Click the blue text above to follow "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" for more marketing and distributor internal management content.
Summary: Liu Qin revealed a detail about his interaction with Lei Jun. Once, Lei Jun asked Liu Qin why he was doing well in investment. Liu Qin's answer was, "I believe I am extremely diligent. I believe heaven rewards hard work! I believe that if you are diligent, you can definitely become a very good investor." Lei Jun's response was: Heaven does not always reward hard work.
Liu Qin, a partner at Morningside Ventures, is an investor in Xiaomi and a person with deep insights. At a recent forum, Liu Qin mentioned his private interactions with Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi, as well as the lessons of the internet.
Opportunity is not luck; it is a deep thinking about the trends of the entrepreneurial environment. Deep thinking is more important than your diligence! However, most opportunities are only passively utilized. Only a few entrepreneurs actively judge and capture opportunities.
Loneliness is inherent to every entrepreneur.
Being an early-stage founder is very difficult. Because when you face your employees, it's hard to explain that the company may only have three months of salary money, and even where the money for the next three months will come from, I don't know. You can't share this fact with them. At the same time, you have to tell them that you are doing something great. But in reality, you don't even know what you'll do tomorrow.
Second, you also can't share this with your investors. Because not all investors have the courage to hear the true current situation. You also can't stand in the spotlight and share your entrepreneurial story with the media. You talk about your glamorous side, but in reality, your pressure cannot be shared.
This loneliness is inherent to an entrepreneur. And the more successful the entrepreneur, the greater the loneliness at work. Why? If you are not successful, you might fail, change offices, and start a new venture in two years. If you are successful, you are burdened by success; you have a halo. Everyone thinks you should continue to be more successful. This halo makes your loneliness even stronger.
So, investor recognition and helping entrepreneurs let go of this so-called burden are what entrepreneurs essentially need most. In fact, investors giving you a sum of money is not important. Giving you money is really because they share a connection with you; it's recognition of you.
But investors give this recognition in the form of a tangible salary that will be paid in three months. Therefore, you see those truly excellent investors deeply respect entrepreneurs in their hearts.
They understand from the bottom of their hearts that their position is not one of condescension; they are equal, and even entrepreneurs hold a higher position. Therefore, as an entrepreneur, what you really need to find is an investor who recognizes you, not just a check. I am a nobody, but I love entrepreneurship. I know how to help Chinese entrepreneurs succeed; that is the real wealth. That is the true value of mainstream society. So, recognition is extremely important. Entrepreneurship needs something of value.
Heaven does not always reward hard work; deep thinking is more important than hard work.
I want to tell a story. I met Lei Jun in 2003. Before investing in Xiaomi in 2010, we had about six or seven years of friendship. I forgot which year this story happened; maybe 2007, maybe 2006, maybe 2008.
Once, for some reason I forgot, Lei Jun called me and said, "I always thought you have your own unique insights in investment. Can you tell me how to be a successful investor? Why can you invest so well?"
I gave him an answer at that time, "I believe I am extremely diligent. I believe heaven rewards hard work! I believe that if you are diligent, you can definitely become a very good investor." I thought this answer would at least get partial recognition from Lei Jun, but unexpectedly, he gave me a surprising response. The answer was that heaven does not always reward hard work.
This viewpoint gave me a huge shock at the time. I later gradually understood that diligence may be necessary, but diligence is far from enough.
This insight, perhaps I can share another interesting story with you, from a book. This book can be found on Douban, called "Outliers." In the Douban review, there is an introduction like this: In "Outliers," author Malcolm Gladwell analyzes successful people in society, showing readers a series of surprising statistical results: Most Premier League players are born between September and November; Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both born in 1955; many founders of famous law firms in New York are Jewish descendants, and their ancestors mostly worked in the garment industry in New York.
Why are there these strange statistical results?
I can give you a few more examples. I checked online yesterday: Among the rich list, there are several successful entrepreneurs. Let me report their ages. Robin Li was born in November 1968, Lei Jun in December 1969, Zhou Hongyi in October 1970, Ding Lei in October 1971, and Ma Huateng in October 1971. A bit different, Jack Ma was born in October 1964.
