US SEC is taking the jobs of Chinese SEC

US SEC takes the Responsibilities of Chinese SEC to investigate into Chase. Interesting If I could vote, will vote Mary White for her second term if any.!!!
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s anti-bribery unit is investigating whether JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) hired the children of Chinese officials to help its business, The New York Times reported, citing a confidential government document.
The bank hired the son of a former Chinese banking regulator who is currently chairman of China Everbright Group Ltd., a state-controlled financial company, while its Hong Kong office employed a Chinese railway official’s daughter, according to the report. After each appointment, the bank secured assignments from companies connected to the new hires’ parents, according to the report.
The bank has not been accused of any wrongdoing, according to the report. The government document and public records cited by The New York Times do not indicate that the employees helped JPMorgan secure business or that they were unqualified, according to the report.

Stay defensive from now

What lines ahead of us for the interest rate ? Concerns the Fed may curtail the bond buying, known as QE, helped push the yield on the 10-year Treasury note as high as 2.61 percent from as low as 1.63 percent in May. The carry trade effect caused the market turmoils in both US and Asian market last week as Chinese market hit 4-year low. And over the weekend, William Dudley, president of the Federal reserve bank of NY came out to clarify what Ben has said last week. However, we all know, Bernanke really meant what he said, the tapering of bond purchase will become reality in the coming 6-12 months. He just spoke in a way to test the market and found out only 5% correction happened and became stabilized with assistance from Central bank of China. So in short, a risk averse investors do not want to allocate to bonds in your 401k starting from now if you have not done so previously.

The money outflows from SAC may trigger sell-offs in some illiquid assets

Both SAC and its founder Steven A. Cohen have been at the epicenter of a federal investigation into insider trading for several years. However, the situation is getting worse recently as the Justice Department's case against the firm and Cohen appears to be ramping up.

Several employees have been charged with securities fraud, and the fund agreed to pay the SEC $614 million to settle those charges. But some clients became spooked two weeks ago after SAC told investors it had officially stopped cooperating with the government. Sources say many of SAC Capital's long-time investors, including the Blackstone Group and Morgan Stanley, are taking their money and walking away from one of the best-performing hedge funds of all time.

Most of time, when the prime brokers or institutions pull themselves out from a hedge fund, the fund must liquidate some of its assets for redemption. MS, on behalf of its investors, invested about $180 millions into SAC. And Blackstone had positions about $550 millions. So a total amount of $730 m will be taken out in a short time. This is still not the end, and sometimes it is almost certain this is not an end. A ripple effect of redemption driving up by investors who run fast to get themselves out may rush in within a short-time window. We will watch the progress closely in the following days.

The Online Streaming Music Service -- The unavoidable threat to Apple iTune/IPhone/iPod online music business

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It’s been over a decade since the first Apple iPod emerged on the scene, disrupting the music industry and prompting the inevitable shift towards digital. It was a great debut for the almost out-of-business comapny, Apple computer, to turn around in its history. When it was first introduced, this pocket-sized music player went head-to-head against the now legacy playback formats that previously dominated the recording industry, including CDs and vinyl records. While the sound quality of an mp3 file will never match the fidelity of a record due to file compression, the added convenience of being to carry one’s entire music library in his pocket has forced the hands of music execs and fueled the development of new music business models for the transmission and playback of our favorite beats.

And since that, iTune/iPad hardware-software co-design has evolved as the MP3 industry's dominant design model, while motivating other competitors to understand and mimic its eco-system. Through endless efforts by designers in the industry, the process innovation eventually brings up the new type of business model, the online streaming music services, provided by companies, such as Spotify and Pandora.

Without too much surprise, Google announced at its I/O developer conference that its service would allow users to combine their existing music libraries with Google's millions of available tracks to create their own playlists. That puts the new streaming product in direct competition with on-demand products like Spotify and Grooveshark. But the product also features radio stations, which could pit it against other internet radio services like Pandora. Many on-demand services also provide radio options.

The disruption model by Prof. Christensen allows us to explain the MP3 player market as a new disruptive innovation that needed an integrated platform due to the complexity and initial disaggregation of music on the Internet.

