Zhang Linxuan founder of the network: Why do I have to start a business

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My name is Zhang Linxuan, 20 years old this year, is the founder of the chat net (talkways.com). The website is dedicated to providing a platform for Chinese students to learn English and gain more visual angle, and is currently in beta debugging stage. Registration from the company to now have half a year, has been a number of investors millions investment offer, the valuation of tens of millions.

Recently many friends have asked me, as a is how to start a business, the process of what difficulties, how to solve some of the problems, and then I want to simply write a log, you can give more friends have the same dream to do the reference, but also to sort out their own ideas for the past year's efforts and growth to make a summary.

I know certainly not many entrepreneurs and investment in Daniel, but I think every era has unique opportunities and circumstances, sometimes the most help you see the road is not already ahead or reach the end of the people, but a few steps ahead of you. So I hope you can discuss it with me, if there is something wrong with me, or if you have a different point of view, please try to spray it vigorously. But one thing to be aware of is that this is just my personal feeling since I started my business, not my success.

Before we go into this, I'm going to introduce my project a little bit, because it's often referenced later.

My project is called in the chat net, is an online English teaching platform, the United States elite school students or graduates registered to become teachers, and fill out very detailed information, Chinese students according to their own needs, to find different schools, professional and experience of teachers, choose different courses, through the online video dialogue to complete the study, Then pay the fee set by the teacher, and grade the teacher's course, to urge the teacher's teaching performance.

Because of cultural differences, American parents basically do not pay their children full tuition, 60% of college students graduate with an average of 15,000 U.S. dollars (interest from the date of graduation), they have very great pressure to earn money in class, so willing to earn 5 to 20 dollars per hour to do video tutoring. In China, teachers of the same quality are about 5 to 10 times times the cost.

Although video teaching in some aspects than face-to-face, such as interaction has been bound, but the teaching effect will be the teacher's English level and comprehensive quality to make up. In addition, when you learn English anytime and anywhere, you also have friends from abroad who are congenial to you, and gain more perspective and even resources.

Doing things in China is not necessarily the best and will be chosen.

Entrepreneurship must have a core competitiveness. Core competence is not about ideas, but about why you can do better than others if they know your ideas to copy you. Core competencies are intrinsic, your ability and expertise, for example, your technology is particularly strong, and in a field has been studied for a long time, the level of domestic TOP10, and external, your resources and channels, such as your brother-in-law is a big company executives, and then can become your first big customer ( Bill Gates ' mother was a director of IBM and helped gates sign the first big bill.

External core competitiveness is often short-lived, because if you develop well, then soon your original resources will not meet your needs, but you can rely on it to start. Internal core competencies generally require a longer period of time to explore and accumulate, but also need constant progress. If you are missing the core competencies, even if you are the first in the market, your company will soon be copied and cleared out.

Some young entrepreneurs will have an idea (especially easy to appear in the returnees), feel that entrepreneurship is to prove themselves, if they are good enough, gold will always glow, so do not care to "go" or use the resources around, excluding external competitiveness. In fact, I was also this idea at the beginning, and later found that it was very wrong. Entrepreneurship has only one purpose, is success, only success can prove yourself, no one will remember that Bill Gates used his mother's resources in the start-up, but everyone knows Microsoft's success and Gates last 13 years of the world's richest man.

I remember a previous experience of starting a business in the United States. At the age of 17, he was doing the school newspaper. The school does not give us sponsorship, printing to raise their own money, they do advertising investment, the entire version of the advertising price is 400 U.S. dollars, and then we will have one in each period. But in fact, the circulation of the school newspaper is not so high, 1000 per issue, the number of people who get the newspaper are directly thrown away, most readers just look at the cover story.

Businessmen know this, but they will be willing to give 400 knives. This is because as the United States Government to protect the object, public schools can not post any advertising, so the independent school newspaper has become a lot of companies can usually advertise in schools the only way. Is there a more efficient way to advertise in schools? Then I thought of a way, many American high school entrance is next to have parking space, our school has three entrances, each entrance to each side very close to have parking space, these are mostly for students (American students are many 17 years old to start independent driving). I contacted them, promised them 50 knives a month, renting their "wagon", that is, they drive to school 15 minutes early every day, I put a big poster in the car when they arrive, and then take the posters away before they get out of school and rent the poster. I wrote the idea into a simple page and sent it to a nearby company, and less than a week later, a local marketing department in America's very famous network Driving School (driversed.com) found me and signed up for the next one months of advertising cooperation contracts. The contract says they will give me 2400 knives, and my cost, to the driver's cost and printing costs together only a little more than 300 knives. Then this thing didn't go on, because when driversed to give me money to find I did not have a green card, not in the United States legal company, but I believe that if I continue to do, perhaps the result will be good.

