Lei: A failed college startup experience

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Many people want to start from scratch, empty gloves wolf, in today's business community This is a very unrealistic thing. I particularly want to ask: Why do not you first do the accumulation of capacity and resources before starting a business? If you think the opportunity is rare, why not try to persuade more people to give resources to start a business?

I participated in the founder of Jinshan Software, excellent network, as angel investors have invested a lot of successful entrepreneurial projects, looks very windy. But in fact I have had a very painful failure. Entrepreneurship is not an easy thing, we must think clearly, do a good job of preparation before starting.

Some people are forced to start a business for their families, some people to face and vanity blind to start a business, such a business is doomed to be very bumpy!

"My Ten Years of Programmer Life" Series III: Sunny Days

The painful experience of college entrepreneurship failure

I went to the computer department of Wuhan University in 1987. Wu is one of the first batch of universities to implement the credit system, as long as the completion of certain credits can be graduated. Just went to college, I am more strict on their own requirements, began to take a number of senior courses. In just two years, I finished all my credits and even finished my college graduation project. (about how to finish all the courses in two years, many college students are very concerned, I will introduce in detail later.) )

Although it was a crash, my grades were good. In the course of "Pascal program Design", the teacher felt very good, and chose the next edition of the Model program. According to later teachers, I was in the department 20 years to take the "Assembly language Program design," The score is only one of two students. At that time, I love to write programs, has been in the teacher's laboratory "bubble" for more than a year, has become a laboratory of "old fried dough sticks."

After two years of university, I am not satisfied with the campus life, ready to wandering. Ranger of the year, must have the following equipment: a broken bike and a broken bag, the bag should be loaded with at least two boxes of disk and three of very thick programming reference books. Wu Ying Yuan dormitory to the electronic street, not far away, but it takes forty or fifty minutes to walk, bicycles became necessary equipment, new bicycle recruit thieves, so it is better to be a "broken" bike. The best computer of the year was 286, and the memory was only 1 m. For a master, all the common software must be owned, at least 20 floppy disks required. There is no programming interface data, there is no electronic version of the book, had to standing a few very thick programming information. At that time, the quality of the book is not high, content is not complete, but also often a lot of mistakes, at least three of the control to see. It is certainly not a comfortable thing to run around carrying three of very heavy books. It was then that I made up my mind to write a book of programming information without errors and content, so that all programmers could take only one book. This book is the "Deep DOS programming" that my colleagues and I co-authored in 1992.

In this way, I rode a broken bike, carrying a large bag full of disk and reference books, began to go to the city of Wuhan Electronic Street.

Just debut, my idea is relatively simple, as long as can learn things, what can be done, make no money is not important. I have a very strong interest in all kinds of new things. For the next two years, I was amazed by the breadth of my day. I have written encryption software, anti-virus software, financial software, CAD software, Chinese system and a variety of practical gadgets, and Wang Quanguo together with the circuit board design, welded circuit board, and even did a "hacker", decrypt a variety of software. Two years of mixed up, the computer company bosses have become acquaintances, they have any technical difficulties, are willing to ask me for help. In this way, I became the Wuhan Electronic Street "celebrity".

Yellow Rose Group

In May 1989, I met Wang Quanguo on an electronic street, and he was in charge of technical support in a school-run computer company. Soon, this three grade than me, the elder four years old school teacher became my best friend, our friendship has continued to this day, now he in Jinshan, as vice president and CIO.

At that time he wanted to do encryption software, is doing a cryptographic software interface, and I just write the core of the encryption software. We agreed to work together in the summer to write encryption software. August is the beginning, we two people about two weeks, day and night hard, completed all coding, testing, interface design and instructions, etc., this encryption software is completed.

At that time, the film "Mysterious Yellow Rose", the King suggested to the "Yellow Rose Group" (Yellow rose) to the signature of our work. In this way, the yellow Rose Group was born. Later in our works, we often use the phrase "The hand of the Rose, the Eternal fragrance" as a standard signature file.

