Early stage of operation : quickly familiarize yourself with the team and understand the business

Today I want to share how to operate in a startup company based on my own experience.

When I started my first business, there was no concept of Internet operations and product managers . I did everything: planning, business, operations, R&D, and wrote my own code. I had never studied this major, I just liked it. After I came to Tencent, I found that things were different. The people around me were all very outstanding. I received training in commercialization theory, which helped me to organize the messy knowledge I had accumulated before. After joining Tencent, you will find that the knowledge in the book is more critical than what you have done before.

What impressed me most about joining Tencent was that I was able to quickly integrate into the team and understand our own business. A lot of operations work involves dealing with people, including product managers, R&D, and users within the team. In this process, it will be difficult to carry out if you don’t understand the team and the business. It is actually very difficult for a newcomer to understand the business, whether in a large company or a startup. It does not mean that you do not understand it, but that the method that the company or the boss wants you to understand the business the fastest is irrelevant. It would be best if there is systematic experience and ability to be imparted. For example, if you have good documents or good materials, sharing them is very valuable. Understanding the business is the first thing so that the team can become familiar with it quickly.

Next, all new employees at Tencent will go through the user forum and collect user feedback for three months to understand the products, activities, content, and user opinions. We found that 90% of users are complaining. Because users cannot find an outlet for many contents and experiences or cannot directly reach you, they can only use more violent methods, including some very extreme words, "Why is this product so crappy and difficult to use?" and "Why are the functions you made so poor?" But this is the most effective way to help you understand the product, because by paying attention to the content of user complaints, you will know where the product is doing well, where it is not doing well, and where there is room for improvement. After three months, your understanding of the product will improve faster than your skills.

Perception of operations: users, content, activities, and channels . The underlying layer is data-driven, and you need to know how to do each piece. Whether in a startup or a large company, colleagues in operations must contact and create opportunities for these four areas in the early stages. If you don’t take the initiative, you won’t be able to grasp the focus of your work, so this will help you better understand the division of the current work modules.

Are all excellent products produced through operations?

I had already started a business when I first joined Tencent. A year later, I felt that I had accumulated enough capabilities, and with the help of a systematic model building, I was able to quickly organize my work. At that time, the biggest feeling was the conflict between me and the product manager. It felt like the product manager did nothing, and we in operations did a lot of things to quickly improve user data. You have to know that a good operational creativity and idea is very rare. All of these are what we think, but the product manager does nothing. At that time, the browser grew very fast, with the number of new users increasing from hundreds of thousands to millions every day, and from zero to hundreds of millions of users in one year. This no longer happens now. In 2011, WeChat made a huge contribution by driving the development of WeChat through browsers and other channels. At that time, everyone thought that operations were too powerful, and they were the most powerful group of people among all those who operated the products.

What is the difference between product operations and product managers? There is a huge difference between operations and products, which requires data analysis and marketing capabilities, and is very comprehensive and integrated. However, the product manager is very prominent in this link, but his shortcomings are also very obvious. The overall trend of his ability in the entire product is based on learning and execution, and then uses user analysis and other capabilities to support the entire front-end learning and services.

In order to improve myself, I did not quit my job. I wanted to improve myself and think about product operations like a product manager. I made a very important decision in my life. I decided to be a product manager instead of a product operator.

Starting from users, to needs, to execution, to iteration, and exceeding expectations, product managers often mention users. Sometimes they do not express their ideas themselves. Their hearts are toward users, but their actions are actually toward themselves. Operations are not like that. All aspects of operations, including promotion activities, channels, payment costs, and data, must emphasize users, user operations , user research, user value, user experience, and user needs.

Products are driven by the "user" line, but cannot be driven by the "operation" line. Product managers can think about problems in one main line, so I decided to switch to being a product manager as I continued working. I suggest that everyone here who is engaged in operations, if possible, switch to being a product manager. Try to understand your problems, work, and personal development from the user's perspective, understand your personal development, and what main line you plan for the next three years.

