Is it really difficult to start a business on the Internet?

The hardest thing to start an Internet business is to go from 0 to 1, which is much more difficult than from 1 to 10 and from 10 to 100.

1. With an idea, it is not even 0, because an idea is a very abstract thing, everyone is creative, and everyone can have a whim. There are many ideas that can be realized in theory, but few ideas can really land. These ideas need to meet the market demand, and they must be real and objective pain points rather than false demands. The highest level of ideas is to create requirements, which users may not know.

2. It's hard for a clever woman to cook without rice, and money is always the biggest obstacle in the initial stage of starting a business. Whether it is company registration, office location, equipment leasing or personnel recruitment, there must be start-up funds. In the early stage, we should spend the life cycle of the project at the minimum cost, and we can only talk about development if we survive.

3. Talent. What startups lack most is talent, and what they need most is talent. If they don't have enough money to hire Daniel, they will have to settle for the second best, and ask Xiaobai to cultivate slowly. It's easy to recruit people, but difficult to keep them. The biggest problem for startups is to keep people. Once employees can't see the development hope, they will jump ship one after another. It's no use letting you have three heads and six arms.

4. Emotional intelligence. Startups don't have factional struggles of big companies and cheat each other, which highlights the importance of entrepreneurs' emotional intelligence. No matter how strong your personal ability is, one person has only two hands and two feet, but the team is different. Even if your personal ability is not strong, the achievements of a team are definitely much stronger than those of an individual, but only if your EQ is online. This is actually the simplest and most difficult breakthrough of the Internet. There are many examples of star startups failing because of internal struggles. Even if the weather is right and the people are right, you still failed without anyone.

Those rules and routines of starting a business 0- 1

1. synthesis

The growth curve of the project is 0- 1 (running in small steps) and 1-n (striding forward).

Let's take a look at the two stages that all entrepreneurial projects will go through, namely 0- 1 and 1-n! All projects must start at 0- 1! This stage means that there are a lot of uncertainties and high risks. All development plans are based on assumptions. Since it is a hypothesis, it needs to be verified! Is the market positioning good? Has the product been polished? How is it? Where are the seed users? Are there enough seed users? Have you formed a basic brand image and reputation? All these (uncertainties) indicate that your project is still in the stage of 0- 1!

If you compare your project to your child, and your child is still underage, maybe only 4-5 years old! During this period of time, I watched the communication in the community and found that there are many entrepreneurs, including many members of our community. Although their project is still in the stage of 0- 1, as founders, they use the thinking mode and communication mode of 1-n to promote their projects all day!

It's like a girl who is obviously underage, but adults want her to wear high heels and make up like adults. This is not a competition! As we all know, a little girl should be curious, ask more questions and make more small mistakes, which is also the way of thinking and communication we should have in the entrepreneurial stage-0-1. At the beginning of the project, we should think more and ask more questions when we know the surrounding markets and customers.

As we said just now, the characteristic of 0- 1 is that there are too many uncertainties, which also makes us unable and should not make long-term plans and invest a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources. If you take a 0- 1 project to finance, unless you are Lei Jun, it is difficult to convince investors, and the same is true for finding partners. It is also difficult to persuade partners to join full-time in the uncertain situation.

Therefore, as a founder, your job is to promote the project with the correct way of thinking and communication at the stage of 0- 1 to reduce the uncertainty of the project. Many people complain in the group that they can't find investors and partners. In fact, the root cause is that there are so many problems in your project. How can others vote for you? How to join you? Therefore, the project is still in the stage of 0- 1, and you should take the right methods to eliminate these uncertainties. You seduce investors and partners with a 1-n communication method, and you will definitely not succeed!

2.0- 1 four doors

As a founder, you took your project through the 0- 1 stage as smoothly as possible in the initial stage. How can you get your project through the 0- 1 phase smoothly? Is to remove the uncertainty in the project step by step!

Here, I divide the uncertainty of 0- 1 stage into four layers, which I call the quadruple gate.

The first heavy door: verify the problem audience;

The second door: verify the solution;

The third door: accumulate seed users;

The fourth door: verify commercial realization.

