The new popularity of middle-aged people in large factories: accurate escape from the top, the next entrepreneurship

Wang Long just came out to start a business, and in just half a year, he got two rounds of financing from first-line institutions.

But looking back, on the one hand, it is because he accurately grasped the current popular subdivision track of the database, on the other hand, it is because the timing of his departure is the beginning of Tencent Cloud's lack of growth.

Why? Wang Long mentioned, "When I left, Tencent's stock price was still 780, and many people said that I accurately escaped the top, but I actually didn't think about it so much." Any company will have its own ups and downs, the company treats me well, I just feel like I am facing a ceiling and need to make changes to achieve self-growth and my dreams, so I chose to leave. ”

Prior to founding Matrix Origins, Wang was a former vice president at Tencent Yunyuan, where he was responsible for managing big data and AI-related products and services. He has many years of experience in China, Germany and the United States, and has worked for multinational companies such as eBay, Siemens and VMware.

This may be the intuition of a serial entrepreneur. But more investors have also discovered this fact, "I have met nearly thirty entrepreneurs with a large factory background this year, at least P8 plusus, bytes above 3-1 grade people." Han Yi, executive director of Yunqi Capital, said.

Wang Han, an early investor in the enterprise service industry, also told me, "Now there is indeed an increase in the situation, compared with the previous years before I made my own investment, the most obvious thing is that the development of large factories after the national anti-monopoly is not as expected, including layoffs, the performance of stock prices in the secondary market is not ideal, etc., then everyone will feel that it is better to come out and do something." ”

Take the initiative to leave

"Now from the big factory to start a business, I think there are two kinds of people, one is the professional manager, they have a clear goal, in the big factory to see the high title, high income; the other is indeed a dream, to achieve a dream, to create some value of people." 」 One investor concluded.

"Although it was just starting to start a business, the idea had been brewing for a long time, and the whole time lasted from half a year to a year." Matrix Origin founder Wang Long said. In addition to personal reasons, in Wang Long's view, the time has also arrived.

Choosing this point in time to start a business, in Wang Long's view, there are two core reasons: money and time are ready, and maybe even a problem: money.

First of all, the growth cycle of basic software is very long, to make a good product, and reflect the value in the market, and then return to investors and entrepreneurs, are calculated in ten years.

In the past for a long time, when there was a good C-end market in China, many people were reluctant to do the B-end or basic software market, because the return on investment cycle was too long, investors had no motivation, and the market was also full of take-ism, and over time, the attention of basic software was limited, and there was no soil for development.

In recent years, due to various reasons, everyone's attention and attention to basic software has been significantly improved, and in the trend of industry and technology development, there have been many new opportunities, and the market and users have more recognition of the value of basic software, so that the willingness to do long-term investment has become more.

As the first wave of entrepreneurs who came out of the big factories to make a database, Matrix Origin also got good financing and valuation. It has successively obtained a $10 million angel round of financing led by Wuyuan Capital, followed by Jianfeng Evergreen, Yuanlai Capital and Weiguang Venture Capital, and a $10 million angel + round of financing led by Zhong Ding Capital, Wuyuan Capital, Jianfeng Changqing and Cornerstone Capital.

Similarly, Rocky, who came out of Alibaba, also chose to join the entrepreneurial army last year and founded Weisi Technology.

As a person who has looked at the RPA track early on, Rocky believes that the first batch of RPA vendors in China have completed the education process of the market, and under the new IT architecture, now is a good time to start a business. In addition, Alibaba Cloud's RPA products are also led by him in the 0~1 stage, but only a small team is doing it within Alibaba, and the resources in all aspects are relatively limited, and some ideas and businesses are difficult to develop.

In terms of track selection, Rocky chose an international logistics field that currently has fewer players and is relatively unpopular. In his view, making things bigger and more complete is not suitable for the planning of Weisi Technology, they are more inclined to do subdivided industries with smaller entry points, closer to the industry and users, and can bring greater value.

Perhaps precisely because the incision is small enough, Weisi's products have quickly completed the verification of business models in the field of logistics. It is reported that Weisi's registered users have exceeded 3,000, there are hundreds of customers, and at the end of last year, it obtained tens of millions of yuan angel round financing led by Yuanjing Capital and followed by Liangcang Fund, and this year it has obtained byteDance's investment.

Although Wang Long and Rocky are emphasizing that they chose to leave because they encountered development bottlenecks, it is a fact that we have seen that the speed of Alibaba and Tencent has gradually slowed down in promoting the digital transformation of the industry.