As described in Christensen’s context, when the functionality and reliability of a product are not good enough to meet customers’ needs, then the companies that will enjoy significant competitive advantage are those whose product architecture is proprietary and integrated across the performance-limiting interfaces in the value chain. The initial MP3 player industry had characteristics similar to a traditional PC, such as a hard disk interface and a processor to convert digitized music into analog sound. These MP3 players seemed ready-made for modularization. As the case points out, the technical hardware had all of the key ingredients that Baldwin and Clark highlighted as necessary properties for modularization including module partitioning and hidden module capability in hard drive disks, an interface specification based on PC interfaces for things such as hard disks, and system compliance and testing specifications based on minimum performance requirements for hard disks. All of these ingredients would allow for a market based on modularity. However, the music industry and the MP3 files, that had become the standard digitized music file format, were not easily integrated into these those assembled devices. For example, before Apple launched its iTunes store there was a low appropriability regime in the digital music space and it wasn’t clear what platform users would use to pay for music. Other questions remained unknown to both suppliers and customers, such as: What is the appropriate approach for customers to store their music? What kind of software platform should be used on portable MP3 players, which allowed customers to play and share their music? How can the music copyright be protected in the MP3-based music industry? There were many unknown interdependencies. MP3 makers only provided module-based hardware but the MP3 music industry itself was still at a stage where the interfaces and integration of music on the devices was unclear and unsettled. Similar to the Japan phone network example pointed out in Christensen’s framework, a seamless customer experience model was needed and Apple was able to provide this integrated, seamless experience, with a revenue model, an easy-to-use user interface and integration with the music industry itself in the form of digital rights contracts. Therefore, an integrated and proprietary solution, as offered by Apple’s iPod/iTunes ecosystem, that vertically spanned across those interdependent interfaces in the value chain could emerge with a competitive advantage.

Clearly, the MP3 player’s disruption and the initial quality of the entire package (or lack thereof) meant that the industry had moved to the left side of Christensen’s disruption diagram and there was a performance gap that needed to be bridged by an integrated product such as the iPod/iTunes. SanDisk and other MP3 player makers seemed to see this market as ready for modularization, with the PC interfaces as a template, but they missed the fact that while technical interfaces were easy to modularize, the full architecture of the music distribution system was not ready for modularization.

In the context of Christensen’s framework, at the beginning of a wave of new-market disruption, the companies that initially will be the most successful will be integrated firms whose architectures are proprietary because the metrics required by customers are not yet good enough. Apple benefited from its integration process to provide customers with a seamless hardware-software codesign with the iPod/iTunes ecosystem, allowing customers to manage their MP3 music efficiently with a portable device and a centralized music digital rights management (DRM). Apple has dominated this integration process because functionality and reliability were initial concerns of the customers. After several years of market evolution, those disruptive pioneers themselves become susceptible to hybrid disruption by a faster and more flexible population of nonintegrated/modularized companies whose focus gives them lower overhead costs. Now that customers of the digital music market have been relatively well served, they have many mature options to choose to access and manage their favorite music. Furthermore, the architecture within the digital music industry has been quite stable and well defined. Both customers and content providers know which attributes of the digital music player ecosystem are crucial to the operation of the product systems. They can also verify whether those attributes offer clear guidelines. For example, customers can verify whether the software provided will allow them to download and store MP3 music easily and conveniently and whether the device can provide enough storage volume and enough processing power for entertainment. Also, there are not many poorly understood interdependencies across the customer-supplier interface. Customers can predict how the subsystem changes will interact with other subsystems in an integrated digital music solution, as provided by Apple, Microsoft or Amazon. As we can see, these three elements follow what is described in Christensen’s framework, indicating the industry will shift to modularization.

The re-emergence of streaming music services reflects this underlying trend in the following ways: \item Streaming music services can be seen as a modular architecture because customers don't need to worry about the hardware and all of the bells and whistles - they can simply configure their songs and stream the music from anywhere. It provides great flexibility for customers to control their music content without a centralized service system and proprietary hardware.

\item Streaming music services eliminate the limitation on hardware storage and the dependency on the hardware platform. Now that the interfaces with the music industry are relatively well defined, you can listen to music on any portable electronic device, such as, an iPod, iPhone or smartphone, as well as a PC.

\item Streaming music services offer a lower cost structure, which allows them to compete in this industry as the market evolves.

Apple will need to compete by opening up its architecture (relying less on hardware) and perhaps allowing an iTunes streaming service with competitive pricing - this will eat into its high margins.

