你为什么要创业?如果是这 8 个原因就危险了
编者按:创业杂志《Foundr Magazine》发行人 Nathan Chan总结了 8 个错误的创业原因。
如果你想成为一名企业家,那么你并不孤单。《社交网络》和《乔布斯》这些明星云集的电影已经把创业文化推向众人的焦点。因此,有那么多人正在考虑走上了创业之旅也并不奇怪了。
然而不幸的是,那些对光芒四射的创业精神的描写可能会促使一些人因为错误的原因而去创业。错误的起步,往往会导致这些企业家最终创业失败。
为了避免创业失败,在出发之前,你需要确保自己的创业之旅并不是源于以下 8 个原因:
1.要成为百万富翁
巨额财富往往会诱使人们创业,但用金钱作为自己的目标,当你开始创业时就会完全呈倒退的趋势。
你的客户对你是否变得富有并不感兴趣;他们感兴趣的是你的业务所产生的价值。作为一个创业者,你的目标应该是满足你的客户对价值的需要。
注重价值,钱也会随之而来。
2.要创造被动收入
啊,是的,很多创业者的终极梦想是:把系统放在那里就可以产生无尽的收入......但不要自欺欺人,这种情况也只是一个梦想。
除非你足够幸运地继承了一笔财产,否则没有真正的被动收入来源。在所有收入的背后都是很长时间的汗水积累。尤其是当你是一个新的创业者,你会发现,你产生的每一分钱都将是辛苦挣来的。如果你没有做好准备通过漫长而艰难的工作来挣钱,你的业务会遭遇失败。
3.证明你可以
也许你觉得你取得的成就还不够。你需要利用一件额外的事来证明你的价值,这件事就是一个成功的企业。
事实上,这样一个企业绝不会满足你的不安全感。反而,创业会放大和恶化这些不安全因素。
如果你需要证明你 “能做到这一点”,你需要开始治疗,而不是创业。
4. 跟着你的激情走
谁不想放弃日常工作,去做 100%喜爱的事情呢?
基于你的激情创业,虽然这是可行的,但是成功的企业家不能只专注于这一标准。
至少在初期,企业主往往要花费更多的时间在销售和市场营销上,而不是他们喜欢的工作上。如果这听起来并不是你喜欢的事,那么在你喜欢的领域的找一个工作,可能会比创业更好。
5.为了别人放弃工作
虽然作为一个企业家能够在决策方面有更多的自主权,但你永远是要对别人负责。别人可能是你的客户、投资者,甚至是目前的市场趋势,企业家需要让其他人尽量的开心。
6.要成为著名的 CEO
着眼于名声,必然导致创业失败,也会导致名声的失败。
如果你的成功指标包括媒体的关注,那么你在第一个新闻发布会后就会很快被挤出市场。名声就像金钱一样,为别人产生重大价值后名声自然会有,它不是苦苦追寻而来的。
7.摆脱繁重的工作
作为一个新的创业者,你在初期需要做很多基础和繁重的工作,然后才能将这些工作外包给别人。此外,你需要定期做很多工作。
上门推销、客户支持和数据录入等工作最初将全部是由你负责的。开始创业,你需要做好准备。
8.要改变这个世界
俗话说的好,“你在改变世界之前,得先付清房租。” 很少有成功的企业家一开始就有解决一个巨大的世界性难题这样崇高的目标。
成功的企业,不管表面上看起来多么光鲜亮丽,都始于一个特定的市场,着眼于解决一个人们关注的问题。如果你想要增加你成功的机率,你也应该这么做。不用担心,这样做之后,你会很快到达改变世界的阶段。
最后,重要的是要记住,一个成功的企业是通过产生大量的价值来实现的。你的目的应该是为你的市场解决一个痛点,并且利用一个真正棒的方式去解决。一旦你做到这些,成功的可能性是无限的。
These 8 Crazy Reasons for Becoming an Entrepreneur May Ultimately Lead to Failure
If you want to become an entrepreneur, you’re not alone. Star-studded films like The Social Network and Steve Jobs have put startup culture in the limelight. It’s no surprise so many people are considering embarking on the entrepreneurial journey.
Unfortunately, however, these glitzy portrayals of entrepreneurship may motivate some to start a business for the wrong reasons. And by putting the wrong foot forward, these entrepreneurs may ultimately trip and fail at their ventures.
