Entrepreneurship is difficult

Angel angel investor Lei Jun has issued such a feeling: "Entrepreneurship is not an easy thing, more than 90% of the venture will die, can definitely survive is a blessing to my older generation." And the author of this article Xu Xuran is the failure A member, as a repeat of the online game entrepreneur, he spent nearly eight thousand words to share their own financing, team, cash and other issues.

Found in many entrepreneurship is too difficult to start, I found the failure of the beginning already, it is my bad luck, every time the reasons for failure of business are different, so that I have experienced a variety of entrepreneurship Pain, but then I took a look around my business with my brothers and found that this is the entrepreneurial life. There is no lack of ridicule to write online game startup failure to Raiders to share. Everyone who has ever had an entrepreneurial failure may feel "with a heart in his heart." If you are still in business but have not yet experienced a failure, you may also feel similar. Be careful, I hope you can learn from it; friends who have not yet started but are preparing to start a business, I hope you have a chance to choose carefully! Also, please keep soberly reminded that the daily success stories you see every day are just countless A drop in the ocean among entrepreneurs, the numerous cases of entrepreneurial failure that have been inundated by the sea, 99.9%, have no chance of reaching you through all kinds of media. If you see such a simple start-up simply by seemingly simple success, I can say very responsibly: You are wrong.

1. Financing issues:

- Venture capital is only icing on the cake, there is no help. If you do not have a ready-made product that is already profitable in the market, or if your team is very famous and has created great success stories before, venture capital will not consider investing in yours. Do not waste time. If your team encountered a problem want to find VC money, then please do not waste time, VC this time will not come to help you. The financial crisis, you should have seen the situation, many VC companies are forced to close out forced to close cash, do not forget that most of them are unlimited partnership, the fund lost money, partners have to own pocket of!

- For the special case of the gaming industry, VCs generally do not like investing in pure R & D companies because R & D takes a long time and risks are large with a lower return than operators. However, it is very difficult for developers to transform themselves into operators. The funds and experience they need are far beyond those of pure developers. Therefore, the chances of operators actually getting investment are also very low.

- There are many so-called "angel investors" on the market who may be willing to invest in earlier R & D teams, but they are often not the game industry people, the capital is not very abundant, or on the surface is very abundant, but may not be willing to continuously take Come out to invest in the game. Because they know little about the game, they will be cautious about investing in industries that they do not know, so they will not really invest in it even if the funds are abundant (of course, they will always look very confident on the surface) A sum of money is definitely not enough for you to settle the game smoothly. Even if the superficial effort is well done, a great sum of money will arrive, but no angel will not strictly control your finances. Understandably: What should you do if you put money out of the bank? Of course, no angel will give up his right to withdraw money from the bank, so he will immediately retreat when it encounters difficulties. When you ride the tiger, No money is dead, refinancing will greatly dilute the team shares, and the new VC or investors are not willing to see an angel does not understand the game accounted for a large stake, do not like to encounter difficulties in the team, but do not like to take It is well understood that money is going to buy out the old shareholders, and why do I give money to someone who has been impossible to continue contributing to the company? And he fails very much. I will also mention below that even if this angel capital was initially obtained, it often resulted in a great deal of conflicts in future cooperation, resulting in a probability of nearly 100% failure of the project. So even though I myself am an angel in my spare time, I still strongly recommend that you do not understand the angel's money in this business. They are only a step away from the devil! Let me say one more thing: It's hard for you to know how much he understands, and if you just "know a little bit," and you're going to actively manage it, you're likely to soon experience the consequences of being dead. .

2. investor's question:

- Manage conflicts

Most early angel investors, even those in the game industry, are often not professional enough to know the game, often know the game, they are too involved in product management and design decisions, or blindly Believing in a "crony" claiming to be an expert, placing him in the team responsible for day-to-day management or monitoring, these people often make mistakes:

Proposing ridiculous so-called game ideas, which they consider to be the so-called game features, actually became the culprit that led to the project's failure.

Too much attention to some insignificant details and overlook the more important direction, so that the distribution of energy imbalance in the team, the development cycle is prolonged.

Investors put "spies" are often able to speak, will discuss the type of leadership like, or simply a relative of the investor, the typical situation is to know all-day game, in fact, naive children, their The real ability to work and management is very poor, they blindly meet the investor's non-professional ideas, often with the team a serious management conflict, coupled with each new recruiter who they have to look over, often lead to a large internal team contradiction.

- Investors can not stand the setback and retreat

Every talent and team has his growth process, and even a talented team with successful experience inevitably misses new game designs or developments. The vast majority of investors, including many industry investors, are not patient enough with the team to drop out of their investment immediately as product development encounters difficulties or when the product is found to be less than ideal.