A Review of IEEE WCNC 2013 report - Best Paper Award

IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) was held in the magnificent city of Shanghai, China, on April 7 – 10, 2013. This was an historical event for the IEEE Communication Society, not only because China is the largest mobile communications market in the world, but also because this was the first ever IEEE WCNC event held in mainland China. IEEE WCNC 2013 received a record-breaking 1903 paper submissions in the main theme, the highest in IEEE WCNC’s history. 843 papers were accepted in the four tracks, following a thorough peer review process that ensured each paper received at least three reviews. The accepted papers were presented in 160 technical sessions organised in the four tracks, 139 sessions of which were dedicated to oral presentations and 21 sessions to posters. This separation among the accepted papers was not based on technical quality, as all oral and poster sessions in IEEE WCNC 2013 were considered to be equally important.

In addition to the main technical sessions, there were five keynote lecturers, five Technology and Business panels, five workshops, and ten tutorials. For the first time WCNC2013 offered free tutorials to all attendees. The conference offered attendees a content-rich program, covering both fundamental research and newly emerging advances in wireless communications systems and wireless networking. On the other hand, the Best Paper Awards promoted world-class research in our community, and the Student Travel Grants encouraged students to participate in the event. Throughout the four-day international event, more than 940 attendees representing 60 countries converged on the Shanghai International Convention and Exhibition Center to discuss the latest wireless communications & networking technologies and their applications.

Wednesday marked the event’s final day, which was initiated by the keynote address by Mr. Guanghua Yang, Director of Huawei Technologies. Mr. Yang discussed “Progress Toward the Future of Mobile Broadband Communications” and the need to fundamentally improve spectrum efficiency and re-architect radio networking protocols and infrastructures. After the keynote address, the Best Papers Awards ceremony was held, where the announcements were made by Professor Jiangzhou Wang, the TPC Chair, and the presentations by Professor Xiaohu You, the General Chair. The authors and papers honored were:
* Jianwei Niu, Long Cheng, Yu Gu, Junghyun Jun and Qingquan Zhang for their paper, entitled “Minimum-Delay and Energy-Efficient Flooding Tree in Asynchronous Low-Duty-Cycle Wireless Sensor Networks,”

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* Nam Tuan Nguyen, Rong Zheng and Zhu Han for their paper, entitled “An Unsupervised Mobile Locations Extraction Approach with Incomplete Data,”

What drive the recent market rally and do we expect a huge pullback?

Finally got some time to update my market expectation on recent market rally after a busy week. Today we saw all the indexes dip into light negative territories with low volume. It is the light pause after 5 consecutive rally to market new high since its breakout on May 6th. The recent market internals really shock me as I have discussed early last week that the P/E multiple should not even remain the same level as it was before 2008. Even the recent economic outlook has improved, the investment context within the world was not optimistic from my perspective. The export data from China, the eye-catching emerging market, was inflated as we all know some of the exports did not even leave the tax harbor, rather acting as a way for some domestic companies to ask for state refund. The slowing outlook on China economy, together with all of the QE monetary policies followed by other central banks, did not indicate any potential real growth. So I argued that the valuation is high based on D/P yield trajectory model.
However, money, especially money managed by most active funds, has to flight somewhere to seat. You might say they can go to bond market. Well, with negative real interest rate implied by TIPS, that is not wise to go. What about commodity? Not all funds can access to those assets. The commodity market not only links to QE but also connect to economic outlook. That is why recent commodity market tumbles even after FED announced the potential additional stimulus.
The group rotation brought technology and materials stocks back to yesterday’s leadership. Industrial metals rose following a wider-than-expected trade surplus. Energy, utilities and consumer discretionary stocks were flat to lower. All of these suggest investors require a lower market premium for their investment. Is this the whole pictures right now? You keep wondering why market keeps going up without a pause under low volume? This leads us to discuss next meaningful question, do we expect a huge pullback soon?
After analyzing the earning reports by those big institutions, such as, JP Morgan , Morgan Stanley, and BOA, I tend to update the picture to a more realistic one - we may not see a huge pull back in May. Let's take a look at too-big-to-fail banks' reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) had perfect trading records in the first quarter, making money every day of the period as Morgan Stanley posted losses in eight sessions and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in two. One daily gain at JPMorgan exceeded $200 million as the biggest U.S. bank by assets recovered from last year’s London Whale derivatives loss, the New York-based company said yesterday in a regulatory filing. Bank of America, the second-largest lender, generated more than $25 million of revenue on 97 percent of trading days, compared with 76 percent at Morgan Stanley, the firms said in separate filings. Goldman Sachs, which generated about half its revenue from trading last quarter, said its team made more than $100 million on 17 days.
You will ask where those trading revenue come from, the tiny notes said a big portion of that came from them selling insurance to clients. Pause here, what "insurance" are they talking about? yes, in financial industry, the "insurance" is the put option. Now when those big banks are all writing the put options, do you expect big institutions such as GS to bet huge market downward slope? Remember, they are too big to fail banks, which have access to capital market with huge financial resource to gauge market internal. Therefore, I will not bet against them, at least not in the following two weeks.
I will keep eyes on the market and update the market review whenever I see something new.