Why four doors? Because you can't bypass it, for example, you can't bypass the first weight and go straight to the second. For example, you can't verify the solution until you verify the problem audience. If the problem is unclear and the audience is unclear, you can sell a solution or start polishing the product. This will not work. Does it make sense logically? For example, if you don't know whether you like it or not, it's meaningless to start polishing products without accepting your proposal! ?

Therefore, you can see that the curve of 0- 1 stage is winding, which emphasizes flexibility and one stage. You should be sensitive enough to the amount of investment, control your time and financial resources as much as possible, and don't waste it.

Weapons to break through the quadruple door:

1. Imaginary products (such as a+personal WeChat),

2. Low-tech products (such as a poster+QR code),

3. Minimum feasible prototype (H5, applet, App)

4. Products with revenue model (seed user WeChat group+direct transfer payment method)

Now there are four doors, just like the monster upgrade in the game. We need special weapons to break into houses. In essence, we still take the product-driven and user-driven route, so every step of a weapon is a product, but the definition of product form here is very broad, just like choosing different weapons in different scenes, including pistols and submachine guns!

At the stage of determining the problem audience, that is, for the first time, we should use the lightest product form, which is an imaginary product. We present the product in the form of a paragraph and an interview, but remember here that no matter what form the product is, user interaction should be clearly defined here. For example, after introducing your imaginary product in a paragraph, be sure to ask the other party if they are willing to add you to WeChat to continue to pay attention to your project? Imaginary products also need polishing, so you only polish descriptive words, so the iteration period at this stage is very fast, and feedback from others can be collected quickly, which is more suitable for rapid adjustment.

The second weapon is low-tech products, such as posters, so that people can see your products intuitively. The production cost of this stage is definitely higher than that of the imagination stage, but only design is needed, and product realization is not needed, such as writing code and coding. Why do you want to make a visual presentation like a poster? Because at this stage, you have to verify for the first time whether your proposed solution is emotionally accepted by everyone and even arouses great curiosity.

Here is a real example. Two weeks ago, I participated in the pioneering camp of Xi Academy of Fine Arts as a tutor, together with students and teachers from eight major fine arts colleges. A team I took made such a low-tech product, the pre-sale poster, which is their imaginary beauty product. Because the poster has a sense of design and is easy to spread in the circle of friends, it quickly received advance payment from many people. Of course, they finally returned all the money, but they perfectly verified the acceptability of this hypothetical product scheme, and it only took them a weekend!

The third weapon is the smallest feasible product prototype. First, we will use technology to implement it, such as H5 web pages, applets or applications. ? This process will be long, and there will be many product iterations in the middle, which may be polishing function, polishing interface, polishing UI, or polishing experience process, UX, but everyone should remember that the key door to be broken here is to accumulate seed users or to accumulate a certain number of seed users. If you can verify that your products and services can acquire and retain users and form a certain word-of-mouth communication, congratulations, you have also broken this heavy door.

The last weapon has a revenue model. If you charge users directly, this stage is to design a charging function or service and try to collect money from users. If your revenue model is advertising, then this stage is to introduce advertising into the product to verify whether users will buy it.

I still want to emphasize here that the flexibility and cost of each weapon are different, so the target stage is different. For example, in the first stage of verifying the target audience, you should focus on polishing your imaginary products and do more customer interviews, which is far more flexible than investing in a real product. What kind of weapons should be used for what kind of checkpoints, and never be arrogant, resulting in waste and passivity in project promotion.

3. Five-step decomposition of unit iteration

After talking about checkpoints and weapons, let's talk about how to fight, which is the tactical accomplishment of our entrepreneurs. The tactical accomplishment of 0- 1 is completely different from that of1-n. The tactical accomplishment of 0- 1 is to run in small steps and iterate flexibly. At 1-n, you can make a long-term plan, concentrate human, material and financial resources and make great progress. ?

Small steps mean that the period of each iteration cannot be too long. Generally 1-4 weeks, each iteration can be broken down into 5 steps.