In fact, investors generally invest in multiple projects at the same time. When one of the projects encounters any difficulties, it stops immediately and reserves resources for other projects. This is actually the most common investment strategy, because for investors, this can spread the risk, to avoid unilateral expansion of losses, but for you, you do not have the opportunity to spread the risk, the problem is only a dead end.

- The divestment due to investors' own reasons

Investors often have their own main business, which is the so-called cash cow. Without these cash cow, it does not matter which "idle money" to invest in. However, when their main businesses encounter difficulties, they will not hesitate to cut off non-core business investments. In fact, some investors even invest in the money simply because they "borrowed" from the financial markets. The market Once the downturn, life-long too late, your team no matter how good the product development, he will take the strategy of losing cars and handsome, reluctantly sold you or closed children thing. Do not be happy to sell, willing to take the plate at this time the new owner did not seize the opportunity to bargain severely, the future may not be no longer sell you. Someone may say, "There's a contract there! How can he withdraw his money casually?" Allow me to say very sad words: the contract is a piece of waste paper at this time, and when you get to even the wages did not receive When you still have the money to go to litigation? Even if you can resist, other people in your team can not resist ah, have long gone to work to disperse their own to find a job!

3. The team's own problems:

- lack of management experience

You guys, all of you who are entrepreneurial enthusiasts, know how to be game elites, so most of you have some special skills in designing games so you are not usually a good manager, right? But once you Starting a business, your pain comes, you find that more than 80% of your time every day is not a game, but to deal with some specific game design production has nothing to do with things:

- Find investment through various channels, write a large amount of useful information to the laymen daily, and have to face a variety of false experts and true practitioners, fake friends and true liar, fake investment and real agency, Fake rich and really no money investors and so on.

- Find people through a variety of ways, in order to convince some of the experts can help you to a higher level to join the team and make every effort to solve the problem, go to work secretly in the company pull gang, to get off work late into the night; In fact, masters Are all pregnant and abdomen, maybe at the same time preparing several business plans, whoever gets the money go with whom, ostensibly to tell you well, you painstakingly paint the future for the cake, promise future salaries, to the shares, To give options, what good conditions are given to them, but their few remaining, as a result of the conditions given by others better, others finally decided to go with others.

- So easy to set up a team, a little money to send hair to everyone, their own bitter money or get at least to boost morale. As a result, although you work under a big name and your job is not good enough, you complain too much and get tired all day long. As a result, although you are the nominally you are the general manager, you give him money. In fact, he is as hard as the leader . I often say the following sentence: Although you send him a salary, you are the boss, but you are actually a grandson, he is a grandfather, you are not depressed?

- Easy to key a few people are cobbled together, we are cattle, who also look down on who, together with the planning and procedures Art has always been a natural rival, has never been done before will basically fight, previously co-operated , More pleasant, maybe because the company boss used to give you a salary, we are not so many disputes between the interests of each other, and now have worked hard, interests tied together, a small contradiction can easily be transformed into a person Big contradiction of not right.

- Easy to find some start-up funds, the company can be set up, a headache thing is still behind it! Rent a house, buy a machine, in order to cheaper with a variety of small hawker bargain. For company registration procedures, if it is overseas investment, to set up offshore companies, for fear of being fooled, investors please lawyers to do the documents but also to understand the legal acquaintance to help the trial, but all in English, hundreds of pages, just find someone Can not understand. But also engage in domestic companies for the United States, for the dollar, get registered capital, do the national tax, land tax, tax avoidance but also apply for high-tech enterprises, double-soft certification ..., want to engage in the operation of the company you even more troublesome, as well as ICP, , Virtual currency distribution rights .... All over the past six months have passed, the whole people lost a layer of skin. What? Please an administrative cashier and the like, so that they go to run not to get it? Excuse me, what is not an important thing you need a large number of batches? A file to do the wrong thing your life is gone, just find a monthly salary of 1000 More people do you rest assured?

- So easy for everyone to break in, awesome to a place to do, worked for more than six months and found that one of the core members of the level is not enough, or else the ability is good, but it does not come, people do not want to give you a grandfather, alas, Blame did not see the original blame, but no way, how do you quit for some time found? The shares have been given, a lot of documents have his signature on it, you let him put the shares out easy? List of shareholders Leave a company to the rival company how to find investment in the future? Quickly find someone to replace it, the work in front of him basically all the costs, the new people have to re-run with the team, how can there be so much time Funds Yeah, can you guarantee someone so anxious to get it? He also shares, do you still have? So I suggested many times entrepreneur: do not divide the shares in the early days of business, give yourself leave some room , Make a pool of option or term shares and write the future bonus or shares of the core staff in his employee's contract in the way of a company system and formulate an objective evaluation system as far as possible According to his work performance at any time to adjust the proportion of the time left automatically expire. Do not want to trust you at all, be careful. Or in turn you trust him, anyway, everybody can not do the same with the shares of waste paper, you also try both business and grandpa taste bad?

