming the industry leader?
Specifically, we always have a big goal. The big goal must revolve around a stage and a key point to achieve the small goal. Many small goals have been accumulated in the big goals. What is this goal? Where did it come from? It means that a team often discusses what to do collectively, but there are often things with different opinions. At this time, it is very important for CEO to make a quick decision and finalize an implementation plan to implement it. Where to go is actually to achieve iteration, which is the most important thing. If you do something wrong, you can adjust it quickly. I am not afraid of mistakes, I am most afraid of inaction, and I can iterate products quickly.
3) Write a business plan.
There may be some problems in financing, and everyone will write a PPT. I see more problems to share with you. Everyone should have a very strong summing-up ability, and it is best to make clear what they want to do in one or two sentences. Very, very simple, a sentence that your grandmother can understand to explain what you are doing, investors will feel very at ease, and your team has a strong summing-up ability.
In addition, the marketing ability is strong, and there are too many PPT pages which are very complicated. If you don't look good, you must be simple, unified and beautiful. You'd better have a designer to beautify it for you. Focus is very important, you can't do several things at the same time, you can only do one thing at a time, and the time, energy, manpower and funds of the entrepreneurial team are limited.
4) concentrate on product development
It is useless to simply guide the relationship between resources. The core is the product, and it is said that the user is king and there is no chance to fight. It must be a test of your comprehensive ability. There must also be a suitable financing plan. You should understand the stages of investors' investment. At the beginning of valuation, don't scare investors, run in small steps and don't eat fat. Especially when the capital is relatively cold, we should consider a more suitable valuation.
Entrepreneurial points
1) The key point in the initial stage of starting a business is to give up.
You may still be starting a business. Let me briefly talk about the main points of starting a business. At the beginning of the venture, the core key point is the product. The way is to make a single breakthrough and make good use of the greatest advantages of your team. What are the difficulties when starting a business? The hard part is to give up and start choosing many directions.
But the difficulty lies in giving up and focusing on one thing. You can tidy up, one, two, three, four, five, and one, two, four, five, just do the first thing. It is most important to do the first thing well. The purpose of the early stage is to acquire some core seed users and establish word of mouth.
There are only a few people in the management team, 10, 20 people. It must be ruled by the people. The CEO will manage people and rely entirely on them. The stage is seed and A round, and the financing amount is about 50,000 to 5 million US dollars. Investors want to return it 10 times.
2) The key point in the growth period is operation.
Then there is the relative growth period, which means that the focus at this time is on operation, and the method is to improve efficiency and implement it soon. At this time, the difficulty is competition. When you reach a certain scale, there will be a bunch of similar products. At this time, you still have to strengthen yourself, make good use of your best strengths, and pull your competitors to their best places instead of being dragged to his best places. At this time, the key is to find the pattern and open the competition.
At this time, the management, the company may have dozens of people, one hundred people. From the personnel system to the rule of law, it is necessary to establish a set of hierarchical mechanisms. At this time, the investment stage is probably A to B, and the financing amount may be 200W to 2000 W. Investors may hope to have a return of 5.
3) The focus of dilator is management.
After that, it may be the expansion period. Many entrepreneurial teams began to talk about products and technologies. At this time, the most important thing is at the management level.
The method at this time may be to establish a mechanism, and the so-called barrel theory comes out. Make up your shortcomings, grasp the key points, and the difficulty is decentralization. Before, the CEO was a gambler, and he went everywhere. The difficulty now is that you can only manage seven people at the next level. Other things are up to them.
The purpose is that a model has been established and needs to be expanded quickly. At this time, management may be ruled by law. The investment stage is B to C, and the financing amount is 1000W to 5000 W. Investors hope to have a return of 2-5 times.
4) The key point of maturity is capital.
In the end, it may be a little far from everyone. This is when the company matures. The key point is money. The method is to invest in mergers and acquisitions. I believe many people have read a book from 0 to 1. The highest goal of the company is to be an innovation monopoly. Monopoly is the ultimate goal of any enterprise, not a closed and conservative monopoly, but an innovative monopoly.
At this time, you need to integrate the industrial chain and find the winning point. The difficulty is that the CEO needs a brain. When you integrate the industrial chain, you need to dilute your own shares in order to open up the industry and form a monopoly. Management is the rule of law. The scale of the company is already very large, from private enterprises to public IPO enterprises, with more than 50 million US dollars, and investors want 2-3 times the return.
Some summaries and experiences:
What I want to say is that I have a deeper understanding of entrepreneurs. When I was 20 years old, I was told that you follow your heart. I didn't believe it at that time, and I didn't have that condition at that time. I can only do the environment and what I do. Now I feel more and more that for young entrepreneurs, they should try to follow their hearts and do what they love.
For example, we all know the founder of Facebook. When he started his business, he actually did a very simple thing. He clicked first, and there were two pictures on the page. The girl in the class or the girl in the next class ordered which one looked good. This is the initial impulse of sophomore boys. He really wanted to do it, so he made it into Facebook.
In addition, another person, the founder of Zynga, is an angel investor in Facebook. His company is also listed in the United States. At that time, he saw the rapid growth of Facebook and thought that games could make more money on this platform, so he founded a game company.
He was a successful entrepreneur and angel investor on Facebook. He was 40 when he started his business. He was voted by the executives of EA, a very famous game company in the world. The core of this company is that data-driven game companies are not creative-driven, but data-driven. At the beginning of his game, investors helped him dig up a lot of executives, and he did well in the game.
But he was actually the originator of social games at that time. Although this company is listed in the United States, it has gradually degenerated into a company with gambling as its core game. Why? I believe this founder doesn't like it very much. He saw that he went to this outlet to start a business. He may not like it himself. Driver is the data-driven thing he wants to do, not the creative game company.
Although he is also very successful, he is not so successful, which is far from Facebook. For a young entrepreneur, you must do what you like, not have it both ways. From the beginning to success, even if it is very successful, we have calculated that it will take seven years. It is very painful for you to do something you don't like for seven years. I suggest you follow your heart and do what you like.