Internet Business Thinking

Chapter 2 Internet finance is not in the future, but in the present! (2)
Why did Yihaodian cooperate with Dangdang?Regarding this issue, Yu Gang, the chairman and co-founder of No. 1 Store, emphasized that on the one hand, the two have a common philosophy, that is, "everything starts from customer experience"; The inevitable result of the development process of the business industry.

Let's talk about the concept first.Before Yu Gang established cooperation with Li Guoqing (Dangdang founder and co-president), the topic they talked about the most was that they hoped to complement and improve the experience of their respective customer groups through cooperation in each other's professional fields and core categories.Of course, there will continue to be competition with Dangdang.For example, the same product will also appear on each other's platforms, depending on whether you can achieve a price advantage and give customers more choices.In addition, can you let customers feel the best experience brought by your system, logistics, and customer service capabilities.Yu Gang hopes to improve their respective operational efficiency by learning from each other.

Let's talk about competition and cooperation.Yu Gang believes that e-commerce is a scale game.In the early stage, huge sums of money must be spent to develop systems, build logistics, and invest in talents.Therefore, at this stage, most e-commerce companies must first improve their core operating capabilities, and then seize traffic.Traffic means customer base. Only when the customer base expands can orders increase. When sales scale up, operating costs, marketing costs, and labor costs can be diluted.This is the first reason why e-commerce is moving towards competition and cooperation.

Secondly, e-commerce is an important part of the Internet ecological chain.The Internet ecological chain includes modules such as portals, communities, games, entertainment, and search. Regardless of their form, these modules are ultimately designed to meet the needs of the public.For example, there are entertainment needs, news needs, social needs and shopping needs.The role of e-commerce is to meet shopping needs, and its importance is reflected in its high stickiness to consumers.However, it is very difficult to operate e-commerce, which involves multiple management and operation links such as procurement, marketing, system, warehousing, logistics, and customer service.At present, most of the shares or acquisitions of some e-commerce companies are carried out by Internet companies without e-commerce business but with traffic. The advantage is that the service content of Internet companies can be more complete, and e-commerce companies can also obtain greater traffic. .This is the second reason for e-commerce competition and cooperation.

E-commerce platforms turn to socialization

Compared with the vicious competition in the past, this round of competition and cooperation between e-commerce companies is more rational. All parties are calmly thinking about how to jointly create a benign competitive environment and ecological circle.

The previous competitive environment was: fighting between e-commerce and e-commerce, and between e-commerce and traditional retail.The result is that both e-commerce companies have suffered losses, and traditional retailers have a hostile attitude towards e-commerce due to the impact of e-commerce.

The current competition and cooperation actually includes two meanings: first, competition and cooperation between e-commerce companies; second, competition and cooperation between e-commerce companies and traditional retailers.The former is to integrate the social resources of online retailing, and the latter is to integrate the social resources of online and offline retailing. For example, we are now vigorously promoting O2O (Online To Offline or Offline To Online).

At present, almost all large e-commerce companies open their platforms to third-party merchants.These merchants include brand merchants, small e-commerce companies, and traditional retail companies. Yu Gang, chairman of No. 1 store, said that in the future, No. 1 store will cooperate with more traditional retail companies and let them enter the platform of No. 1 store. Yihaodian will provide them with e-commerce solutions, including online marketing, data analysis and decision-making, platform display, supply chain response system and mechanism, etc.Through competition and cooperation, large-scale e-commerce platforms including Yihaodian will no longer be the single-handedly competitive business model of the past, but an open and socialized e-commerce platform.The identity of e-commerce will also have a dual nature. On the one hand, it will continue to play the role of a participant in market competition, and on the other hand, it will also become a provider of market services.

(Section [-]) Internet Entrepreneurship - Anyone can do it, but not everyone can do it

Five startups, five companies, both successes and failures, Li Song has tasted the ups and downs of entrepreneurs, and thus summed up the five elements of entrepreneurial success or failure: [-]. Are the problems to be solved by users? Second, whether the team has sufficient executive power; third, whether the market size of the field you want to set foot in is large enough; fourth, whether the business can be commercialized on a large scale; fifth, whether there is a natural competitive advantage.

Li Song may not be the most successful Internet entrepreneur, but he must be a legendary one.

Genetic engineer, Ph.D. in finance from Columbia University, executive director of investment bank Morgan Stanley Asia, angel investor of ChinaHR.com, founder of Zhenai.com and Digu. Type" legendary entrepreneur Li Song.