Let me give you another example. I am a 1998 graduate of CEIBS. The 1998 CEIBS graduates are very interesting. When I returned to CEIBS, I heard a joke. Many classmates and teachers said, "Do you 1998 graduates have some special genes? Look, many in your class are in venture capital, such as Liu Qin, Shi Jianming, Ji Yue of Sequoia Capital, Chen Wenjiang of CDH, and Chen Hang of the China Cultural Industry Fund. The class above us, 1997, also has a few."
Why are they all from 1997 or 1998? Is there something special about our genes? The most important point I want to share is that sometimes diligence alone is not reliable. Opportunity is important. But as an entrepreneur, opportunity is hard to capture; the key is to discover the opportunity.
Actually, the reason Jobs and Bill Gates were both born in 1955 is that when they graduated or dropped out of college, the PC industry was just starting. Why are most PC internet entrepreneurs from the 1969, 1970, 1971 age group? Because the internet boom happened exactly when they had been working for two to three years. If you graduated too early, like Lei Jun, who is from the software generation, you were already tied up by his "Kingsoft." If you were born too late, you were still in university and had no chance to think about entrepreneurial opportunities.
I graduated from CEIBS in 1998, and the internet wave burst in 1999. It's not because I am smart or diligent; opportunity is more important. But opportunity is not luck; it is deep thinking about the trends of the entrepreneurial environment. Deep thinking is more important than your diligence! However, most opportunities are only passively utilized. Only a few entrepreneurs actively judge and capture opportunities. This is another viewpoint I share with you: "Heaven does not always reward hard work! Deep thinking is more important than hard work!"
Great entrepreneurs' inspiration comes from details you overlook.
Everyone here may have heard my speeches elsewhere. I once mentioned that the most important vision of entrepreneurship is to answer three key "vague" questions: "Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?"
But today I won't expand on other issues. Today I want to focus on one point: these three questions are not vague, empty, or big at all. Because our key questions are captured from the core details of clues. So we need to see the big from the small.
Let me share one or two examples. In 2007, when I decided to invest in UCWeb, many people didn't understand why I wanted to invest in this mobile browser. Because it has value. It placed a so-called classified navigation directory on the browser, which is a website navigation.
I can't figure out why in the United States, Yahoo first appeared—a manually classified navigation list—and then Google appeared, which destroyed Yahoo's value. But in China, Baidu came first, and many years later, a navigation page called hao123 appeared. Why?
I think this is a very interesting phenomenon. Yahoo's most primitive manual classification list once greatly promoted the development of the American internet. But it was easily replaced by a search engine company like Google. In China, we always emphasize that China has a "late-mover advantage," but after Baidu's search engine appeared, why did a manual classification like hao123 appear again?
This is a very, very interesting core detail. It shows that in China, there are a large number of netizens who don't know how to use pinyin, don't know how to use a keyboard, and even don't know how to use search engines. Typing a word in Latin letters for search is very simple, but in China, using pinyin to type Chinese characters into a search box is very difficult.
This shows that, first, traffic is very core in the internet; second, the realization of traffic is not necessarily a pure copy of the United States.
In 2007, there was no Android, no iPhone. 2007 was the era of Symbian. The characteristic of Symbian is that using the phone keyboard to input Chinese characters is even more painful. Using the phone keyboard to press and hold the search box is even more painful. So we found our answer simple: UCWeb was the core of traffic aggregation in the Symbian wireless internet era in 2007.
This was our core viewpoint for investing in UCWeb in 2007. The core of this decision came from our thinking about an inconspicuous phenomenon of hao123. So I want to say here, as an entrepreneur, when you plan your entrepreneurial vision, don't capture concepts; understand the core details of your core market. See the big from the small. Many great entrepreneurs' inspiration comes from details you overlook; clues hide a lot of useful insights.
Insight is the source of your vision. I have seen many excellent entrepreneurs, whether Zhou Hongyi, Lei Jun, or Ma Huateng, all have strong insight. These insights all come from capturing clues that ordinary people overlook.
When three walk together, one must be my teacher; more importantly, who do you walk with?
"When three walk together, one must be my teacher." I think everyone understands this. But in reality, the key in "When three walk together, one must be my teacher" is: who do you walk forward with?
Why do I want to mention this? Because in the early days, when we talked about entrepreneurship, we often said, "Look at your team, your team's execution, and the importance of the team."