Bitlok released, won a lot of peer acclaim, "Yellow Rose Group" also began to have a point of fame.

"Anti-virus expert"

At the end of 1989, the computer virus just appeared in China, which aroused my great interest. In order to solve the problem of the school room, I and classmate Feng Zhihong cooperation to develop the "immunization 90", which I wrote the second commercial software.

Recalling the cooperation at that time, Feng Zhihong said: "At that time, the virus was popular, the idea to do an anti-virus software, two people have this idea, there is cooperation." At that time the conditions are not good, we are outside a company to find a machine, two people division of development procedures, because the winter vacation free time is more abundant, chose to develop in the winter vacation. Wuhan winter is particularly cold, every day we ride from Wu to the company to go to the machine, wind and snow unimpeded, foot also gave birth to frostbite, the canteen is not convenient to eat, often their own hands to boil the corrugated surface, until a few years later Lei still mention ' Feng Zhihong boiled corrugated noodles very delicious '. ”

Immune 90 is written in Pascal, and the final version can look up and solve all the viruses that were found at the time. I still remember the program: This anti-virus software has the virus immunity function, if infects the virus, this procedure may like shakes the body dust to remove the virus as well, also did the sample library promotion and in English environment English display, in the Chinese environment Chinese display, the user may even use the text way to add the virus library manually. These features seem to be nothing today, but think of it as our work at the end of 1989.

Immunization 90 price 260 yuan set, after the listing in Wuhan sold dozens of sets, we each earned a good thousands of yuan. Under the recommendation of the teacher, immunization 90 won the first prize of science and technology achievements of college students in Hubei province. I've sent a lot of articles on viruses in magazines such as Computer World, became a small well-known "anti-virus expert"; the most memorable is that I also published an academic paper in the academic journal Computer Research and Development, and was selected for the first session of the Youth Computer conference. At that time, the Hubei Provincial Public Security Bureau also specifically asked me to lecture, talking about anti-virus technology.

1990, as the anti-virus market gradually began to start, the Ministry of Public Security involved in anti-virus software research and development and product management. I did not officially graduated from college, I feel that writing anti-virus software too much trouble, the suspension of immunization 90 follow-up research and development.

Open source

I also worked with Feng Zhihong to develop a shared software ri (Raminit, a small tool for clearing memory).

Ri was very popular at that time. is popular because the computer's memory is very small, after running the program will cause the system speed is slow, and some software may because the memory is occupied by other resources and can not run, this time need to restart the computer. RI executes to host memory later, and can then clear the current environment or the program in progress by using a customizable hotkey (by default, pressing left CTRL and right ctrl) to return to the DOS prompt at the time the RI resides. In order to allow more users to avoid the pain of frequent restart, I decided to make the tool software completely free of charge.

This product is very convenient for programmers to debug programs. In the process of developing software, there are always many bugs that need to restart the computer frequently. Using RI can improve programmer efficiency. Soon, RI was a necessary tool for the programmer at the time.

At the end of 1992, I spent three days rewriting RI and the new version of RI 2.0 was more powerful. In order to get more programmers to help me refine, I have published all the source code.

It seems RI also counted as the earliest batch of open source free software in China.

Hacker career

At the beginning of 1990, I was in a friend that used WPS Hancock, was shocked to live. The interface is easy to use and beautiful, but the printing result can be simulated and displayed first. The signature is Hong Kong Jinshan Company asks Baijun, think this "Hong Kong" software writes very good. Because of the lack of computer storage and computing capacity at that time, WPS Software needs a valuable Hancock support. I particularly want to buy a set to use, but to buy a set of more than 2000 yuan, which was an astronomical figure at that time. No way, I decided to decrypt the WPS, and transplanted to the ordinary computer directly use.

It's not an easy thing, I haven't slept much for two weeks, and I've finished it. In the use of the process, I also in the original based on a number of enhancements and improvements, many friends feel very useful. So, I decrypted the WPS version became the most popular WPS version of the country. Because of this origin, I later met to seek Baijun.