The first step is to define the product. Defining the product means defining the function, design and positioning of the product according to the assumptions to be verified in the current iteration.

The second step is to design and implement the product. This step is the concrete design and necessary programming or other technical realization.

The third step is to set the test target. ? The goal here refers to the test goal. For example, iteration is to verify whether users will pay for an advanced function. Then the goal of our test can be that if more than 70% people pay, the hypothesis is established.

The fourth step is to test, that is, give your product to users, or interview customers with your product on the spot. It takes a long time to set up a test here. It usually takes a few days to 3-4 weeks, and data and feedback must be recorded during the process.

Step 5: Compare the data with the target. This is the most indispensable step in each iteration. Only by comparing the real data with our assumed goals can we know whether our assumptions are valid and decide the direction of the next project.

To sum up a little, I just talked about two different stages in the growth curve of the project, namely, the four doors of 0- 1 and 1-n, 0- 1, and the different weapons needed to break through these four doors, that is, different forms of products. Finally, let's talk about the tactical training of 0- 1, that is, running in small steps and iterating quickly. These are the so-called rules. Composition is to look at the development of the project and the distribution of manpower, material resources and financial resources from a global perspective. Share some routines after the composition. There are some practical skills and shortcuts that may have immediate effects.

4. Routine 1 Jin 60

What does gold 60s mean? In other words, you have 60 seconds to explain your project and your ideas to others. Gold 60s is not necessarily a formal speech on stage, but an opportunity to promote your entrepreneurial ideas at any time in your life. The other party may be your friend, someone who plays an important role in a certain field, your potential partner or your future investor. Remember, such an opportunity may appear at any time. If you can clearly express your entrepreneurial project at any time, you will get more opportunities than others.

The purpose of 60s is to arouse the other party's interest in continuing to understand (the project), so as to gain opportunities for in-depth communication. Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. Entrepreneurs must practice hard at ordinary times and cultivate your gold for 60s in case of emergency.

Three Important Principles of the Golden 1960s

1. Time shall not exceed 60s.

In other words, make everything clear within 60 seconds. Why the 1960s? Physiologically speaking, a person can pay continuous attention to a new thing that he doesn't know at all for 60 seconds. If you can't explain your project or content clearly within 60 seconds and arouse the interest of the other person, even if he continues to listen to you, his attention will drop sharply, or he will simply find an excuse to end the conversation, so 60 is the longest time you can have. If you can successfully arouse each other's interest within 60 seconds, then congratulations, your first step.

2. The amount of information should not exceed 300 words

In the 1960 s, some people would say that I spoke quickly and watched many roadshows of entrepreneurial projects. In the 1960 s, he spoke very fast, so he couldn't, because the amount of information was too large, and the amount of information could not exceed 300 words, because the other person's digestive ability was limited and he couldn't digest too much information.

3. Choose different versions according to different highlights of your project.

This version is prepared by you before, and you can prepare many sets to deal with the different roles of the other party.

* gold 60S template

for instance

After two examples, let's review the purpose of the gold 60s. Why bother to design a 60s speech, or buy our products immediately after others have heard it? Or invest in us right away? Obviously not! This 1960s was just a stepping stone. Our purpose is not to let the other party make a decision to buy or invest immediately. Our aim is to arouse each other's interest in further understanding, and it is best to ask some constructive questions!

5. Routine customer interviews

So after a successful golden 60, if the other party is willing to continue to communicate, congratulations, you have successfully attracted his attention and entered the customer interview time. The purpose of 0- 1 phase customer interview is to get real clues to verify various assumptions in product conception, so we should ask as many questions as possible in customer interview. But how to ask questions? What questions were asked?

First, make clear the purpose of asking questions. The purpose of the interview is to get real clues, not to deliberately approach one's own assumptions. Don't deliberately guide the other person to say what you originally imagined. This is meaningless.

Here's an important point, avoid asking the other person's choice directly. For example, this question is asking about the choice: Do you think I am good at xxx? Will you buy it? These are their thoughts at that time, that is, the choices they made under the judgment at that time. These choices are temporary and unreliable. And it is possible that because you are an acquaintance, their answers will tend to cater to you because of face or human feelings, so these answers are worthless to you.