Warren Buffet 's dancing show on the annual shareholder meeting

Today, the whole investment community shed their eyes onto Omaha, where the oracle of Warren Buffet leads his annual shareholder meetings as before. He has become the icon of all of the young investors like me since the first day I touched equity investment, about 10 years ago. And what really matter to most of us will be who can take over Bershire Hathaway after he and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger are gone. And he assures us that no one, including his son, could steer the route away from how is run today. Indeed, I hope something new can come in, because the strategy he uses has been known to most of us, being a value/Large Cap investor. Well, success will keep pacing its own way. Show my greatest respect to Warren!

How can Intel (INTC) fall behind, a strategic analysis

Intel, the largest PC chip maker, scrambled to appoint Chief Operating Officer Brian Krzanich as chief executive officer, leaning on an insider to accelerate a shift toward mobile devices as the personal-computer age wanes. But Intel indeed has been late in this mobile phone market behind another chip maker, ARM for almost 10 years. Nowadays, 90% of mobile smartphones are using chips based on ARM architecture, in which the Qualcomm (QCOM) currently dominates, leaving Intel almost nothing. Only 300 M chips for PC were delivered last year by INTC, while Billion of chips were delivered for Mobile phone devices last year. The shrinkage in PC market, as visioned by the traditional PC manufacturer Michael Dell, could eventually kick INTC out of the U.S. technology history by following the other dying giants, you name them.

You must be definitely asking how could this happen? Well, I was asked this question yesterday and would like to share some of my thoughts here, mainly from strategy perspectives this time. This in my opinion could be another classic case embraced by Prof. Christensen at Harvard based on his low-end or new market disruptive theory.

The Intel once focused on improving the single-chip or multi-core performance by emphasizing on the processor speed. The well-known Moore law, written in EE textbooks, was the motto of the ex-CEO Andy Grove. To maintain its market share in PC industry, it kept most of the investments in sustaining innovation, squeezing other competitors, such as AMD, out for crying. On the other end, the emergence of mobile computing devices, initiated by AAPL's iphone, required a different set of quality metrics, such as power consumption, mobility adaptability and flexibility. ARM's architecture rendered lower single chip performance compared to chip maded by Intel, however, provided superior measurements in terms of power consumption and support for mobility. Back then, the mobile smartphone was a non-consumption market, where huge uncertainty existed so that Intel can not allocate resources to fight in that market. Prof. Christensen said, this circumstance was a perfect setup for new-market disruption to happen. And it did happen.

Therefore, Paul Otellini, 62, went out to beg Bell, who has spent 16 years working on phone design in Apple, to help reshape Intel's organization. Bell created a new site which is 16 miles away from the Intel main campus. Why? because he doesn't want people in this new site to have any connection with original Intel Structure. The pirate flag hang outside his office showed his determination to fight in mobile phone industry.

Could Intel Succeed in this shift? or Is it too late? huh, an interesting question.

The first day of May

Today marks the first day of correction attempt in the recent market rally. People on the street keep saying we will not see "Sell in May" effect this year considering about the unprecedented QE by Fed. However, keep in mind, the underlying assumption that P/E multiple should be the same or should expand, given current economic outcome, should not hold. Under rational analysis, most of the central banks including BOJ, EU and UK had undercut their interest rates to record low, you wondered how low can it go? The effective interest rate based on TIPS indicates a negative -1.5%, forcing investors into equity and illiquid assets, without other relative stable investment avenues. In traditional mature industries such as Telecom, we expect to see more and more M&A at an on-going basis as higher equity valuation in large cap should allow them to do M&A with equity swaps. On earning side, FB just reported $0.12 EPS. Pause here, think it over, whether P/E forward ratio about 48, with PEG 1.6, can be sustainable? People might argue FB can go expansion internationally for it to work out. I think it might be possible but depends on how it executes the plan. At least I know, expansion into Chinese market will not give it too much edge. If you were executive of Facebook, what will you do? compete with AAPL and GOOG with its Facebook mobile phone? this is a dead route as it lines just on the sustaining innovation trajectory routes on AAPL, Sansumg, Goog roadmaps. What I am thinking will be Facebook can become contents provider to company such as AMZN, or Barnes, for future growth channel. Will they go there? It is an open question.

