An employee in a mobile internet start-up company

I am a senior, now a mobile internet start-up company in an employee. If you go back to this time of 2013 years, my business card is the founder and CEO of "Love for You". Now I am burdened with a debt, every month to pay off the whole night tossing and turning.

Most people will think of the founder of the Elephant, Liu Kenan founder Guo Lei, Segmentfault founder Gao Yang, and founder Ma Jiajia. As for entrepreneurs like us who care? To be honest, losers don't have a say in the domestic business community. I am also thinking about this step, and I hope that those who have read this article will be able to motivate you.

At the beginning of 2012 I internship into a traditional toy dealer enterprise, in the company as Zhejiang Province, sales work. Work requires a long time on the outside business, although busy but for me at that time, the income is quite considerable.

Mother and infant industry is a very extensive industry, the industrial chain is very large and complex. Food, products, children's supplies, mummy supplies, children's wear, bed, cotton products, toys, maternity and other equipment. Each piece further subdivided a wide variety, variable style, product quality is uneven, large and small factories everywhere. And their channels are more complex, the most primitive is the factory shipments to large distributors, large distributors distributed to small dealers, and finally supply to the baby shop.

If you want to sell your product to a baby shop, you must follow the rules of the game. You can certainly try to build your own team to sell your products, but you know there are 4000-5000 baby shops in Zhejiang province. Baby shop owner and local distributors are years of cooperative relations. It is difficult for a general factory to enter a baby shop. So a lot of factories directly to do direct sales line. Led to the current electrical business in the field of products are very many, and homogeneity of serious. and offline entity stores under the impact of the electricity business after a dismal sales. They don't have the ability to work directly with factories or to use the Internet. So in the end it was old-fashioned. Cut off the money and make a promotion.

This time, for consumers, baby shop product options are becoming less. But like baby bath, early teach, amusement park and have to go to the physical store consumption. You come to the shop more times must buy things, so at present to see the traditional baby shop anytime die. And the situation on the line is the product type homogeneity serious, the price is uneven, the service cannot guarantee and so on. So we then judge the line with the line under the trend is inevitable, we think that this model is a big opportunity to do bigger and stronger. Later we also saw a foreign zulily mother-child flash shopping site just got D round 8500 dollars of financing. This also gives us great confidence, we decided to prepare for six months to start a business.

In mid-2013 we started a full time business, the position is "for you love" every 10 o'clock in the morning on time to recommend a number of selected products for the mother and child, more than 10 kinds of online baby services. Considering the hundreds of thousands of we borrowed at that time, we positioned ourselves first as a regional market. On the one hand, invest a certain amount of money in the local online channel advertising, on the other hand through with the offline business cooperation to do to push. The chances of doing it were still very high.

I am responsible for contacting suppliers, business cooperation and company management. The partner is responsible for the operation of the website, background maintenance. It turns out that we "too young, too naive".

The first problem is that traditional advertising is too cheap to return. The second problem is that suppliers are not willing to supply the most popular products to us. The third problem is that the baby shop is more willing to work with the United States and glutinous rice These large flow of business cooperation. The fourth problem is that the user experience on the site is not very good.

There is no turning back arrow, the problem is always solved.

For the first question we began to try lean advertising, with the third party to put together, to find peers to exchange resources. For the second problem, we reduce the recommended products, the main attack one or two items to strive for the volume. In response to the third problem in the baby shop layering method made a adjustment. It did start to get some improvement, with a daily daily turnover of 1000 yuan, a good three thousand or four thousand yuan. Then the bigger problem is that we're running out of money and we can't even see the break-even day. At that time to the angel investors and VC have no good feelings, do not know how to communicate with investors. One time I went to Shanghai to find a Taiwanese who was an angel in Silicon Valley, Tom, who flew back to America. I had the cheek to shove the business plan in his bag. Then sent him e-mail to ask him if he could give the project some advice also did not reply to me. There are a few investors who are more interested, but talk and talk and watch our situation.

Sales began to fall in the last two months, and the capital chain was almost broken. We started out with no pay, leading to two team members. Usually successful entrepreneurial stories are an investment at this time. It is a pity that God did not care for us, the project insisted for more than half a year to die. The taste of which is self-evident, now I have accepted this reality frankly. There is nothing in the world, and I will not deny what I did. Here I want to give some pertinent advice to the other entrepreneurs.

CEO to be like a product manager

Take my project, the site template design, visual experience, operating experience, product display, URL, etc. are unqualified. Founder Start a business is actually a product manager, good carving your product.

Do not do the most opportunities, only to do their own good

Entrepreneurs should be aware of the areas in which their resources are distributed, who they need to find after the project starts, and what resources they need to take advantage of. Instead of hearsay, the blind zone enters a blue sea and even the Red Sea.

Team members should be complementary, willing to sacrifice the ego

Early team members are critical, and the ability is not necessarily very cow. But must be steadfast, must know to sacrifice ego. Values to be the same, personality and knowledge to complement each other.

Do not use your own money, do not borrow other people's money to start a business

First of all with their own money risk is very large, I was more stupid people do not learn me. And if there is an angel investment willing to vote you also show that the approval of your project, you can get the investor's advice. In particular, the Internet field must be professional.

Learn to integrate resources, four and two

Product on-line is nothing but the promotion of the problem, in addition to digging the old channels. As a new generation of entrepreneurs must learn to set up their own rules of the game. The only criterion is a lean attempt, usually with unexpected receipts. In addition, the project of seed biennium should not consider advertising budget.

Improve your emotional quotient

Entrepreneurial process will encounter a variety of resistance, this time must withstand the test. To learn to adjust their own mentality, the team can not have negative emotions. Adjust your mind, control the mood, observe other people's emotions, need to control other people's emotions.

Good seeing, and judgment.

Entrepreneurs have to follow the trend and learn to stand at the top of the mountain before the wind arrives. Supplement their knowledge, expand their network circle. There's a lot of real information in the hands of the big guys. Entrepreneurs learn to make friends with them while improving themselves.

The article finally gives everybody a sentence. Horses always run against the storm, Holly is always proud of the winter snow stands. Luck!!!

Wen/Watson