1. Complaints: Find opportunities for low-risk entrepreneurship from complaints.

This section focuses on "complaining". Three sources of inspiration for finding problems In my opinion, the most important thing entrepreneurs should do when looking for problems is to collect complaints frequently. You should see who is complaining about what is around you. This is a very important way to start a business.

Many people get angry when they hear the word "complaining", saying that "this is negative energy", "people who complain often have no future" and "don't complain" As we all know, when you say "Don't complain", you may have missed a lot of wealth. You know, complaining is likely to contain good low-risk entrepreneurial opportunities.

Facebook was originally a product on the campus of Harvard University. I remember mark zuckerberg revealed in an interview that he heard many students complain that it is sometimes difficult to find the contact information of other students, and there should be a roster of Harvard University (Facebook), which is particularly difficult to promote from the school level. Zuckerberg thinks he can do it faster and better than school, and Facebook is the product of this complaint.

I can give you some more examples. For example, people who travel frequently complain that it is getting harder and harder to take a taxi, so with Didi taxi, they enjoy traveling with * * * *; People who rush to work in the morning and evening complain that "the distance from the subway station to the unit is too far, and they are often late", so with ofo and mobike, they enjoy the bicycle business-although the project is in a difficult situation now, I still think Dai Wei has really found a good entrepreneurial direction, but the pace is too fast; For example, in the past, people often complained that "instant noodles are not delicious, they always taste that way, and they are often unhealthy to eat". Therefore, with the US Mission and Hungry, there is an extremely hot Internet takeaway industry.

This is the entrepreneurial opportunity hidden in the complaint. Whenever you hear someone complaining around you, you can think about whether it is possible to find a way out for future development from this kind of complaint. It is best to think of a solution, but it doesn't matter if you can't think of it. At least you have exercised your business sense of smell and thinking ability.

Although we haven't found a suitable solution to some complaints, with the development of the times, maybe some new technologies will help you find a suitable solution. From now on, listen carefully to the complaining voices around you, find out what customers really need from these voices, and then start to solve them. Low-risk entrepreneurship is sometimes such a simple start.

Insight: insight into the life and soul of customers.

After complaining, let's look at insight, which is the second source of inspiration for finding problems.

Many market opportunities cannot be obtained from people's complaints, so insight is needed. Jobs once said a classic sentence: "We will not do market research outside, only poor products need to do market research."

Customers will always have demand for what they know. The demand is mainly manifested in these aspects: better, more, faster and cheaper, and it is difficult to have any other demand. When people use Nokia and Motorola's mobile phones, have you ever thought that the mobile phone can realize all the functions with only one key? I have no idea. All we can think of is whether the quality of the mobile phone can be better, whether the battery can be more durable, whether the price can be cheaper, and whether the appearance can be more beautiful ... It can be said that Nokia has done its best in these aspects, but it still lost to Jobs' subversive innovation.

Jobs's point of view stems from the famous saying of Henry Ford, the automobile king: "If I ask customers what they want, they will tell me' a faster horse'." Before the popularity of automobiles, the most familiar means of transportation was the carriage. At this time, if you ask the customer, he will naturally say carriage, but he can't imagine the "four-wheeled steel monster" anyway.

Where do subversive ideas like cars and Apple phones come from? Creativity definitely does not come from the complaints of customers now, but from the opinions I want to focus on in this section. What is insight? Insight is an observation that goes deep into the customer's life and soul. You have to know him better than the customer and bring yourself into his life thoroughly, then you can gain insight into some opportunities.

The risk factor of being Party B is extremely high.

I don't know if you have read an old book from the 1990s called The Art of Innovation. One of the authors is Tom Kelly, the boss of IDEO, a famous innovative design consulting company. IDEO used to be the most creative company in America. They helped Apple design the first mouse, helped Wal-Mart design a handcart that is easy to operate and let children sit in, and helped Crest design a toothpaste cover that can be twisted and broken.

Having said that, I would like to remind the entrepreneurs who are Party B ... What IDEO Company does is Party B, and it is the best and most famous Party B in the world. However, every innovation it makes requires a very high R&D cost, but it can only get a one-time return with a very high risk factor. Even if the amount of this return is large, it is still unrepeatable. If it were Party A, it would have to be done again. So I always think that Party B's business model is very dangerous. When you are exhausted in Jiang Lang, the company will go bankrupt.

2, insight into the customer's life and soul

Anyway, when Tom Kelly introduced the source of creativity, he emphasized insight. In his view, customers are "fools" or far less clever than themselves, because customers simply don't know what they need. This view of Tom Kelly has influenced a large number of people and achieved a large number of people.

Once, Tom Kelly gave a keynote speech on insight in Poland, and an audience rushed to take a photo with him and bowed to thank him. Tom Kelly was puzzled and asked him why. The audience explained: "I heard you say that you should be insightful, do it when you get home, and you will make a fortune soon."

What does this man do? He sells cold drinks at the railway station. Before, his business was very dull. After listening to Tom Kelly's speech, he stood on the platform every day to observe the passengers. After a long time, he really observed it.