Here comes what matters to AAPL today Several days ago, when AAPL announced Huge stock buyback program, we have analyzed that it has nothing to do with strategy unless there is any leverage change. Finally, with the disappointed market reaction on the second day, the CFO definitely received tons of phone calls from key stake holders, so that he quickly rushed out with a game with leverage to pump up the stock prices. So here comes a simple math for all, the principle amount of bonds is $17B, assume simple 35% tax rate, so the simple calculation for the value of tax shield will be D*t = $5.95 B. And 940M share outstanding, and hey, do not forget the close to $100B equity retirements, the share outstandings will be around 703M shares. The value increase due to this amount of debt offerings will be $8.46/share. By far, AAPL advances about $12.86 /share, indicating people expect AAPL could progress with more debt offering.

Some thoughts on Google Goggles

#Some thoughts on Google Goggles The shipment of google goggles has poked some interests in high-tech communities in the past two days. And I only got time today to make my own personal comments on that. Before throwing out my opinions, it will be always great to list some pros and cons for this product. More importantly, listing them within contexts, especially contexts related to Google's future strategy. The cool things : 1) A pair of glasses: hey, it is a tech stuff on your face, which can be easily spotted by other people. Is that cool? Yes or no? 2) on-time video or image taping; The over-the-fly feature allows you to take some shots any time, "any where". I will come back to this later on. 3) On network connections and cloud computing compatible. 4) operating system ? What about the non-cool stuffs? 1) product quality and reliability; Can you break it with your hands? what about children? 2) Do I know whether you are taping when you wear that? 3) The "ugly" steel panel on the right continues with google's so so UI design structure. By far, no context has been discussed yet. Here we go, can google goggle sparks another tech architecture innovation run, that helping google to shift from its non dominant design position in smart phone or tech industry? Before we can answer that question, let's shape the value network for goggle. 1. Target markets: IT geeks or some fashion guys. Trust me, you will definitely see Google hires some hollywoods guys or football stars to wear that during its official debuts. Do you think these people really different from people who use products offered by AAPL now? The answer to this should be a double no. 2. The cost structure: Will google compete on high-end or low end product? Can it leash out super profit margin on this? I bet no one even google will not believe he positions this as a low end product., can we conclude that high-end product offer high-profit margin? Not necessary. 3. Marketing and sale channel? will Google use the existing marketing and sale teams which are specialized on its mediocre Google/Motorola google X phone to do the marketing and promotions to sell? It can't hardly redeploy a new group for goggle for a new products. 4. The potential legal issue on social impacts. What failed Google so many times in the past year is Google never realized the dynamic social innovation trend mixed in tech innovation. Like now-a-day, even a kid in high school has known "social "concept, developing a product without thinking about social impacts, without any doubt, will lead to another failure, just as Nexus one or Google Cash. So How could Google make a big hit other than having a fashion show for couple months with its doomed-to-fail business model in Goggle? In the end, you might think I am too pessimistic about Google, actually not at all. It just need to shape its superior research capability into the right customers, in order to keep business and innovation rolling. For example, this Goggle will be better fit for government agencies, where high profit margin is well known for interesting business structure, instead of leaking this stuffs out for public show. This is merely a trade-show other than a business concept to me.