- lack of technical experience

Because there are too many technically dead products, 80% of the products just come out to have technical problems. Even experienced people, can you say that you did exactly the same game as he did before? , Even if it is a pure cottage, you dare to say that your program personally made all the necessary technology for an online game? Know all the Kaner and thunder? How many programs throughout the game? The entire program is actually a chain, a ring Broken, the other ring on the chain and then useless strong, have to break, you are not familiar with a piece of code absolutely can kill you.

You are not a cottage, there is innovation? Well, sorry, that is risk, innovative ideas often create new technical challenges, bringing a variety of technical uncertainties, resulting in the last insurmountable technical obstacles. The most annoying thing is, finally found that in fact these ideas many previously failed team has long been tried, of course, people are not fools, the industry so profitable, the elite are all here, you can think of innovative people also early I thought of it, and most of your so-called innovation is actually a reference to foreign stand-alone game, is not it? People did not do, you did, you are also triumphant, but not actually because people did not expect , Because people unsuccessfully test, technically obstruction, bones are piled into mountains, you do not know it.

Someone often tells me that it is good to have a lesson after all, being young and failing lessons anyway. Excuse me, what kind of valuable experience and lessons do you get if you die like this? Can you guarantee that future innovations will not encounter new technical risks?

- planning experience

Even the cottage will not plan we do not say, they should not get the investment right? You are capable, you do innovation, so you can still plan because of the death of it, because after all you Technology and art came to you, you have so many innovative ideas people have given you to achieve, not easy to die. But can the player really recognize your new design? Is your new design perfectly seamless? Did you know how players would play your game before going live? What happens when you play together? You've really figured it out Is it clear? You think you are smarter than the player, but you may actually find the player smarter than you are after a line operation. Found wrong, change it, the player gives you a chance to change? The player who persecuted you have gone, the remaining vested interests because you have been deprived of interest after you also bye, now how to do? A promotion fee to pull new players right? This time you can have more money, because you have a bad reputation, right? But your investors, your operators have so much patience ?

- Art is not enough

Because the art of death to hear is not much, but it can not be taken lightly. Your art in the team is very idealistic people, otherwise people stay well in the company collar salary is not good, why do you come out with entrepreneurship? But the art certainly hope that visual effects look good, or his value is reflected in the (By the way, investors tend to like to see pictures, because they can not understand the code and numerical planning)

In order to make good art, your technology and planning will be a big burden on the client specifications rose and then rose, and finally even the most upscale machines are not moving. Your technology will tell you: It does not matter, it is the development stage, in order to achieve the main function, it has not been optimized, and so finished with the optimization, the optimization is finished a lot better; Or: these effects we can give it plus On the switch, we turn off the low-end machines, to ensure running. You will believe The final result? He did not optimize, how can there be so many beautiful optimization space? They will say: "These models do too many faces it!" "I think of him in monsters and scenes So much texture it! ", So after the development of the finished test, you excitedly find Taiwan low-grade machines, the special effects switch off a look, ah? Your art is crying: This is my game? You also cried: it seems did not run very fast way? The original program development time are used in a good machine, but also never tried the same screen a lot of people's situation, now how to do? Art redo? Program Substitution? ...

- Recruitment difficulties

You have to hire it? Headhunter certainly can not afford to use, recruiting sites and are also some newbies, hey, on the other hand, In the original company collecting too. But you go the original company people do not prevent you? And all those who have entrepreneurial complex cattle have been raided N times, and your share of it? Ordinary employees for a stable job, or else the money , You are a newly established small company, you are not stable, so give it a high salary? Left a high salary, another high salary, pay a few of the few have to pay the deposit, they take more than you, you forbear Investors do not tell you urgently? The job is very common, the normal work after get off work, the leave and the normal leave, want to open? New Labor Law read it? So many lawsuits you ever seen the company won? Several friends of mine told me the same thing: "After reading the new edition of Labor Law, I directly closed the company and I went to work!" You are taught not to be expelled or poorly done, but you have not spent your time, you have to pay your salary for the time he has learned and the time he has learned to do the work for him. Whole to feel that they have done the fastest, good and cheap, but even if you are covered in iron, can twist a few nails?

