Post-90s entrepreneurs 1
Hao Chen, CEO of the post-90s generation: How can a self-made college student earn millions a year?
Hao Chen, born in 1992, is the founder of Micro World Education Association and a brilliant CEO. 20 15 and 20 15 received an investment of $5 million. The self-made entrepreneur shared his understanding on the road of starting a business and saw how a newly graduated college student earned1million dollars a year.
Meet the CEO who started from scratch after 90.
Introduction to Hao Chen:
Hao Chen, the founder of Micro-World Education Association, was born in April 1992 in Taiyuan, Shanxi.
He studied in Taiyuan Foreign Language School in high school, and served as the chairman of Taiyuan Foreign Language School Model United Nations and the secretary-general of Shanxi Model United Nations. During this period, he realized the lack of quality education for young people in China, so he decided to build a leading platform for quality education and practice for young people in China for middle school students in China.
After being sent to University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in senior three, he started to establish Shanghai Zhuozhi Achievement Education Technology Co., Ltd. and became the pioneer of business enlightenment education for middle school students in China. At present,? Outstanding achievements? The 9th National Future Leaders Summit has been successfully held, with participants covering 34 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, 109 cities, 600 senior middle schools and more than 5,500 outstanding middle school students.
He built a foreign business education competition platform for young people in China? Dika ICDC and FBLA NLC are the business challenges of middle school students with the highest specifications and the largest number of students in the United States. It helps young people in China to go abroad and enter the world. Outstanding achievements in the field of intelligent innovation? It has always been the national youth electronic information science popularization innovation education base of China Electronics Society of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
As a post-90 s entrepreneur, was once called by the media? China's youngest CEO? , China Business News, Sohu. China News Network and Surge both reported the news of Hao Chen.
Now? Outstanding achievements? Become the only authoritative platform for quality education for young people covering the whole country and providing multi-category learning, competitions and study internships. The company has also developed from a member of 6 people to an enterprise with nearly 150 employees.
20 15,? Outstanding achievements? With an investment of $5 million as the capital, the fund of this institution mainly comes from the Ivy League Alumni Fund representing the top universities in the United States. Outstanding achievements? And recognition and support for its vision.
The following is the entrepreneurial monologue of Hao Chen, CEO of post-90s generation, to see how he earned millions of dollars a year.
The original text is as follows:
My name is Hao Chen. 1992 Born in Aries. I am the CEO of a startup company in the field of education. I graduated from the English Department of University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in July, 20 15. Yes, I hate it, but I will still be detained. CEO after 90? Hat. But I didn't say I would give 100 million employees, and now there are about 150 employees; I didn't tell investors that I would be the second Ma Yun, but in 20 15, I successfully raised 5 million dollars. I'm sorry, because it's a man and his face value is not high, what can't be relied on? Big breasts? Selling sex toys; Like most children of this generation, I come from an ordinary dual-income family. I don't have great wealth or tragic stories. I hope I can share some of my understanding on the road to entrepreneurship with you today. Of course, if you say that I understand it wrong, haha, you are right.
Three key points of starting a business
In the matter of starting a business, I should act earlier than most post-90 s entrepreneurs. Whenever someone asks me if I support college students' entrepreneurship, I always say? Actually, I started my own business in high school ? By chance, when I was in the third year of high school, I got the qualification of walking students, so I could enter the university without the college entrance examination. At that time, it was 65438+ 10, eight months before the university started, and that's when my business started. what am I supposed to do？
Hao Chen, 19 years old, is very stupid and doesn't know anything. There was no WeChat at that time, no? Mass entrepreneurship and innovation? No? Internet plus? I saw an opportunity in a very special sub-field. Business education for middle school students? . This comes from an activity I participated in in high school, Model United Nations? At that time, it was discovered that a company called a meeting of middle school students in China to collect membership fees. It sends high school students from China to the United States to attend the American Model Trade Union Congress, and collects membership fees. I actually collected tens of millions a year! You know, at that time, tens of millions were astronomical figures for a small basin friend in a second-tier city, and I didn't even dare to think about it. So, I made a very, very subjective judgment: Model United Nations is a political simulation activity, mainly aimed at students who want to be politicians in the future. Aren't there more people who want to be entrepreneurs and bosses? Why don't I do a mock business activity? ?