When it comes to the reasons behind this entrepreneurial wave, many practitioners believe that there are the following points:

First, the economy of the big factories is not as good as in the previous two years, which is a reality that cannot be ignored. Second, the Internet giants have also reached a period of transformation in their youth, just like Microsoft in 2005. The relatively high-level management in the big factory has also changed from the "what you want to do" in previous years to the situation of "what you want to do but can't do". And some of them, instead of lying flat, it is better to choose to start a business, after all, the money outside is not difficult to take, and there can be a sense of achievement. Third, in recent years, the degree of openness of listing has been relatively high, which is easy for entrepreneurs to have the illusion that it is too easy to go public.

Another Alibaba entrepreneur told me, "When I first went to Alibaba, I wanted to do digital transformation, and now I can't push it in Ali and found a bottleneck." This bottleneck is actually related to China's digital industrial capacity, and we need to admit that there is still a gap with the digital industry capability of the entire United States. ”

An analyst, who did not want to be named, also said, "The platform-based big factory went very fast in the early days, because it mainly serves Internet companies, which are barrierless and naturally acquired when using digital technology, and their business models are seamlessly connected with digitalization." In fact, large enterprises in the Chinese industry have not yet achieved seamless docking with digital technology, and large enterprises have thresholds when using these technologies, and they also face great challenges at the business level. ”

In the view of some entrepreneurs, the current digitalization in China has reached a new turning point, and it is necessary to promote digitalization in the industry, rather than relying only on the platform to promote digitalization. Then you need people who have sat in platform companies to discuss digital transformation before and come out.

Therefore, when they choose, they will first look for an industry that can have a huge value return in digital remodeling; secondly, the digital foundation of this industry is relatively weak, and there is room for reshaping and upgrading; third, they hope that the digital trend of this industry can get the consensus and support of the whole society.

In addition, due to the experience and accumulation of large factories, these managements can have more advantages than the vast majority of entrepreneurs in terms of industrial environment, policy guidance and industry impact, and can have a deeper understanding, while not making mistakes in the general direction.

Of course, their background is not all advantages, many of them actually do not have or are not good at doing 0 to 1, because in the previous enterprises, they were more with large teams to fight.

Another well-known reason is the coldness of capital markets today. In this regard, more than one entrepreneur talked about choosing the crisis moment that the public thinks, often only need to take a step forward, you can see the opportunity. At this time, the cost of starting a business is also very low, and the opportunity cost is also very low.

Who is a scarce species in the eyes of investors

From the intuitive feelings of investors: "This year, there are more people out of the byte, and more people came out of Ali last year, in the entrepreneurial market, ali is a unique existence, they have a circle of their own." Tencent's game business is completely different from the people who come out of the advertising business, and the people in Tencent Cloud do not have tencent's brand, but the color of consulting companies will be more. The characteristics of the people who come out of the flying book are relatively young, and the things they do are also more product thinking. ”

Wang Long admits that as a person who has been working in the digital field for twenty years, he has experienced the ups and downs of many large companies and the cyclical changes in many industries. In fact, every industry rises and falls, when the big wave is sandy, there will be this kind of entrepreneurial boom from the big factory, and the United States has experienced many rounds, which is not surprising and normal. China's Internet has developed rapidly for more than 20 years, and large factories have gathered many outstanding talents, and then encountered the general trend of these years, there are many opportunities to change, and there will naturally be more people who choose to start a business.

Of course, more importantly, in the current capital environment, the real high-level people from the big factory to start a business, is still not bad money.

An entrepreneur who did not want to be named said that when investors knew he was going to start a business, many people took the initiative to come to the door and were willing to give money. Wang Long also said: "At least the first two rounds of investors have taken the initiative to find us for communication, and then choose to invest in us." ”

But for investors, in fact, the most important thing is not the background of the entrepreneur, but more concerned about how high the ceiling of the product and business is.

Talking about the pros and cons of the background of the big factory, Rocky said that it is clear that investors will not worry about products and technology, after all, previous experience has proved the team's ability to productize 0 to 1. However, investors will pay special attention to whether the product can quickly land and run through the model, which is the previous experience gap of many large factory entrepreneurs.

It is reported that the most scarce founder on the market now is that he has both technology and market, and he understands both technology and commercial thinking and ability.

In the head agency, the two sides basically chat about one round to two rounds, you can determine the willingness to invest, and the price of the angel round will not be particularly cheap, the dollar basically has to run to one hundred million to two hundred million dollars upwards, if it is a case of renminbi, basically to three hundred million yuan.