But this doesn’t have to be you. Before starting out, avoid failure by ensuring you’re not pursuing entrepreneurship for the following wrong reasons:
1. To become a millionaire.
The chance of huge wealth often lures people to entrepreneurship, but having money as your goal when you start a business is completely backwards.
Your customers are not interested in making you rich; they’re interested in the value your business generates. As an entrepreneur, your goal should be to fulfill your customers’ need for value.
Focus on value, and the money will follow.
2. To create passive income.
Ah, yes, the ultimate dream: a hands-off system generating endless revenue . . . but don’t fool yourself into thinking that that's anything more than a dream.
Unless you’re lucky enough to inherit a fortune, no source of outcome out there is going to be truly passive. Behind all income lies hours of sweat equity. Especially when you're a new entrepreneur, you'll find that every cent you generate will be hard-earned. If you’re not prepared to work long and hard for your money, your business will fail.
3. To prove that you can.
Maybe you feel that you haven’t accomplished enough yet. You want an extra notch on your belt to prove your worth, and that notch is a successful business.
The reality, though, is that a business will never fulfill your feelings of insecurity. If anything, entrepreneurship will reveal and worsen those insecurities.
If you need to prove that you "can do it," you need to start therapy, not a business.
4. To follow your passions.
Who among us wouldn’t want to quit our day job to do work we love 100 percent of the time?
While it’s feasible to build a business around your passions, successful entrepreneurs cannot focus on that criterion exclusively.
At least initially, business owners tend to spend more time in sales and marketing than actually doing the work they love. If this doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, finding a job in the field you love may be a better bet than starting a business.
5. To stop working for somebody else.
Although being an entrepreneur allows for more autonomy in terms of decision-making, you'll always be accountable to someone. Whether that someone is your customers, investors or even existing market trends, entrepreneurs need to keep others happy as much as employees do.
Although the dynamic is not the same as being an employee, you’ll always be working for someone.
6. To become one of those famous startup CEOs.
Focusing on fame is a sure-fire way to fail at entrepreneurship as well as to fail at being famous.
If your success metrics include media attention, you’ll be out of business soon after your first press release. Just like money, fame follows a person who generates massive value for others, not those who seek it.
7. To leave the grunt work behind.
As a new entrepreneur, you’ll do a lot of ground and grunt work before you grow your business to the point when you can outsource these tasks to others. You'll do a lot of work, period.
That’s right: The cold-calling, customer support and data entry will all initially be up to you. Be ready.
8. To change the world.
As the saying goes, before you change the world, you’ve got to pay your rent. Very few successful businesses start out with such lofty goals as solving a huge world problem.
Successful ventures, despite appearances, start with a specific market and the aim of solving a laser-focused problem. Yours should too if you want to increase your chances of success. And, don’t worry, you’ll get to the world-changing stage soon enough.
In the end, it’s important to remember that a successful business is achieved by generating massive value.
