創業者做這件事會把投資人嚇跑
Mark Achler
2017-06-08
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企業家內幕網絡是美國的一個在線社區，美國創業界最睿智和最有影響力的大咖會在這里及時回答與職業和創業有關的問題。今天為大家分享的是西北大學凱洛格管理學院講師、MATH Venture Partners公司常務董事馬克?阿克勒在“萌芽期的創業者應該知道什么？”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業人，她想讓我給她一些創業方面的建議。所以我認真反思了近40年的創業、管理企業和將企業做大做強的經歷，并且總結出了一些來之不易的經驗。 “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。我很認同“服務型領導”這種說法。你要把客戶和員工的需求當成自己的需求去熱情地倡導和憧憬。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。一旦你發現了一個對于客戶來說很迫切并且很嚴重的“痛點”，首先你要考慮，客戶憑什么相信你這家小小的創業公司能替他們解決這個痛點？作為一名風投資本家，每當創業者想向我推銷他們的創意時，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。在我們的這家風投基金，我們最看重的就是銷量。哪怕你有世界上最好的產品，如果沒有客戶，它也只不過是個好的產品罷了，并不是一項好的生意。 文化比戰略重要 優秀的CEO會制定戰略、會利用資源、會招募最優秀的團隊，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隊來執行，而這個經驗是我很晚才學到的。 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來，威脅要讓我們關門。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。可以說我們已經到了生死邊緣。 直到18個月后，我們才與這些電影工作室達成合解。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。這是一項非常艱難的工作，需要團隊付出大量額外的努力。如果不是對公司的愿景有堅定的信念，如果不是有優秀的企業文化，我們的團隊就不可能東山再起，也不可能一直那樣苦苦支撐到柳暗花明。 融資是為了機會，而不是為了滿足一般需要 風險融資真的不是一件容易的事。很多企業被一時的勝利沖昏了頭腦，失去了管理一家盈利的企業所必須的專注和自律。今天，對于很多有風投注資的創業公司來說，資金已經不再是一件很為難的事。但總有一天，市場風向會再次轉變，資金來源也會收緊。另外作為一名企業家，你當然希望公司的命運掌握在自己手中，而不是交到風投和銀行手里。聰明的創業者都要有底線思維，不管風投催著你以多快的速度把業務做大。 在我們投資的這幾家公司里，有一家創業公司的CEO是個很優秀的家伙，也是一個經驗豐富的創業者，而且已經取得了相當了不起的成功。今年早些時候，在成功進行了一大筆融資后，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。” 少即是多 我喜歡簡潔，我也喜歡專注。每當有創業者告訴我，他們的產品可以應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。”我經常喜歡問創業者這樣一個問題：“產品和品牌哪個更重要？”在科技界，永遠是產品更重要。但如果你不了解你的用戶，也不了解你的品牌，那你怎么去打造產品，怎么去優化功能？所以對于創業者來說，少而精才是王道，大而全只會以失敗告終。（財富中文網） 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. |
