Shao Xiaofeng, Partner of Ali: What are the temptations that entrepreneurs should resist?

Abstract: At present, we often hear that many entrepreneurs talk about the original intention of financing and listing. What is the original intention of starting a business? What are the temptations that entrepreneurs should resist? The following are the internal speeches of Shao Xiaofeng (flower name "Guo Jing"), a partner of Ali and the director of Lakeside University. / Please think about a few questions / 1. What is your original intention to do something? Has it changed? 2. What value have you created for the society? 1. Don’t want to be BAT as soon as you start a business. If a startup company wants to make itself into Ali, the goal is wrong.

At present, we often hear that many entrepreneurs talk about the original intention of financing and listing. What is the original intention of starting a business? What are the temptations that entrepreneurs should resist?

The following are the internal speeches of Shao Xiaofeng (flower name "Guo Jing"), a partner of Ali and the director of Lakeside University.

/ Please think about a few questions /
1. What is your original intention to do something? Has it changed?

2. What value have you created for the society?

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1. Don’t want to be BAT as soon as you

start a business. If you want to be an Alibaba, your goal is wrong. When Ali first started, we didn't target any company. We didn't say we wanted to do eBay, nor did we say we wanted to do Amazon.

We just feel that China's small and medium-sized enterprises need such Internet tools to help them expand their business, help them export, help them take orders, and solve this problem. So we are serious and down-to-earth to do this.

The entrepreneur said that I want to be an Ali and a BAT company. Once this kind of goal is set, basically his original intention is wrong, because he is doing it for the sake of becoming bigger.

The more we get to the Internet age, the more we should think: what social problem can we solve? What kind of special value can you help create for a particular user group of yours? Think about these questions.

Most companies are a natural law, a natural result. In addition to this direction, there are other reasons why the implementation is not in place. If the execution is not in place, even if the direction is right, it may not be able to build the company, but in fact, you don't need to think that I want to be as big as Ali, and who I want to be.

Because as long as you keep an eye on these things and do it in a down-to-earth manner, you can really reflect the value created by users, and really solve everyone's headaches, and this business can be done.


Second, how to do better and faster than others?

The problem to be solved after doing it is: If there are other people doing this together, how can I do it better and faster than others? Therefore, there is no need to think about how large it can be. First of all, his goal is wrong.

Blind optimism, blind expansion, irresistible temptation, or no prediction or perception of market changes in the next 2-5 years, will inevitably die in these places.

Some people say "I can surpass anyone within a year or two" when they reach 1 billion. Afterwards, a large amount of investment was made, a large amount of scale was expanded, funds were involved, and the user experience dropped sharply. The experience of the product process was not regarded as the most important thing. This must be the performance of forgetting the original intention.

For the external environment of this industry, you have not judged that there will be drastic changes in the next 2-3 years. Just like three years ago, many people were building offline physical markets, but today none of them can be sold in the physical market. There is no prediction that no one will be doing it in the physical market three years later. Therefore, many companies often have problems in such places.

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3. Stick to the bottom line: Don't do things that are not related to the business

Back to the fundamental question:

Who are these users you are facing today?
Has his needs been met today?
What value have you created for him?
Will the needs of users in this regard change in the next three years?
Where might change go?
You've got to think about these things in a solid way, not 1 billion to 10 billion. It is possible for you to reach 10 billion, but if you are purely for this 10 billion, there may be chaos in the middle, acquiring companies, expanding the flow of water, and expanding the market size, then you have considered cultural integration and business integration. problem?

In fact, these are very complex issues that you will face, including how you need to learn how to face changes in the entire country, economic environment, economic policies, and some government regulatory systems.

When you are doing some small innovation, the perception of these external environments is not so obvious. But after a certain scale, the sensitivity to any changes in the external environment increases rapidly.

At that time, a little thing may have a great impact on you. If you still don't care about these things, it may be that you don't know where you fell, because you couldn't feel it when you were young.

When I first came to the company, the B2B Chinese website was still there, and PV (page views) was assessed at that time. At that time, I also came to learn, so I have to keep an eye on Alexa (a website that publishes website world rankings).

If you only evaluate the number of PVs, it may lead to the user experience that can be done on one page, and the team may make it into three pages.

It can't be said that he is wrong, but it is wrong from Alibaba's values. Because you must stick to the PV of customer first and the ultimate user experience, instead of playing a game to see if the PV ranking is very high. What about actual users? What is his value? What about his experience? will be affected instead.

So if at the end, you simply take the result you want to assess, it must not be the best way. Instead, it is necessary to set how to obtain this result according to the company's values ​​and its own strategy. The measurement of this process may become a very crucial key point in KPI assessment.

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things are easier said than done, such as "Don't forget your original intention", "What do you want, what do you want, what do you give up".

In fact, the most difficult thing for a person is not to say "I have it, but I won't take it", or "I have a chance, but I didn't seize it". The biggest challenge is not here, the biggest challenge is when you have the ability, and at the same time Opportunities and strong temptations, you can bear not to do it. **

Because if any company has any temptation and any opportunity to make money, you will not be able to restrain your desire and want to intervene. If so, the company's strategy will definitely be messed up, and the core value will not be reflected, because your original intention will be forgotten by you.


4. Adhere to the mission, vision, and values

​​Ali has always adhered to this one: do not do things that have nothing to do with Ali's own business.

No matter from Taobao, to finance, to logistics, to cloud computing, this is the basic system construction of business. Because we stick to our mission, vision, and values, it's very good to have that.

Why does Alibaba emphasize our own mission and vision, and always tell everyone "where are we going and what we want to do". Because once the original intention is forgotten, what should you do in the future? What not to do? There is no criterion for judgment.

The increase in income depends on our individualized understanding of each person every time, and accurate push to maximize our business interests. This is what we have been sticking to.

Today, there are many people in the company, and it is not enough for this group of people to be highly unified. How to descend to the middle level, then to the supervisor level, and then to the employees, it is actually very difficult.

But the more this is the case, the more we need to have a group of people talk about this every day and year after year, stick to these things, and have an organization like a "partner" to inherit and promote our own mission, vision, and values.

As the company continues to expand, it will be diluted even more. This is the biggest challenge and the hardest goal for our partners.

The company is getting bigger and bigger, the business scale is getting bigger and the business modules are getting smaller and smaller, how to stick to the principles, this is the biggest challenge to the company; it is also why we want to make it the core of our "partner" organization. Its mission is: to inherit the company's mission, vision and values. We have to have such an organization to ensure that this thing can be passed down and persisted. **

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