The post-90s entrepreneurial boom has been declared dead

The entrepreneurial boom of the post-90s generation has been declared dead.

From the beginning to the end, the entrepreneurship of the post-90s generation always seems to be distinctive.

Usually, a company lays off a large number of employees and tries its best to whitewash the situation with "elimination at the bottom". They generally agree that "deceiving others" is much better than "deceiving oneself". The startup companies born in the 1990s appear to be quite honest, and even carry the "arrogant" gene that was deeply rooted in the bones of this generation when they started their businesses.

For example, Gifts, a post-90s startup company with a valuation of US$200 million, has recently openly stated that it will continue to lay off employees. According to CEO Wen Chenghui, this is to maintain the company's flexibility and to lay off mediocre people. Meet the adventurers.

Just looking at the entire announcement, this post-90s start-up, which is not as stable as large companies, has a more noble attitude than large companies. The content does not mention the operating status or the cause of the incident at all, and does not cry about poverty. He did not show any weakness, always showing the glorious image of "I would rather die standing than live on my knees".

However, there would be a large amount of capital willing to buy this routine during the entrepreneurial wave of the post-90s generation. But now that the trend is retreating and capital is in the cold, what strength do the post-90s startup companies have left to support their pretentiousness? What? From the applause of flowers all the way during the entrepreneurial craze of the post-90s generation in the past two years to the tepid and tepid situation today, does this indicate that the entrepreneurial wave of the post-90s generation will end in collective failure?

90 The post-90s generation was once an entrepreneurial hero created by the times

In fact, the entrepreneurial boom of the post-90s generation only lasted for less than a year, and they were hit by negative news one after another. Today, the current situation that may be accompanied by a bleak future for gifts seems to have finally brought an end to this trend.

In 2014, the post-90s start-ups caught up with a big wave in the era of capital carnival, attracting national attention. In particular, a group of investors represented by Xu Xiaoping and IDG are extremely partial to this group of young people with unique personalities, and hope to win the popularity of this group of mainstream netizens. Rather than saying that the investors are investing in the post-90s generation, it is better to say that they are riding on a publicity ride. As China increasingly has no shortage of investment funds but high-quality entrepreneurial projects, investment funds need to promote themselves and compete for investors more than entrepreneurial projects.

It is under this situation that post-90s entrepreneurs represented by Ma Jiajia and Chen Anni have become the " A god and goddess who combines beauty and wisdom. More importantly, the post-90s label they admire is also seen by more people as an expression and indictment of reality for a generation, thus deepening the recognition and support for these post-90s entrepreneurial stars.

The world is bustling with profit and gain. It is precisely because of the leading role of this group of so-called entrepreneurial stars among the post-90s generation that more capital has begun to seek and bet on the future of post-90s entrepreneurs. , they don’t even care about products or business models.

Once upon a time, many people born in the 80s and 70s who started their own businesses had some regrets. Why didn’t they be born a few years later and become those born in the 90s?

And simply investing in people will also provide a good foundation for the future. The collapse of the prosperous age has laid hidden dangers. We have seen that in just one year, new companies such as Gift Talk, Sing Together, and Magic Department Store, under the aura of their founders born in the 1990s, have easily raised tens of millions of dollars in financing, and they have been in the limelight for a while. However, as national entrepreneurship enters deep water, these start-up companies that rely on the reputation of their founders have gradually disappeared from public opinion. Once they reappear in the media exposure, most of them appear as failures or with a rather negative image.

For example, Ma Jiajia, who was once labeled as the "college entrance examination champion" and "sexual liberator", her Paofou Technology only lasted less than a year before closing down. The same was true for Wang Kaixin's Magic Department Store, which after three With a round of financing and a more mature business model, it fell into trouble with a broken capital chain at the beginning of last year. It even bluntly stated that it could not even pay all its employees a month's salary.

In comparison, Gift can be said to have lasted longer after the entrepreneurial boom, but today's layoffs can only be said to be precarious.

