Hello, I am a programmer, is also an entrepreneur.

I think I’m a good programmer, and I can give you a few examples:

In 2012, my Afinal was awarded the title of “Most Popular Chinese Open Source Software” by Open Source China.

In 2016, my JPress also won this title.

Multiple programs have been awarded Gitee’s GVP (Most Valuable Open Source Project).

I am a Contributor for several well-known frameworks like Seata, Consul, JFinal, etc.

Over the course of my career, I have worked as a core developer, architect, and CTO on multiple product teams with over 100 million users.

However, in the past entrepreneurship, is quite a failure, perhaps one of the more important reasons is: I am an excellent programmer.



(一)

In 2014, I started my first business.

The direction of entrepreneurship is furniture industry.

I chose this industry because I found that almost all the well-known brands of furniture that consumers buy in the market are produced by OEM factories. In 2014, Beijing’s Daxing and Tongzhou districts were dotted with such factories.

Furniture produced by the factory is pressed and restricted by various furniture brands. Hundreds of pieces of furniture from the factory can be sold to thousands of pieces after being branded by brands, and many pieces of furniture may be multiplied by 10 times. Factories are struggling, while consumers can’t buy high-quality and inexpensive furniture products, which creates a huge profit margin.

I think this is a huge opportunity.

In that year, O2O was very popular, so I also created a new word called F2C(factory-to-customer). I thought that through our platform, we could directly sell products from manufacturers to consumers without middlemen to earn price differences. At the same time, we agreed with the manufacturer that the price of the furniture should be set by the manufacturer and that we would get 10% rebate for each order sold.

In 2014, due to the popularity of O2O, entrepreneurs’ projects are rarely seen by investors if they are not connected with O2O. For O2O, we rented a store of 2,000 square meters in Tongzhou, Beijing, for furniture experience and display. At the same time, we have created an online furniture mall, where customers can place orders online directly after the store experience is completed.

It looks beautiful, doesn’t it?

Soon, 2000+ square meters of stores and online furniture mall, I have been struggling in the Internet industry, I spent about 50W costs, in fact, has been very saving.

We actually went through a lot of things to launch the mall.

First of all, a manufacturer of a manufacturer to interview, determine the plan to sign a contract, because the manufacturer of furniture without photos, then we need to go to the manufacturer to take pictures, after taking pictures also need to make the mall product landing page, this process needs to use photographers, designers, website editors… Coordination of different personnel.

These are nothing in fact, the biggest problem is that we are not just talking about one manufacturer, each manufacturer has its own many different products, products from taking photos to online, it is a huge workload. The process took about 2 months with a team of 5 people. Although the website was barely launched, we were exhausted.

But at this point, the pain has just begun, the site has no traffic ah, the product can not sell.

At this point, we’ve spent 5 months and more than $600,000.

At the end of 2014, Beijing entered the coldest season, we experienced SEO, station group, email group, Baidu bidding, Baidu know and other N promotion methods, finally ushered in the order: a cloth sofa of 2000 yuan, the address is in Beijing Tongzhou, living on the sixth floor.

It was our first order, but we were very happy. After simple communication with the customer, we pulled the furniture to the customer’s home community, and when we entered the community and prepared to move the sofa upstairs, we found that the elevator was very small, and the sofa could not enter the elevator through the door.

We wanted to disassemble the furniture into finer pieces and send them upstairs for assembly, but it was getting dark and it was hard to find the tiny pieces. At the same time, it’s winter, the wind is blowing in Beijing…

We think, simply had taken a stair, 4 big old men move a cloth art sofa, say from the Angle of weight still very relaxed, say dry dry.

After entering the stairs to go upstairs, we found that the stairs are also very small, each to a crooked place, are special not stressed, several times almost get the sofa in the stairs…

After about 1 hour of struggle, finally moved all 4 sections of fabric sofa to the customer’s home.

Right now just discover, my two hands many place, already by sofa and the cement armrest in stair grind a lot of blood… Probably because it was too cold in winter, the frozen hands could not sense when they were worn out.

So, hurriedly wipe the blood on the clothes, afraid to dirty the customer’s new furniture, the customer bought is cloth sofa, dirty really hard to wash.

So, after more than an hour of hard work, two minutes of rest, ready to help the customer simple assembly, then collect the money and leave…

$2,000 for furniture, you can make $200. It was enough for dinner for a few of us, our first meal in five months, and we started planning where we should go for dinner that would be more enjoyable and cost-effective.

At this point, the customer came over to say to us, cloth art sofa broke a big hole… I hurriedly checked, the sofa was indeed cut, but also more than one place, I think it should be just move the sofa, the corridor is too narrow to cut.

