企業(yè)家內(nèi)幕網(wǎng)絡(luò)是美國的一個在線社區(qū),美國創(chuàng)業(yè)界最睿智和最有影響力的大咖會在這里及時回答與職業(yè)和創(chuàng)業(yè)有關(guān)的問題。今天為大家分享的是西北大學(xué)凱洛格管理學(xué)院講師、MATH Venture Partners公司常務(wù)董事馬克?阿克勒在“萌芽期的創(chuàng)業(yè)者應(yīng)該知道什么?”這一問題下的回答。 最近,我的女兒也想追隨我的腳步成為一個創(chuàng)業(yè)人,她想讓我給她一些創(chuàng)業(yè)方面的建議。所以我認(rèn)真反思了近40年的創(chuàng)業(yè)、管理企業(yè)和將企業(yè)做大做強(qiáng)的經(jīng)歷,并且總結(jié)出了一些來之不易的經(jīng)驗(yàn)。 “你”并不重要 對于你媽媽來說,你就是她的全部。然而在激烈搏殺的商海中,沒有人會以你為中心。我很認(rèn)同“服務(wù)型領(lǐng)導(dǎo)”這種說法。你要把客戶和員工的需求當(dāng)成自己的需求去熱情地倡導(dǎo)和憧憬。有時候,你甚至要比客戶自己還要了解客戶,你要知道他們是怎么想的,他們關(guān)心什么,最重要的是,要知道你如何才能找到他們。 我很喜歡“緊迫性”這個詞。一旦你發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個對于客戶來說很迫切并且很嚴(yán)重的“痛點(diǎn)”,首先你要考慮,客戶憑什么相信你這家小小的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司能替他們解決這個痛點(diǎn)?作為一名風(fēng)投資本家,每當(dāng)創(chuàng)業(yè)者想向我推銷他們的創(chuàng)意時,我都會要求他們站在用戶的角度來談,并且要明確地提出怎樣讓用戶掏錢購買你的東西。在我們的這家風(fēng)投基金,我們最看重的就是銷量。哪怕你有世界上最好的產(chǎn)品,如果沒有客戶,它也只不過是個好的產(chǎn)品罷了,并不是一項(xiàng)好的生意。 文化比戰(zhàn)略重要 優(yōu)秀的CEO會制定戰(zhàn)略、會利用資源、會招募最優(yōu)秀的團(tuán)隊(duì),然后只要別妨礙他們干事就行了。CEO的全部工作都要依賴手下的團(tuán)隊(duì)來執(zhí)行,而這個經(jīng)驗(yàn)是我很晚才學(xué)到的。 直到我50歲那年,我才從Redbox公司的CEO格雷格?卡普蘭那里接受了企業(yè)文化的教育。2009年的時候,我還在Redbox公司工作。突然有一天,有幾家大型電影工作室的律師闖了進(jìn)來,威脅要讓我們關(guān)門。不光是這些電影工作室不再將電影直接賣給我們,他們還要求他們的分銷商也跟著“封殺”我們。可以說我們已經(jīng)到了生死邊緣。 直到18個月后,我們才與這些電影工作室達(dá)成合解。而在這漫長的一年半中,我們每周都得派員工去掃蕩每家零售店,購買電影的拷貝,然后把它們放在自己的庫存里。這是一項(xiàng)非常艱難的工作,需要團(tuán)隊(duì)付出大量額外的努力。如果不是對公司的愿景有堅(jiān)定的信念,如果不是有優(yōu)秀的企業(yè)文化,我們的團(tuán)隊(duì)就不可能東山再起,也不可能一直那樣苦苦支撐到柳暗花明。 融資是為了機(jī)會,而不是為了滿足一般需要 風(fēng)險(xiǎn)融資真的不是一件容易的事。很多企業(yè)被一時的勝利沖昏了頭腦,失去了管理一家盈利的企業(yè)所必須的專注和自律。今天,對于很多有風(fēng)投注資的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司來說,資金已經(jīng)不再是一件很為難的事。但總有一天,市場風(fēng)向會再次轉(zhuǎn)變,資金來源也會收緊。另外作為一名企業(yè)家,你當(dāng)然希望公司的命運(yùn)掌握在自己手中,而不是交到風(fēng)投和銀行手里。聰明的創(chuàng)業(yè)者都要有底線思維,不管風(fēng)投催著你以多快的速度把業(yè)務(wù)做大。 在我們投資的這幾家公司里,有一家創(chuàng)業(yè)公司的CEO是個很優(yōu)秀的家伙,也是一個經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的創(chuàng)業(yè)者,而且已經(jīng)取得了相當(dāng)了不起的成功。今年早些時候,在成功進(jìn)行了一大筆融資后,我給他寫了一封賀信,他回信道:“我們慶賀的是收益和用戶,而不是融資?!?/p> 少即是多 我喜歡簡潔,我也喜歡專注。每當(dāng)有創(chuàng)業(yè)者告訴我,他們的產(chǎn)品可以應(yīng)用于多個市場和各種用途時,我常常會不以為然,心里暗暗說道:“這個CEO還不知道他的用戶究竟是誰?!蔽医?jīng)常喜歡問創(chuàng)業(yè)者這樣一個問題:“產(chǎn)品和品牌哪個更重要?”在科技界,永遠(yuǎn)是產(chǎn)品更重要。但如果你不了解你的用戶,也不了解你的品牌,那你怎么去打造產(chǎn)品,怎么去優(yōu)化功能?所以對于創(chuàng)業(yè)者來說,少而精才是王道,大而全只會以失敗告終。(財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)) 譯者:樸成奎 |
The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question, “What should budding entrepreneurs know about building a business?” is written by Mark Achler, lecturer at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and managing director of MATH Venture Partners. One of my daughters was recently thinking about going into the family business and becoming an entrepreneur, and asked for some advice. So I began reflecting on hard-fought lessons I learned from nearly 40 years of starting, scaling, and managing businesses: It’s not about you You may be the center of your mother’s universe, but I hate to break it to you: In the business world, you are not the center of others’. I believe in the servant leader model. You need to be as passionately advocating and dreaming about your