After becoming a product manager, I have a profound understanding. The browser cooperated with WeChat at the time and brought a lot of traffic to WeChat. The browser is a tool -type product. Our operation team is very large and has created many channels. Further down are activities and other content-related parts. When WeChat came, there were profound changes. There is no conventional operation in WeChat's operation. Apart from leveraging its operations, its main method is to promote WeChat through all channels , and all work is centered around the product level. For example, why do we need to set a “click” sound in the WeChat shake function? Because the "click" sound is like the sound of a bullet being loaded, and when it hits a person, that sound is like winning the prize. Therefore, the product will have many leverage points integrated into its functions and experience. During the user experience process, most of the users are male. Men are naturally fond of violence, and the most obvious thing is the feeling of a gun. The excitement of shaking someone is like winning a lottery. Users have worked hard and will feel very satisfied when they finally get what they want.

This matter exploded very quickly, and after continuously accumulating understanding of the product, I found that excellent products may not really need operations. As long as the product design is strong enough, the links are simplified enough, and user needs are met sufficiently, perhaps operations are really not necessary. For example, Facebook encountered a bottleneck when its user base grew to tens of millions. They found that when a new user was added to 12 friends, activity and retention increased significantly. Therefore, Facebook transformed its entire system. After all new users logged in, the system actively recommended friends and tapped into the users' promotional capabilities. As a result, Facebook's subsequent user growth exploded very quickly.

Through the growth of these points, it is not difficult to find that the attractiveness of excellent mechanisms to promote operations is becoming weaker and weaker. What is the reason? Because the effect of the operation itself has been reduced to the basic level at this point.

Growth experience: Product 123

I had a vision at that time, to create the most operationally savvy product. I have started a business before and had strong operational capabilities, but there are two key factors that lead to poor overall product operations: communication and execution, and then there is the system. The system is very easy to understand. The product has the final say on user issues, operations have the final say on product issues, and data has the final say on operations issues.

How to apply these into actual operations? It is to improve learning ability. When new products are added, I will analyze good benchmark cases in products and operations, how to operate products, and how operations cooperate with products. I will list some products that combine many extreme points of operations and products, and then discover a change point. Good products may not need operations. After a period of sedimentation, I will find that product operations are inseparable. This is a big change.

Where are you from, where are you going, and how are you getting there?

The highest questions in the philosophy of life are "Where do you come from? Where are you going? How do you get there?" This is a question you should always think about, the only thing that will change is your thinking angle and standing height.

Product Operations: Think Like a CEO

I want to start a business. How should I develop products and operations? My role began to change.

When I started my business, I was the co-founder and CMO. I led the product, operations, and R&D teams, which was consistent with the role of CEO. This process was the biggest improvement in my second stage. At that time, I was the leader of a department, and I began to think about how to improve myself, change my way of thinking, and think like a CEO of a startup.

Although you are just a small operation or product manager at this point, if you have not positioned your role at this level from the beginning, it is not too late to change and adjust from now on. It is never too late to learn and grow. If you are in a startup, think like a CEO. If you are in a large company, think like a product manager.

When you communicate with your boss and team leader about the issues you are thinking about in an operations role, you will find that you are talking about different things. You are still talking about activities, promotions, and costs, but your boss is talking about user scale, industry trends, product profits, and growth rate. You find that the content is similar, but why is it different? Because the pattern, height and perspective on things are different. That’s why you always feel that what your boss says is too abstract, and that there is more to it than just doing these things every time. That’s right, if you don’t have such far-sighted design ideas and still focus on activities, then you can really only be a product operator.

Communication: Speak with data

For an operation, it is imperative to speak with data. Data is very core, especially in a startup company. Every link will be measured by data, including manpower, financial resources, speed, scale, and competitive barriers. This is a very important value of operation.

