Set up a special sale platform with partners tonight Hotel special app

Jinxin: Vice president of Jing Dong Group

Tonight, the founder of the Hotel special offers, a lecturer at the business School. 2011 and partner set up a special sale platform "Tonight Hotel special" App.

This January, "Tonight Hotel special" was officially bought by Jingdong Group. Jinxin the "financial World" weekly summed up the two years of entrepreneurial road.

In 2013, we finally set up our own backstage operation team. But not until the end of the year can not support: we cut off the entire team. This is tantamount to dissolving most of the company's manpower. We forget that it is more difficult to keep growing at high speed after volume increases.

I made a particularly foolish mistake. There was a time when I thought we were going to be a big company and we would soon be big and need a lot of people. Even though we had only over 50 people at the time, we rented a modern office building in downtown Shanghai that could accommodate 100 to 150 people, and half the office was vacant. Finally had to lose the liquidated damages, retreated to a lot of remote park.

We also made a rash mistake and assumed that everything would go according to our expectations. Actually to the later stage, the marketing cost of mobile internet whole went up, want to rely on their own to realize the idea of PK Ctrip is very difficult. I think in the tourism industry to make some movement or to be sure to "alongside the wealthy, to go the right way", so defected to the electric quotient gene and our most matching jingdong.

If I can repeat, I would rather pay a higher cost of outsourcing a high quality background operations team, even if each single cost more than their own operations, but also to do the row. Because this flexibility is higher, when the order is found not so high, I can be in time to cut off this piece. Like a home to install broadband, you can choose 200 dollars one months, or 1700 yuan a year, of course, you will think the latter cost-effective, but if you move after three months?

For tonight's hotel specials, we often get an idea and start doing it. Now, there are many other ways. At first, we insisted on only making phone payments. But out of every 20 users who choose to pay for their mobile phones, 19 fail to pay. For the first two months, we've been grappling with the problem of payment platforms, constantly working with various payment platforms, but it turns out that the user was not accustomed to paying directly on the phone. In fact, to test the way the phone prepaid, we do not need to talk about the hotel, can use a more "light" way, such as directly on Taobao to buy a good prepaid hotel on the app to sell, Taobao sell 500 yuan, I can sell 300 yuan, even if they pay 200 yuan can also, to see if there is no one to buy, They are used to prepaid mobile phones so that they do not have to talk to one another, saving operating costs. First of all the hotels are connected to see which hotels sell well, then to talk about cooperation, this has a point.

In addition, startups should keep a low profile and start with users and products. In retrospect, I should not be so high-profile to do publicity, including the launch of many Big V friends to help forward the promotion. On the second day of the first release, our downloads rushed to the second place in the App Store rankings, and we had 1 million users early on. But it is said that tonight hotel specials do not feel that this is a good app, on the contrary, their impression is that the hotel is too small choice, payment procedures inconvenient, the program is too ugly. Although we soon had several later optimizations, I had offended my users. In the product is not done before, should be "sneaky" behind closed doors, wait until the test completed, relatively mature version of the online, then go ahead, or you can only waste resources.

If you want to sum up your own lessons, I would like to say: learn to assume that your ideas are wrong. This will be a more open-minded attempt to consider a variety of possibilities. I like the science fiction "three bodies" there is a very classic: ignorance and stupidity is not a barrier to survival, arrogance is.

For two years, half of my decisions have been wrong, and in the future, I can't avoid mistakes, but what I can do is to minimize the cost of mistakes. Originally a mistake burned 10 million, now I hope to lose tens of thousands of pieces will be able to turn back. Small scale experiments, large-scale promotion, the most worth learning entrepreneur is actually Deng Xiaoping. Try the wrong with the smallest cost, this is the so-called lean entrepreneurship.

Tips:

Jinxin thinks lean entrepreneurship should do this

Don't be blind to self-confidence

In the product development, creative implementation, the lowest cost, the fastest way to carry out market testing, or in a small range of first Test.

Make the company more "light"

Stay flexible, don't make rash mistakes, and leave your own bridges. Adjust the direction at any time according to trial and error results.

In "Light" to find "heavy"

In the "light" way of extensive trial and error in the process, find the company should concentrate on doing the "heavy" point, forming a threshold that others can not go beyond.