Unlike Jobs, an IT man who came out of a garage, Li Song is one of the very few entrepreneurs who came out of an investment bank.If it is said that he walked from the genetic laboratory to Wall Street as "abandoning the dark and turning to the bright", then he will not be understood by most people when he walks out of Wall Street.

In 2001, under pressure from his family and colleagues, Li Song and four partners founded Xunlong Technology.Xunlong Technology is one of the earliest and largest wireless value-added service providers in China, focusing on the dating platform based on SMS.By January 2003, Xunlong Technology had 1 million paying users and a monthly income of 220 million yuan, ranking among the top three mobile value-added service companies in China at that time (the other two were NetEase and Tencent). In January 1200, Xunlong Technology was acquired by Sina.com for US$3 million and renamed as "Sina Wireless".

Xunlong's testing of the water made Li Song fall in love with Internet entrepreneurship completely, and it has been out of control ever since.He is not only a professional manager, but more importantly, a professional entrepreneur.In the short 2001 years since 12, he has participated in the establishment of five Internet and mobile service companies.

In 2004, Li Song, who took a full year off due to SARS, founded Meisi Technology in Shenzhen, mainly engaged in mobile music download business. In April 2005, Li Song also founded the music-themed social network Yake.com and the dating site Zhenai.com.The music social network Yake.com was quite influential at the beginning of its establishment, but Yake.com, which vowed to be China's "My space", has been running for a whole year and still has not found a profitable business model. In the end, Li Song decided to shut it down And transfer all financial resources to Zhenai.com.Now, Zhenai.com has 4 million registered members, with an annual income of over 4500 million RMB. Match.com, the largest dating site in the United States, has invested US$5000 million to purchase a 20% stake in Zhenai.com.

In 2010, Li Song, who saw the opportunity of the mobile Internet, founded Mugu.com to test the waters of LBS. However, due to the natural bottleneck of the pure LBS model, at the end of 2011, Mugu.com transformed into a mobile photo sharing service.

"I like Internet entrepreneurship, and I like the unique and fun-filled lifestyle it brings me." Unlike most "complaining" entrepreneurs, Li Song, a professional entrepreneur, has always enjoyed the process of starting a business.Among the several companies he founded, some were acquired in the end, and some are still in operation today and are very successful;It can be said that Li Song has experienced all the ups and downs that an entrepreneur can go through.

Success is capital, failure is capital

"Manager" magazine had an exclusive interview with Li Song.When answering "Why did he choose to leave the investment bank and why did he choose to start a business in the Internet industry", Li Song gave three answers in one breath.

The main reason, he said, is love.He likes the Internet industry and is eager to create a product from scratch and make it create value for society. This process brings him great enjoyment.Furthermore, I just feel that people like myself who come from the financial industry do not have any special skills and have no clue about doing traditional industries, while the Internet is at least an information-related industry, which is similar to the financial industry.The third reason is from a practical point of view: the Internet industry at that time was one of the few industries backed by a large venture fund industry.Going to start a business today, there are very few industries that only need a business plan to raise funds.

After years of entrepreneurial experience and the ups and downs of the capital market, Li Song fully realized the importance of capital.What he is most afraid of is that the market happens to be at a low point when financing is particularly needed.Therefore, the experience he summed up is: even when there is no shortage of money, financing should be considered.Investors are mostly icing on the cake, and few give timely help.Entrepreneurship is a marathon in most cases, and only with sufficient funds can you survive to the end.

Most of the venture capital fund managers in Silicon Valley in the United States are entrepreneurs, while most of the venture capital fund managers in Asia are engaged in finance or providing management consulting. Therefore, Chinese venture capitalists lack independent judgment and often follow others. If you want to invest, everyone will invest, if you want to withdraw, everyone will withdraw, let alone make early investment. All investors think that they would rather pay more money in the future, and wait for the business model to be established before investing.

Now, the media always say that China's Internet plagiarized the United States.In fact, to some extent, this phenomenon was forced out by Asian investors.When you get in touch with investors, the first question investors most often ask is, "Is there any successful case for what you do in the United States?" If you can't tell a successful case, many venture capitalists will give up investing .

Five Elements of Entrepreneurship

Li Song has worked in investment banks for many years and has accumulated considerable experience.He told "Manager" magazine that under normal circumstances, investors will evaluate a company from five factors.

The first element is looking at problems worth solving.Is the problem you want to solve a problem your target users think is worth solving?Most people fail to start a business because of this. Entrepreneurs often imagine a problem by themselves, but not enough users care about this problem.

