Five entrepreneurial lessons from Silicon Valley

Five entrepreneurial experiences from Silicon Valley

From Silicon Paririe to VegasTech, entrepreneurs are actively laying a hotbed for the success of local startups, just from attracting talents and funds. Judging from its characteristics, Silicon Valley has a lot of experience worth learning from.

VegasTech is a collective name for technology startups established in Las Vegas. They are already strong enough to compete with Silicon Valley. Case in point: Tracky, a member of the VegasTech startup group that focuses on social collaboration, recently launched an extravagant party at Mike Tyson’s former “Hangover” mansion, with more than 400 people in attendance, free of charge. Food and drinks were served, and the gathering was attended by numerous local entrepreneurs.

But unlike other startups, Tracky did not spend a penny from venture capital firms, and everything was supported by sponsors. Experienced VegasTech entrepreneurs understand the importance of resources, and they will bring people with resources together to help each other when in need.

But Las Vegas startups still have a lot to learn? Especially how to grow into an entrepreneurial ecosystem, including corporate founders, entrepreneurial talents, and funding. From those successful predecessors, VegasTech can learn how to form a good entrepreneurial ecological environment.

The following are five lessons from successful startups:

1. Repeat investment and use the proximity principle.

For VegasTech startup parks and other growing entrepreneurial ecosystems, they need to continue to conduct mergers and acquisitions (M&A) so that investment funds can be reallocated through other companies. For example, Tony Hsieh did not want foreign funds (such as Amazon) to invest in local companies, so he acquired Zappos for US$1.4 billion. At the same time, many business founders also decided to use funds for local investments. But for now, there are no large-scale technology companies in Las Vegas, so at this stage, it will still take some time to form a local merger and acquisition financing circle.

The suggestion for the new entrepreneurial circle is: if a start-up company is acquired and the company suddenly obtains a large amount of funds, the company's senior management should use the funds to reinvest locally to protect the local Entrepreneurship Resources.

2. Start-ups are a recruitment tool.

Another characteristic of Silicon Valley is talent acquisition, which can also be called "acquisition recruitment", which is the act of acquiring the entire company not because of the company's products or services, but just because of the company's talents. . Most companies that recruit through acquisitions are usually established no more than five years ago. In the traditional concept, five years seems to be a very short growth time for a company, but as the update rate is measured in months, technology has not yet Industry, Silicon Valley generally considers five years to be a long time.

3. Media reports and scientific and technological activities are very helpful.

By participating in activities such as 4SqDay (April 16) and Social Media Day (July 30), Vegas, as a technology entrepreneurial entity, began to promote its brand effect. Local media also increased exposure to VegasTech, including radio and Internet promotions.

Publicity through media reports will help attract funds and talents. For example, some technology events such as CES and NAB held in Las Vegas have attracted thousands of technology personnel, media, and many Fortune 500 companies.

4. Profit is better than users.

Silicon Valley companies like Instagram and Foursquare have high market value not because of their profit models, but because they have large user bases. For Silicon Valley, user growth is like a bombshell, and investors will spend huge sums of money to acquire these companies. Although this does not mean that these companies in the VegasTe startup group are not encouraged to have a large user base, this is not suitable for the companies in the Vegas startup group.

The profit growth of companies in Las Vegas is generally in the range of US$500,000 to US$1.5 million. They will find that other than making profits, companies do not have many options to attract investment. The scale of users is very important to these companies. Not a very good choice. In short, it will be difficult for non-Silicon Valley startups to survive if they blindly pursue user scale without developing a feasible profit model in the early stages of their business.

5. The key to corporate survival is to create profits worthy of acquisition.

Since VegasTech does not form an alternating cycle of technology boom and bust, the entire stage from ideation to accumulation of user base will not be too attractive for these companies. Easy money will not be too attractive. ?Make investments unless these companies can generate profits and earn profits. The key to corporate survival is not to pursue some flashy appearance, but to actually generate profits, because profit is the only guarantee for corporate survival. (Of course there are sometimes exceptions)

For startups outside Silicon Valley, profitability is the key to survival. Unlike some startups lying in a hotbed, some experienced entrepreneurs in VegasTech have been honing their survival battles for many years and have continued to grow in an environment with extremely poor financing. It is conceivable that being able to survive in a desert without financial support, once these companies obtain enough funds, their development will be incredible. ;