I successfully cracked a lot of software, has become a circle inside a few major decryption master. One time a friend told me, "Natural code" encryption is very good. Wang Quanguo and I started to decrypt the nature code, and soon it was done. But after the study, feel that the code of nature is very good, the more research on the more admire the author Zhou Zhinong natural Code. Later I went to Beijing, the first to know the cow is Zhou Zhinong.

The failure of college entrepreneurship

I saw a "fire in Silicon Valley" in the library and was fascinated by the story of Steve Jobs. The 80 's was the era of jobs, he was the world's it hero, the influence of the year is no less than today. In the early 90, even Gates said he was just the second of jobs. After a long spell in the electronic street, I felt good and began to dream: dream of writing a software run on every computer in the world, dreaming of running a world's most cattle software company. So the following story begins.

It was July or August 1990, the junior summer vacation. Wang has a colleague, and one of his friends want to run a company, pull me and Wang into the country. The two of them are in charge of marketing, I and Wang are responsible for the technology and services, shares four share. Wang Quanguo and I are quite confident of their skills, and they are very confident of their sales ability, as if "a perfect match", we almost did not hesitate to agree. I thought that jobs, Gates and Dale were the successful college ventures, why can't I? Think of these, immediately blood boiling, brain dizzy. Today in retrospect, it seems so strange, we seem to have not discussed, open the company who invest money, what to do after the opening, rely on what to make money and so on practical issues. It's really "how bold people are and how big they are."

Company named three-color Sunsir, we hope that red, yellow and blue three primary colors to create a colorful new world, flying our dream of entrepreneurship. Four of us have no money, no people to invest, and finally I helped the company take the first list to earn thousands of yuan, began to start.

At first, I rented the Luo Yu hotel room 103 as the office. We do nothing to make money, no routines. Busy every day, daytime run market sales, evening back to do development. Then found a direction, do imitation Hancock. Office more than 10 square meters, put the table and computer, there is no place. We don't go back to the dormitory at night, and five or six people lie in the office when we sleep. People who can't find a place to lie can only sit in front of the computer and work. Soon, Li Ruchong joined our team. He was also a very capable person, and later he was involved in the creation of the company software, has been president of the company software.

Not long ago, our imitation Hancock technology was stolen, they do a lot more than us, the price is cheaper than us, this product almost did not earn any money.

It seems that our team is also very strong, the company's most people when there are 14 people, business scope is very wide, sold computers, did imitation Hancock, and even took the job of typing printing. In fact, there is basically no money on the books, even eating is a problem. A brother bragged that he played Mahjong well, volunteered to play Mahjong with the canteen master, really won a lot of meal tickets. Later, when there was no money, we sent him to play Mahjong to win the meal ticket. That's how we live.

There is also a very disturbing thing, is four shares of the same shareholders, who is the chairman, who is the boss. I was 20 years old just out of the way, do not want to get involved in such things, but they took me several times from the Wu classroom to call out the meeting, one open is an overnight. In a few short months, the chairman has been re-elected two times. Like all startups, a lot of things have happened in the middle.

An upsurge of entrepreneurial zeal is a day of cruelty, and I begin to think of a question: as a senior student, do I have the skills needed to start a business? After several nights of thinking, I proposed to split up.

It was a winter Sunday, and everyone agreed that I and Wang Quanguo quit, we split a 286, a printer and a bunch of chips, and left. Although we started a business with only half a year of time, looking back at the past things vividly, feel a century so long.

After the suffering of entrepreneurship, back to school, in the heart of a very relaxed, a person walking in the Wu Cherry Blossom Road, feel the sun shines.

My entrepreneurial process in college ended so dismal.

I think people just grow up in frustration and failure. Because of this failure, I have a sober understanding of their ability, but also for the future development of the down-to-earth, step-by-step to do the psychological preparation.

College four years passed quickly.

I was desperate to come to the center of China's it, Beijing, the story of the city began to move.