From the perspective of founders, the post-90s label once pushed them to the top, but now it seems that it may be precisely because of the commercial value of this label that they are obsessed with it. Focusing on the achievements gained from selling labels, they ignore that the foundation of a company is respect for business laws. Entrepreneurs should have the basic qualities of a leader and manager.

It even has to be said that the personality label of the post-90s generation has even been spoiled by so-called entrepreneurial stars.

For example, arrogance reflects the fearless spirit of the post-90s generation, but there is an essential difference between arrogance and bragging. The former needs its own strength as support, while the latter, whether it is based on external praise or blind optimism, is contrary to The basic attitude of a start-up. At that time, Yu Jiawen was slapped in the face after making arrogant remarks on CCTV. This incident also proved that small goals such as earning 100 million yuan can only be talked about by Wang Jianlin as a joke. Once it is used as a hype gimmick, Sooner or later, you have to find a way to justify this. If you can't, you can only give in, be criticized, and then be ruined.

Why do most star startups born in the 1990s end in failure?

So, from the perspective of the current entrepreneurial field, have startups born in the 1990s really failed?

According to a survey by a university in Shenzhen, of the 160 entrepreneurial teams that have settled in the college student entrepreneurship incubation base since 2010, only 12 of them are still in operation. The remaining nearly 100 entrepreneurial projects have all "died", and the entrepreneurial success rate is still low. to 5. Among the factors of failure, market demand, lack of funds, and team problems are the most prominent factors leading to failure.

This is certainly not an exception. Even star start-ups that had high hopes and had gone through several rounds of financing have gone bankrupt, shut down, and those that can persist are only stubbornly resisting. However, a careful analysis of the reasons shows that the failure of the entrepreneurial wave is inevitable, and the failure it presents is not entirely caused by these post-90s entrepreneurs. Therefore, it cannot simply be said that this is a failure of post-90s entrepreneurship. Rather, it is more the result of the role of multiple parties.

In terms of internal factors, the post-90s entrepreneurs’ own factors are indeed the initiator. For example, they are easily self-inflated among flowers and applause, and thus lack correct and rational cognition, especially self-awareness and ability. Business cognition is hard to see in this group of post-90s entrepreneurs. Or perhaps the achievements gained by hyping up personality labels are too dazzling, making it difficult for them to give up this simpler path to success, so that they try to drive the operation of the entire company through personal influence, which is a more fatal mistake.

This also exposes a common phenomenon characteristic of the post-90s generation, which is that they dare to speak out and have an excessive desire for self-expression, which can easily lead to an imbalance of attention between individuals and companies. Especially for start-up companies, excessive use of the founder's own personality traits or hobbies as the focus of hype makes it difficult to focus the user group's attention on the company's products, and loyalty is formed based on attention to the founder. It is usually not very stable unless it is supported by strong user demand and commercial products. However, as new business people born in the 1990s, it is often difficult to bet on the correct market direction at one time.

More importantly, the post-90s entrepreneurship has a more threatening flaw, which is its weak ability to resist risks, especially compared to the post-80s generation who have basically occupied the entrepreneurial market. After all, the post-90s generation is a new force in business. Even though they are the group most influenced by the Internet and mobile Internet waves, they are exposed to hidden sources of information. What’s more, most of the post-90s generation in this entrepreneurial wave have no work experience. Newcomers, let alone a deep understanding of market demand. In addition, there is very little accumulation of personal connections. These inherent factors are the main reasons for its weak ability to resist risks.

Judging from these own weaknesses, we can find that many of the factors that lead to business failure are not actually inherent in post-90s entrepreneurship. Instead, it is investors who deliberately ignore or even encourage them from behind, which leads to their failure. Trapped in the halo, die in comfort.

When the entrepreneurial wave is booming, public opinion is almost uniformly guided by hymns. This cannot escape the role of the driving forces behind it, especially investors and the media. The former is loyal to groups that can tell stories, and through packaging Only in this way can we find a suitable successor, and the latter tends to look for hot topics born in the 1990s, and this is also extremely in line with the correct direction of mass entrepreneurship.

