Counting 10 Internet celebrities, they all have successful classic cases after their business failure.

Counting 10 Internet celebrities, they all have successful classic cases after their business failure.

Ma Yun once said such an inspirational sentence, "My greatest experience is to think about how others fail and what mistakes people will make." Ma Yun said that it is not easy to be an enterprise, "95% of enterprises have fallen" to avoid the mistakes made by fallen people.

On the way to starting a business, who dares to say that he has not stumbled? Lei Jun went bankrupt, Liu was cheated by employees, and Zhou became the "father of rogue software". These internet tycoons have also experienced bloody lessons. The difference is that instead of recovering, they constantly sum up their failures and start over.

I sorted out the experiences and feelings of 10 internet bosses who failed to start a business, hoping to give you some encouragement and enlightenment on the road to starting a business.

1, ma yun: the market value of the chairman of Alibaba's board of directors182.5 billion us dollars.

Failure experience Ma Yun went through three ventures until Ali went public in the United States.

From 65438 to 0994, Ma Yun founded the first organization: Haibo translation agency. The first month's income was in 700 yuan, and the rent was 2000 yuan. Ma Yun went to Yiwu with sacks on his back to support translation agency.

From 65438 to 0995, Ma Yun accidentally came into contact with the Internet in Seattle, and he decided that the Internet was the future direction. After returning home, Ma Yun and his wife and friends raised 20,000 RMB to set up Haibo.com and started the China Yellow Pages project. However, after the cooperation with Hangzhou Telecom, the two sides had differences, which made Ma Yun decide to give up the website.

1At the end of 1997, Ma Yun was invited as the general manager of China Electronic Commerce Center of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of China, and began to contact foreign trade. Ma Yun's idea of doing B2B websites began to mature. 1999, 35-year-old Ma Yun decided to start a business in Hangzhou and set up another startup company of his own-Alibaba.

In Ma Yun's view, the successful experiences of enterprises are different, but the lessons of failure are similar. "My biggest experience is to think about how others fail and what mistakes people will make." Ma Yun said that it is not easy to be a business. "95% of enterprises have fallen", avoiding the mistakes made by fallen people, and "turning mistakes into nutrition" can become the surviving 5%.

2. Lei Jun: Founder of Xiaomi, now valued at 45 billion US dollars.

Failure experience Before his success, he founded Tricolor Company and went bankrupt because he could not make a profit.

When he was in college, Lei Jun read a book "The Fire of Silicon Valley" about the early entrepreneurial legends of Gates and Jobs, which touched him very much-"I was deeply attracted by the story of Jobs. After working hard in Wuhan Electronic Street for a period of time, I felt good about myself and began to dream: I dream of writing a set of software to run on every computer in the world, and I dream of setting up the best software company in the world. "

So, when he was in senior three, he founded Tricolor Company with three friends. Unfortunately, the company was forced to dissolve after half a year.

In this regard, Lei Jun has three reflections: First, there must be a clear profit model; Second, we must have a forward-looking market awareness; The third is to have certain team management ability.

3. Liu: The founder of JD.COM has a market value of $40.3 billion.

Failure once opened a restaurant in Zhongguancun, but it was closed after being cheated.

After graduating from college, Liu opened a restaurant near Zhongguancun. Before, the clerk had a low salary, lived in the basement and usually only ate leftovers. The boss personally controls the funds; After Liu took over, he raised the salary of employees, improved the accommodation environment and gave employees the right to purchase and register. Due to loose management, employees changed their ways to embezzle the money in the store. In less than a year, the original profitable hotel was wiped out.

The lesson Liu learned from his failure is that we must trust employees, but trust does not mean that there is no management.

4. Zhou: founder of 360, with a market value of 6.4 billion US dollars.

The failed experience once created 372 1, one of the earliest search engines in China.

Before doing 360, Zhou once worked as a search engine called 372 1, and Baidu also launched a similar service. The competition between the two sides is fierce. Zhou added a module to the client of 372 1 to delete Baidu's client, but the module itself cannot be deleted. This made Zhou wear the hat of "the father of rogue software".

Later, Zhou felt that Baidu's search model was better than his own. At that time, the Internet industry was in a downturn, and he sold 372 1 to Yahoo in the case of his dominant market share, resulting in the search market of 1 100 million dollars being finally occupied by Baidu.

Feeling of failure Regarding these past experiences, Zhou said: "Don't just stare at your opponent, you must stare at the needs of users, you must persist and don't give up easily."

5. Zhang Xiaolong: Vice President of Tencent and Father of WeChat.

Foxmail developed after failure experience.

Foxmail developed by Zhang Xiaolong once had 2 million users and was the largest shareware in China. Zhou said that Foxmail didn't have a business model in those days, so he often refuted Zhang Xiaolong, saying that he wanted to increase advertising and make profits. But Zhang Xiaolong said, why does it have to be like this? As long as there are users and feelings.

Later, Foxmail became a big burden for Zhang Xiaolong. Every day, countless people urge him to run forward, but his popularity and users have not brought him benefits.

A year later, Zhang Xiaolong sold Foxmail to an unknown Internet company.

