Li Jun (pseudonym), a college student entrepreneur in Wuhan, once saw an example of "breaking up after graduation": next door to the company, a college student entrepreneur in the same city "985" worked hard with his team for three years and moved from the business incubator to Optics Valley Building. The company has more than 10 employees.
Near graduation, the founder received an invitation from a world top 100 company with an annual salary of 600,000 yuan and decided to leave the company. When the backbone left, the company was dissolved in less than a month. The office next door is still piled with sundries they haven’t taken away.
When the reporter interviewed a number of entrepreneurial tutors, they almost agreed that "the phenomenon of entrepreneurial college students breaking up after graduation is extremely common. These student entrepreneurial teams, born in the ivory tower, are in ‘ Eat small fish ’ It is difficult to take root and grow in the market competition. After struggling, the graduation season has become the last straw to crush them. "
Entrepreneurial upsurge is surging in the campus, so it is even more necessary to think calmly behind the pursuit of dreams: How can China university student partners achieve a "life-and-death leap" from campus to society, so as to gain a firm foothold in society?
"based on the professional field, do their job"
Fan Xiaohu, a doctoral student in computer science at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, spent three years and finally got rid of the "hard bone" of the smart home industry in Wuhan.
In 2011, Fan Xiaohu was admitted to the Computer College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and met three doctoral students with similar age and similar interests, such as Xie Qubo. After class, everyone ate, sang, talked about technology and life, and became good friends who talked about everything.
Three years later, they were deeply inspired by the news that Google bought a smart home company at a high price. "Isn’t this our research field?" After many discussions, four people decided to build a smart home system for the elderly and set up Wuhan Bohu Technology Co., Ltd..
Bohu is the two main creations of the company — — The combination of Xie Qubo and Fan Xiaohu’s names. The four people in the main creative team have their own strengths. Xie Qubo once listed a startup company; The other two are postdoctoral students abroad, mastering the frontier trends in the industry; Fan Xiaohu, who calls himself "Liu Bei", can get a group of "generals" together to fight.
Fan Xiaohu believes that the main reason why the project can run steadily is that they are based on their professional fields, do their own jobs and do what everyone in the team is best at. "How deep the water in this industry is, all four of us have already understood it."
After three years of development, Bohu Technology has gradually determined to target young people, large hospitals and nursing home enterprises, and its annual income has exceeded one million yuan. Fan Xiaohu was also named as "Top Ten University Students of Wuhan Entrepreneurship in 2017" and selected as "3551 Optical Valley Talent Plan".
Guo Guangxin, majoring in architecture in Wuhan University of Science and Technology in 2011, also considered the problem of specialty matching when choosing entrepreneurial projects.
In 2015, Guo Guangxin formed a three-person team and established Wuhan Zhongguo Technology Co., Ltd. He is in charge of software development and design, while the other two are good at operation and one is in charge of sales.
Their entrepreneurial project is a self-service studio. When he was a senior, Guo Guangxin developed a sound-controlled camera induction module for SLR cameras based on his professional background. Just pose and shout out the command, and the corresponding photos will appear on the display screen.
This technical improvement has greatly "solved the pain points of the industry". Originally, the remote control was needed to control the shooting, which greatly affected the aesthetics of the photos. Now, both hands are liberated from the remote control. "With professional ability, we should be the most technologically superior among our peers." Guo Guangxin said.
In November 2018, the renovation of the company’s new venue was completed, and the team also won the silver award in the National Entrepreneurship Competition. The company was named as the "Little Giant" enterprise of Wuhan in 2018.
According to Huang Zihao, an animation major in Huazhong Normal University in 2012, "the team should go far, not only based on the specialty, but also pay attention to aiming at the market". In his senior year, he set up an animation production team, and later established Mu Zi Lan Culture Communication Co., Ltd.. Because of the high cost of animation production, it is difficult for school teachers and students to afford it, but once they take root in the school at first, once they leave this group, it is difficult to survive. When a teacher asks us to do animation, we simply don’t charge money.
Market research shows that most painters like to draw figures, but in fact the positions of figures are saturated. The real market gap is scene production. "We mainly focus on the outsourcing of excellent art", which is the strength of Muzilan team.
"Many college students’ entrepreneurial teams failed to improve their market competitiveness in a segment." Huang Zihao said, "As far as our company is concerned, many animation companies outside have strong comprehensive strength, but we may be better than them in the subdivision of scene production. This is the foothold of our startup company. "
Mu Zi Lan takes animation art as its main business and participates in the artistic production of several animation game projects. In China’s largest animation art outsourcing platform "Mi Hua Shi", Mu Zi Lan has achieved the second place in the country.
"Finding a partner is more important than finding a partner."
"There are many similarities between being a community and starting a business." Fan Xiaohu traced his entrepreneurial origin back to the experience of establishing a student association when he was an undergraduate.
In his sophomore year, Fan Xiaohu, who loved Taekwondo since childhood, founded the Taekwondo Association of Shandong University and developed it into seven schools. From the aspects of club management, business development and off-campus competition, Fan Xiaohu felt "just like expanding a branch". He once led this new student club to stand out among more than 400 student clubs in the school and won the title of Top Ten Club.
An incident made Fan Xiaohu realize the importance of partners for the first time. On the day before the Taekwondo competition, he accidentally broke his leg bone in the second section of the black belt and could not participate in the competition. It never rains but it pours, because I was recuperating in the hospital, I couldn’t sign a contract with the sponsors on time, and a club sponsorship fee was also ruined.
"These little somersaults during college are still affordable." He decided to perform in the school orientation activity 37 days after his fracture. His leg was bandaged and his friends helped him to go to the performance site. On the stage, his partner quietly supported him, and the performance was an unexpected success.