The second element is to look at the execution of the team.It mainly depends on whether your team has enough experience and ability to develop the product or service you want.

The third element is to look at the market size.Ignoring competitors for now, assuming you have 100% market share, is the field you want to enter large enough?If the market size is not large enough, even if the execution is perfect, it will not be done.

The fourth element is to see whether the product or service can be commercialized on a large scale.Are revenue models, cost structures, promotion channels, etc. feasible?Taking the cost structure as an example, too many entrepreneurs take it for granted that losses are only a temporary phenomenon when the income is low, and once the scale effect is formed, they will turn losses into profits.And that's not the case.If the cost structure is not established, the larger the scale, the more compensation will be paid.

The fifth element is to see if there are any natural competitive advantages or barriers.Many entrepreneurs think that their competitive advantage is "I am better than others", but in fact, this reason is not sufficient for investors-even if the founder team is better than others, the company must continue to hire Employees, therefore, must assume that the average level of employee competence will gradually tend towards the industry average.

"Nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult to start a business on the desktop Internet, because the hearts of consumers are like pieces of land where various brand banners are planted, and there is hardly much room for brands." Li Song talked to "Manager" His views on the prospect of entrepreneurship in the future, "This is not the case with the mobile Internet, and there is still a lot of room to be developed. If you start a business in the mobile Internet, you cannot make a product that only extends from the PC. In that case, you will still face many large companies. competition.” Li Song is more optimistic about three services that perfectly reflect the characteristics of the mobile Internet, namely services based on geographic location, services related to communication or social interaction, and services related to photo sharing.

Of course, Li Song does not deny that at present, there are very few companies that make money from the mobile Internet.But he is still optimistic about the future development of the mobile Internet industry.He believes that at present, the mobile Internet basically has no business model except for games.Those so-called advertising models on the mobile Internet are all cast by insiders, and each App is advertising each other.In other words, all the money is from venture capital funds, not from traditional advertisers.However, this situation is about to change.

Take Japan's mobile Internet development as an example. Japan's 3G network appeared in 2000, but its mobile advertising did not develop until 2006.

The biggest challenge of mobile advertising is that marketing directors of traditional corporate advertisers need a set of standards for measuring advertising effectiveness that are generally accepted by the market in order to get advertising budgets from their bosses.The biggest problem in China's mobile Internet industry is that there is no unified measurement standard for the market.

Regarding this problem, Japan's solution is that mobile Internet media companies set up a mobile Internet advertising association among the people, establish this standard, and then promote this standard together.

Find a good mentor
In an interview with "Manager" magazine, Li Song, a doctoral student, revealed such a little secret - in the entire entrepreneurial career, the thing that made him regret the most was that he did not find some life and business ideas earlier. on the mentor.He believes that the biggest shortcoming of people with doctoral degrees is that they are too independent.If you have a mentor, you will be able to save yourself a lot of detours.

As the CEO of Zhenai.com, Li Song shared the brand promotion strategy of Zhenai.com with Manager.He said that the marketing methods of enterprises are all for brand positioning.Zhenai.com seldom invests in traditional print media advertisements, and usually focuses on TV content advertisements, built-in advertisements in movies, and subway and bus advertisements.

Li Song also talked about his appearance in "33 Days of Broken Relationship".He said: ""33 Days of Broken Love" is a film with a very high production ratio. Its total investment is only 900 million yuan, but its box office has a box office of 3.4 million yuan. It has a significant effect on Zhenai.com's brand promotion. Therefore, this We will try this marketing method in the future. In addition, we have also cooperated with three major TV stations on dating programs, including Jiangsu Satellite TV's "If You Are the One", Zhejiang Satellite TV's "Love Lianliankan" and Dragon TV's "One in a Hundred". These cooperation It has played a very important role in our brand awareness. Before that, our users would be shy about going to the website for dating, but since these dating shows became popular, dating through the website has been recognized by most people. "

At the end of the interview, "Manager" magazine raised a question that everyone is concerned about: Will you continue to start a business in the future?Li Song's answer is: "In the future, I may not start a company from scratch as before. I always believe that the biggest challenge of Internet entrepreneurship is to find problems that users think are worth solving. There are very big risks in this. "He hopes to cooperate with a certain consortium in the future to jointly form a management team to acquire Chinese Internet companies.If 100 points is a perfect score, they will acquire companies that have achieved 30 points. The scale of these companies does not need to be too large, but the target users must be determined.He will lead his team to integrate such enterprises and help them execute the target strategy.

Online Business Tips
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