The feeling of failure Now, the founders of many Internet companies say: We don't need to think about money now. After we have users, we will naturally find a profit point. But Zhang Xiaolong's experience tells us that a clear profit model is extremely important before starting a business.

6. Chen Ou: Founder of Jumeiyoupin, with a market value of $2.4 billion.

Failure experience once founded GG game platform.

When studying at Nanyang Technological University, Chen Ou built an online game platform GG with a computer, and invited two top Warcraft masters, WCG champion and ESWC champion, to compete at the peak. This won him the first batch of users.

However, with the increase of users, Chen Ou, who has no capital reserve, is more and more embarrassed, and the sponsorship he can get is also a drop in the bucket. Investors are dismissive of him, which makes the development of GG difficult.

At this time, Chen Ou was going to Stanford to study for an MBA, so he hired a professional manager to take care of the company and sold some of his shares. Subsequently, professional managers introduced other angel investors. Through the operation, Chen Ou's equity was only over 30%, and he lost control of the company and was finally squeezed out of the company.

In his second venture, Chen Ou imitated the American business model, set up a game company in China, and implanted advertisements in social games. However, due to the huge difference between the domestic market and the United States, the company soon went bankrupt.

Sense of failure: The two failed entrepreneurial experiences have given Chen Ou two gains: First, the company needs to have a healthy equity organization structure; Second, copying foreign models won't work.

7. Zhen: the founder of worry-free future, with a market value of $2 billion.

Failure experience invested in voice mail and magnetic materials.

Zhen was a consultant with an annual salary of one million before starting a business. In the tide of rapid economic development in Chinese mainland, he wanted to be a "billionaire", so he worked part-time as a voice mail delivery system and invested in magnetic materials. But both adventures ended in failure.

In summing up the lessons, he said: starting a business requires a lot of energy and must be done full-time; Entrepreneurship can't just start with products. Having good products does not mean having customers. Customers need complete services, and entrepreneurship needs to change from product-oriented to customer-oriented.

8. Wu: The CEO of Meitu Company is now worth $3 billion.

The failed experience once founded the 520 social platform, and later stopped operating.

1999 I saw a piece of news in Wu, when I was still in high school: a domain name named "business.com" sold for $7.5 million in the United States. So he borrowed 654.38 million yuan from his family and began to invest in domain names. As a result, he made some money and got to know Cai Wensheng, a later company investor.

In 2002, Wu, who dropped out of school at home, found a good domain name:, so he copied Tencent and made money by collecting membership fees.

Two years later, "520" has accumulated hundreds of thousands of paying members, but because the products and operations can't keep up, most members only pay for one month and stop renewing their fees. Finally, Wu was forced to close "520" and sell the domain name.

Looking back on this experience, Wu Shuo has two lessons: first, reverse entrepreneurship is not feasible, and a company cannot be established just because it has a good domain name; More importantly, I am not sociable and don't know the needs of users. How can I make a good dating website?

9. Wang Xing: The founder of Meituan is valued at $7 billion.

The failed experience once founded the campus network and was forced to sell it.

In the winter of 2003, Wang Xing, a Ph.D. student in the United States, returned to China to start a business. After several failed projects, Wang Xing found that socializing with acquaintances among students was a starting point, so he set out to build a campus network.

At that time, it was very troublesome to go to the railway station in Beijing, so during the winter vacation, Wang Xing launched an activity in Tsinghua, Peking University and the National People's Congress to register the campus network and take the bus to the railway station for free. At the same time and place, 50 people set out. In order to make up the number of students, students pull fellow villagers to register everywhere, which is equivalent to promoting websites. This activity brought 8000 seed users to the campus network. However, due to the lack of a clear profit model, the capital side is not optimistic about this project. Finally, the capital chain broke and the internal team split. Wang Xing was forced to sell it.

The failure of this project inspired Wang Xing: First, the entrepreneurial team must have a clear division of labor, and the CEO must be liberated from corporate affairs and pay attention to the development trends of the industry, the times and society; Second, contact capital as soon as possible, lower your posture and make compromises; Third, we must start a business with people we trust, so as to maintain unity in the low tide.

10, Renren.com founder Chen Yizhou: market value 1 1000 billion USD.

The failed experience once founded ChinaRen community.

According to the characteristics of several popular community websites in the United States at that time, Chen Yizhou and others, who were still studying at Stanford at that time, designed a group named ChinaRen. However, no one in Silicon Valley wanted to invest in their project. Finally, they raised $200,000 from Stanford students.

1March 1999, they returned to China to register their company. After obtaining the investment from Goldman Sachs, they quickly launched the ChinaRen community and obtained tens of millions of dollars in new financing. After that, ChinaRen began to burn money and smash advertisements crazily.

At first, Chen Yizhou and others were scared, but investors said it didn't matter. If you burn it, you will have investment. If you don't burn it, you won't be able to go public. But soon, in 2000, the American stock market crashed and capital entered the cold winter. As a result, investors who originally supported burning money changed their attitudes, and told Chen Yizhou clearly that there would be no new investment and they should sell the company as soon as possible. Chen Yizhou had to sell ChinaRen community to Sohu.

This case is actually similar to the campus network: entrepreneurship needs to make rational use of existing capital, and it is best to have its own hematopoietic capacity, so as to survive the crisis in the cold winter of capital.