Your desires should be fully superseded by the goal of solving a painful problem for your market and solving it in an awesome way. Once that piece is in place, the possibilities for success are limitless.
本文编译自:entrepreneur.com
以色列大数据公司 Anodot 获 300 万美元 A 轮融资
Anodot日前在 A 轮系列融资中获得 300 万美元,投资方为 Disrupt-ive,融资总额已达 450 万美元。
Anodot 是一家提供实时分析和异常检测的大数据创业公司,成立于 2014年6月,总部位于以色列,还在森尼维尔市、加利福尼亚、以色列的瑞安那等多地成立了办事处。
Anodot 通过已获得专利的机器学习算法,实时在大量的数据中发现异常的数据并把他们转为有价值的商业信息,以消除商业观察中的延迟,支持快速的商业决策,目前主要应用在广告技术、电子商务和物联网行业。
值得一提的是创始团队成员都是连续创业者,Anodot 的 CEO David Drai 曾是 Cotendo 公司的联合创始人兼 CTO,这家公司最后被 AKamai 以两亿六千八百万美元收购。而 Anodot 的首席数据分析专家 Dr.Lra Cohen 是惠普软件的前 CTO。研发副总裁 Shay Lang 同样有多年相关经验。此外,董事会的成员还包括 Impreva CEO 兼总裁 Anthony Bettencourt,O’ Reilly Media 的首席数据分析师 Ben Lorica。
今年早些时候就有行业分析称,BI 将会在未来快速发展,到 2018年 之前,有望以每年8.3%的增率、两百亿美金的市值增长。正如很多 BI 公司已在 2015年 拿到了融资,例如以色列创业公司 Pyramid Analytics 和 Sisence 都在今年获得了 3000 万美元的投资,Looker 也在今年3月 份融到了 3000 万美元,Adaptive Insights 则在 6月 份获得了 7500 万美元。
Disrupt-ive 的合伙人兼 Anodot 董事会成员 Tal Barnoach 此前曾发表声明:“通过自动化、实时的对大数据指标和关键信息进行提取分析,来变革商业智能,这有着巨大的市场潜力。”
Anodot 的 CEO David Drai 也表示:“拿打车 APP 来说,订单都是基于短信系统,若出现问题则至少需要 3 天来进行修复,动则会损失上万美元。这就是我创立 Anodot 的初衷,希望利用机器学习和自动监测来进行实时分析,降低由延迟发现问题造成的损失。”
据悉,知名科技公司 WIX 和 Avantis 都已是 Anodot 的客户,本轮融资将用于在物联网、电子商务、广告技术等的市场扩张。
Israeli business intel startup Anodot scores $3 million in Series A
Anodot, a business intelligence startup that specializes in anomaly detection, exited stealth on Wednesday and announced a $3 million Series A funding round led by Tel Aviv- and New York-based Disrupt-ive Fund. Its total funding to date is $4.5 million.
They use machine learning algorithms to identify system anomalies. Already counting prominent tech companies Wix and Avantis among their clientele, the new round will help them expand their sales strategy toward IoT, e-commerce, and adtech companies abroad.
“There is a huge opportunity to disrupt the BI market by enabling automated and real-time insights into big data pools of metrics and KPIs,” said Disrupt-ive Fund general partner and Anodot board member Tal Barnoach in statement to the press.
Its co-founders have impressive resumes: CEO David Drai is also the co-founder and former CTO of Cotendo, which was acquired by Akamai for $268 million, and the former CTO of Gett. Chief Data Scientist Dr. Ira Cohen is the former CTO of HP Software and VP of R&D Shay Lang has experience at several tech companies. Their board includes the likes of Imperva CEO and President Anthony Bettencourt and O’Reilly Media chief data scientist Ben Lorica.
“As a mobile taxi app, SMS text orders were dropped by the carrier, but it could take up to three days to spot critical issues and fix them, costing tens of thousands of dollars per incident,” Drai said. “That’s where I got the idea for Anodot—to employ the latest advances in machine learning to detect performance problems automatically and in real-time, eliminating the latency.”
BI is flying high
The business intelligence market is expected to grow 8.3% per year to a value of $20.8 billion in 2018, according to an industry analysis by MarketsandMarkets published earlier this year. Consequently, BI companies have raised a lot of money in 2015. Fellow Israeli startups Pyramid Analytics and Sisense both raised $30 million rounds this year. Other companies include Looker, which also received $30 million in March, and Adaptive Insights, which brought in $75 million back in June.
The company was founded in June 2014 by co-founders CEO David Drai, Chief Data Scientist Dr. Ira Cohen, and VP of R&D Shay Lang. They maintain offices in Sunnyvale, California and Ra’anana, Israel.
