The entrepreneurial era of scientists has arrived. For entrepreneurs from scientific research or technology, technology is a stepping stone, and the long board is very long. But in contrast, they may also face shortcomings in such aspects as marketing and sales.
Yesterday evening, Jingwei Zhang Ying shared on Weibo his 9 sincere dry goods suggestions to the founder with a scientific research/technical background. The core is to accelerate the self-growth and iteration of entrepreneurs from scientific research/technical backgrounds from the perspective of finding eukaryotic partners, strategic HRDs, believing in the power of professional institutions, systematically designing their own all-round growth, and colliding with founders in different fields without limits.
Today we chose to put these 9 suggestions in the public account to release, mainly because I feel that the pictures in the circle of friends yesterday, the typesetting is not so easy to save, the text is not so easy to copy... hereinafter:
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In recent years, Jingwei has obviously switched the investment track, and we have invested a lot in the big medical, hard technology, enterprise services, and intelligent car ecology. In contact with these founders with scientific research attributes, I clearly and deeply feel that they are very different from the founders of the mobile Internet 5 or 6 years ago.
Coming from scientific research or technology, they are authoritative in the professional field and have accumulated profound technology. But often because of the relatively late start-up, the age is relatively older than the mobile Internet founders to start a business. Also because science-oriented and technology-oriented are strong, there will be some in addition to science. Age and rigorous scientific thinking will also bring about the relative solidification of personality, easy to study and think in a single line.
Because we are dealing with them continuously and deeply, helping and empowering, we have seen the best side of many excellent companies that have developed very well, and at the same time, we have also seen a series of regrettable events in the process of entrepreneurship because these founders are very specialized in their professions, but their business is not comprehensive enough.
In the process, we have a lot of thinking. At the same time, in order to be more rigorous, I also discussed with Maggie, the general manager of Xinchi Technology, and the general manager of The Triassic, and they also contributed their own thinking.
We sort out these reflections, for Jingwei, how to help and support the founders of these technical and scientific attributes more effectively when we face them, and how our entire platform can understand the essence. I think it can also be sent out publicly for your reference:
01 Find a business partner and co-founder worthy of a certain stake
Many founders with scientific backgrounds have weak commercialization capabilities, and they need someone who can make up for the work of exploring business models, sometimes including company operations, fundraising, and even all things other than science.
If you find such a suitable person, you can give 1/5 to 1/3 of the original founder's shares, because you have to recognize this person as an equal partner, not a subordinate. Scientists paired with such partners can make your career more powerful and develop rapidly.
Of course, in case a person is wrong, there must also be a certain protection mechanism, which will be discussed in point 3.
02 Find an HRD that has a strategic height, can fight for a long time, and has proven itself in a startup
This person is not simply obedient to the order to perform recruitment actions, but to be forward-looking, understand human nature, can quickly integrate into the industry, understand the trend of this industry, understand the talent of this industry, in addition to being able to cooperate with the founder in finding professional talents, accelerate, but also know how to match the professional talents overflowing in other industries to supplement this team. At the same time, you can also give your own advice for the growth of the organization.
This person is also almost a partner, although his function is HRD, but in the case of tacit cooperation, it will also penetrate into other aspects of the company's operation. This person must be high-allocation, over-allocation, pre-allocation, and in the appropriate case, a certain amount of shares should also be given under the premise of a good protection mechanism.
Strategic HRD and business co-creation in Article 1 are both people who are too important to be important, and they are the true core of a team. These two candidates are also very difficult to find, but this spirit of persistence in finding these people, this emphasis on putting it into action rather than just talking, must be from the earliest days of the company, the first day of its establishment.
03 Believe in the power of professionalism, believe that the rigor of the front can avoid many pits
What you don't understand must be faced with a professional attitude, so from the first day of entrepreneurship, you must find professional institutions in finance, legal affairs, equity options and other aspects to do a good job of design. Make preliminary preparations at sensitive points such as labor contracts, option agreements, old stock repurchases, and employee departures, fill in loopholes, and avoid stepping on pits.
Even if the most core partner mentioned earlier can't keep up with the progress or other tears, it must be resolved within the rules. At the same time, after giving people a choice, do not make value judgments.
04 Systematically design your own all-round growth
We must have a heart and vision, and set aside a certain proportion of time to systematically learn and supplement our own cognition in the market, sales and other aspects.
If you can't do a good job of learning design, then find like-minded founders to learn together. These like-minded people may be the top leaders of fast-growing, same-stage startups from different industries. We believe that only by chatting with a leader at this almost stage will we have a real understanding and harvest of the same frequency.
You can find these leaders through their own methods, or investment institutions, or participate in learning organizations like hundreds of millions, you can first list 7-15, and regularly communicate and collide in weekly units, and this systematic exchange of learning will be of great help to your overall growth. Hundreds of millions of second-term students, Xu Zhaoxia, the founder of Anxin Group, showed her visit schedule at the end of the course, full of a large sheet, with characters, themes, and time, and her growth is also obvious to all.