So, we immediately discussed a solution…

At this point, the customer came to say: I don’t want this sofa.

The four of us looked at each other, dumbstruck.

The first reaction in my mind is: this sofa, absolutely not return!

Leaving aside how we managed to deliver sofas to clients’ homes in such cold weather, this was our first order in five months, even though our hands were bruised and bloody. Our innovative F2C model has just been proven! If return, how can we give the manufacturer confidence ah…

Can’t refund!

After consultation with the customer for a long time, xin kui this customer is female customer, at the same time is big night, we 4 big men in the customer’s home, the customer is afraid of ah… Afraid of what we might do in an extreme situation.

Finally, the client agreed to buy the sofa for 1500 yuan.

Well, that is to say, the innovative F2C model we created was sold at 1500 yuan for the fabric sofa we got from the manufacturer. At the same time, accompanied by the wind in the winter swish blowing, hands were more than a sofa grinding out of blood, various and customers…. Just to lose 300 bucks!

You know, before I quit, I could sit in a warm office and easily earn 2,000 yuan a day.

So, I said to myself: Jack Ma just started when he is not running customers; Liu qiangdong himself was also a Courier. What the hell am I.

(二)

After nearly two years and a total loss of more than 100 million yuan, I finally gave up the so-called innovative F2C furniture industry and found several classmates as partners. They were responsible for funding and I provided technology. We established a new company.

Back in 2015, new media was hot.

Tuyere.

Therefore, we discussed and decided to make toB’s new media management tool. My classmates trusted me very much. They said: Brother Hai, listen to you. You are the god of technology and we believe you.

With the start-up capital, the recognition and support of my classmates, and the fact that I am very familiar with the Internet software industry, MY confidence increased. I have been doing product research and development for so many years, and the Internet industry is the field I am most familiar with.

I started plotting out a bunch of useful features.

1. Connect to the wechat official account

2, the administrator can directly interact with the fans of the public account through the mobile phone

3. Automated marketing

4. Various fission functions of wechat: wechat voting system, doing tasks…

5. Docking toutiao (no interface to simulate automatic login by browser)

6. Sync up a bit

7, internal cut into the forum function, convenient communication fans.

8、…

At the same time, registration of new companies and recruitment began.

A month later, the company registered down, the office address is also fixed. Hai Ge in this open source circle of small reputation, but also quickly set up a team of nearly 20 people.

Product + design + development + operation + test, perfect!

It’s a SaaS platform, and what I want to give our customers is absolutely simple, usable, perfect, and secure.

Three months later, due to too much function planning, the first version has not come out, the two partners began to worry, asked me: brother, can you come out the first simple version.

I told them: The current version, too few features, and defects, users will not pay.

However, under the “pressure” of the partners, I also began to put pressure on the team. After the fourth month, the first version came out, but there were so many planned features that the first version became a little bit different… A little bit of every feature.

This is absolutely unacceptable to me.

So I convinced my partner (a classmate and investor) that we needed another month to reorganize and reorganize.

In this way, the monthly expenditure of 20W (staff salary + office address rent, etc.) in the following less than half a year… The team eventually disbanded, though by the time it did, the product still didn’t function as intended.

I think from experience rich, sure of the second business, not only hard hit my left face, but also fan me a big mouth ba son.

(三)

Through these two ventures, I almost emptied all my savings and my health.

Because I couldn’t make promises to my team, customers, classmates and family, I was constantly in extreme anxiety and great pressure, and I felt particularly painful and suffering.

During that time, I couldn’t sleep at all nights.

I feel unfair, I feel unlucky. Yes, in the predicament that I thought I was struggling and helpless, I thought that all the failures came from outside rather than from myself…

In 2016, with the recommendation of a friend, I joined a listed company as a CTO.

reflection

The more painful the experience, the more profound the reflection. During my time as CTO, I can finally relax and have a little time to review my entrepreneurial experience, learn and reflect.

Thanks to the company. During this period, I learned how to do team management and read a lot of books on management

I found that all my past failures were inevitable.

Until today, I still see a steady stream of entrepreneurs, like me, who are walking the same road I have walked. I decided to write out my mistakes, perhaps to bring a little reflection to the students who are starting their own business.

The pursuit of tuyere

I once heard the speech of Lei Jun, lei always said: we entrepreneurs, most of the time in addition to hard, smart and other factors, what we do (entrepreneurship) must also take the trend, when the wind comes, pigs will fly.

Lei always cited a lot of successful examples, so far there are indeed a lot of enterprises with the help of tuyere, become a great enterprise. At the same time, Lei also founded Shun as capital, which means to do things according to the trend.

So, when O2O was very popular, I started a furniture company based on O2O. After the failure, new media became very popular, so I started a new media tool company.