Looking back now, although this judgment is particularly simple and rude, it did not use any SWOT analysis, and it is more likely to be a 19 high school student? Subjective assumption? . But it's okay. It's okay. What's that? Fengkou? 、? Internet plus? 、? Subsidies? 、? Burning money? 、? Platform? Wait, the buzzwords on the tall are confusing now. I chose to be one? I am familiar with what others have done, which is rich in cash flow. ? Whenever someone comes to me and asks me, especially entrepreneurs who are similar in age or younger than me, I always advise them to start from three aspects:
1、? Someone else did it? =? The pattern has been verified? As long as you copy the successful model of others in a certain field to the parallel field, you don't have to try other models at all, because human business has developed for so many years, you can't find a brand-new revolutionary and subversive model at all;
2、? Abundant cash flow? =? Can you survive without any financing? Because you are too young, investors are not stupid at all. They are looking at track record, you have nothing, don't expect you to get a penny from VC.
3、? Know yourself? =? I am a customer of my own products, and I know what customers want. ? In this way, you can avoid spending on marketing expenses, labor costs and sales expenses at the beginning to the greatest extent. Maybe I didn't think of it myself,
These three points will be of great help to a 19-year-old fresh meat who knows nothing and is stupid.
Direction is more important than effort.
When I first started my business, I loved to brush my sense of existence. It was the era of Weibo and Renren. ? I am at the Capital International Airport, which is the third city I went to today. Hard-working people are the most beautiful! ? ,? Working overtime until 12, only the lights in our office are on in the whole building. Hold on! (There is a bowl of instant noodles next to it)? ,? This is the third time to stay up late. The friends in the team are so hard! ? . However, when I started my business in the third year, I found something that had a great impact on my outlook on life: hard work was good, but it was useless. ? (There should be a smiling face here) Who works hardest and hardest in the world? It's a cleaner who gets off work at four o'clock in the morning, a traffic policeman who stands guard until the early hours of the morning, and a couple who set up a breakfast stall downstairs ... I don't mean to be rude at all, but I respect these hard-working people very much. However, you will find that these people, in addition to special efforts, have a common feature: their income is relatively low. If you can make a great and successful company through hard work, these people should have their own business empire. Unfortunately, it is not.
Dude, you are starting a business, not doing specific work, making something from a certain A to a certain B. As long as you are skilled, keep trying to copy this kind of thing. You are doing something that no one else has done, from a certain A to an uncertain X, so believe me, it is really useless to work hard. If you work hard and your business is still not improving very much, then stop and see if there is something wrong with your strategy.
What? You said you were a small company. What's your strategy? I used to feel the same way. When I tried to adjust some practices, I received unexpected results. From then on, I fell in love with stopping to think carefully about strategy. There were only five of us at that time. Taobao can beat Ebay not by hard work, but by China's tool Alipay. Iphone can eat Samsung's last bite of rice, and it didn't do anything special, just made the screen a little bigger. Good future (learning and thinking) can become the best education company in China, not because of any efforts or internet plus, but because the model of each course is particularly benign at the beginning ... Really, please believe me, the decisive proportion of efforts in entrepreneurship is estimated to be 5%. Ask Tang Yan, CEO of Momo. How many days did he work before Momo went public? My poor colleagues, don't try to comfort yourself.
About financing.
Financing? I didn't intend to write this part because I didn't think it was necessary at all. As I said at the beginning, ample cash flow helps me a lot. Yes, I highly recommend a young man like me? What is the first project for a self-made young entrepreneur? Platform type? 、? Integrate resource types? 、? Subsidies? Business. Give me a break, don't take Ma Yun and Liu as examples, saying that they also started from scratch, but they got a lot of money when they started their business. What I want to say is that the businesses they started with were all profitable businesses, and what you saw was the result of a lot of money, which they got by turning profitable businesses into platforms.
What? You told me that Li Yanhong started burning money? Well, unless your age and personal background are comparable to the Peking University undergraduate+returnees in the early days of the Internet demographic dividend. VC won't give you a penny when you start a business, because they may have been fooled away by tens of millions of dollars before you fool them with your business plan. So believe me, don't be confused by any government-supported venture loans and post-90s funds. You still won't get a penny. Do your own business in a down-to-earth manner, and then talk to VC after a certain scale effect. At this time, my advice to you is: don't believe anything they say to you? Synergistic effect? And any resources that may bring you, because they are the same. When the investment manager of each fund decides to vote for you, their role becomes their own fund? Sales? They will tell you all kinds of themselves? Unique? Then I hope you can make some concessions on the valuation or terms. Sorry, at your stage, investors can't help you at all. Because of the same promise, they may have talked to 100 people a year. How many days can they leave you a year?