He found that many passengers would take a look at his cold drink stand and then his watch before getting on the bus. After reading their watches, they got on the bus and left without buying a cold drink. But there is still one minute before getting off the bus, which is enough for passengers to buy cold drinks. Why don't passengers do this? The reason is that human beings are sometimes irrational. The irrationality here is caused by tension. Although there is still one minute before getting off the bus, it is obvious that you can buy cold drinks, but in the case of psychological tension, passengers are more inclined not to make a decision.

I found the problem, so how to solve it? This man's solution is super simple, but extremely effective. He spent 5 zlotys (the monetary unit in Poland) to buy a clock with accurate time in the supermarket and put it in front of the cold drink stand. It is such a simple move that his cold drink sales have doubled. Passengers can turn their heads before getting on the bus and have a look at the drinks they carry with them. When passengers can fully grasp the time, they are no longer nervous, but choose to go to the booth, watch the clock to buy cold drinks, and then get on the bus and leave.

The secret of Zlotti's investment to double sales is insight. If entrepreneurs can master the skills of insight, they will find that there are too many entrepreneurial opportunities in life.

3. Experience: Forget your founder status.

Philip kotler is known as the father of modern marketing, and I like his words very much: "Strictly speaking, there is no product at all, and the only thing customers pay is the experience." To this end, I listed "experience" as the third source of inspiration for low-risk entrepreneurship.

The so-called experience is to forget your founder's identity, treat yourself as an ordinary user and try your own products. The key to experience is to forget your ability, background and identity. Zhang Xiaolong, the person in charge of WeChat products, has a view that is praised by people in the industry. He called it "Xiaobai" mode, that is, thinking about how to make products like Xiaobai. This coincides with my idea.

Don't get me wrong, in my opinion, "Xiao Bai" doesn't mean any insult. There are no omniscient and omnipotent people in the world, and the story of "being born with knowledge" will always be a legend. In the face of unfamiliar fields, people are generally ignorant, and experts are only a few after all. From this perspective, the vast majority of people are "little white".

The curse of knowledge will amplify the risk of starting a business.

One of the most common mistakes made by industry experts is to put their position too high and attach too much importance to personal feelings. They are so familiar with the industry that they form inertial thinking and artificially amplify the risk of starting a business. I call it "the curse of knowledge"-when you are immersed in a certain field for a long time and your mind is full of too much professional knowledge, it is easy to get tired of these professional knowledge and think that others have the same professional qualities as yourself, which is a misunderstanding that low-risk entrepreneurship must avoid.

Bill Gates is a business veteran I have always admired. Without him, there would be no later PC era. However, no one is perfect, and his experience has obvious problems. Windows is indeed an inter-generational product, but it is definitely not a perfect product, and there are various loopholes and bugs. Upgrade every few months, otherwise the running speed will be greatly reduced and the user experience will be affected.

Why is this happening? The reason is actually very simple. For Bill Gates, all bugs in Windows are not bugs. He himself is a researcher. For some small bugs, he can solve them himself. Even if he doesn't have time, just make a phone call and ask a senior software engineer from Microsoft to help him solve the problem. Ordinary Windows users like me don't get this treatment. If I encounter a bug, all I can do is complain. Unless the system crashes, no one can ask professionals to help you solve a few small operational problems. After all, the current labor costs and door-to-door fees are really not cheap.

"Yangchun Baixue" is really nice, but "Xialiba people" can't understand it. Your originality may be "unnecessary" to others. The company needs to make a profit, and "chin beauty" doesn't buy it. Where does the profit come from? My honey, my arsenic, that's what I said.

Experience the product from the user's point of view

I have repeatedly stressed on various occasions that experience is a very important link for entrepreneurs.

When you develop products, please take off your aura first. Never look at your product from the founder's point of view, but think of yourself as an ordinary consumer. If you can't think from the user's point of view, you will naturally make a mistake-think that every product you make will be carefully studied and used by users, which is the taboo of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs must have the ability to quickly switch to the perspective of "little white users", learn to experience first, and then let your employees and their families experience.

Procter & Gamble has set up a large supermarket with an area of thousands of square meters at its headquarters to simulate the daily operation of ordinary supermarkets. In this supermarket, P&G employees only do one thing, that is, they keep putting P&G products in various ways, horizontally and vertically. What they think about every day is how to put it more reasonably, attract customers' attention and let them pay the bill. They not only do their own research, but also invite some people to go shopping at random from time to time, and then secretly observe the buying methods of these people to see if the change of product location will affect the customer's buying experience.

This is an opportunity for business. Business opportunities come from observation and experience, from constantly looking for the best solution. When making any product, whether it is an Internet product, a in addition to formaldehyde product or a product used for stretching, you must thoroughly implement the three sources of inspiration I mentioned-seeking complaints, feelings and experiences. Only in this way can you create products that really solve problems and explore the real way out for low-risk entrepreneurship.