Don’t think you can start a business just by drinking some chicken soup from BAT

Today, when President Li calls on everyone to backpack and venture into the world (mass entrepreneurship and innovation by all), thinking about how to seize the dividends of this reform trend, or seize the opportunities of national policies, how to survive in this round of entrepreneurial wave, not fall into the "Hang Dad" tribe, and live long enough, may be more important for entrepreneurs and innovators than entrepreneurship itself.

The more unprecedented the success of any model, the less replicable it is. They must be giants born in certain specific environments, where the three elements of time, place and people are matched at the same time. But for most entrepreneurs, perhaps we should pursue universal business methods, but this does not seem to be popular among entrepreneurs in real situations.

Don’t think you can start a business just by drinking some BAT’s chicken soup

Today, we live, learn and grow in a contradictory cultural atmosphere. On the one hand, we encourage makers, but on the other hand, we do not have a sound intellectual property protection; on the one hand, we encourage college students to start businesses, but on the other hand, we do not provide effective help in education. This phenomenon can be seen in many fields, that is, there is a dilemma of two layers of skin between the phenomenon advocated on the one hand and the essence on the other hand.

When we walk into supermarkets and bookstores, we always see all kinds of so-called Chinese classics in the children's reading area, such as the Four Great Classics, The Art of War, and Thirty-Six Stratagems. I am thinking, what will be the impact if a nation learns and advocates these from a young age? For example, Zhuge Liang, whom we admire, spent his entire life doing low-probability events, and his success is simply not universal.

However, our education has trained us to worship "speculation" heroes since childhood, so that many entrepreneurs are deep in their hearts pursuing the occurrence of such low-probability events in themselves. We follow the footsteps of BAT and worship the chicken soup of Jack Ma, Robin Li, and Pony Ma. Isn't this also a reflection of such Zhuge Liang-style low-probability events?

This is reflected in the situation in entrepreneurship: on the one hand, we shout that we want to do a great business, and on the other hand, we try our best to find the possibility of a small probability of speculative success, rather than how to truly make reliable products.

Rotten apples don’t attract money, and entrepreneurship is not about taking hormones

I have always emphasized that entrepreneurship requires a spirit of "planting trees" or "Yugong moving mountains". Why do I put forward such a theory? Because I have observed that some entrepreneurs in the Internet and smart hardware fields would think of using capital to package rotten apples to start a business. This phenomenon can be called a gambling mentality, a lack of consideration, or a unique innovation, but in the end, it is all about looking for speculative low-probability events.

If the packaged apple is a good one, then it doesn’t matter if it has some water in it, which is also a normal phenomenon in commercial communication. But the key problem is that some entrepreneurs always want to go to the vegetable market to buy a pound of cheap rotten apples to package, and give these rotten apples away as so-called free, and then tout them as subversion. Of course, we do not rule out the possibility that some entrepreneurs are fooled in the vegetable market because they do not understand the industry.

But the reality shows us that it seems that it is not others who are being overturned, but the money in one's own pocket and that of one's father. From the perspective of social trends, this is also a good thing, because people keep trying and making mistakes, and keep feeling for stones in the river. They can always touch a few stones and find the way to the shore, which to a certain extent promotes social progress.

But from the perspective of entrepreneurs, we need to be more rational and make our entrepreneurial journey smoother. When we start a business, we need to think like packaging apples, and we also need the spirit and perseverance to cultivate apple trees.

No matter what business we start, it is just like planting a tree. After choosing a good seedling, we must have enough patience to cultivate it. Only when the seedling is cultivated healthier, it will have stronger ability to resist environmental changes in the future. The biggest inspiration from the path of European and American century-old enterprises is the "tree planting" spirit. The reason why they have come to this day and become a role model for most of us is precisely because of their unremitting efforts for hundreds of years, rather than relying on speculation or hormones to quickly ripen.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.