Liu talks about scientists starting a business and applies to any venture

How to set up a pioneering team? How does the enterprise culture develop? Ideal and reality "fight" How to do? All these problems, every entrepreneur will encounter. Mr Liu talks about scientists starting a business, but it applies to any startup.

Wu Wenzhong's face was always red. In front of more than 1000 listeners, and Liu face-to-face talk about the entrepreneurial way, he some sit, modest as still in the Chinese Academy of Sciences to graduate students. In fact, before the founding of Dalian Medical Science in 2003, he was already the Institute of Aquatic Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

9 years of entrepreneurial experience, he is not easy. Venture soon, he negotiated with people sales business, finally, someone proposed to invite him to take a bath. He refused: "Take a bath and go home and wash it." After that, he realized that it was business etiquette, something he couldn't learn or learn in the CAs.

Also from the Chinese Academy of Sciences system, Wu Wenzhong's confusion Liu has encountered. In Changzhou, "Lenovo Star Entrepreneurship Hall" on, Liu to hands-on experience to answer the many problems of pioneering scientists. In fact, in the company's development process, almost everyone will encounter the ideal and the reality of contradictions and conflicts, not "bath" scientists are not good entrepreneurs. Mr Liu's answer to the big-business auditorium applies to all startups.

Five taboos for scientists to venture capitalists

Liu chose to start his own business, because he did not want to see his scientific research on the sidelines, delay into the actual application stage. There are not a few scientists who have the same idea, but he doesn't think anyone is fit to start a business.

1. Do not work in scientific research institutions, but also to start the company. The founders left too many leeway to themselves, and the entrepreneurial determination was affected. More importantly, the idea of scientific research is very different from the operation of the company. Scientists have told Liu that his scientific research can be made into different products in different industries, and the company has a good future. Liu has poured cold water on him, the start-up companies have capital stock, recruitment of practical difficulties, focus on the development of key business will be possible to achieve breakthroughs, more than a line of attack can accomplish nothing.

2. Do not have the determination, but also learn to delegate. Some scientists claim to be ignorant of business, so the external personnel Management company, their own CTO. In fact, the scientists are still the size of the company's business, long management let enterprises into chaos.

3. Do not "blindfolded", but to "aim at the fight." The most important task for startups is how to keep themselves "alive", Wu Wenzhong has 500,000 start-up funds, and after the first month's pay, there is almost no balance on the account. Where's the money coming from? At the end of 2003, the biomedical industry began to do research and development for foreign pharmaceutical enterprises to solve the problem of survival. But this income after all is unstable, enterprise development bottleneck is obvious. The following year, he cleared his mind and decided to make his own product. From groping to directional development, this is the two stages that many enterprises will experience.

When the company develops smoothly, the risk lurks deep, but it is still dangerous. 2003-2004 years, medical Connaught concentrated all the energy to develop a single product, the market opened up quickly, the company increasingly rich funds. By 2005, Wu Wenzhong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences temperament again, he decided to develop a number of products at the same time, the funds dispersed, spending the place is also increasing, he found that the real money is still the original product, the company's development is less than the past. Since then, he has spent a long time tweaking the business architecture, narrowing the product line to the extent that the company can afford, and making the product a single one, and the company's development is back on track.

4. Scientists start a business, do not "project thinking", but to "product thinking", must take into account the market factors. Lenovo's top 3 companies have failed, and two of them have been working for the big American Software Institute, but they don't know about the Chinese market, and they're always complaining: "My product is so good, why don't people see it!" What they don't understand is that many times startups have to fill the gap rather than create market gaps.

5. Ideal, but not idealized, whether product development or company operations. The same is another challenge for scientists to start a business. In scientific research institutions, scientists can book business gas, encounter unpleasant things big temper, but do companies to do business, but to learn to moderate "bow." As a scientist, Wu Wenzhong never ask for help, but the entrepreneur Wu Wenzhong to solve the problem of production power supply to the director of power. 1987, the price bureau that Lenovo Hancock priced too high, to punish Lenovo 1 million, than Lenovo 1986 annual profit is higher. Someone proposed to hold a press conference, let the media to report the matter, Liu returned a sentence: "This matter to the media, we have fun, but the enterprise died, we are to live, or poke out to do addiction?"

