Entrepreneurship guide: 9 military rules that should not be violated

Introduction: Steve Blank was hailed as the contemporary "Innovation master" by Harvard Business reviews, while San Jose mercees named him one of the top 10 most influential leaders in Silicon Valley. He once started his own business eight times and now teaches at Stanford University to spread innovative culture. This article is excerpted from the startup owner's manual, co-authored by Bob Dorf. the book aims to teach you how to build a great company with tested and verified customer development processes.

The text is as follows:

Whether you plan to open a pizza shop or make a very popular software product, you need to take a look at the following. This is the nine most common mistakes that entrepreneurs do in their initial stages.

1. Think that you understand customer needs very well

One of the most critical aspects of entrepreneurship is that the company's founders firmly believe that they understand the customer's needs, that they know the customer very well, understand what the customer needs, and that they know how to sell products to the customer. All calm entrepreneurs know that startups do not have customers at first, and they need to think carefully about all problems related to customers and their business models. Unless the company's founder is really an expert in a certain area and has many years of experience in the industry, the chance is very small. Entrepreneurs must admit that the so-called "clear customer needs" in the early stages of entrepreneurship are based on self-confidence guesses.

To succeed, entrepreneurs need to turn these guesses into reality. How to do it? Go out of your office, go to your customers, and check whether your Guesses are correct. If not, correct them in the shortest time.

2. "I know what features to add !"

This idea is actually guided by the previous one. Once an entrepreneur thinks that he is familiar with the customer's needs, he will add the "functions required by the customer" from the perspective of his consideration ".

Many founders often follow these ideas to create a "perfect product" in their own consciousness ".

However, many features of such a "perfect product" are not necessarily the real needs of users, and do not attract the expectations of the founder!

3. focus too much on the product release date

For a long time, the R & D, sales, and marketing departments of startups have been paying close attention to the product release date. For example, the marketing department tries to find an "Event" time point, such as exhibitions and conferences, to release products at such time points, in the hope that the product will gain a greater degree of attention.

Although the supervisor knows that the product R & D progress cannot guarantee the launch of perfect products on the release date, no matter whether the management personnel or investors are concerned about the early release, the product quality will not be affected, they only focus on the results of that date.

Product Release and first customers only mean that a product development team has completed the first version of the product. However, this does not mean that the company really understands the customer, nor does it mean that the company knows how to do a good job in marketing. However, basically all start-ups, whether ready or not, will schedule their respective departments on the "product release date.

Even worse, investors manage their financial budgets based on the product release date.

4. emphasize development rather than exploration, learning, and change

Mature companies need to implement existing business models for development. In these models, the functional requirements of customer groups and products are known and verified repeatedly.

But start-ups should not do this. Start-ups need to constantly explore and demonstrate their initial guesses and assumptions in practice to operate the company in the "Exploration" mode. In the process of exploration, enterprises will continue to grow and find a suitable and beneficial business model for their own development in the experiment again and again. In this process, the assumptions and assumptions of Most startups will be gradually rejected.

Therefore, companies that rely on the product line established at the beginning of the company's development do not pay attention to learning and exploration in the company's development, after all, they will pay the price.

5. Business plans cannot be changed

Traditional Business Plans and product models have a major advantage: they provide the founders with a clear development roadmap to guide them at what stage to achieve. There are also various financial indicators to constrain, such as profit and loss, negative assets and cash flow.

But the problem is that none of these indicators are necessary because they cannot motivate entrepreneurs to achieve their entrepreneurial goals: to find a reusable and scalable business model. An unchangeable business plan will limit startups to seek innovation and develop in an inherent model (whether right or wrong), which will inevitably affect their achievement.

6. unclear responsibilities

Most start-ups will learn some job names from mature companies. But what startups need to understand is that these job names depend on mature business models in mature companies. For example, the term "sales" refers to a working team that uses standard product introductions, prices, categories, and conditions to sell mature products to well-known customer groups.

In start-ups, there is no such clear definition of this term. Even if there is, it is not obtained through practical exploration. Many start-ups have vague job responsibilities.

Start-up companies must be able to discover user needs. Such people must be able to adapt to changes and chaos and learn from failures, it must be able to work in a risky and unstable environment.

7. Rigid Execution of sales and marketing plans

Many startups will hire their vice president and executives with high salaries, hoping they will bring benefits to the company. However, these managers and Board members often focus on the implementation of sales and marketing plans, and they believe that these plans can reflect the company's development. They also think they know how to do it (and think they are hired to do it ). In a mature company, there is no problem in doing so. Such actions may even work for startups with "existing markets.

However, in most startups, it is not appropriate to focus too much on sales and marketing plans. In the early stages of the business, most products did not receive a large amount of user feedback and were modified. In addition, the user requirements assumed during most business operations may be incorrect, therefore, Rigid Execution of sales and marketing plans may lead to the final withdrawal of products from the market competition.

8. Expand the company too early

In the early stages of business, many companies were able to develop smoothly according to their business plans, revenue expectations, and product models. Some companies will choose to expand their business scale at this time. But in fact, there is not much room for the company to make mistakes, learn, update, and provide feedback to customers. So at this time, we are eager to expand the company's scale, which is likely to bring a fatal disaster to the company.

9. Dealing with adverse crisis

Some of the hidden crises of startup companies will be gradually exposed after the launch of the product, when the first batch of customers were available but the sales did not meet expectations.

In this case, Most startups have a solution to respond to the crisis: Change the sales supervisor or vice president in charge of sales. Then, the new vice president will point out that the company's previous strategy did not grasp user requirements, or there were problems with the company's sales strategy. Because the new sales associate is always hired to solve the sales problem, the marketing department must resubmit to a supervisor who believes that all the strategies previously formulated by the company were wrong.

If the new senior officials can solve the company's crisis, it will be good. However, once the work of the new executives fails, the start-up companies will be prone to repeated situations: crisis, change the owner, follow the new line, crisis, change the owner ......

The real question should be: Does your business plan really come from the customer's needs?

Most of the assumptions in the Business Plan are unverified. Truly Smart entrepreneurs will develop in the Process of the company, revise the company's initial plan and business model based on the experience and results gained in practice. The emergence of problems is not seen as a crisis, but as a stepping stone to the success of an enterprise. (Compilation: Wei Bing)