本文来源:geektime.com
硅谷
2015年12月15日
硅谷
特朗普见硅谷科技巨头们,他们说了些什么硅谷技术领袖们共同发现一个无法逃避也很难用创新方式解决的难题:如何在接下来的会议上面对候任总统特朗普。
硅谷技术领袖们一直试图用创新颠覆来解决难题,但在美东时间14日下午的2点,他们共同发现一个无法逃避也很难用创新方式解决的难题:如何在接下来的会议上面对候任总统特朗普。后者不但从价值观到施政纲领与他们大相径庭,而且还曾口无遮拦的对他们中的一些人进行了人身攻击。
硅谷唯一高调支持特朗普的 Peter Thiel 坐在了特朗普的左手位置,而候选副总统 Mike Pences 坐在其右首。参与会议的科技领袖大约在20名左右,包括亚马逊 CEO 贝索斯,苹果 CEO 蒂姆·库克、微软 CEO 纳德拉、特斯拉 CEO 马斯克和 Google 的创始人拉里·佩奇。代表Facebook参加的不是 CEO 马克·扎克伯格,而是鼓励女性追求自己职业发展的的 Facebook COO 雪莉·桑德伯格。
特朗普左侧依次是候选副总统麦克·彭斯、Facebook COO 桑德伯格、Google创始人拉里·佩奇、亚马逊创始人贝索斯;右侧依次是Peter Thiel、苹果CEO蒂姆库克、甲骨文的联席CEO Safra Catz、特斯拉创始人马斯克
除了Peter Thiel,组成硅谷科技生态的风险投资者无一被邀请参加这次会谈。
但特朗普的家庭成员却是这次会议的参与者,这其中包括特朗普的女儿伊万卡和儿子埃里克以及小唐纳德。
图片来源于Huffionton Post 白宫记者 Christina Wilkie
和与奥巴马会晤时的收敛不同,特朗普似乎并没太多顾忌参会者的感受。
他虽然一开场就赞扬了这些科技领袖,但却更为浓墨重彩的称赞了 Peter Thiel 所具有的远见,并且一度亲昵地拍着他的手。 这显然是个让别的与会者尴尬的时刻。
他还说:"我在这里是想要帮助你们的……现在你们得喜欢我了,起码多喜欢一点点……”
在发现有记者通过视频记录这些谈话后,记者被赶出了会议室。
这次会议开始前并没有定下要讨论的议题日程,但“让更多的工作留在美国”是特朗普一定会提到的话题之一。
而在会议的前一天,IBM说会计划在美国国内新增招聘2.5万人。IBM的CEO Ginni Rometty 现在是特朗普顾问团成员,也参加了这次会议。
但很难说特朗普能否在政策上对科技公司们让步。
例如特斯拉创始人 Elon Musk 会希望政府对新能源更为支持。但特朗普却希望复兴石化行业,并且很有可能任命埃克森美孚的董事长为美国国务卿。
除此之外,几乎所有的硅谷公司都仰赖技术移民给它们带来的在研发方面的人力成本优势,但特朗普很可能会坚定的要求他们把工作优先给予美国公民。
更别说这些公司大多都在研发包括无人车在内的人工智能技术,而这些技术会减少就业。
硅谷一些从业者认为这些技术领袖应该用拒绝会面来表达自己的立场。
“也许有人会希望这是一次实质性会谈,但对我而言显而易见的是,这会是一场技术怪胎真人秀。这些科技富豪们去拜见特朗普,但除了轻易丢掉自己的尊严外,什么都得不到。” Kara Swisher,硅谷科技媒体 ReCode 的创始人在一篇言辞激烈的文章中这样说。
但乐观者依然会希望此类接触能最大可能地为硅谷和美国的科技产业争取利益,使特朗普在相关政策上不会对科技业太过严厉。
Elon Musk 和 Uber 创始人Travis Kalanick 显然持有这样的态度。他们在当天早先时候被宣布成为特朗普内阁顾问团成员。而在这之前,甲骨文的联席 CEO Safra Catz 也提前会见了特朗普,并说无论如何都会尽可能帮助总统。
Musk和库克还会和特朗普有一个单独的会谈。
也有风险投资者认为特朗普不会真的影响到硅谷。
“我不觉得特朗普会对硅谷有很大影响。他充其量是带给全世界一个警告:我不会按常理出牌。但作为我们这样风投行业的人,不按常理出牌是很正常的现象。”硅谷创业者学校 Draper University 的 CEO Andrew Tang 说,“这个职业就是不按常理出牌,如果要按照常理出牌,我们就不会去投资那些和传统巨头对着干的小公司了。” 他同时也是风险投资公司 Draper Dragon 的合伙人。
但在记者被赶出会议室之后,能够让公众知道这个会议究竟谈了什么的信息少之又少。会议结束后,唯一发表声明的贝索斯也表达得非常含糊。“我分享了我的一些观点,认为政府应该将创新一直作为主要支柱,这会在整个国家创造大量的工作,不仅仅是在科技行业,而是在各个产业,例如农业、基础建设、制造业……所有的行业。”他说。
最后,奉上这些科技大佬们参会时的照片。亮点也许在于,他们脸上自带的表情包。
左侧是亚马逊创始人贝索斯,右侧是Google创始人拉里·佩奇。图片来源于路透社
施密特(Eric Schmidt),Google 母公司 Alphabet 董事长,曾任Google董事长席位.照片来源于路透
中间是 Facebook COO 雪莉·桑德伯格.照片来源于路透
作者:徐涛 来源:36氪