Four key points to keep the start-up company cohesive

"The founder is the thread that wears the pearl", this is the word that Liu often mentions, he compares the talent of the Enterprise to the pearl. Scientists think about how to burnish themselves into a large "pearl", shiny, entrepreneurial thinking is how to collect more "pearls", to create a fighting force of the entrepreneurial team, he himself into the "pearl" of the "Red Line."

"Pearl" How to wear it is not easy to break scattered? Liu spoke four points:

1. Equity incentives are not necessarily the best option. The founder believes that the division of shares to employees can cultivate their sense of ownership of the enterprise, to maximize the motivation of the team. But sometimes this is not the best approach. Mr Liu admits that start-ups are not suitable to attract talent with equity incentives in the early days of limited funding. If employees have insufficient confidence in the future of the enterprise, equity will not play its due incentive, and in turn, it may be a serious constraint on the founder. Tianjin, the founder of a company once complained to Liu, early he allocated too much equity to employees, and later the staff to unite against him, do not agree with him for the next development of the enterprise investment, and demand the proportion of equity dividends.

Wu Wenzhong also encountered similar troubles. When he started his business, he divided more than 40% of his shares into several members of the core team. In the first few years the move has some effect, but so far, some of them have sold their shares to other shareholders, and some have withdrawn from the company to return to work. This has a big impact on Wu Wenzhong, and he found that premature dilution of equity had allowed him to allocate less resources when he later introduced venture capital and recruited new management teams.

Mr Liu believes that the equity incentive is feasible only if the enterprise develops to a certain degree and achieves the company's value that everyone has accepted. Before that, cash was more stimulating. It is a more realistic incentive for employees to pay high salaries, to promise high commissions, and to distribute the high bonuses they promise when the company's profits reach a certain standard. He thinks equity should be sold to more knowledgeable investors, and that the money in turn can be used to motivate employees.

2. The recruitment of professional managers needs to meet special conditions, otherwise his learning costs are too high. Medical Connaught has been a staff of more than 300 people, the revenue of hundreds of billions of enterprises. Wu Wenzhong gradually feel the energy is not enough, he can no longer research and development, sales, PR and all the work of a catch, so he came to a former bank president as general manager, the day-to-day operation of the company. The problem is that, as a tech start-up, it leaves the entry threshold for skilled professional managers too high, and Wu Wenzhong is still in charge of research and development and marketing operations.

This approach is very different from Lenovo's career manager. As a gross company, Lenovo's professional managers can not understand the manufacturing industry, thinking more from the company's strategic layout, the formation of corporate culture and so on. And the professional managers of small and medium-sized enterprises, management will be in-depth research and development, procurement and sales of the specific operational level, which requires them to the industry has a certain understanding, otherwise the cost of learning is too high. Mr Liu's advice to Wu Wenzhong is to figure out what special conditions the recruiting person must meet.

3. Maintain the consistency of the company culture. With the expansion of the company and the continuous expansion of the staff, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the consistency of corporate culture, but also more important. For example, recruiting outside sales teams at random is a very dangerous thing. External recruitment wage requirements are relatively high, they bring the new mode of work and culture will impact on the existing culture, and not the same industry sales skills are different. Liu suggested that, you can first from the company's internal training sales team, familiar with sales skills, the formation of a certain standard, and then to the company's cultural bottom line requirements to recruit external personnel to enhance the Company's sales capacity.

Any enterprise has its own cultural genes, then enter any employees, can use their own ideas to optimize the culture, but can not subvert it, new employees must be as old as the general staff, from the bottom of my heart to identify the core values of the enterprise. Mr Liu does not suggest introducing too many executives at the same time, because each of them has a working experience that will dilute the company's original core culture.

4. Transfer the company culture to sub/subsidiaries. For "How to set up an office/branch team?" Liu believes that the office/branch of the head of some like "government", not suitable for local selection, only "central" assigned. On the one hand, the existing staff has experienced the baptism of corporate culture, on the other hand also familiar with the various departments of the parent company, docking with the work will not have too many problems. Each office/branch company will share regularly, not only can exchange the experience of recruiting and office renting, but also can draw lessons from the different characteristics of each market. Of course, to the Office/branch can not start all decentralization, financial, personnel recruitment and other key powers, the parent company must first strictly control, to Office/branch development Good, and then decentralized.

Lenovo Holdings in it, real estate, consumer and modern services, chemical materials, modern agriculture and other fields are involved, Liu said, only to the company's culture to the subsidiary, so that "flag one Armed Forces dynamic", Lenovo holdings in various fields can be a big development.