This Is A Start - Up Period Of Thinking About Whether To Go On Or To Give Up

Global push This is the thinking list of starting a business. Is it a continuation or abandonment list?

Almost all start-ups, regardless of whether they have ever been in the outbreak, will always usher in a long "doldrums" either sooner or later.

In this darkest hour, many problems focus on detonation, sleepless nights, cunning cold sweat, and unspeakable "torment", which is the most difficult to control internal emotions.

Today's article is from an angel investor in Silicon Valley. I hope this list of "emotional control" and "problem solving" can bring you some inspiration and help.

If the original intention of "changing fate" is to depict the brilliant future blueprint and return to day by day operation and development, pain, hesitation and hardship become the norm of life.

In the 8 years of CEO, only 3 days are good times, and the rest of the time is difficult. (Ben Horowitz's "hard work")

A few years ago, TechCrunch reported the entrepreneur's emotional curve drawn by Paul Graham at the YC dinner, causing widespread concern in the business circle.

For many entrepreneurs, after a hot moment, it is a long "doldrums" - the company is half dead, and the road ahead is too late to go on or give up. This is the darkest stage for entrepreneurs, and it is also a neglected point in many traditional business textbooks.

From my personal experience as well as those who have gone through the downturn and are willing to share their experience, I have made some suggestions.

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Solving emotional problems

The bottom of grief is both emotional and analytical. Let's start with emotional lows.

First of all, we should bear in mind the following points:

1, achieving product / market fit is very difficult.

Even if you think you are the only one who fails, it is not. Every start-up company has to go through this stage, but not every start-up company can survive.

Entrepreneurs often blame the failure on themselves, but it doesn't matter. It's very difficult. Everyone's business process starts from failure.

You need to expect to face such a low level, because it is difficult to avoid or bypass. Withdrawing, restarting, or carrying out a "significant" change, and other evasive measures can not guarantee that you will not encounter such a low point again. It is only delayed and inevitable.

So instead of trying to avoid an unavoidable problem, we might as well think about how to overcome this difficulty.

2, expect to have an argument with your co founders.

When things go smoothly, the co founders will always agree with you, because the focus is on maintaining the momentum of growth.

But when things get complicated or even worse, there are often differences about what to do next, and these differences are usually very meaningful.

3, whether to quit or not depends on you.

There are plenty of tools that you can use to repair a broken thing, as well as a company. You can change products and switch customers. At the same time, you can also restructured company, reset the team, or even fire your co founders.

As long as you want to continue, you can (usually) find a way to go. Whether you want to quit or not, it all depends on you. But don't be naive to think that withdrawing or restarting a new product will allow you to bypass this difficult valley.

4, the loss of consumers, staff turnover and loss of CO founders do not mean that you fail.

When you go from one iteration to the next, people may fall from your team. This is a normal thing. It doesn't matter. That's just part of what's happening, even if it makes you feel defeated, but don't let it get you down.

What you need to think is, will the new strategy be more meaningful than the old one? If not, it is your failure.

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Solve the problem itself

We compare the "sad Valley" to a long run. If you can co-ordinate all things and maintain the team's productivity enough to support this long-distance race, here are some unfounded general suggestions.

1, identify the root cause of the problem.

Is the product effective? Is the entry training bad? Or is it not enough to enforce the growth rate? You can identify the main bottlenecks by knowing which links are effective and which links are not effective.

If the product is high participation and high retention rate, but the number of users is not large, then we need to focus on marketing.

If the product's participation is low and the retention rate is low, it may need to be dealt with from the product side.

2, venture capital is mostly from products, which is the reason why they fail to improve.

Most of the new products I meet are not in the stage of "products fit the market, but need to increase users". On the contrary, most products run away from the very beginning.

They require users to accept new things and are in a new market without competitors. Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether the customer's behavior is supporting their products. On the contrary, it would be more effective to take a known job category and try to invent 20% instead of 90%.

For example, apple did not invent smart phones, MP3 or computers, but they were super innovative and successful. So you don't have to invent a brand new product category. When you have a benchmark competitor to compare, it is easier to get product / market fit.

3, resist the urge to start again.

People often think that if they do it again, they will somehow avoid the "doldrums of sadness". But actually not.

What you need is to trust your initial instincts for products and markets and find out how to guide them to their proper positions. If there are smart people investing in you and the market you are looking for, there must be something worth investing in, so you need to dig it.

4, let your product be partitions, more focused, and easier to understand.

It may sound boring. But you are not trying to impress a designer friend, but to convey the value proposition of your product with simple and focused terminology.

The closer you get to this level, the more boring your product sounds, but it's actually a good thing.

5, money is used to buy time, and time is used to buy product iteration.

That's why a school of thought says that we should raise as much money as possible at every point. We should raise as much money as possible before the product / market meets, so that you can have as much iteration time as possible to ensure that you can achieve the product / market fit.

After the product meets the market, you need to raise as much money as possible to maximize the valuation. But sometimes, less extreme may be a good idea.

6, cherish every small victory.

Even if you are doing something that does not spread in large scale at the beginning, it is also worth it, such as pre filling content, inviting all friends, public relations and so on. These small victories can create motivation, improve team morale and get incremental capital so that you can further develop.

Over time, in order to achieve scale, you can find out how to systematize these processes, or how they can lead to larger and more expansible ideas.

7, small teams are the best.

They moved faster and faster. If you plan to do a lot of product iteration, you don't need to communicate all the changes and let everyone buy it. On the contrary, big teams encounter a lot of confusion every time.

After the company is stable, you can expand the team to create a complete set of functions, but before that, the team of consumer products can only be engineers / designers and product leaders, that is to say, less than six people.

Zhang Ying of Jingwei venture capital, after seeing the article, made a sincere reflection and summary. Here are three articles from his experience and feelings:

1. real understanding and analysis.

This includes not only your own character, but also your own strengths and weaknesses and weaknesses, as well as the true understanding of the core founder team. True understanding and analysis are bigger than everything.

2. people will always find the right thing for themselves.

In this long "doldrums", you need to understand what the "thing" is -- a choice between insisting on and changing the runway, and no delay in deep thinking, will only cause you to fall into the abyss. Failure is not terrible, but many people will be overcome by the frustration brought by failure. It is the most terrible thing to conquer their partners, family members and the future.

3. balance between life and work.