"Entrepreneurship is more complicated than running a taekwondo club, and there will be more accidents in the future." Fan Xiaohu remembers that once, the day before signing the financing contract, the other company went bankrupt and the investment project was ruined in an instant; Years ago, there was not a penny on the company’s books, and several partners took money from home and barely paid their employees.
"Sometimes it is not necessarily good to fight alone. There are a group of partners who work hard with you, and they will not be isolated when they encounter difficulties." Fan Xiaohu knew from the beginning that he had to find a reliable partner to start a business together.
When choosing a business partner, he invited his familiar classmates, and the four people knew each other about their professional abilities and ways of dealing with others. He believes that "finding friends in adversity" is the best choice for entrepreneurial partners.
He calculated the account: he can’t talk to his girlfriend for an hour before going out every morning, and less than two hours after work at 9 o’clock in the evening, with more than eight hours to stay with his partner.
"Finding a business partner is more important than finding an object." He laughed.
"Like-minded" is also the standard for Guo Guangxin to find a partner. The "three partners who study architecture" get along well in character and all understand the importance of partners. Guo Guangxin remembers that a partner once said: "If a person starts a small company, it doesn’t make much sense to take 100% equity, but if the partners work together with Qi Xin to make the company bigger and stronger, even if I hold a small number of shares, it will be enough."
On the issue of shares, Guo Guangxin holds the largest share of the company, and the other two have no objection. "No matter how powerful a person is, after all, his ability is limited. Together, we can push the company to a higher level." Guo Guangxin said.
Clear rights and responsibilities to avoid disputes
Fan Xiaohu has his own set of methods in the distribution of partners’ equity: "First of all, the rights and responsibilities of partners must be clear, there must be black and white, and there must be a dynamic adjustment mechanism." For example, although the shares of the four shareholders are shared equally, they all have corresponding sales tasks, and they can get commission separately for completing each business, following the principle of more work and more pay. "The interests between partners, as long as the shares and profits are reasonable, everyone will be happy to cooperate together."
This point coincides with Guo Guangxin.
Before the establishment of the company, Guo Guangxin did not have a clear concept on how to distribute the shares. He consulted a large number of relevant materials and consulted the entrepreneurial seniors who got 10 million yuan of financing from the same school, and finally divided the shares into 1: 2: 7.
He knows that the problems that college students often encounter when starting a startup company are: blindly talking about friendship between brothers, sharing equity equally among partners, and lacking the main decision makers. It is very common to split up because of disagreement in the later stage of the company’s development. Guo Guangxin believes that it is very important to have a person who can make a decision.
Shortly after the company was established, Guo Guangxin wanted to recruit people to expand his business, but the other two shareholders felt that the business was still immature, which could save the expenses of new employees and let everyone take on more work. Guo Guangxin gathered the shareholders together and calculated the account for everyone. "An intermediate salesman can bring 2,000 yuan for eight hours’ work. Once we increase his workload, we should not only do business, but also be responsible for low-level promotion. The business income is 1000 yuan, and low-level promotion can only bring 100 yuan income, so why not spend 500 yuan to hire another person?" With theoretical and model data analysis, Guo Guangxin finally made a decision to recruit 7 people for the company.
In order to avoid interest disputes, Huang Zihao has always been a sole proprietorship. "I share the risks by myself. If I make money, it belongs to the company. If I lose money, I will still pay everyone.". He believes that in the face of enormous social pressure, the enthusiasm at the beginning of starting a business is extremely easy to dissipate, so the shares are not too complicated.
Ding Yubin, the entrepreneurial tutor of Huazhong Normal University, found that most of the partners of college students’ entrepreneurial teams were classmates and friends, and some of these originally close relationships later became the fuse of contradictions. In the development stage of the project, some people can work together for free, but they break up after achieving certain results.
He introduced that there was a three-person entrepreneurial decoration team. After the company got a list of 800,000 yuan, a partner in charge of on-site construction proposed to divide the money, took away 200,000 yuan in cash, retained some shares for dividends, and left the company.
Zhao Beiping, dean of the School of Entrepreneurship of Wuhan University of Technology, suggested that college students should set the rules of the game before starting a business. Formulate corresponding rules and regulations on the design of equity and voting rights, determine the core figures, grasp the laws of enterprise management, and form a mature enterprise structure, thus maintaining the operation of the entrepreneurial team.
Xu Wenchuan, a senior manager of the Innovation and Cultivation Center of a university, once said in the forum on innovation and entrepreneurship of universities on both sides of the mainland and Taiwan Province, "Encouraging college students to innovate and start businesses is not encouraging them to start businesses alone. If it is very hard for college students to innovate and start a business alone, then it is necessary to encourage team entrepreneurship, especially to encourage students to form teams across departments and colleges to improve the complementarity and anti-frustration ability of innovation and entrepreneurship resources. "
He gave an example. For example, in some innovative and entrepreneurial teams in colleges and universities, some people study business management and are sensitive to finance. Have a plenty of students from the Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, who are proficient in technology; Others come from management colleges and humanities colleges, so that every student’s professional ability can be fully exerted in innovation and entrepreneurship. Only when every college student knows what his strengths and weaknesses are, can all the weaknesses in a team become strengths.
So how to strengthen the cohesion of college students’ entrepreneurial partners in team combat?
Ding Yubin believes that the key lies in creating the management wisdom of college students. This requires college administrators to have both strong leadership skills and team building skills. The professional ability, financial ability and social ability that a helmsman needs can’t be learned from books. It requires entrepreneurial college students to have enough confidence and enough tolerance in society, so that college entrepreneurs can explore and learn through trial and error and grow together with team partners.
(Liu Zhenxing Yang Jie China Youth Daily China Youth Network reporter Lei Yu)