Grasp the key point of data core in this process. I believe your boss will look at you with admiration next time you report your work to him. You must persevere. When you start to switch from operations to products, there is a painful transition period, which is to challenge your original cognition. This requires erasing the unacceptable things and opening up a new path. All you need to do is persevere.

When you begin to change your mindset in this way, you must stick to this understanding and remember that you must use data to speak to the product and your boss. Every time you do an activity, you must understand the time and cost required to achieve it, how long the conversion will take to be sustained, whether it is a first conversion or a second conversion, all the data needs to be shown. During this process, you will find that your overall ability has improved. You start from grasping a single point to grasping the whole situation. This is why you can often become very specialized when you focus on just one small point.

One leaf can tell the coming of autumn, but one leaf can also block one's view

Although I am confident, it is important to know what my weaknesses are. I used to think I knew everything, but after working in product and operations, I feel that I need to strike a balance and use different shortcomings or different ways of thinking in different situations. For example, when making product decisions, I will use product thinking to understand the real needs of users. However, it is not enough to just use it. I need to turn over the operational ideas, and then fill in the shortcomings and move forward step by step. When I reach a certain point, it will become a flexible expansion, and your capability coverage is also flexible.

Longboard Effect

What is the longboard effect? All colleagues working on product or operations must focus on one point, which is your ability to make a living. Although not everyone is an all-rounder, you must know where your shortcomings are and how to make up for them with your strengths. The long board effect means that if you are particularly good at copywriting , you must have particularly beautiful representative works. Only when you reach your strengths at a certain point, when it comes to your weaknesses, will the balance point be strong. This is very important in a startup company. You need to set a growth goal for yourself.

Goals, paths, and execution

From a work perspective, all people working on products and operations should first set a point that is unattainable, do it quickly and move forward, focusing on the goal, path and how to get there.

For example, Tubatu has 300 customer service representatives, each of whom maintains more than 300 QQ groups. They hide in the QQ groups. When someone in the group says that my family needs to decorate the house and choose building materials, they will immediately jump out and say that there is a chance to go on Tubatu. Is this kind of work product related? Not relevant. In fact, it is a very crude operation, so when you want to achieve a goal, the path and method to achieve it are not necessarily high-end. (90% of Tubatu’s early users were brought in this way, with strong sales skills guidance.)

I used to work in operations at Tencent, with over 100 million yuan in resources at my disposal every month. However, if I wanted to achieve the same results as an entrepreneur, the gap would be huge. I couldn’t use my previous abilities and experience in mature teams at large companies, so I could only settle for the second best and use the most primitive methods.

At that time, many O2O startup teams used offline promotion or joined QQ groups, including the now very popular community operation , which are all very crude methods. What changes occurred in your thinking at this time? When you were keen on building a certain ability or a particularly high-sounding theory in the past, your foundation was actually unstable and not down-to-earth enough. So in a startup company you have all the conditions and opportunities to do such things. You can put into practice many fantastic ideas as long as they are effective and feasible. These cannot be done in large companies.

From 0 to 1, from 0 to 0.1

My previous startup company grew from more than 10 people to more than 100 people and raised three rounds of financing of tens of millions of dollars, which was a huge improvement. The only thing I did in the middle was to go from “0 to 1”. When I started the company I am going to start now, I found that it was not working. The entrepreneurial environment has changed. The new industry is different, the users are different, and the challenges and difficulties I face are also different.

The connections and capabilities I had accumulated previously played little role, and in the new team, I started from scratch again. When I go from 0 to 1, I will break down the original process from 0 to 1. The number of users will increase from zero to one million and then to five million. I will set sail again and set a new goal. What I am doing now is still within these capabilities.

The last point I want to convey to everyone is that when doing product operations in a startup company, remember to return to this point. First, make more use of product thinking to communicate with your product team and R&D, and speak with the user's mindset. When you communicate upward, use data to speak and strengthen your leadership thinking ability. At the same time, in the process, you should constantly set goals for yourself, split paths, and then execute.

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The author of this article @操作鹤手 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!