A college student's readme: How did I die on an online education website?

Intermediary transaction http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/6858.html ">seo diagnose Taobao guest cloud host technology Hall

Original title: A college student's readme: How I Killed the company

Online education in the 2013, new and become a hot spot in the capital market, we have a new product in China with great enthusiasm and optimistic, and emerged as the Ape bank, biography, more than 91 foreign teachers, 51talk these online education companies.

He is now a veteran of line education, but in 2009, his college graduation, in the ignorant of entrepreneurship, suffered his own online education Waterloo. At that time, he how to start a business, how to meet the defeat, in a café, he told Dark Horse to his undertaking, the following for his dictation.

I am a rural child in the west, it is not easy to enter this university, so, I deeply know that education for rural or western remote areas of the children accidentally taste what. The university has also been doing a number of entrepreneurial projects, but are only a little bit, not like later, do an online education site so large a concept.

When I graduated from college, I didn't rush to find a job, but decided to start my own business. So I have an idea to do an online education website. It was 2008, and there was no such thing as the foreign-education net on the market. As for why to do online education Web site is based on the following requirements of latitude considerations: First, the Chinese education monopoly is too strong, good teachers are in the hands of elite schools, students basically test a good high school or in a good city will certainly mean good education, I want to change this situation through their own efforts. Second, the Internet and education must be the main trend of integration, only the Internet as an open tool and platform can change what I call the unreasonable resource allocation and teacher concentration monopoly of the status quo.

Therefore, based on the above, I decided to do a primary three or four-line city of online primary and secondary tutoring training website, this is not the general sense of the tutor site, home very early on the existence of a tutor site, such as XX tutor it, but these sites are mainly tutoring intermediary, that is, the tutor or to the user's home to teach, And do not say that the Web site control is not said, and can not solve the problem I said Help.

So, the first thing I did was not to do this mode, to do is a closed loop, all the experience, testing, teaching, paying, rating this series of closed-loop on-line completed interactive tutoring platform.

With this idea, the next step is money, I did not have too much money, also did not raise money experience, so go to the school forum BBS on the post looking for investment. As a result, a senior through the network and I met a side, decided to invest me 100,000 yuan, I have the first bucket of venture capital.

With the first bucket of money, where to set up a big problem, I was at the school in Beijing to read the book, but feel that 100,000 yuan is not enough in Beijing to spend, so, listen to Brother's advice, came to Wuhan this strange city, in addition to is because it is the city of senior work, but also because Wuhan is an educational center, the market is big enough.

At that time, the funds in my hand is not enough to promote, so the first batch of users is the most important to retain this group of users, and let them continue to renew the fee, will be able to succeed in the initial idea of the most pure. But then the experience proved the unrealistic I had originally conceived.

How to recruit? No experience, so I carefully understand the other traditional institutions recruit students, and ask them to find the normal marketing ideas are: Take the student list, and then hire phone sales, and then crazy telephone solicitation.

With that in mind, I followed up on two issues that addressed the core of an online education Web site:

The first step is to experience. Because parents do not trust the site is not well-known, so I decided to a large-scale free experience, I directly let parents take students to the company experience, and even directly in the scene about the teacher's class, and then we give him a room, and far away from Beijing, Shanghai, a better teacher face-to-face class. Now the hot O2O, we will even in practice. This middle I improved a process, is the beginning originally intended to let students through QQ classes, and then reluctantly for the user experience effect, but also in order to more strictly control the content of education, I rented the conference video system, this will become one of the company's largest cost.

The second step is to resolve the user source. I used three to now also feel very good way, the first is directly paid to buy a few XX tutor it, directly to the tutor bar above the user to my website. This site can be introduced to my site every day with many registered users. The second one I bought a classified information site of all the provincial city Tutor plate ads, the above users are very accurate and effective. Third: Free experience plus phone sweep street. These three methods although very grass with, and those high-end atmosphere of the big Web sites at every turn to millions of promotion than, looks so shabby, but finally proved to be effective.

After the operation, I found some advantages of the company in relation to the traditional organization, first, the teacher, although want to please the real teacher, unfortunately, the teacher price is too expensive, so I returned to the second, a large number of use of famous school students, that is, Tsinghua University student, did not expect this than I imagined the effect is much better. Second, the cost of renting a classroom is eliminated, more importantly, through my online marketing, access to the user from all over the country, and the majority of small cities, which proved that a period of time, the user is basically very stable, customer price is also very high, until the experience after the effect is very good, parents directly to the price of 3000 to 4000 yuan, Then it quickly accumulated hundreds of users.

