Wang Entrepreneurship revelation: Doing the right thing vs. doing things right

In the history of China's Internet development, there may not be a portrait Wang such fate and dramatic. He repeatedly defeated, repeatedly defeated repeatedly war, continuous entrepreneurship, secondary collar ethos first, but once again short.

From the creation of school, Rice, at the domestic, until now the United States network, 32-year-old Fujian Wang described himself as surfing. "Traditional industry entrepreneurship is like climbing, internet entrepreneurship is like surfing." The mountain is always there, you are ready to go, there will always be a chance, Deng how high depends on the strength. And the wave is one after another, you just step on a wave, hold on, its height determines your height, Google, Facebook is so. And if you miss a wave, you miss a chance. But I think there are waves behind the Internet to make sure you step on it at the right time. ”

However, Wang each time the surf was overtaken by the waves. Not to win the game, it can be said to be a life of pleasure, but for an entrepreneur eager to succeed, this reality is somewhat brutal.

Wang can find the market opportunity, but why not the opportunity to turn into wealth? Why do you always make the same mistakes? For entrepreneurial entrepreneurs, the Wang Experience offers an excellent example of enlightenment.

Doing the right thing VS. Doing things right

Management master Peter Drucker once said: "Efficiency is ' doing things in the right way ', and efficiency is ' doing the right thing '." Efficiency and effectiveness should not be neglected, but when efficiency and effectiveness are not simultaneous, we should first focus on effectiveness and then try to improve efficiency. ”

In this sense, Wang has been "doing the right thing"-always able to choose the direction of the ancestors. But in the end, he was always "not in the right way to do things" on the fall.

1997 from Fujian Longyan One was walked into the department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Wang attended the Tsinghua Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Association, heard Lei, Charles Zhang, Chen and many other entrepreneurs of the speech, where completed the enlightenment of entrepreneurial thinking. In 2001, Wang received a full scholarship to study for his doctorate at the University of Interlaken. Without completing his PhD, however, he returned to the country early in 2004 because he had seen the commercial prospects of social networking (SNS) in the United States. Almost at the same time, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook network was officially on the line at Harvard campus. Although Wang and Zuckerberg thought about the direction of social networking almost at the same time, their fortunes were quite different. Wang repeatedly defeated, the direction changed again, Zuckerberg on the social network fast Forward, gradually beyond Google as a new generation of internet companies synonymous.

Wang back home after pulling a college classmate and a high school students groping for entrepreneurship, they first created a lot of friends social networking sites and wandering map E-commerce site has failed. Many friends lose in positioning too pan, soon encountered the promotion of the problem. Including Wang, the three founders are of technical background, development is relatively easy, but the target user group definition is very vague. At first, Wang was thrilled to think that all netizens were their own users. But later he found that positioning is not single-minded directly lead to "Who are your users, the end may not be able to catch." When something is done you don't know how to tell people and who to tell. Wang afterwards concluded that "everyone can come, but the result is that everyone does not come." ”

The question of the wandering figure is at the other extreme. As a service E-commerce site, the wandering map of the business model is very focused. Wang in foreign countries found that digital cameras are very common, and students ' parents in the country is not accustomed to using computers to see photos, wandering Map can let the overseas wanderer to send digital photos to the domestic, through the network pay, by the wandering map of the site to send their parents. Since the website was still in operation, the entrepreneurial team in the Wandering Map project to devote less energy, and the development of the Wanderer map is very important for the team needs short-term projects to supplement the cash flow of the site. However, with the popularization of digital printing in China, the business model of the wandering chart will soon be unsustainable.

Similar to the wandering figure such a short-term "blood" type of Project Wang also developed three or four, most of the team to use their spare time to write out the program, in Wang View, these projects are not the main development direction of the team. Internet industry threshold Low reality, so that people who understand technology as long as there is an idea can write a prototype program. But it turns out, easy to enter only superficial phenomenon, really want to perfect, integrated user group, let the user have the threshold of experience is not low, entrepreneurial ultimately or need team, need specific direction, need to have the right person to carry out.

The failure of early entrepreneurship prompted Wang to establish a net in the end of 2005 and enter the vertical SNS market. He chose the latter in community SNS and campus SNS, which may have been influenced by Facebook's beginnings on Harvard campus. Let Wang after years of relish is to choose the right direction, in one book, he mentions the experience of playing state poker: often going to a professional casino will find that the most important decision you can make in one night is not which card to play, but which table you go to after you enter the game.

But only the right direction is far from enough, Wang once described the dilemma of the campus: "First, the development, the second is the promotion, the third is financing, development and promotion of the biggest problem, but these two problems are caused by the third financing problem, we need resources to do things, need all aspects of help, need human, material, financial resources. Unfortunately, Wang did not solve these three problems.