So when financing, just talk about money. It is best to raise money when you are not short of money. What's the gesture? I'm glad you are willing to pay, thank you! But if you don't want to pay, I can live well. ? If you are confident enough in your business, you can tell them when you answer questions politely and logically and they still don't believe you and try to prove them right? There are no companies in the world with deep barriers, long runways, high gross profit, fast growth and strong teams waiting for you to invest. ? Having said that, I still hope you don't expect someone to invest money in you from the beginning.
Think like a businessman
At the moment you decide to start a business, please treat all subsequent decisions as business decisions. Thinking like a businessman, the so-called business decision is to treat all decisions as investments and use the return on investment to calculate whether this decision should be made. To put it simply, should this person be hired? What growth will he bring to your business if you hire him? Is this growth ten times the salary you paid him? Or the increase in valuation? More complicated, should I go after this girl? How much time are you going to spend on her? How much money is invested? Is the joy, joy, face, sex, comfort and help she brings you worth your investment? Well, you will definitely say that I am particularly heartless and don't understand amorous feelings. I must be single dog. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that from the moment you decide to start a business, the decision you make will really affect your brothers and sisters who work with you, and then affect their families. As an entrepreneur, the responsibility and pressure you bear come not only from yourself, but also from the whole team. So my request is: I hope you will always make the most rational choice. Think like a businessman, regardless of personal preferences and subjective feelings. I know it's hard, but you still have to do it.
Buy and hold
Persistence is very, very important On the way to starting a business, you will encounter all kinds of temptations. Because you will suddenly find that that rustic idiot X who talked nonsense with me in a forum last week just raised twice as much money as you. However, in your opinion, there is no advantage except that the runway you choose is a little longer than yours. That's why you're so anxious. I'm going to be overtaken. Or, you suddenly find that a silly X company has started a new business and brought them abundant cash flow in a short time. You're particularly jealous. It happened that this buddy recently bought a new 9 1 1, and then there was an online celebrity in the car. You couldn't sit still, because in your opinion, this business is particularly low, and the person who should do this business most obviously is you. So you are particularly anxious. Haha, I often feel this way, and I am often troubled by it myself. You can only comfort yourself with Buffett's words, buy and hold, buy and hold. In the long run, this has benefited me a lot.
Others have a lot of financing, which may be that this industry is at the forefront, the competition is extremely fierce, and few people survive. This buddy will die to a large extent; Other people's business will bring abundant cash flow in the short term, and more people like you will see it, so they will rush to do it, and everyone will have no money to earn. 9 1 1 may eventually be sold as a used car, and the online celebrities are of course gone. Entrepreneurship is to see if what you do and the trend of social development will shake. If * * * vibrates, the greater your chances of success, and the greater your achievements after success. If you believe that your business belongs to this type, then don't say anything and stick to it. A fair God will double your high financing, 9 1 1 and online celebrities.
By the way, I forgot to tell you at last. Please forget your identity as an entrepreneur after 90, 95 or even 00. When your employees ask you for a raise, they won't charge you a penny less for it, but they may bully you. Your customers will not give you a second chance to make mistakes because of your age, but will say? I told you that young people are unreliable? ; Where are your investors? It's really hard for them. You said on TV that you would give employees 100 million yuan. Afterwards, they were called a group of stupid investors from other places, which was very easy to fool. They still have to stand up and speak for you. We are particularly optimistic about the founder and his team? .
Successful post-90s entrepreneurs II
Twenty years old? Entrepreneur? : After 90 and his? Global charging network? dream
The stage is as big as the heart. Kenneth Lou, 22, started his entrepreneurial journey from college. Now, he is raising money for his new product Amepere on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, but his dream doesn't stop there. He wants to build the first wireless charging network in Asia.
According to common sense, a 22-year-old young entrepreneur would not have such great ambitions, such extensive interpersonal relationships and such full preparation for starting a business; Because compared with these college entrepreneurs, some older entrepreneurs have a higher chance of success. After all, they have rich professional experience.
However, Kenneth Lou, founder of Novelsys in Singapore, doesn't think so. He thinks he is an exception. What does he think his task is? Provide energy for the world? .
When Lou talked about his company's development plan in an interview, he said: I make everything into slides. ? He showed us a slide about his entrepreneurial career as a student? When studying at the National University of Singapore, he took a year off to start a business. Then he opened another slide and introduced us to the whole story of their entrepreneurial team.