Flywheel Technology is such an example, a few days ago Flywheel Technology announced the completion of more than 300 million yuan of angel round and angel + round of financing, investors are many IDG Capital, Sequoia China and other top VCs. Through our exchanges with the founding team, we found that its founder Lian Linjiang was not only responsible for technology and products during his time at Baidu, but also explored commercialization in many industries.

Wang Han told us: "We are not simply optimistic, a technology geek or a big bull in the industry, most of these technology entrepreneurs are often immature when they go to business, but he feels that his single point of technology is particularly cattle." ”

On the contrary, although the big factories are now a bit weak, it still provides a good soil for China's entire digital industry, such as doing real-time analysis engines, coming out of the box horse to do supply chain scheduling, which have been experienced in the business scenarios of large factories, and such technologies are the most vital.

In addition, she also said that their characteristics are very understanding of the combination of business and technology, because many middleware like Alibaba Cloud, or database products, are to be commercialized, so they themselves are also going to run customers.

In the choice, investors have already had a clear portrait of entrepreneurs in their hearts, more than one investor said that they will prefer such people: they used to be a very good technical talent, leading the team from 0 to 1 to n, and after the baptism of commercialization in the market, very aware of customer needs, although now may not be in the technical line, but in the grasp of the entire product direction, the analysis of customer needs, or the structure of customer needs, can grasp the rhythm very well.

Is the big factory fragrant or not?

In addition to the companies mentioned above, more people are indeed getting more financing.

In May 2021, led by Zhou Weilin, a former executive of Ant Group, Aloudata Daying Technology was founded, and 3 months later, it was announced that it had completed tens of millions of yuan of angel round financing, which was exclusively invested by Sequoia China Seed Fund; in June 2021, DingTalk founder Chen Hang left Ali to create two hydrogen and one oxygen. Two Hydrogen One Oxygen is a technology start-up enterprise in the field of cross-border e-commerce, and has completed the angel round of financing, and the investor is Yuanjing Capital.

However, these executives' entrepreneurial projects are not tracks that can see market-oriented effects in one or two years. They often take the angel round or the angel + round of financing, then begin to disappear from the public eye, and then in their respective fields, may be open source communities, may be subdivision tracks, gradually emerge, and look forward to gaining a foothold in the market.

However, in the past two years, not every entrepreneur with a large factory background has been favored by capital like Wang Long and Rocky.

For entrepreneurs, personal ability is important, but the choice of timing often determines the end of entrepreneurship. In the final analysis, entrepreneurship is an art that needs to gather "the right time, place and people".

The current environment is not good, but many funds are still crazy investment, but also driven by emotions, which has caused these entrepreneurs to have a wrong understanding.

Han Yi added, "Many people in this round have not yet thought clearly about some essential issues, and it may be that the time is relatively short, which is an intuitive feeling of mine." ”

Some investors pointed out: Now many entrepreneurs with such a background think that starting a business is very simple, and even a little bit like catching ducks on the shelves, some people may be optimized, think that entrepreneurship is a new way out, can not raise money may not do it, and then continue to find a job.

Among them, there are still some people, they may only go to the big factory for two years, when they go, the company's development is better, in the comfort zone, the rank is relatively high, but also did not fight.

One of the characteristics of them is that they are very good at storytelling, they will add transactions and traffic, of course, their shortcomings are also obvious, there is no commercial boundary cognition, they may not have taken on such responsibilities.

The entry points of these people's entrepreneurial projects are also various, one is related to their previous business, such as local life or people who are hungry, they will do some projects that are partial to brand supply chain and store digital management; for example, people who come out of Hema may do digital operations of new brands and so on;

For example, people who come out of the cloud business will do some database, number warehouse, lake warehouse integration projects, and some will do some collaboration tools. Because several startups in the United States were valued at tens of billions of dollars last year, it also drove the mood of Chinese VCs, of course, there are some mavericks who do business that has nothing to do with his background, these people are more distinctive.

It should be pointed out that some companies that do tool products have a relatively low cost of starting a business, but if it is some projects with several warehouses, the cost is still quite high, and not everyone dares to do it.

Then, in this way, from the perspective of investors, in the face of such entrepreneurs, it will be somewhat bottomless.

An investor said bluntly: "I think the entrepreneurs in these two years are too speculative, sometimes the business may have to stick to many years, they do not have this psychological expectation, they feel that they can do well in three or five years, but it is possible that three or five years have just begun, so it still feels not very solid." ”

Although I have met many entrepreneurs with large factory backgrounds, there are still a few who can let investors shoot. "Last year, two or three of them came out of this kind of big factory, and this year there are two more in the process of delivery."

(Wang Han in the text is a pseudonym, text/Zhang Xue Editor/Zhang Lijuan Source/Tozhong.com)