Zhang Ying: should start a business or choose to go solo

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"Brawl" or "solo"?

For the past decade many people have started their businesses by basically doing it alone. There are many obvious advantages of going it alone, such as a person deciding the style of the whole company, such as a quick decision, such as a strong execution. But over the past two years, I've found that the trend towards a combination of multiple people, especially a trio, is becoming more and more apparent, and my observation of the latter's entrepreneurial success rate is increasing dramatically. Because the market competition is increasingly fierce, the opportunity soil is fewer and less, the market leaves the founder to grow more and more time, the wisdom of many people is obviously better than one.

In the past period, Jingwei has always had a preference, that is, the shareholder structure of our investment company is relatively simple, we hope that a single major shareholder in the absolute holding power. In short, this is the so-called "do-it-yourself" company. For example, I participate in the investment of the media, my colleague David Su investment Baidu, and again, such as we are more familiar with NetEase, Sohu, Shanda, they are initially using a single founder "Go Alone" pattern, and finally achieved great success.

How do you understand the reason behind this? I think the most important thing about starting a business is that you have to do something right at the right time. Over the past decade, there may be flaws in your abilities, but the market will give you time and space to grow. Tencent, for example, started out with a single instant messaging software, and the market gives a relatively ample time for the development of the horse to find new opportunities in the process of growth, to complement the management of the team and the ability to communicate with investors, and slowly as the company's growth and become a mature large company at the helm, Finally created a strong competitive advantage of the enterprise.

But things have changed a lot today. In the Internet and wireless internet industry, now new entrepreneurs, because the industry environment changes too quickly, they get more narrow market gap, entrepreneurs do not have so much adjustment time, the beginning of a start-up is facing several big internet companies squeeze and fierce competition. To cite an example that may not be appropriate, I prefer outdoor activities, the past few years, outdoor sports are not popular, you go to a field camp is often empty, you can choose the place to camp. But now outdoor sports are becoming more and more popular, you often need to compete with other teams for quality camps, water, and camping sites, which puts a higher demand on you and your outdoor team, such as whether you need to increase your speed and reach the camp as soon as possible, and whether you need a few more experienced members to find other camps, Do you need to improve your camping skills so you can survive in the middle of the gap, and ultimately you need a better team and some better helpers. This example means that in the current entrepreneurial environment, to avoid risk, to improve the success rate of the venture is one way, the start-up companies need to have a "founder portfolio" so that everyone can complement each other in order to deal with the various possible problems, I call this entrepreneurial approach called "Brawl." In the market, we see a growing number of such "gang" companies in the last year or two, and their success rates are relatively high compared to their own.

Of course, everything has its pros and cons. As long as the team will be involved in a number of challenges, the most taboo is a few people temporarily set up an opera, in fact, there is no long-term tacit understanding and good cooperation. Therefore, the composition of the members should be known, everyone's character can be running-in to a piece, so that the probability of success will increase. Or they've worked in a big, mature company for years, or a lot of people used to be classmates and have been together for a long time. For example, Happy Chen Binghao, his team of several vice president, are long-term work in Sina for many years, we cooperate very tacit understanding.

So, what kind of "gang" structure is better? There is no definite answer. I think the three-person combination could be better than two people. For an Internet or wireless internet company, a person can not understand the product, technology and operation at the same time, a company if there are three founders, the best combination should be three people separately tube products, technology and operations, and it is best to understand the product of the boss, because the ultimate success of a company, More depends on how good the product is. Please note that the definition of "product" here is not narrow, but refers to the product as the core, while the consumer behavior, market environment and corporate strategic direction has a profound understanding and long-term layout, such people are more suitable to be leaders. In addition, the three-person combination has a benefit, of which two of people when there is a great contradiction, one person can play a role in regulation, corporate governance is not easy to deadlock, the vote will be relatively easy. A good example is the 3G portal, Deng, Zhang and Chang their three-person combination we think is very good, their personality, ability and background complementary, before the students at Peking University, currently in the company in charge of several different directions, but by the responsibility of the product and strategy Deng led. Another company that I think is worth mentioning is UCWeb, who is also a trio of Yu, Liang and He Xiaopeng. Coincidentally, these two companies are headquartered in Guangzhou, are the wireless Internet in the field of leading companies.

I think there will be more and more of these "brawl" structures in the industry in the future, and the situation in the United States can be used as a reference. In the past 20 years, some representative companies in the US it internet industry, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and so on, are co-founder models, which is what we call a "brawl" approach, This approach has become increasingly mainstream in the United States.

For the early VC, the start-up company immature little, immature is very normal, but the key to the founders know how to find the path of development and the way the team grow. I think if the founders could have known the short Board of the company, where their weaknesses were, and found the right solution as soon as possible, it would be an entrepreneur to look forward to. One of the solutions may be the "brawl" approach I've mentioned above, with a team mix to meet the challenge.

Of course, if the "go alone" into a "brawl", the founder has the courage and mind. Many VC finally give up some companies, and the founder's mind has a lot of relationship. For example, we have invested in a company, is a single big "Alone" company, it had the opportunity to become the industry's first Nasdaq-listed companies. We went in and hoped that he would be open minded and help the company find a better team, but unfortunately it has not been able to carry on. Insist on the way of singles alone so that his company can only be a small workshop. The founder of the start-up company's leadership, innovation, communication skills are very important, but can take this company farther and farther, is the founder's mind.