How to start a technology company that can be bought by a technology giant

Entrepreneurship

"How can we start a company and then let it be acquired by a technology giant," Quora, a well-known US website? "Wonderful" question, Michael Wolfe, a successful founder of 5 companies, gave a sobering answer to the question. He founded five start-ups, and the number is still growing. The following is the answer to the full text, this article from the FAQ website Quora, by the wealth of the Chinese network translation:

I want to start with the idea of one of my favorite people, which comes from the shadowland of the Dark Side of Dreams (Dreams):

Many young people say to me that they want to be a writer. I often give them encouragement and warn them that ' being a writer ' is completely different from writing. Most of the young people who embrace the writer's dream are actually chasing fame and profit, but the writing process before the typewriter is so long and lonely. ' You must have the desire to write. ' I told them, ' not just to be a writer. ’”

"In fact, writing is a work that needs to be done alone and paid little." The writers of fame, who are blessed with luck, are only a handful, and many more are not paid. Even the most successful writers experience a period of obscurity and a life of embarrassment. I am one of them. ”

In 1999 and 2014, we experienced two entrepreneurial surges, and many people suddenly found themselves "wanting to be an entrepreneur". Newly-graduated MBA students could have joined Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, but they chose to go to San Francisco. The elders of big companies such as Oracle or Hewlett-Packard suddenly switched jobs because they did not want to "miss" the next gold rush.

These people tend to find like-minded people soon, they all have entrepreneurial dreams, a brainstorming post that generates ideas, picks out plausible ideas, designs a product, then buys a wheelbarrow and waits for the takeover offer to be sent to the bank.

But many people's hopes are dashed. Entrepreneurship is like the writing described by Alex Harper: A company created by a man who wants to "become an entrepreneur" is often the best. The best entrepreneurs are usually insightful and passionate about a specific problem, motivated to solve the problem, who are dedicated to the company and want to grow. They rarely attend technical meetings, and they are not seen at company-setting parties, and their rapid acquisition is not their main goal.

On the contrary, the idea that people who want to "become entrepreneurs" and make a fortune overnight does not really reflect a unique insight or interest. The E-commerce sites they set up are similar, with little entry thresholds, or they read in Gartner's report that a new market is expected to reach billions of and then plunge into a knockoff product. They are bound to encounter obstacles that cannot be crossed, or have no unique insight to defeat their competitors.

The best entrepreneurs are inspired by their personal experiences and talents. Their ideas are often counterintuitive and seem unlikely at first. It is recommended that you read Paul Graham's classic-How to get the entrepreneurial inspiration. One of his best ideas is:

"The idea of starting a business is ' discovered ', not ' invented '. At YC start-up, we'll be inspired by the natural inspiration from the founder's own experience. Almost all of the most successful startups have developed. ”

Now, many endogenous founders also want to gain wealth, and their investors and employees want to be rewarded, but they will also spend years coping with possible setbacks and making repeated attempts. They know they can get wealth because they have an advantage in knowledge and passion, not because they are engaged in a lucrative career-"entrepreneur".

Still, I never throw cold water on people who are really interested in starting a business-and I would rather they came to Silicon Valley than back to Wall Street. In the entrepreneurial process, you will accelerate learning, harvest a deep friendship and team spirit, you can at least accumulate some great experience. If you really want to start a business, not simply to be acquired quickly, you can try the following:

? Do an excellent job in something. Become a great engineer, designer, product manager, marketing expert, sales rep, or so-called growth hacker (substituting hacker). If most startups need jobs and you don't Excel, it's hard to start a business or join a good company.

? Study an industry in depth. Many of the best companies initially mastered proprietary knowledge in a particular area, such as advertising technology, insurance, supply chain management, and information security.

? Join a good start-up. If you don't know where you have a specific knowledge or passion, follow a company founder who has established its own expertise. Join the team as early as possible, make as many contributions as you can, and continue to learn, and you may be able to create your own company in the future when you reach out to more people and ideas.

Good luck!