I’m chasing the wind, but these products are not solving their own problems, not their own needs. The end result is that you don’t use your own products.

After reflection and learning, I found that many truths spoken by many tycoons are not necessarily correct or consistent with every entrepreneur.

A large number of successful cases have proved that entrepreneurship should start from its own needs and make the products it needs, which is the way with the highest success rate. We should not blindly pursue the wind, to pursue variables. What every entrepreneur should consider is not tuyere, but:

What’s going to be the same in 10 years time.

Cognitive blind area

In my entrepreneurial experience, I only saw a certain opportunity that could not be verified. I did not know about team and management, finance and human resources, market and brand, and users and operation, so I bravely pushed forward with the “flesh-based pit filling method”.

Mixed with ignorance of the market, industry, lack of respect for enterprises and business.

“If you think learning is too expensive, try the price of ignorance,” says Derrick, a former president of Harvard University. After these two ventures, I paid the price of three years’ time, 100 million capital and empty body.

Recently, there is also a popular passage:

Every penny you make is a realization of what you know about the world. Every penny you lose is a defect in your understanding of the world. The greatest fairness in the world is this: when a person’s finances are greater than his perception, the society has 100 ways to harvest you until your perception and finances match.

The greatest mistake, however, is not ignorance, but half-knowledge.

Before starting my first business, I founded a portal website by myself, which was later sold at a price of nearly 10W. It was definitely a huge sum of money for a college student at that time, and it was a successful business.

When DOING this website, what I do every day is actually very simple, is to update the website content every day, and insist on exchanging website links every day. With the collection of search engines, website IP naturally also with the time of the rising tide.

But I made the mistake of thinking that I had the experience to succeed.

Ignorance only leads us to make wrong decisions, and a little knowledge leads us to make wrong decisions while still believing that they are right.

The ability to trap

When a person has a certain ability (skill), it becomes a trap for you to enlarge it infinitely.

Since I was a “good” programmer, I could easily see problems with programs and products in my second startup, and these problems were things I had the ability to solve, so I had to solve them, which took me a lot of time. It was also because I was “too good” at programming that almost all the problems I saw in the company were r&d and product-related.

When you’re too good at something (relative to your other skills), it’s easier for you to see the details.

The operation of an enterprise is a matter of comprehensive capabilities and a variety of complex processes. The more you focus on one thing, the less time and energy you have to focus on something else. In this way, this excellent skill will act as a wall that blocks out all other problems that you should be paying attention to.

I rarely met with investors, I rarely worried about selling the product, and I rarely focused on developing and managing the team.

At the same time, I believe that all success is based on the assumption of ability.

I think that as long as our products have such and such functions and as long as our products are safe enough, investors will like them and users will buy them.

Too often, being too good at something doesn’t just get us started, it’s like a wall that gets in the way.

Human weakness

Vanity: When I started my first business, even before the business model was verified, I invested a huge amount of money in the experience store in order to develop the CONCEPT of O2O. I did not have time or money to do what I should have done.

Ego: In the second venture, driven by the ability trap, unable to hear the voices of others, all the way to black.

Lean startup

In both cases, I almost “flew by the seat of my pants.” I thought I could succeed if I had the feelings, the connections, and the experience.

Therefore, I put all my efforts into the product and user experience, while participating in various communities to accumulate contacts.

After real practice, I found that entrepreneurship itself can be a very scientific thing, rather than just feelings, contacts and experience. Lean entrepreneurship presupposes uncertainty, not certainty; Based on scientific trial and error, not empirical prediction;

In both cases, I unwittingly made a lot of deterministic assumptions. For example, I thought that as long as the product had lots of features, investors would love it and users would pay for it.

In my experience… I think wherever there is A there will be B, but none of this is based on any scientific data.

Lean startup also requires that we have to do value verification and growth verification on the product. If value is not proven, if the growth model is not proven, it should fail fast.

Lean entrepreneurship requires us to: Fail cheap, fail fast.

But in both cases, I flew by the seat of my pants, blindfolded.

I didn’t validate the value of the product, and I didn’t validate the growth method. This failure not only cost me money, but also a lot of time and health.

It cost me dearly.

Entrepreneurship itself is a very scientific thing, and the value and growth of products and enterprises can be verified.

Set sail again

In 2019, I started again.

This time, I made a product that solves its own needs. It is not a draught, but it is a product that will still be in demand in the next 10 years. And because it solves its own problems, I will always be a big fan and user of it.

Anyway, look forward to meeting better you… And me.

Author: Yang Fuhai Public account: JPress Author: Hai Ge

Source: Lu Songsong blog, welcome to share