When everything was going well, I started making mistakes, and it was probably all the mistakes that all the first founders made, and then I did two things that had a big impact on the company:

The first one was an interview with the media. As an early project, I decided to broaden my influence in the absence of internal processes, and I didn't think it would have a fatal effect on me. I did not think that the television media will have such a large impact and influence, in the day after the interview, a large number of traffic into my site, the site was no real technology, the template is copied over, there is no so-called back-office support system and data buffering, suddenly the site crashed, Directly lead to other users simply can not go to class, the user experience caused a lot of damage. This thing to me a big lesson, in the internal technology and operating system does not straighten out the time, do not kiss easy publicity, even if so many traffic you can not undertake.

But at that time was a little victory carried away I did not think how to improve the site technology, nor think for the site recruit a technology developer, after the site restoration, I made a second wrong decision, incredibly ran to Guiyang to open a second office. It was considered that Wuhan was responsible for sales in the central region add a Guiyang sales team to assist, so in theory, the company will have a larger market and more students, but unfortunately I did not take into account the cost of the problem, and did not carefully calculate the wages and costs of employees, and ultimately this behavior to the project brought disaster, I soon found out that the company had not enough cash flow, and that although students were constantly enrolled, it was still impossible to afford two teams. When the cash flow problems, I did not think of financing, in fact, a fledgling college students do not have access to VC.

The next third problem is the loss of users. The product does not take into account the user's positioning of the problem, at first, the company users are college entrance examination students, but after the college entrance examination, they may no longer need this service, so, the old users began to lose a lot, because, at that time, the funds have been very difficult to attract new traffic, but at the same time, there is no way to attract new customers The web site is so intermittent.

Then I made a mistake so far, I feel that the site every day people sign up, water is also good, so boil, wait until this market outbreak, the opportunity will come. So, they took the money they had to buy a house, because they thought the house would definitely add value at that time.

After buying a house, did not expect the form of the Web site, the loss of old customers more and more serious, urgent need to advertise money, but at this time I have no money, finally, a few months later, my first venture on such a failure.

Two years later today, online education has become a hot investment, and in the past two years I have been thinking, such a need and can obviously solve the problem why the final failure of the project, I summed up the following several, I hope to discuss with you:

First, not every time. Online education must be a big trend, now whether it is more shellfish, or 51talk,91 foreign teachers are doing a good job in this field, but, as a market pioneer, in the absence of venture capital support, success is absolutely accidental, failure must be inevitable. The market also needs time to educate, it is not good to do a product too early or too late.

Secondly, there is a lack of planning. Do not think clearly what each step to do, the feeling is to do which step, which step, the final result is dead.

Third, blind expansion, a point has not been done, but the two points, accelerated the death.

Four, there is no feedback and analysis of market launch. Only know the cast side, but did not do fine detailed market feedback and argumentation, did not understand why the flow sometimes more sometimes less, so the new membership is inevitable. Not ready enough, did not anticipate the risk of capital, in doing a good job without timely new round of financing

Five, no co-founder. has always been a person alone, only pay attention to sales, but neglected the Internet products most important is the user experience, the team has no products and technology, only by their own sales force. At the same time as a college student first venture, management team will also have a lot of problems, because the company's wages are very low, so the heart of the employees feel guilty, when some employees make mistakes, even can not bear to blame their mistakes, and tolerate their mistakes, and ultimately lead to the team out of control.

(vi) Insufficient resources. As a college student entrepreneurship, there are few VCs to invest in you, in the final analysis, I did an extremely need for resources and funds of the project, and I lack of experience, so, failure is inevitable, of course, if there is the resources to be able to finance more, may eventually not be the result of this.

Seven, no clear understanding of the cash flow. Always feel, as long as there are start-up funds, customers come in, cash flow will be normal, the result because the funds have been insufficient, their own panic, and make a series of wrong and irrational judgments, accelerated the death of the project.

After the question: I ask a friend, if give another chance, you still can succeed? Friends say that every failure is an experience, and entrepreneurs never know if the previous failure will become the next success reason? I believe in God's own arrangements, but will be more favored those who work hard.