几个实战创业者的经验

几个实战创业者的经验：任何生意都离不开一个公式 Read more: 几个实战创业者的经验：任何生意都离不开一个公式 都说失败的经验比成功更有价值，创业不易，创业的成功率很低，下面看看知乎网友总结的经验教训，这些经验分享者既有创业者，也有投资人，也有创业公司的员工;既有连续创业者，也有刚创业不久的在校大学生……可以说是比较丰富的样本。创业邦对这些网友的回答进行了整理，供创业者们更全面地认识创业这件事，更全面地借鉴他人的经验教训。 @陈曦 08年-10年，我做了一家手机阅读公司，20多个人的队伍，做了kjava、symbian、iOS的客户端。开始做过盗版，后来得到了一个内容巨头的授权，靠SP代收费和最后卖产品做外包两年赚了几百万。再后来SP被整顿，收入下降到每个月只够发工资，最后我把团队裁到最小，但没关，因为还有用户在用，时不时还有人打客服电话到我手机上。 这次创业不能说是完全失败，我学到了很多，认识了很好的人。分享下我对这段经历的想法： 1、任何生意都是那么一个公式：流量大小及成本*转化率*客单价*回头客比例-产品服务的成本-公司运作的成本 >0 这导致我现在看任何事情，都最快的时间套到这个公式里。 2、看好价值链。手机阅读是个价值链很长的事情。上游有作者、有内容供应商，下游有SP、有运营商、有推广公司。各个利益点都是要钱的主儿不说，很多环节都是不可控的。我羡慕Apple这样通吃产业链的公司，当然我也知道这很难做到。 3、永远不要心存侥幸。当时认为最可能出问题的地方，最后一定出问题。 4、对员工好一点。如果跟随我的人都没有赚到钱，创业就没有任何意义。不过这次创业后，我会请最贵最好的人，不会吝啬钱。请不到最贵最好的人，就是没有效率。最贵是因为最好，有道理的。 5、永远不要因为要卖掉公司而做一家公司。我以后再也不会。 6、心存感激。我认识了很好的投资人，他仍是我下一次创业的投资人。我认识了很多很好的人，他们给了我很多帮助。其中很多人，在下一次创业中我才认识到他们的帮助原来那么的有价值，我真心的感激他们。 7、我应该坚持我认为对的东西。 @杨明慧 我创业5次，很早之前是百度的一名员工，08年辞职和朋友一起做第一家公司，做电视购物，当时的愿望是做最好的电购公司。当时我们对产品筛选非常严格，对广告渠道的筛选也非常谨慎，包括用户服务都做得很好，不到一个月的时间里我们员工增加到20 人。也有了不错的收入，积累了一些回头客。但好景不长，一个季度以后，开始有一些冒充我们公司的假公司在通过某种途径买到我们的客户资料后进行非法销售。我们不停的接到投诉，并且无法解决问题，当时感到非常困惑。这是第一次创业并且第一次遇到比较严重的难题，业绩下滑，团队中的两个朋友选择了离开，当时还剩下我和另一位伙伴，我们砍掉了2/3的员工，留下了5、6个人来坚守阵地。 这次创业给我的启发就是：前期的选择过于草率，没有调查并了解整个行业的状况就进来干，等于没有了解战场地形的士兵去打仗，必死无疑!还有就是经验太少。 第二个项目是在一个月以后，我在我所居住的小区做了一个社区代购服务网站 - “生活时间”， 启发是：这次学到了不少经验，而且比较后悔当初把这个网站卖掉。这次创业的缺点也比较明显，没有合理的商业计划，这也怪我当初并没有想把它做到多大，我只是想服务一下社区居民而已，管理经验不足，导致心态不能合理的调节，这也都是我总结下来的缺点。 第三个项目是在线教育，最后泡汤的原因是资金链断裂。这次本应是一次成功的创业，但是因为当时个人资本力量不够，两次遇到的投资人都是非专业人士，实在是觉得很倒霉。现在“星职场”已经的很大了，而我的公司却因为资金问题，死的很惨!教训是明显的。经验也是刻骨的! 目前我与朋友又开始了新项目合作，创业越来越有意思，它不断的在用事实告诉你问题的根源在哪里，然后吸引你去继续做新的事情，你会习惯性的去避免之前遇到的所有问题，你还会像孩子等着看动画片一样的等待新问题的到来，然后从赤膊上阵到全身铠甲，解决一个新问题就多了一片新铠甲，最后的你必然会是——刀枪不入，战无不胜! 