customer and employee needs as you do your own. You have to know your customers sometimes even better than they know themselves—how they think, what’s important to them, and most importantly, how you’re going to reach them. I love the word urgency. Once you discover that pain point that is so urgent and acute, why will they trust your startup to solve it? As a venture capitalist, if you want to whisper sweet nothings into my ear, talk from the voice of the customer and have a clear path to customer acquisition. As we say at our venture fund, MATH Venture Partners, it’s all about sales. The greatest product in the world without customers is just a great product—not a business. Culture eats strategy The best CEOs define the strategy, bring in the resources, hire the best team possible, and then get the hell out of their way. CEOs are totally dependent on their teams to execute, a lesson that I learned way too late in life. It wasn’t until I was 50 that I was schooled in culture from the CEO of Redbox, Gregg Kaplan. Back when I worked there in 2009, we had attorneys from some of the larger studios come in one day and threaten to shut us down. Not only did they refuse to continue directly selling movies to us, but they were instructing their distributors to do the same. We were literally at death’s door. Until we settled with the studios 18 months later, we ended up sending our employees to every retail store that we could find to buy copies of the movies and put them into inventory—each and every week. It was an incredible undertaking and a huge extra effort required from the team. Without the profound belief in the vision of the company and a great working culture, the team would not have been able to rally and sustain that kind of prolonged effort. Raise money for opportunity—not necessity It’s really hard to raise venture capital. So many entrepreneurs who do get drunk off their success and lose the focus and discipline needed to manage a profitable business. Today, money is relatively available for many venture-backed companies, but there will be a day when the markets turn and money tightens up. You always want to be in control of your own destiny and not reliant upon VCs or banks to keep your business afloat. Smart entrepreneurs focus on the bottom line—no matter how hard the VCs push to scale the business fast. The CEO of one of our portfolio companies is a great guy and an experienced entrepreneur who has rung the bell already. Upon completing a large round earlier in the year, I sent him a note of congratulations. He wrote back, “We celebrate revenue and customers—not fundraising.” Less is more I believe in simplicity and I believe in focus. When I hear entrepreneurs tell me all of the different ways their product can be used across multiple markets, I run in the other direction and think to myself, “This is a CEO who doesn’t yet know who his customer is.” One of the questions I like to ask entrepreneurs is, “Which comes first—the product or the brand?” In technology companies, the answer is always the product. But how do you know what to build and what features to prioritize if you don’t understand your customer or your brand? Do less. Keep it simple. Fail fast. |