Entrepreneurship has been repeatedly frustrated, and the pain point lies in growth

Based on the experience of entrepreneurs, this article analyzes that the important factor for repeated entrepreneurial failure is growth, and points out the high importance of growth in entrepreneurship. This article is recommended for people who want to start a business or are in the startup stage.

Most business failures occur because of lack of growth.

Many times, it’s not that there is no money or no products.

It’s not that the employee benefits are bad, but that they don’t know how to achieve growth and they ignore the need to achieve growth!

1. Financing 40 million, big market problems

In 2017, my former leader and I started a second business.

At that time, mini programs, short videos, and social e-commerce were all the rage, so it was relatively convenient to get the money.

In addition, the founder and other team members had some background, so we were lucky enough to get a financing of 40 million.

This amount of money is not low at all for any angel round or A round Internet project today.

We quickly grew from two people to seven people, and then to 70 people, and moved from a shared office to an independent office of 800 square meters.

At that time, the team, from the founder, technical director, investment promotion, operations, human resources, products, etc., all came from well-known Internet backgrounds such as Alibaba, NetEase, and Mogujie.

The only problem is that almost no one in the team knows how to do growth. It seems that they can do it, but in essence they are not real experts.

The team is lacking in several growth-related areas such as community, business, and investment.

As a partner, I am also deeply aware that I am still lacking in skills.

So this project took us more than half a year. During the same period, other projects had millions of users, but we only had one million.

Moreover, the amount of user consumption was not high, so the result was predictable: the project was shut down and transformed.

2. Raised 10 million yuan, but had a daily revenue of less than 10,000 yuan

In June 2019, after successfully exiting an e-commerce project, I joined a new social e-commerce startup company on the recommendation of a friend.

Before the chat, the other party had already made it clear that the project had received an angel round of 10 million, and then I heard that the head of a previous TOP3 social e-commerce company had joined the team.

It just so happens that my previous project was also about social e-commerce, and the results were pretty good. Maybe I can take advantage of this wave to create another platform and leave.

At that time, the team members included investors, leading social e-commerce companies, as well as technical and product teams from NetEase, Ctrip, and Alibaba.

I originally thought that this project shouldn’t be too bad, at least there is a team to start it.

However, after the product was actually completed, we discovered that there were only a few team leaders of the so-called thousand or ten thousand people, and the core distribution resources were not brought in.

You have to know that the core of social e-commerce is the team leader, especially the super team leader who can motivate people, attract people, and make deals, and the opinion leader who can make money through consumption!

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if there are no apps or mini-programs, as long as there are goods to be shipped, they can make millions or tens of millions of transactions.

Our social e-commerce project at the time had all kinds of advanced ideas and could generate dividends every day, but the biggest problem was that there was no one to lead the team and recruit investors.

If the company cannot recruit investors through team leaders, it means that it has no sales. Even if the app is launched and various new customer acquisition activities are planned, it cannot solve the problem of sales and membership growth.

Therefore, the results of this project were also bleak.

Moreover, half a year later, the epidemic hit, which seriously affected offline investment promotion and training, and the project was almost declared dead on the spot.

3. Growth is more important than products and technology

Based on my experience of co-founding a business in recent years, I deeply feel that growth/market is the most important thing for a business.

Regarding growth, there are many specific manifestations in different businesses.

1. Traffic: If you are running short videos, articles, and other self-media, then the number of readings and views is the core of growth.

2. Investment: If you are engaged in e-commerce such as shelves, short videos, live broadcasts, etc., then understanding investment traffic is the core of growth.

3. Sales: If your product requires you to sell one-on-one, no matter it is cold calling, telephone sales, or sales meetings, understanding sales is the key.

4. Marketing: There is another category of people who are particularly good at dealing with people. They have very strong requirements for the team’s marketing personnel in social dealings. They must be able to attract people, build relationships, and brag. In short, they must be able to negotiate for customer resources.

Although the success of a project is related to many factors, such as products, technology, services, site selection, peers, policies, etc., if there is no growth, no one will generate traffic, connections, or channels, and everything will be empty talk.

So here I would like to advise everyone who wants to start a business, before you start a business, ask yourself how to make sales!!!

Whether you are planning to open a Taobao, Tmall, Pinduoduo, or Douyin store, or you are planning to recruit franchisees, conduct advertising, or cold calling offline, just ask yourself if you really understand!!!

If you don’t understand, either ask your co-founder or partner to understand it very well, otherwise you can just give up.

4. Founders are the first to be responsible for growth

Many people who start a business for the first time may be tempted to take chances.

They think they have products, operational experience, and funds, so all they need to do is hire someone to do marketing and investment.

But this is not the case. If the founder himself does not understand traffic, sales, and growth, the employees he recruits will most likely not do a good job.

For example, if you don’t know how to open Taobao or Pinduoduo, and then want to hire someone to make your store successful, unless your product is well-known or you are very rich and give enough opportunities for trial and error, you will 100% fail.

For a startup team, especially one with less than 20 people, all the growth pressure is on the founder.

First, either the founder has worked for more than ten years, successfully managed several projects, and accumulated enough growth experience.

Second, the founder has enough market and customer resources. For example, he has connected with 100 channels and 1,000 customers from a certain brand, knows 1,000 franchise store owners, etc.

Third, the founder has personally verified a project and is now in the stage of finding someone to scale up and replicate it.

Fourth, there are some very capable people in the partnership team who particularly understand growth.

When the team has about 20 people, the founder should look for customers, channels, traffic, phone calls, etc. every day, and everyone else is your executor.

Otherwise, you are really a philanthropist, recruiting a group of employees and paying them salaries, but in the end, you have no traffic, no customers, and the money you have worked hard to accumulate is gone!!!

Author: The village chief lives in Shili Village

Source: WeChat public account "Shili Village (ID: shilipxl)"