我不管别人的创业经验是什么，我只分享一下我自己创业，做过两家公司的经验： 1、创业的方向很重要，也许做有些方向，你只要做了，就一定会赚钱，而且很轻松，比如说03~05年的SP，我做过; 2、创业最重要的是团队，而不是资金，我曾经花钱招募过我的团队，他们都很尽职尽责，但我依旧在08年累得心脏都出了问题，只是因为他们虽然敬业，但依旧不是创业者，创业者只有我一个人。这就说明了一个问题，就是，你是否真正找到了自己的创业团队，那些认同方向，认同你，认同公司价值观的人，一起来创业，这是我认为创业最重要的东西——团队，不是说，你公司的人都是你的团队，其实，绝大多数人都不是创业团队的; 3、不要因为创业而创业，我对那些不知道自己做什么，就因为唱了个“在路上”而整天热泪盈眶的创业者表示无语，他们糟蹋了创业这个词汇; 4、创业，失败的可能性是远大于成功的，希望大家做好长期抗战的准备，这不是戏言。 @洪波 90年代中期，我就开始创业。我现在还活着，我是真朴教育的创始人，真朴教育旗下的聂卫平围棋教室现在是中国儿童围棋培训行业的第一品牌。 如何看待创业?先写下这样一句话吧：所有的发生，都是最好的发生。 创业，对我而言，是看清自己，看清这个世界很好的一个工具。 我先谈谈能活到今天的一个重要原因：敬畏。 我是浙江人，第一桶金是99年从电视购物行业赚到的。那个时候的电视购物行业刚刚萌芽，台湾的同行带着我们完全不懂的产品和美轮美奂的录像带来到了大陆……我只记得，很多产品，都卖疯了。 那个年代，一个市级电视台垃圾时间每天一个小时只需要2万元(月费用)，再在那个地级市布点，招聘营业员，一个月的营业额能做到50万以上。而且很多款产品我都是给全国发货。呵呵，坑了不少人。 有这个觉悟，也是一年后的事情了。慢慢了解到行业的细节，产品的无效，广告的言过其实。 我停了这个日进斗金的生意，开始寻找别的项目。没有什么原因，或者说，我的底限，我不愿意突破。 ps:有先生曾问我：智慧从哪里来?我沉思了很久，看着先生。先生说了一个字：苦。 @潘欣 03-06年我也曾经有过一段不算成功的创业，虽然不是互联网创业，只是一家公关公司的创业，但我也还算积累了一些经验和教训。 1、兴趣。兴趣一定要成为创业源头，并能让其一直持续下去。我因兴趣而创业，又因兴趣而结束这段创业。开端是0，但有兴趣了，付出很大，见效也快;当我失去兴趣的时候，一切都失去的很快。 2、坚持。如果我为了钱不为了兴趣，我当时可以再多坚持几个月，事实上当时我也有客户，公司生存无忧。如果坚持几个月，WEB2.0热潮就迸发了，我多弄几个客户不在话下，只不过我选择不继续了，后来把这些找上门的客户都推荐给其他公司了。从经营企业的角度看，创业一定要坚持，未来的曙光可能随时爆发。尤其是，你明知道你所经营的方向一定会赚钱的时候，就一定不能放弃。 3、退路。不要给自己留退路。当我当时不想继续公关公司的时候，我就开始寻思自己的退路了。但是回过头来总结，会发现，当你开始找退路的时候，你的公司就加速了衰落，因为你的心已经不在这里。 4、现金流。这个无需多说。我当时的公关公司年营业额也有几百万，但一样因为回款会存在很大的现金流紧张的危机。更何况如今的互联网公司创业基本只出不进。严格的成本意识和现金流管理是创业者所必须具备的技能。 5、价值观。我对公关公司失去兴趣的一个很重要原因就是我不愿意给客户回扣，但是行业氛围如此，如果我不同流合污，我虽可以生存，但是因为很多单子因为回扣问题而失去感觉很郁闷，因为我和那个产业格格不入。当然，这个是一个负面的例子。正面角度看，应该是先理顺自己的价值观是否符合你所选择的行业氛围是否匹配，否则你会很累。不要奢望着靠自己改变世界，改变行业，你只是你。 6、资源。这个不用多说了吧，人财物，总得具备点儿什么，不要相信什么白手起家的神话故事，并把 没有什么真正的成功经验，多次创业，有一次彻底失败，其它主要的两次都没有能做大。现在投身移动互联网大潮，仍然在路上。 1. 知道什么时候放弃。做过一个技术很眩但没有市场的东西，后来果断转向，才生存了下来。 2. 每过一段时间退一步看看大局，做事要执着，但也不能不考虑战略。没有战略的成功叫运气，人到了一定的年龄就不能只等着命运眷顾了。 3. 