The reason I mentioned this is to say, I do not have any qualifications, the company has no formal registration, no visible products, no cases, even the logo is not, only a page of documents, you can let a complete strange big company willing to cooperate with me, and give me a small sum of money. This is the benefit of starting a business in America.

In China, it's almost impossible. I came back home with this American attitude to try to do things: I believe that as long as the best solutions and products, it will be accepted. But as a result, I touched a lot of walls. I remember very well that one time I was in China and a marketing executive in New Oriental discussing sponsorship options, the man said: "I believe your proposal will be helpful to the company, it is a good choice, but doing things in China is not necessarily the best will be chosen, there are too many other factors, this is China."

In fact, I think a lot of my friends may be more aware of this than I do, I just want to say to my friends who may be as idealistic as I was at the beginning, these are just rules of the game, you want to win, you want to stand at the highest point, you must follow the rules.

Return to the subject. After you decide to start a business, you need to first choose your entrepreneurial direction based on your internal and external core competencies, and these two points are best to coincide. If you can't imagine the intersection, then think again. Because the success rate of young people's entrepreneurship is very low, the second is very small, so we must do at any point to do our best. And the more backward the more difficult to achieve the ultimate, so in the beginning to choose the general direction, must be a little perfectionism, to find the real best for yourself to do things.

My personal example, the intrinsic advantage: I study in China to graduate from primary school, in Canada and the United States to graduate from high school, so I have a dual language and cultural background; After returning home, I did several large English training company lecturers, including training director of the position, the English training industry has a certain understanding; I love designing products, Two newspapers and two companies have been created before, and the products are my own, and internet companies are the industries that need the most product ideas.

External advantages: I have a lot of friends at prestigious universities in the United States, and through the United States before the establishment of a Sino-American cultural exchange non-profit organization, led by a Harvard, Stanford, the famous university students of the part-time team.

In fact, it is easy to see, the combination of these conditions, my entrepreneurial direction has come out: an English training industry, focusing on the use of American elite team and resources of the Internet products.

I believe that every intention of the people will have their own unique conditions, these conditions are not because of luck, more the opportunity to create their own. For example, a lot of people would think I was lucky to have a life in North America, but I actually went to Canada in the hour because my parents were divorced and I was forced to. Before leaving Beijing, I was very interested in the media, in primary schools have their own newspapers, but also participated in a variety of TV variety shows, in Beijing TV station is also a small star.

After going to Canada, their pride and "Jing-fan" is very unpopular, at the same time because they do not understand the language, before the love of television programs and newspapers can not continue to do. So I chose to study English in my three years in Canada, which laid the foundation for my study and development in the United States. Every thing that happens to us is a blessing or a curse. It's hard to say, but the only thing we can do is to make the best choice no matter what happens: in adversity, to grow, to become stronger, to take advantage and gain more opportunities in times of prosperity. #p # subtitle #e#

At first, I tears with three men, and now they're out of the company.

All of the above talk about core competencies are personal, but when you have a team, they become your biggest bargaining chip, the most important part of your core competencies.

In the case of starting from scratch, you will not have too much money to provide money for everyone, so generally use shares. Shares give your team a sense of engagement, feel respected in the company, and have long-term benefits if the company develops smoothly. Do not be stingy about the interests of others, but to control the company as much as possible, preferably in the angel before the investment to maintain absolute holding.

It says that to solve a need, you have to figure out what, how, and who these three questions are. But when you want to assemble a team, you want to understand the fourth thing, is "why."

My own example, after deciding to start a business, I took the smartest and most capable people around me into the company, and the core team started with six of them. In more than half a year, six walked four, then new four, or six. In the beginning, I and the other three people also tears worship brothers, now these three people are not in the company.