Page 1 1: So what kind of questions should I ask? The questions we ask should give us real clues. Such a question is a good one. How was your last experience in xxx? Because you are asking a thing that happened in the past, unless he lied to you, how much would you spend for such a service? This is a quantifiable problem. Our questions should ask facts and data, not their choices and ideas.

Let's take another look at Airbnb's example.

Ok, we just talked about the rules and routines, the routines talked about the golden 60, and the other is how to do customer interviews. Now let's talk about how to switch to the perspective of your potential partners and investors.

Have you ever thought about it? Why aren't they going to invest in you and join you? In fact, I have been imagining that when you are working on a project, on the one hand, you will grow in two dimensions. One dimension is very direct, that is, your customer volume and sales volume, that is, your whole business is growing, and the other dimension is that your "circle of friends" followers are also growing. Your partner investors are all from this crowd, and they have been paying attention to your project.

Then why didn't these people join you in the first place? In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, you have too many uncertainties and too high risks, and everyone has different tolerance for risks. If you are the founder, you take the greatest risk. You started from the beginning, but there is no reason for you to ask investors and partners to be the same as you, so everyone's benchmark for risk is different.

Followers: As we said, the process of 0- 1 not only allows the founders to accumulate seed users, but also establishes a "circle of friends" for the project! The responsibility of the founder is to eliminate risks. When the risk is reduced to a certain extent, partners and investors will naturally stand out from the followers and join in.

De-risk: Therefore, as a founder, you should have a strong awareness of the existence of risks and be able to quantify them. Just like you have a big wall in the office, you make a list of all possible risks. Whether it is a few weeks, a few months or a year, two years or three years, as long as you are in the 0- 1 stage, your responsibility is to put all these risks in. And update your followers about health risks in time, let them know that this matter is becoming more and more certain, and they can join you and vote for you at some time.

This is another picture. This picture is the other way around. As you can see, with the reduction of project risk, the order of risk reduction is the same. Still the four-door door. First of all, risk exclusion is the wrong audience. If we target the right crowd and rule out that we don't like the solution, then our products are not good enough, and we can't accumulate enough seed users. Finally, the business model is not impressed enough, and others are unwilling to pay.

The whole process just mentioned is also a risk removal process. How do we choose the risk to go? What's the priority? We list all the risks of the project on a wall at home. How do we know which risk should be eliminated most? How to lock the most critical risks? This also determines what we should do next.

Here is a simple tool for everyone. After listing all risks, there are two dimensions. The horizontal axis is from certainty to uncertainty, and the risk is definitely uncertain. Something is not a risk, and the vertical axis is relevant. The risk we have to solve must be related to the project. If it has nothing to do with the project, we don't need to spend time. So when we design the next iteration, we will find the most relevant and uncertain on the graph.

Let's take Audemars piguet as an example, and this is also the horizontal axis and vertical axis diagram. From relevance to irrelevance, from certainty to uncertainty, if the founder of Airbnb had such a risk assumption at that time:

1. What are the related but confirmed risks? Most people who travel abroad need a place to rest at night. This doesn't need our verification, although it is related to our business.

2. Uncertain but irrelevant: Whether people living in the same city also need to temporarily live in strangers' homes, this may exist, we are not sure, but it has nothing to do with Airbnb's business at that time, because they pay attention to people who travel in different places, and they don't pay attention to people in the same city. People in the same city may have such a need to change houses, but it has nothing to do with them, although it is uncertain. Since it is irrelevant, there is no need to verify it.

3. Uncertain but related risks: It is really uncertain whether most people who travel in different places will mind in-depth communication with strange locals. We don't know how many people are willing to communicate with strange locals if they travel in different places, which is also related to some extent.

4. Uncertain but relevant: How many people who travel in different places will choose to spend the night in strange local families, for example, sleeping on their sofas. Before Airbnb appeared, there was another website called couchsurfing, which was to sleep on the sofa. How many people have used their service? This platform is an uncertain assumption that they don't know, but it is very relevant to their business. If this hypothesis,