In addition, if it is an excellent company and has two or three rounds of financing, then there should be at least three or four investment institutions among the shareholders, and attention should be paid to treating each investor of each investment institution differently. Distill the people who are really helpful to you among these investors, give up those who don't mean much to your growth, and focus your time and energy on these few people and let them help you grow. This kind of growth must be the contribution and help of a few people to you, dozens of times the marginalized advice that most people give you.
05 Unlimited collisions with founders in different fields
Extending from point 4, we strongly recommend that founders with a scientific background also communicate more with founders in the same stage or after one or two rounds in other fields. Not only to learn from others, but also to talk about their innovation, to explore their business, to collide without margins, during which it is very likely to discuss new forms of cooperation, new business models, new scientific research achievements and IP commercialization opportunities, and even curve overtaking methods.
The head agency generally has a large number of excellent companies, and it is entirely through them to introduce the founders of the brother companies. You can make this kind of communication more efficient by setting your own learning needs.
06 First intellectual property, then paper
Scientists like to publish new research results, but from a business point of view, we must let intellectual property rights and patents go first, and intellectual property rights must be more important than papers. You should publish your paper strategically and systematically after intellectual property has progressed to a certain level, so that it can stand both commercially and academically.
We must use the business model to determine the layout of intellectual property rights, the rhythm of declaration, and the layout of intellectual property rights to arrange the rhythm of publishing papers. Because your company is already a business organization, you must pay attention to the rigor of business, the secrets of business, and you must think about how to distance yourself from competitors. On the basis of promoting everything through science and technology, the layout of intellectual property rights is the life gate and the moat.
070 Convert market thinking, don't be self-congratulatory, and properly let go of the pride in your heart
The founder of the scientific research background chooses to start a business, in fact, the essence is to enter another field, to be able to break some rules, to be grounded, and even to have wolf nature. Scientific research belongs to scientific research, and business belongs to business.
Scientists tend to think in the right direction and like to think about product forms from the technical route, but the market often needs reverse thinking, and it is necessary to reverse the technical matching according to commercial needs. The transformation of identity also marks the transformation of the way achievements are evaluated, not because they are at the forefront of research and technology and have new breakthroughs, to be able to evaluate each achievement from the perspective of the market, customer recognition is the most important, to let go of some pride as a scientist.
08 Take the founder as the leader to actively learn and understand the policy
Communication and interaction with relevant government departments must be long-term accumulation, positive accumulation, only in this way will the relevant departments and regulatory departments have an understanding of your company. At some key nodes, whether this key point is good or bad, it is possible for the relevant departments to give you more empowerment, or more communication margins. Without these accumulations, it is impossible to expect that when a critical moment is encountered, the support or understanding of the relevant departments will be obtained.
The government encourages scientific and technological innovation, giving a large number of guidance, support, incentive policies and measures, and founders with scientific research backgrounds must take the initiative to learn and understand. In the early days, founders must lead by themselves, lead by example, spend a certain amount of time, have direction, rhythm, communicate with relevant government departments, seek long-term exchanges and collaboration, and after relative maturity and stability, they can introduce GR colleagues to help.
09 Understand human nature and allow the existence of grayscale
The world of scientists is often black and white, and they like to stick to the truth. However, in the actual operation of the company, the existence of grayscale is inevitable, and there must be compromise and tolerance. These grayscales may exist in the treatment of employees, the compromise of business cooperation, the accommodation of terms, and the competition with competitors.
Because not everything can really be right and wrong, scientists like to think about things, don't like to think about people, but many things are still decided by people. At the same time, when friction occurs, if you want to solve the problem, do not dwell on right and wrong, but start from human nature to do empathetic thinking.
How to comprehensively understand human nature, to be able to communicate effectively with people with different personalities, to achieve business goals, to achieve development, we do not expect everyone to be more than eighty, but we must have the consciousness to enhance the mental strength of this piece, in order to transform ourselves from a scientist to an entrepreneur The road is more stable, farther and longer.
The above views and suggestions are based on real cases and real exchanges we have experienced in the past, some summaries, some thinking and adjustments, and some enabling methods.
What Jingwei can do may be to continuously think about various practical scenario problems that founders may encounter in the process of systematically empowering technology entrepreneurs, and make up for the preliminary plan and suggestions, which is also the concept of "post-investment scenario" that we have recently refined. I sent out these suggestions, the first is to remind and encourage myself, and the second is to hope that more technology founders can see it.
These nine suggestions may correspond to only 2 or 3 individuals, but as long as you can really recognize a few of them, take the time to become a structured, process-oriented optimization and improvement path for yourself, it will be helpful for the growth of scientific research attribute entrepreneurs themselves, and there must be additional points for scientific research attribute startups.
I don't expect how much recognition these nine suggestions can be gained, and I look forward to entrepreneurs who really have scientific research attributes after reading these suggestions, and after thinking clearly, the temporary touch is far less than the immediate action. Even if these suggestions only help one company in the end, then our collation makes sense.
Source: Matrix Partners
Share: Ying Zhang
Edit: Zhuo Yong
![Yu Yong, founder of the ACM class at Shanghai Jiaotong University: Teaches to train Chinese Turing Award winners[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)