- Insufficient resources lead to too many compromises

Start-up teams often have to make a lot of trade-offs in designing their products because of the size of their funds or teams, their capabilities, and so forth. The real products have a big gap with your ideal, and good ideas that have great potentials do not have the chance to play. But can a compromise to almost mediocre games stand out in today's fiercely competitive market? It's not necessarily the case for large companies to spend hundreds of years on a few years ago, and the small company that you do is so eclectic Design ... often hard worked for a year and a half, and look back at their original ideas, look at their current semi-finished products, has completely confused what they are doing, not only you, but also your other members of the team discouraged It's

4. Operator-related issues:

- can not find the right agent caused the capital even broken

Exhausted hardships Products finally finished (of course, this year are often the players interact and pay the most important functions such as Gang of War have not done that done, because it is really no money nor morale to do it anymore) , Your investors are good, all difficulties are stuck, not so much compromise, the product looks good, this time you want to start looking for operators. However, every operator in the market today develops games on their own. In my case, the products they develop are "pro-sons," and if you want them to be agents of your products, they should be "dry-sons," with their Pro-son grab food to eat, not only have outstanding features, but also with his "pro-son" does not conflict Caixing. Even if all the conditions are met, he will severely pressure your price children, and sometimes even directly put your ideas learned to the pro-son spent.

- The strength of agents is poor

Forget it, some people are willing to operate better than signing out, find a newly established operating company with little experience, or have been defeated before the company is not very good reputation, after all, people say to be the same as their sons to focus on doing Well my product. However, this kind of company often has more than enough resources to support it. Due to financial strength, poor management ability and limited operation experience, it is incapable of operating well. When the operation fails, or both of you cower and cry, and die, or he Run early to find someone to give him another son to go, the last failure of the responsibility is certainly you, maybe the contract is not ruined, the product continues to hold, the server continues to open, how much earned money certainly not to you , You want to transfer another hand signed to other people are out of the game - of course, you have to get back the first copy of the money paid back! Have to make up for his loss! Are you still have money at this time?

- Delays or omissions of agents cause operations to fail

Finally signed to a big company, but also not happy too early, maybe your pain has just begun too! Big companies have so many pro-son it, you are just a dry son, even in the dry son you are not necessarily ranked Because they have a dry son who can speak a foreign language. People are born worth more than you (though you know he is actually junk). People will pick the right product to your left pick thorns, you do not say to cooperate fully with the operation? Operators have experience, people say you want to change you dare not to change it? In fact, you know the heart of them sent the product manager Is just a debut small hair child, often say that today to change, change your mind tomorrow, said the original child. But you have to treat him like a grandfather. Why? Most of the copyrighted gold will be paid only after it is officially put into operation. At this time, you do not have much money to pay for it. Can you bow for money?

However, when everything is ready, you clash with another son's time on the line, no way, people important, but you give way, wait, not a lot of places have to change it Even some companies are bad, you know the cash flow is not working, deliberately delay at this time, find a variety of reasons not to give you a line (do not agree with me ah, to the last shiver you go to the court to sue you Carriers, are you afraid of late death?). Funding emergency how to do? You come to the operator to discuss: or do you give us investment resources? Well, waiting for you, the contract to re-sign, the proportion of re-points, the company shares have come, then you have Bargaining chips? Hey, obediently ...

- Forced to transform themselves into operators failed

We believe they, or else we operate it! Your investors are courageous, and then come up with 20 million transformation we are just not VC who like their own product operators do? Go-getters, first ask, Do you know the operation? To find the director of operations, right? To give shares? Investors and additional investment to give shares, right? How many shares are you left? How much is left in the company? You are also the you Life, you worked very hard for two years to give a group of stranger products, right? They can operate the product? Shi Yuzhu to push the team what a great, we can also recruit 3000 people to do Push ... There are several ways to run ... (here omitted three thousand words).

5, the issue of interest payment:

Suppose all the above bullets are coming. Products on the line operating successfully, but also make money, this time to relax? But let me help you to calculate an account: As an independent development company, the product is signed after the operator can often only be divided into about 20% As the core of the entrepreneurial team, often in the final product listing, only a small part of the development company shares, most of the shares have been owned by investors, according to the proportion of shares, only less than 10% of the proceeds allocated . And investors are capitalists, they often have to resort to means to pursue their own interests maximize, remember: after all, your salary is his hair, he is strong, you are weak, he wants to crush you just natural reaction only. They often use various means to plunder the wealth you deserve, so that you finally find it difficult or even impossible to obtain actual benefits. I am not very professional in the specific means. I am sorry that I can not cite them one by one. At least the following means are common of:

- Investors have the right to dividends, not listed nor sold, but also have the ability to make profits through a variety of ways to do away with the transfer, the last company actually no profit, huh, huh.

- Various complicated agreements are signed during the listing or sale process. Investors cash in on the cash, but long-term bundling of the benefits owed by the entrepreneurs leaves entrepreneurs with virtually no real gain for a long time. You think about the development of light 2 to 3 years, talk about acting on the line yet another year or so, such as the company listed or sold, at least 2 to 3 years, but also to keep you tied for 3 years in order to gradually get the actual benefits , During this period do not know how many changes to occur, when you still have the happiness of success? What, you learned law, finance, finance, accounting, tax ...?