How to choose a business direction?

In fact, using my own funds to start a small business is not my first choice. I have also tried to lobby for venture capital investment, hoping that venture capital can help me avoid personal risks and increase my chances of success, but in many cases The lesson learned after the failure of this financing is: for first-time entrepreneurs, you must first clarify the purpose of joining venture capital, that is, whether you really need funds to start a big business or whether you need other people to pay to let you go away in peace. To put it simply, the motivation is pure or not; secondly, if there is no good project that can be picked out from a million, the best way to start a business is to "use self-accumulation to start a business first and then start a business."

Venture investment institutions pay special attention to the business model and operational risks of the project, by judging whether the project can be expanded, whether it has profit prospects, whether there is a risk of failure, and whether it has a qualified management team. The coffin is sealed. For a small business entrepreneurial team, these conditions cannot be met overnight, or by the time you meet these conditions, the best time to start a business has often passed. Taking the e-commerce industry that I am most familiar with, those companies that have been able to obtain venture capital in recent years have met the above requirements (excluding WEB20 bubble companies): the entrepreneurial elite team has been familiar to investors (similar to eBay), the business The model is a transplantation of successful foreign models (similar to eBay and Dangdang), a unique business model developed after many entrepreneurships (similar to Focus Media), and an industry that has already had an impact and urgently needs to expand its scale (similar to The9). In the three-dimensional matrix of profitability, risk level and experience value, most small entrepreneurial enterprises in urgent need of funds are in a coordinate item of "weak, strong, weak". So if you are not an industry elite, do not have more than ten years of industry operating experience, and lack original ideas and insights, if you are just an ordinary successful person with entrepreneurial passion, then the best decision is to choose the industry you are most familiar with. Start a small business with "viability", and then consider attracting investment and expanding the scale after the business reaches a certain scale.

In 2002, I had accumulated seven years of IT technology experience and five years of technology and management consulting experience, so I expected to start a small company that could give full play to my own expertise, competitiveness and survival advantages. enterprise. When I was working at McKinsey Management Consulting, I had the opportunity to conduct in-depth research on domestic logistics companies and understand the demand for IT in the logistics industry, so I chose logistics software solutions as an entry point for entrepreneurship. In order to improve the "survivability" of the company, I did not blindly pursue the formation of a strong elite management team of returnees. Instead, I chose like-minded childhood friends to form an entrepreneurial team that is "simple in style and good in meaning"; I did not blindly pursue the best. Instead of choosing the most advanced, fashionable and most profitable technologies and fields, we have chosen the field of logistics software services that have a large number of users, have simple and simple needs, but need to serve customers conscientiously. Under this concept of "doing something and not doing something", although we missed opportunities to make money such as text messages and online games, it was not a flash in the pan like many other small businesses in online value-added services. After three years of hard work, , now the company has developed industry-leading products, brands and business models, and venture capital investments that had originally rejected us slowly began to show interest and confidence in us.

Starting a small business is a means, not an end. Our common goal is still to use what we have learned to run a successful business. Therefore, integrating various resources, including "policy resources, competitive resources, and capital resources", to strive for a good growth environment for enterprises has become one of the necessary preparations for starting a business. Policy resources refer to a full understanding of various domestic policies, competitive resources refer to the clear advantages of overseas returnees to start a business, and capital resources refer to the accumulation of people, money and materials. Due to the geographical disadvantages of the returnee entrepreneurial group, we particularly hope to enhance our understanding of policy resources. However, the channels for obtaining this information are limited, and each policy department operates independently. As a result, our understanding of policy resources is not comprehensive and systematic enough, which affects the development of enterprises.

For example, when we first founded Huaxia, our entrepreneurial team specially registered a private enterprise with an international student as the legal representative in order to maximize the use of preferential policies for overseas students to start a business. However, due to a lack of understanding of other policies (such as high-tech enterprise policies, etc.) The registered capital was not increased, which led to the discovery that even the basic qualifications were not met when applying for government project funds in the future. The establishment of the Entrepreneurship Branch of the Shanghai European and American Alumni Association has established a communication channel for overseas returnee entrepreneurship in a timely manner. Therefore, I recommend that all returnees who have started or plan to start a business join this organization and contribute to the success of overseas returnee entrepreneurship.