How to judge a team? Many people ask me, and I have talked with some friends. I said, "I look at what kind of wife you marry, and what kind of girlfriend you find." Actually, there is an important point: who you associate with determines your level of excellence.
What kind of people are your entrepreneurial partners determines the quality of your entrepreneurial team. "When three walk together, one must be my teacher." We should learn from the shining points of the people around us.
In my own entrepreneurial process, I have learned a lot from the founders I have invested in for many years. So today, if I were not considering entrepreneurship, when you form a team, would you prefer to form a team of people you can easily convince and admire you, or would you try to find people who are even better than you and can support your entrepreneurship?
Actually, we judge whether an entrepreneur has excellent team ability by looking at who you associate with.
So, when three walk together, one must be my teacher. More importantly, who do you walk with! Xiaomi founder Lei Jun is famous in the industry. When he talked to me in 2010, he said he wanted to build a different startup: "I want to distribute my equity widely because I need enough, as many as possible, excellent people. In the first ten months of Xiaomi, we didn't do anything; we only did one thing: find people."
Actually, many people think finding people is difficult, but first you need to ask yourself: do you deeply realize that "when three walk together, one must be my teacher"? Who is your teacher? Everyone is your teacher, but who do you walk with? So in this matter, first, you should try to find the best people you can get, and their excellence determines how excellent your team is. It's not that if you are excellent enough, you should find people worse than you; this is a misconception many entrepreneurs have, as they tend to find ordinary people who are easy to convince.
Many people say, "I can't handle those excellent people." I agree; it's hard to handle excellent people. But this is another sentence I give you: "Leadership comes from unbiased self-awareness, an empty cup mentality, and the unity of knowledge and action." On this point, many people think leadership charm comes from your achievements and fame. I think neither is true.
True leadership: first, you need to lead a team, and you need to lead yourself. To be a fair and just leader, you must first be fair and just to yourself. Unbiased self-awareness is an extremely difficult thing.
So to this day, I never consider myself a successful investor. I only want to say that I am an investor who loves investment and entrepreneurship. Good unbiased self-awareness not only sees yourself clearly but also doesn't overestimate yourself. When you are honest with yourself without bias, you will find that the people around you gather to you. Because they recognize that you are a trustworthy leader.
Second, an empty cup mentality. For many excellent successful businessmen, especially creative entrepreneurs, it's not about your loud voice; you need to learn to let go and listen. Listening is a quality and ability more important than anything else. Learn to be open and simple. So for some excellent teams, the best management is no management! No management means letting them become self-driven teams, where everyone can manage themselves well. Efficient teams come from self-drive, not from KPI indicators.
Third, how to achieve "uphold integrity and surprise"? Doing subtraction is the most important quality for a startup. Many times, especially in the internet industry, we pursue extremes. The internet is an industry where a point can represent the whole. The internet is a place where a word-of-mouth point can change the entire industry landscape. Betting all the company's resources on the most core point is an extremely difficult thing. This is my last point.
Actually, the internet is a place where disruption and innovation happen every day. There are many innovative ideas every day, but I also want to say that in the internet industry, I see many excellent people who cannot achieve great things. The reason is that they constantly use surprise tactics; how to achieve "uphold integrity and surprise" is extremely difficult.
How to achieve "uphold integrity and surprise"? This is what I observed from my interactions with Zhou Hongyi. Zhou Hongyi is a controversial person, but his understanding of internet traffic is extremely profound. He used to do rogue software. What did he reflect on to return to a state of "uphold integrity and surprise"?
I won't expand on this today; I just want everyone to think and compare: Zhou Hongyi before Qihoo and Zhou Hongyi after Qihoo are different. I think what is called "uphold integrity and surprise" is an important factor in the internet industry.
Many young entrepreneurs here are very creative, but how can you put your creativity in a more prominent position?
First, the most important point is to make products, not do business. Don't just convert traffic into revenue without doing core user value. Good companies can create real long-term value. Many people say Xiaomi is a company that knows how to hype and market. How many people truly understand that Xiaomi is a company with such geek spirit?
It tries to provide users with all the resources in the market, the best value, the best cost-performance, and the best experience. The fans it creates are inseparable from its products. So "uphold integrity and surprise" is an important point in internet entrepreneurship.
--------------------------------------------
......................Cooperation Promotion..............................