Lu is a very enterprising young man. He is resourceful and clever. Novelsy's ambition is beyond the reach of many experienced entrepreneurs, and the idea of building is a huge challenge for them. Now Novelsys is raising funds for its new product Amepere released on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Amepere is a mobile power supply, but different from ordinary mobile power supply, it supports Qi standard radio technology. Qi is the first standardization organization in the world to promote wireless charging technology? Launched by the wireless power consortium? Wireless charging? Standard, with two characteristics of convenience and universality.
This product is indeed a humanized mobile power supply, because compared with the existing mobile power supply, it does not require customers to carry a long data cable with them. It also has more intelligent functions. It comes with a mobile-enabled application that allows users to know when to charge their devices and when the devices complete the charging task.
Ampere is specially designed for smart phones, which is more flexible than mophie, an award-winning designer and manufacturer of mobile smart devices and accessories. You only need to put the smart phone supporting Qi wireless charging standard into the ampere case, and the phone will automatically start charging. For smartphones like iPhone that don't support Qi wireless charging, Ampere is equipped with a special charging holster and a movable receiver.
Ampere's battery capacity is 2700mAh, and its retail price is $99. Its price seems to be much higher than the mobile power supply of brands such as Xiaomi. The price of ordinary mobile power supply is one-fifth of that of ampere, but the battery capacity is about four times that of ampere. Lou hopes to reduce the price in the future mass production stage.
Even if Ampere sells at its high price, Pirate3D, another startup in Singapore, still thinks that Lou's development will be very difficult, because he thinks that once the sales of a certain product drop, the potential conflicts between crowdfunding companies will be exposed.
It is quite difficult for a new enterprise to produce software products and hardware products at the same time. Once there is a little problem in the production process, the products of the enterprise may be in danger of not being delivered on time. In this case, customers will be extremely dissatisfied with the manufacturer, and a large number of customers will even ask for a refund, which will make the enterprise fall into a dangerous situation of capital shortage. Ampere is in danger of appeal, because this product only improves the existing similar products on the market, and there is no substantial innovation breakthrough.
In fact, Novelsys loses several dollars for every ampere sold, but Lou thinks that the increase in sales can make up for this loss. He said in an interview:? Ampere's crowdfunding on Kickstarter is actually a costly marketing activity. ? Retail is also an important way to make up for losses, but the effect is a bit slow.
Ampere seems to be the main product launched by Novellsys, but it is actually only a small beginning for Novellsys to implement its grand plan. Lou is conceiving his second plan. This time, he will not only produce a simple hardware device, but also build a wireless charging network using Noverlsys technology.
The plan is temporarily called Juice, and they plan to set up wireless charging stations in the city, especially in cafes and restaurants in the city. As long as customers download their applications and register, they can charge their devices for free where there is a wireless charging station. Coffee shops or other places where these wireless charging stations are installed need to pay a certain fee. If your battery is rechargeable, you can use wireless charging directly next time without reconnecting.
What do coffee shop and restaurant owners get in return? They can put targeted advertisements and charge customers for providing more charging time. This idea is the first time in Asia, but it is not new, because it has already appeared in the world. Starbucks and Duracell Powermat cooperated on wireless charging network in 20 14, and 200 Starbucks stores in San Francisco installed wireless charging boards. Starbucks will soon install wireless charging boards in coffee shops in Asia.
Lou said in an interview. Ampere and juice will create a wireless charging system. With this system, people can charge their equipment anytime and anywhere without worrying about the equipment running out of power? We just hope that everyone's equipment will always be in a state of sufficient power. ?
In order to make fruit juice a feasible plan, Lou must act quickly and occupy the Asian market as soon as possible. He predicted that the plan will be implemented in downtown Singapore from June 1965 to June 2005, and will be extended to all regions of Singapore before the end of the year. At that time, they will cooperate with some large chain restaurants, such as coffee beans, Starbucks and McDonald's. He plans to enter the international market in the middle of 20 16, when Novelsys will become the acquisition target of a famous wireless charging company like Powermat.
There is no doubt that Lou has conceived this plan dozens of times in his mind, and publicly publicized his plan and took action for it. He feels that the goal of Singapore is to become a smart country, and to achieve this goal depends on three important resources. The first is data; The second is electricity? Urban residents can find a place to charge wherever they go; The third kind is coffee, which provides energy for the builders of the city. Coffee shops had better be as good as Starbucks and coffee beans.
