创业者做这件事会把投资人吓跑

刘颖

The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question, “What should budding entrepreneurs know about building a business?” is written by Mark Achler, lecturer at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and managing director of MATH Venture Partners.

One of my daughters was recently thinking about going into the family business and becoming an entrepreneur, and asked for some advice. So I began reflecting on hard-fought lessons I learned from nearly 40 years of starting, scaling, and managing businesses:

刘颖

It’s not about you

You may be the center of your mother’s universe, but I hate to break it to you: In the business world, you are not the center of others’. I believe in the servant leader model. You need to be as passionately advocating and dreaming about your customer and employee needs as you do your own. You have to know your customers sometimes even better than they know themselves—how they think, what’s important to them, and most importantly, how you’re going to reach them.

I love the word urgency. Once you discover that pain point that is so urgent and acute, why will they trust your startup to solve it? As a venture capitalist, if you want to whisper sweet nothings into my ear, talk from the voice of the customer and have a clear path to customer acquisition. As we say at our venture fund, MATH Venture Partners, it’s all about sales. The greatest product in the world without customers is just a great product—not a business.

刘颖

Culture eats strategy

The best CEOs define the strategy, bring in the resources, hire the best team possible, and then get the hell out of their way. CEOs are totally dependent on their teams to execute, a lesson that I learned way too late in life.

It wasn’t until I was 50 that I was schooled in culture from the CEO of Redbox, Gregg Kaplan. Back when I worked there in 2009, we had attorneys from some of the larger studios come in one day and threaten to shut us down. Not only did they refuse to continue directly selling movies to us, but they were instructing their distributors to do the same. We were literally at death’s door.

Until we settled with the studios 18 months later, we ended up sending our employees to every retail store that we could find to buy copies of the movies and put them into inventory—each and every week. It was an incredible undertaking and a huge extra effort required from the team. Without the profound belief in the vision of the company and a great working culture, the team would not have been able to rally and sustain that kind of prolonged effort.

刘颖

Raise money for opportunity—not necessity

It’s really hard to raise venture capital. So many entrepreneurs who do get drunk off their success and lose the focus and discipline needed to manage a profitable business. Today, money is relatively available for many venture-backed companies, but there will be a day when the markets turn and money tightens up. You always want to be in control of your own destiny and not reliant upon VCs or banks to keep your business afloat. Smart entrepreneurs focus on the bottom line—no matter how hard the VCs push to scale the business fast.

The CEO of one of our portfolio companies is a great guy and an experienced entrepreneur who has rung the bell already. Upon completing a large round earlier in the year, I sent him a note of congratulations. He wrote back, “We celebrate revenue and customers—not fundraising.”

刘颖

Less is more

I believe in simplicity and I believe in focus. When I hear entrepreneurs tell me all of the different ways their product can be used across multiple markets, I run in the other direction and think to myself, “This is a CEO who doesn’t yet know who his customer is.” One of the questions I like to ask entrepreneurs is, “Which comes first—the product or the brand?” In technology companies, the answer is always the product. But how do you know what to build and what features to prioritize if you don’t understand your customer or your brand? Do less. Keep it simple. Fail fast.

刘颖

企业家内幕网络是美国的一个在线社区，美国创业界最睿智和最有影响力的大咖会在这里及时回答与职业和创业有关的问题。今天为大家分享的是西北大学凯洛格管理学院讲师、MATH Venture Partners公司常务董事马克•阿克勒在“萌芽期的创业者应该知道什么？”这一问题下的回答。

最近，我的女儿也想追随我的脚步成为一个创业人，她想让我给她一些创业方面的建议。所以我认真反思了近40年的创业、管理企业和将企业做大做强的经历，并且总结出了一些来之不易的经验。

刘颖

“你”并不重要

对于你妈妈来说，你就是她的全部。然而在激烈搏杀的商海中，没有人会以你为中心。我很认同“服务型领导”这种说法。你要把客户和员工的需求当成自己的需求去热情地倡导和憧憬。有时候，你甚至要比客户自己还要了解客户，你要知道他们是怎么想的，他们关心什么，最重要的是，要知道你如何才能找到他们。

我很喜欢“紧迫性”这个词。一旦你发现了一个对于客户来说很迫切并且很严重的“痛点”，首先你要考虑，客户凭什么相信你这家小小的创业公司能替他们解决这个痛点？作为一名风投资本家，每当创业者想向我推销他们的创意时，我都会要求他们站在用户的角度来谈，并且要明确地提出怎样让用户掏钱购买你的东西。在我们的这家风投基金，我们最看重的就是销量。哪怕你有世界上最好的产品，如果没有客户，它也只不过是个好的产品罢了，并不是一项好的生意。

刘颖

文化比战略重要

优秀的CEO会制定战略、会利用资源、会招募最优秀的团队，然后只要别妨碍他们干事就行了。CEO的全部工作都要依赖手下的团队来执行，而这个经验是我很晚才学到的。

直到我50岁那年，我才从Redbox公司的CEO格雷格•卡普兰那里接受了企业文化的教育。2009年的时候，我还在Redbox公司工作。突然有一天，有几家大型电影工作室的律师闯了进来，威胁要让我们关门。不光是这些电影工作室不再将电影直接卖给我们，他们还要求他们的分销商也跟着“封杀”我们。可以说我们已经到了生死边缘。

直到18个月后，我们才与这些电影工作室达成合解。而在这漫长的一年半中，我们每周都得派员工去扫荡每家零售店，购买电影的拷贝，然后把它们放在自己的库存里。这是一项非常艰难的工作，需要团队付出大量额外的努力。如果不是对公司的愿景有坚定的信念，如果不是有优秀的企业文化，我们的团队就不可能东山再起，也不可能一直那样苦苦支撑到柳暗花明。

刘颖

融资是为了机会，而不是为了满足一般需要

风险融资真的不是一件容易的事。很多企业被一时的胜利冲昏了头脑，失去了管理一家盈利的企业所必须的专注和自律。今天，对于很多有风投注资的创业公司来说，资金已经不再是一件很为难的事。但总有一天，市场风向会再次转变，资金来源也会收紧。另外作为一名企业家，你当然希望公司的命运掌握在自己手中，而不是交到风投和银行手里。聪明的创业者都要有底线思维，不管风投催着你以多快的速度把业务做大。

在我们投资的这几家公司里，有一家创业公司的CEO是个很优秀的家伙，也是一个经验丰富的创业者，而且已经取得了相当了不起的成功。今年早些时候，在成功进行了一大笔融资后，我给他写了一封贺信，他回信道：“我们庆贺的是收益和用户，而不是融资。”

刘颖

少即是多

我喜欢简洁，我也喜欢专注。每当有创业者告诉我，他们的产品可以应用于多个市场和各种用途时，我常常会不以为然，心里暗暗说道：“这个CEO还不知道他的用户究竟是谁。”我经常喜欢问创业者这样一个问题：“产品和品牌哪个更重要？”在科技界，永远是产品更重要。但如果你不了解你的用户，也不了解你的品牌，那你怎么去打造产品，怎么去优化功能？所以对于创业者来说，少而精才是王道，大而全只会以失败告终。