Encouragement: Sharing the experience of failure in the first entrepreneurial project

If you don't do some things now, you may never have the chance to do them again.

Starting a business had nothing to do with me more than a month ago, but an accidental opportunity gave me a profound experience.

Background introduction: It was around the end of June when I happened to see a startup team recruiting product partners for a blind date travel project. After chatting with the team leader, the CEO, although I didn't know much about this project field, I felt that the CEO really wanted to do something, and I also wanted to experience the startup team, so I agreed.

When I first joined, the team was extremely short of staff: there was a CEO, a UI, a front-end, a back-end, four marketers, and me as a product manager. Well, this lineup was quite weird. The technical strength was really weak, which also laid the groundwork for the failure of the *** project.

Blind date travel is actually a relatively new thing for most people. Simply put, it is to organize a group of single men and women white-collar workers with a small age gap to travel together, get to know each other during the trip, and finally find their ideal partner. For many single white-collar workers, blind dates and travel are just needs. Most blind dates are basically through meals, cafes, movies, etc., but these methods have certain limitations for strangers, which may cause both parties to be unable to let go of themselves and unable to understand each other from multiple angles. Traveling is a direct and interesting way to get to know each other, and some interesting games (similar to Running Man) in group travel can make everyone take off the mask of self-protection, be true to themselves, and get to know each other more easily. After considering the above, we think this is a marketable project.

Considering the team's weak resources in the early stage, we only plan to do one-day tours around the suburbs. The difficulty of this project is not how to make the website exquisite and attractive, but how to make the offline user travel experience good. For this reason, I proposed a specific travel process: after the user registers for the blind date travel project online and pays, he is invited to join the activity group. In the group, there is a dedicated tour guide to provide relevant information. After the group members get on the bus in the morning, the tour guide will become the event host for an ice-breaking trip. Before arriving at the destination, the single members will be familiar with each other. After arriving at the scenic spot, various interesting games such as tearing name tags in groups and who is the undercover will be used to deepen everyone's understanding. In addition, our photographers will use their keen eyes and extremely fast hand speed to capture the sweet moments between the "couples" and provide them to the group members for a fee to leave good memories. To put it another way, even if there is really no one you like, then the blind date is considered to be a trip out to relax, which is not a "losing business" for white-collar workers who are under great pressure at work on weekdays. For this project, the profit models considered before are: 1. Registration fee, which is basically the bulk 2. Providing photos as a value-added service for a fee 3. Providing paid VIP services when a certain number of users are accumulated. For the team, except for the fixed expenses of the office space in the early stage, all team members do not receive wages, so the team cost pressure is not particularly large. The above model can support the team for a certain period of time.

So, we naively started working in a big way. First of all, we needed a website of our own. In two days, I browsed and experienced many dating and travel websites, pondered their functional design and the user needs behind them. Combined with the characteristics of my own project, I decided to divide the age levels when designing the one-day tour products on the website, with five years as a distinction, so that the members can have more topics to communicate online and reduce the generation gap. At the same time, a communication community and a dating strategy area were built to attract and gather more users who need relevant experience posts. After n business discussions and four version revisions with the CEO, the website prototype was finally released and handed over to the UI for optimization. At this point, my first stage of work has temporarily come to an end. I thought that the rest was to continue discussing small-scale modifications with the developers. However, after a week, the unreliable developers did not produce any output results, and the colleagues who had previously marketed through Weibo, WeChat and other channels also had a bad start. The first offline event that had been planned for n long did not attract enough users, so the CEO made a decision: to terminate the dating travel project.

The first entrepreneurial project that I carefully planned and designed for more than a month just died in the womb. Later I thought that maybe our choice of this project was not very accurate at the beginning: first of all, the team members were still students, and their social circles were basically on campus. Campus students were not the target users. The real target users were white-collar workers who were unknown to everyone, and they were blind dates for white-collar workers. No one had blind date experience, so they could not deeply understand the pain points of blind dates. Secondly, the technical force was too weak. After the product prototype came out, the technical staff could not quickly launch the product according to the product prototype. This was quite fatal. If it could not be effectively solved, it would seriously hinder the progress of the project in future projects. Thirdly, the operation and marketing personnel were all inexperienced students. There were not many channels and resources for promotion and related cooperation, not to mention the process of attracting new users, retaining users, and promoting activation. ***To sum up, the team members were inexperienced and did not have enough running-in. In addition, the CEO's judgment and analysis of the market were not accurate and clear enough, so we had to strategically give up and start over.

Although the result of my first entrepreneurial project was not ideal, I really experienced the various problems encountered in entrepreneurship during this process. I could only try to solve many difficulties by myself. I also had a deep understanding that when forming a team, I must find suitable and reliable teammates. A good team is better than a good project. Now, I have a good idea and am working with a few technically skilled partners to start my first business. Although the road is tortuous, I believe the prospects are still bright. What I can do is to persist in the darkness before dawn and not give up easily. Since I have chosen the distant place, I will go through wind and rain.