At first it might be for a good opportunity, or a bunch of friends to do one thing, and I'm sure most of the young people who think about starting a business together think so. But entrepreneurship is realistic and brutal. Every really good person will consider his choice: I devote myself to this time, whether I can learn something, grow up, go farther in my field. So the biggest guarantee for a partner is that even if the company is yellow, he will not lose because he has grown up. If a person is just doing a task to accomplish a task, not because he likes it, then his work will never be long, after a period of development, he would start to feel that he is wasting time, then there will be inevitable contradictions. Even if the short-term contradictions, the root of the problem is still, long time he will eventually opt out.

Now, my relationship with my partner is very good because what they do in the company is what they love to do. We usually play the League of Heroes LOL.

Wooing good people must be like chasing girls (or boys) in love.

After the specific programmes have been identified, plan for implementation and determine the degree to be achieved before the angel investment is made. Any project needs money, no investment from scratch ... So you're really not playing. Based on your knowledge of your project, determine the best possible level of resources, manpower, and funding available to you.

Generally speaking, and then rough demo are strong on paper, and the demo is certainly the more perfect. But the problem is that the perfect and need a lot of human and financial resources, so how to choose, it is necessary to test an entrepreneur's judgment and decision-making power. You have to choose a goal that can be achieved, and the degree of completion of this goal will be enough to attract future investors. Because the project and the situation are very different, where is this balance, I can not give a solution to the snake, but one thing I want to say is that for the first time, your plan will always be worse than the actual situation, so at the beginning of the formulation of the plan, must let oneself conservative conservative and conservative. Our advantage is passion and can-do, disadvantage is lack of experience, do not sedate, easy to overly optimistic. Now that you know your disadvantage, you must find a way to make up for the relatively prudent and conservative choices in some decisions.

The implementation plan will always change in the start-up phase, but it must not be an excuse not to plan, because you have to learn to develop more and more reliable plans, and implementation will be more and more able to keep pace with the plan.

Like myself, when I was a kid, the plans I made were basically never executed, this includes a variety of exotic ideas, read a set of books Ah, learn Photoshop, and even follow the video to learn dance and so on; at the age of 14, the plan must be to do a second newspaper (the first in Chinese primary school). , then the time of the sophomore did, a year later, six months ago in the chat network planning, think of April finished rough products, then June completed, late two months.

Don't think the plan is useless because you've had procrastination before, or if you haven't finished making a plan, and then quit making a plan. There are really few people in the world who have been able to complete the task according to the plan, even the Chowa master in the development of new Apple products are repeated after the plan, and sometimes the release date even after more than a year.

About the process of making products, due to the different industries in a lot of products, so I do not do a comprehensive analysis, only talk about my own in the process of chatting nets. I decided to do this last November, and it was 7 months until the June website completed the beta.

First of all, from the project you think of the general direction of the fine wisp, decide the main function of the site, this time for me longer, I think it should be longer, after all, in the start-up period to change direction is very painful things, one is that you do not have enough resources and manpower to change, the second is if changed, The team and the investor will have doubts about your ability to judge, and therefore have no confidence in the project. I spent about 3 months at this stage, identified a number of sites need to focus on the design of the major items, such as students to search for the teacher's use of the Granville map are the conditions (this will affect the teacher registration needs to fill in the information), students and teachers between the appointment and payment process, as well as student achievement and curriculum system.

Then I summoned 6 of my friends who I thought were more careful around me to do a part-time product team. You see 2, 3 times a week, I work with this team to make the detailed structure of the product, decided how to achieve some specific functions, as well as the basic style and style of the site, this stage spent 2 months. Then, here is to praise Liu, our designer, he is great, we together to the Site page one page of the discussion design, of course, the design is all he did, I just mention the idea. It took 2 months to design the site, and then a outsourcing team was found to write the front end of the site.

and product synchronization is the technology. For internet companies, technology is as important as a product (it is even more important at the beginning than the product, because the initial importance is that the product can be used rather than perfected). #p # subtitle #e#

At first, I tears with three men, and now they're out of the company.

All of the above talk about core competencies are personal, but when you have a team, they become your biggest bargaining chip, the most important part of your core competencies.

In the case of starting from scratch, you will not have too much money to provide money for everyone, so generally use shares. Shares give your team a sense of engagement, feel respected in the company, and have long-term benefits if the company develops smoothly. Do not be stingy about the interests of others, but to control the company as much as possible, preferably in the angel before the investment to maintain absolute holding.

