Six classic theory of Internet entrepreneurship: No VC should think about the grocery store

Shoe Factory Theory:

There are countless shoe factories in the world, making their own shoes and selling them to their customers.

On the web, when a business is already being done, think about the shoe theory, and you'll find that: in most cases, even if a lot of people are doing shoes, does not mean you can not go to do shoes, others do Nike, you can do Li Ning, do not do anta, even if not well-known brands in the three-tier cities sell well.

If other shoe factories are making money, then you have a chance to get a piece of the market, and if the other shoe factories are losing money, then you have to find a way to make the money they lose. By doing well in cost, product, service, channel, and marketing, you have the opportunity to surpass your existing competitors. The business of making money is often a business that many people are already doing. If you are the only person doing a business, it may be that your business is not profitable, so no one can see it.

Grocery theory:

Many large stores or companies, such as Wal-Mart, eight partners, McDonald's, and so on, initially from a small shop started, from the little ant gradually do Big Mac.

On the network, many people believe that, in the absence of VC, the company loses money is normal, and so some day took a huge amount of VC, expand the scale, the national chain, will certainly make money, so the company's core team of time and energy spent on various types of investment managers. It's time to think about the grocery store theory, and if you run a small grocery store and you lose money, you'll lose more if someone helps you do a global chain like 7-11.

In most cases, a good company, or a good business model, if you can make money in a wide range of companies that are technologically revolutionary (such as 3G, cloud computing, optical storage, and so on), should also be profitable. Such companies, although the upfront need for a small amount of initial capital and time to configure personnel, hardware and software, but will not put their future on the illusory huge investment and global expansion. Immersed in the VC fantasy children, the first to run a grocery store, than see VC learn more things.

Hukou paradox:

The police Department has all the local residents ' Hukou records, but can the police make money from it?

On the web, many people take "catch users" as their only pursuit (or as the only pursuit in previous years), ignoring the construction of a truly viable healthy profit model. This time, you should think about the hukou theory: the police have so many user details, detailed to blood type, telephone and address number, your site can be better than the police station? If you think you can make money with that little user's email, the police can go to Nasdaq long ago.

Of course, I do not deny that a certain base of the user is indeed one of the important conditions for making money, but it is meaningless to keep users and not think of cash flow. There are a lot of millions of registered users of the site can not see any hope of making money, and some only tens of thousands of of the small station has a healthy cash account every day. Therefore, if not to make money, it is recommended to stop showing off a lot of xx millions of users, so many users do not make money, can only prove two words: incompetent.

Boiling water Theory:

Boil the water, it looks steaming, but the total amount of water will not increase, and need heating costs.

In the network, many people unscrupulous to pursue the user's "active degree", but does not consider the active degree in the end can bring what income.

There are two types of activity in nature: activity related to the business, such as active users who often look at popular goods on Taobao, generally increase the chances of buying, the other is the activity unrelated to the business, assuming that Taobao has a free online game with nothing to do with shopping, Results every day there are millions of people online to play (product Manager can be reported on the very beautiful activationrate and retentionrate), but these people simply infatuated with the game of the people turn to Taobao shopping opportunities? Can the benefits brought by online games exceed the cost of developing and maintaining the online server? No one knows.

Think of a bucket of boiling water, and in order to maintain a seemingly hot activity, you need to constantly add firewood, add fire, these heating costs are high, and the resulting heat can not increase the amount of extra flow, then boil it to do what? Mother Teresa said that the passing of a man was a tragedy, and that the passing of a group of people was only a number. On the web, when we see a group of people active is a beautiful number, we should go to see how everyone is active behind what really means value.

Water heater Theory:

Many people are willing to pay for the water heaters, and many people are willing to pay to repair the faulty water heaters.

On the internet, many people believe that if a network product is not a necessity for people, it is very difficult to charge. Indeed, users on the web are accustomed to a free life, just as people get used to free air and free roads. This time you should think about the water heater theory, water heaters are not necessities of life, people can completely wash the free cold shower, and even do not bathe, why every family has a very often thousands of water heaters?

Simply because humans have the will to pursue a quality life experience (including but not limited to bathing), and the water heater has no cheaper alternatives. If your network products or services can bring people a truly high quality of life experience without a cheap alternative, then someone else is willing to pay. For example, I would be willing to pay for Gmail's mobile clients, willing to pay for Pandora's online music, willing to pay for Yeeyan's high-quality translations, and of course willing to pay for Tucia's design services. There are many people like me, please do not despair of the Internet.

The phenomenon of fried dough sticks:

If you go to the street to sell fried dough sticks and sell pancakes to talk to the chef, you will find that their monthly income is very stable, and some can even monthly tens of thousands of.

The internet always said that entrepreneurship 99% will fail, what escape, what the ruin is used to describe the entrepreneur. At this time, think of selling fried fritters pancake entrepreneurs, others in the street casually put a tricycle, can feed a family. Go to the street restaurant, tea shop, mobile phone accessories store, grocery store, bed shop ... Why are most of these entrepreneurs alive and well? And the so-called it entrepreneurial elite college students instead of a penny earned?

If the "able to feed the family" as the minimum success criteria, then the streets of ordinary people on the entrepreneurial success rate of more than 80%, and we also use "entrepreneurial escape, Failure is normal" to comfort their incompetence, really damn timid!

Source: news.chinaventure.com.cn