However, for a startup, it is not easy to follow the plan made by entrepreneurs, especially when the standard of wireless charging technology has not been unified. Powermat wireless charging technology company uses Power Matters alliance standard, while Ampere is based on Qi standard. In the current war of 19 in the late 1980s, the AC transmission mode defeated the DC transmission mode. Since then, this phenomenon of non-uniform standards has always existed in the wireless charging technology industry, and different people always prefer different current input methods.
Even today, the industry has not yet determined what kind of standards should be formulated. In the development of battery technology, from graphite technology to electronic skin technology to long-distance energy transmission technology, innovative and competitive new technologies are constantly emerging.
Any of these technologies can overwhelm Novelsys technology, but Lou doesn't think so. He said in an interview:? We are not a technology group, but an infrastructure provider. ? He said that Greg Mittman, vice president of MyRepublic, was a mentor of his team. The company is adopting cloud computing technology to reduce the network computing cost of Asian telecom industry.
Lou said in an interview that he had done a lot of preparatory work before crowdfunding began. He showed me a lot of data he used. In the preparation process, he calculated the cost of each product and predicted the profit and loss of sales.
Before crowdfunding, Lou also consulted many new hardware companies in Singapore. In the interview, he said that he had an in-depth discussion with Razer, a famous game equipment manufacturer, and X-mini, a wireless speaker company, and got some suggestions from them on production and how to contact contract manufacturers, and also taught him about distribution channels.
Lou also asked Singapore startups Vibease (which launched the world's first intelligent vibrator) and Pirate3D (Singapore 3D printing startup) for advice. Their conversation convinced Lou that the first batch of products should be sold in Singapore to avoid conflict with the sales of products launched in Shenzhen.
He plans to produce the first batch of ampere products in Singapore, with a quantity of 4000. If the market demand exceeds 4000 units, it will be produced by an Indonesian manufacturer, which is located in Batam Island, Indonesia, near Singapore. Lou heard many horrible stories from Shenzhen, such as how the parts of the product were replaced in the production process, how the design concept of the product was copied and how the product was copied.
Lou doesn't think it is necessary to enter the China market, because the first batch of production is very small. They chose Singapore because they know more about domestic production lines, control product quality and communicate with manufacturers in time. Lou said that only when the order volume exceeds 6.5438+0 million, they will consider the manufacturers in Shenzhen, China.
In order to run Novelsys wholeheartedly, Lou chose to drop out of school and set up a team of 8 people. Their team won an event organized by iJam (Singapore Accelerator) and raised $60,000 for Noverlsys.
I had entrepreneurial experience before the building. He once launched a daily purchase application to support global services; However, his partner quit halfway, which made the application unable to grow and develop. His second entrepreneurial experience was to set up a company to organize applications for people to download and try, but this venture also ended in failure because his then co-founder cheated him.
The National University of Singapore has established the Kent Post Scholarship (Entrepreneurship Scholarship), which students can obtain through competition. Lou began to put up posters on campus, looking for co-founders. The title of the poster is:? Are you the next elon musk (the most inspirational entrepreneur and entrepreneur in the world)? But no one contacted him. Later, he sent an email to the electronic engineering department of the school. In this way, he met Mark Keong, the co-founder of the company, who later became the engineering soul of the company.
Keong found Delane Foo, an industrial designer he met while studying in Singapore. In this way, three people participated in a series of new entrepreneurial competitions and won scholarships from the school. But to build a real enterprise, it is not enough to have a business plan.
Once, Lou's tutor asked him: Do you want to win more business plan competitions or start your own company? It was this question that made him wake up and found his own direction in life. Later, I received iJam funding and angel investment of $82,000. His current goal is to get 450,000 scientific research grants from TECS in the spring, and it is expected that the A round of financing will be completed within two years, with a financing amount of 4.5 million US dollars.
For a student, there are still too many things to learn if he wants to start a business, but the building is different from ordinary students. He is one of three members of the Pilip Yeo project, which is named after a famous government official in Singapore. This plan gives Lou a chance to get close to Yang Zhiyuan and his social circle. If you want to realize your great ambition in a country where the national economy is dominated by the government, getting close to a government official will be of great help to you. Therefore, Lou can get the help needed to start a business.
? I'm only 22 years old, and I always like to encourage my peers to start businesses. Because we have no car loan and no mortgage; We are not married and have no children; We don't need to take on family responsibilities. We can start a business wholeheartedly. ? Lou said in an interview. We need to study, but I think the people we meet and the social circle we build are far more valuable than a degree. ?