It says that to solve a need, you have to figure out what, how, and who these three questions are. But when you want to assemble a team, you want to understand the fourth thing, is "why."

My own example, after deciding to start a business, I took the smartest and most capable people around me into the company, and the core team started with six of them. In more than half a year, six walked four, then new four, or six. In the beginning, I and the other three people also tears worship brothers, now these three people are not in the company.

At first it might be for a good opportunity, or a bunch of friends to do one thing, and I'm sure most of the young people who think about starting a business together think so. But entrepreneurship is realistic and brutal. Every really good person will consider his choice: I devote myself to this time, whether I can learn something, grow up, go farther in my field. So the biggest guarantee for a partner is that even if the company is yellow, he will not lose because he has grown up. If a person is just doing a task to accomplish a task, not because he likes it, then his work will never be long, after a period of development, he would start to feel that he is wasting time, then there will be inevitable contradictions. Even if the short-term contradictions, the root of the problem is still, long time he will eventually opt out.

Now, my relationship with my partner is very good because what they do in the company is what they love to do. We usually play the League of Heroes LOL.

Wooing good people must be like chasing girls (or boys) in love.

After the specific programmes have been identified, plan for implementation and determine the degree to be achieved before the angel investment is made. Any project needs money, no investment from scratch ... So you're really not playing. Based on your knowledge of your project, determine the best possible level of resources, manpower, and funding available to you.

Generally speaking, and then rough demo are strong on paper, and the demo is certainly the more perfect. But the problem is that the perfect and need a lot of human and financial resources, so how to choose, it is necessary to test an entrepreneur's judgment and decision-making power. You have to choose a goal that can be achieved, and the degree of completion of this goal will be enough to attract future investors. Because the project and the situation are very different, where is this balance, I can not give a solution to the snake, but one thing I want to say is that for the first time, your plan will always be worse than the actual situation, so at the beginning of the formulation of the plan, must let oneself conservative conservative and conservative. Our advantage is passion and can-do, disadvantage is lack of experience, do not sedate, easy to overly optimistic. Now that you know your disadvantage, you must find a way to make up for the relatively prudent and conservative choices in some decisions.

The implementation plan will always change in the start-up phase, but it must not be an excuse not to plan, because you have to learn to develop more and more reliable plans, and implementation will be more and more able to keep pace with the plan.

Like myself, when I was a kid, the plans I made were basically never executed, this includes a variety of exotic ideas, read a set of books Ah, learn Photoshop, and even follow the video to learn dance and so on; at the age of 14, the plan must be to do a second newspaper (the first in Chinese primary school). , then the time of the sophomore did, a year later, six months ago in the chat network planning, think of April finished rough products, then June completed, late two months.

Don't think the plan is useless because you've had procrastination before, or if you haven't finished making a plan, and then quit making a plan. There are really few people in the world who have been able to complete the task according to the plan, even the Chowa master in the development of new Apple products are repeated after the plan, and sometimes the release date even after more than a year.

About the process of making products, due to the different industries in a lot of products, so I do not do a comprehensive analysis, only talk about my own in the process of chatting nets. I decided to do this last November, and it was 7 months until the June website completed the beta.

First of all, from the project you think of the general direction of the fine wisp, decide the main function of the site, this time for me longer, I think it should be longer, after all, in the start-up period to change direction is very painful things, one is that you do not have enough resources and manpower to change, the second is if changed, The team and the investor will have doubts about your ability to judge, and therefore have no confidence in the project. I spent about 3 months at this stage, identified a number of sites need to focus on the design of the major items, such as students to search for the teacher's use of the Granville map are the conditions (this will affect the teacher registration needs to fill in the information), students and teachers between the appointment and payment process, as well as student achievement and curriculum system.

Then I summoned 6 of my friends who I thought were more careful around me to do a part-time product team. You see 2, 3 times a week, I work with this team to make the detailed structure of the product, decided how to achieve some specific functions, as well as the basic style and style of the site, this stage spent 2 months. Then, here is to praise Liu, our designer, he is great, we together to the Site page one page of the discussion design, of course, the design is all he did, I just mention the idea. It took 2 months to design the site, and then a outsourcing team was found to write the front end of the site.

Synchronization with the product is technology. For internet companies, technology is as important as a product (it is even more important at the beginning than the product, because the initial importance is that the product can be used rather than perfected).