Furthermore, capital blindness is the root cause of this trend. In actual practice, as long as you have some label of being born in the 90s, a famous university or a beauty, you will more or less get financing and fully It reflects the phenomenon that the threshold for entrepreneurship has been lowered by investment. It is this blindness that on the one hand indulges the inflated psychology of the post-90s generation, and on the other hand leads to the inherent flaw of start-up companies over-relying on financing. Once the capital ebbs, most of them will be burned. Burned to death.

In short, the entrepreneurial boom ended with the sacrifices and failures of the post-90s generation. They may be blamed for their youth and frivolity, but they are not the only culprits.

Pursuing acquisitions may be the best way out for startup companies born in the 1990s

There are currently very few companies that have emerged from the entrepreneurial wave, and the dead can naturally only serve as the laughingstock of today's people or be the victims. It is a matter of experience, but companies like Super Course Schedule and Gift Talk that have faded out of the public eye but are still struggling to survive are another matter. Maybe they still have a chance, but in general terms, the road to reality may not be There are only two options: refinancing and being acquired.

Of course, it is necessary to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, but it is by no means a long-term solution, and it is impossible to use this as a basis to wait for user accumulation to create greater profits for the company. This is mainly because many post-90s start-ups were brought to the stage of commercial hype at the beginning of their development. Even most companies have not yet formed a clear business model, and their users have also developed under the influence of the founder’s popularity. It can be said that there may not be a hard demand in the market, and relying on increasing revenue and reducing expenditure may not support the company's profitability.

As for financing, since the value of the post-90s entrepreneurial label may have been consumed by the continuous negative news, refinancing has become really difficult for post-90s entrepreneurs who do not have any advantages, especially capital. The cold winter has not yet passed, and caution has become the unified attitude of many investors. Investment institutions have already changed the name of post-90s startups from Xiaotiantian to Madam Niu.

Under this market situation, only by finding new capital stories and business value can these endangered companies obtain new financing to maintain company operations. However, looking at the current Internet economy, it can be said that there is no sign of recovery, so if you want to obtain financing, you may need to rely more on luck.

Being acquired by a giant company can be regarded as the most feasible method, and even for all post-90s entrepreneurs, this is a rare destination. Putting aside the emerging companies in the entrepreneurial wave, there are actually many startups born in the 1990s that were spotted by giants in just a few years and then acquired by them. The benefits of this are obvious.

On the one hand, with sufficient financial support, there is no need to rush for commercial profits, and more time can be spent on polishing products. On the other hand, for entrepreneurs born in the 1990s, this is really an excellent opportunity to enter a giant company and learn relevant experience. When the time is right, they can still start their own business again.

For example, before Raven Technology was acquired by Baidu, it could only rely on three apps to catch up with the trend of artificial intelligence. Its products were not simple enough to support the word "intelligence", but now Baidu has With the support behind it, not only the founders born in the 1990s have really become popular, but also for companies with technology research and development as their core, it has relieved a lot of worries.

Therefore, for startup companies born in the 1990s that are struggling to survive, selling whatever they can on the basis of residual value may be the only way to save their lives. This is also equivalent to giving the product a chance and giving the team a chance.

Jack Ma, Liu Qiangdong and others were still in their prime when they started their businesses, but it was many years before they achieved success. In comparison, those born in the 1990s still have a lot of time. Youth may not necessarily avoid the cold winter of capital, but youth is capital. If companies want to survive in the cruel business world, they can't just rely on the hype of selling dreams. The post-90s generation should return to the essence of business competition.

In short, in addition to reflection on the emergence and end of the entrepreneurial boom of the post-90s generation, as a post-90s generation, you don’t have to be depressed about it, because it is this era that should be depressed. There is nothing we can do about the failure of the post-90s generation this time, but if we are lucky, things will pick up again in the next generation. ;