注重时间效率，做不大的事情不值得你坚守，那叫生意，不是企业。 4. 真心爱你的员工，永远替他们着想。我很高兴我在帮很多以前的员工和朋友们成功。 5. 合伙人超级重要，如果你想创业但不知道做什么，就学着做一个合格的搭档吧。相信我，这样的人不多，如果你是，早晚有人会找你做搭档的。 6. 无私地帮别人吧，并在创业过程中享受快乐。 7. 别忘了你的家，和你的健康。 @夏锎 提供一个Zentertain的案例，Tapic游戏，供抛砖引玉。 从投资回报的角度，虽然Tapic不能说是严格意义的失败，但毕竟其成绩远低于预期，可以作为案例提供一些思考。 09 年底Tapulous的Tap Tap Revenge在App Store如日中天，免费版收费版等多个版本销售非常火爆，于是当时我对Tapic极度乐观，毕竟是在它的基础上进行改进，觉得踩在巨人肩膀成绩应该不会差，在排行榜冲到前几名大有希望。可等到历时半年至2010年7月底发布之后Tapic的成绩远低于预期，最高只在美国进入了收费400名。 总结经验： 1、天时很重要。从2009年底到2010年底以来，市场急速变化，各类游戏大量涌现，Tap Tap类音乐游戏已远没有之前流行。 2、不可低估品牌的作用。TTR作为最早的iPhone游戏之一，有大量的用户群体，而Tapic是后来之辈，缺乏此用户基础。 3、要充分预估风险。除了音乐类游戏的受欢迎度变化，Tapic开发过程中，曾遭遇从iOS3切换至iOS4的转变，游戏方式大为更改。更别提被App审核团队数次reject。 4、明星效应不可忽视。因为TTR里都是名人的歌曲，TTR制作公司Tapulous可以借此进行营销，而Tapic则不能。 5、营销很重要。Tapic虽然玩家反馈不错，但依然缺乏有效的获取大量玩家的渠道。营销很重要，且随着App Store生态的成熟越来越重要。 6、细节细节细节。事后回顾Tapic的开发，觉得游戏细节实在欠琢磨。 7、东边不亮西边亮。日本收费榜Tapic曾进入前20，也算是补偿。 8、如果再来一次，我会做的再快一点，功能简单一点，重点突出一点，不贪大求全。 @刘寅 在大学期间曾经组建过一个团队进行了一次创业，典型的学生热情，做事大胆。在获得融资后，反而加速了项目失败。回头看来整个过程有很多幼稚可笑的桥段和想法，也有很多值得分享的东西。 项目是做社区电子商务，我们是专注于校园市场，卖学生需要的商品和服务。 在武汉本地做出了一些效益之后，项目被杭州的一个老板看中，有意向投资。我们当时急缺的就是钱，冲着投资就冒失的把市场逐渐投向杭州。 由于缺少和融资商谈判的经验，烧钱的规划上也缺少经验，在合作初期，团队就一直处于被动，话语权逐渐被老板掌握，在老板急功近利的强势压力下，业务的推动越来越吃力，坚持了大半年，杭州的市场没有按预期的计划吃透，钱却烧了不少，后来财务也出现了问题，团队开始解散。项目失败了以后还打了官司，这已经不是很重要了。 回顾整个过程，有以下几个感想。 团队+激情>资金。这个公式在校园里最能够得到体现，也很容易成立。却在社会中的创业团队里面，这是相当宝贵的财富，也是很难追求到的。 不要冒失的放弃一个市场和投向新市场。即使新旧市场的基本属性可能相同，但是其中的一点差异化就足够让一个准备不充分的团队完全崩溃。 不要让投资商/老板完全掌握项目决策权。即使在现在，投资商对项目的过度干涉而玩死项目的例子屡见不鲜。初始的谈判尤为重要，来钱不难，给钱的人要足够靠谱才是必要的。 公关。回想为什么打不开杭州市场以及为什么武汉的市场却比较容易，发现权力机构的支持十分重要。在武汉有学校的官方支持和电子商务协会的支持，虽然都是非常表面的，但是也产生了极大的推动作用，团队当时没有正确的认识和珍惜这一点。同时我也在想，如果和这些权力机构更深层次的进行合作，而不是仅仅向他们索取支持，可能项目发展会更好。 @风影 创业一年，做个总结：去年的3月份，我离开了之前创办有半年的公司。或许很多人以为，有过创业经验的人再次创业会容易得多，我当时也这么认为。但事实并非如此，因为一个品牌的打造是需要时间和过程。 关于钱 我的建议是，如果你下定决心创业，至少要准备半年的运营资金。这么做的好处有两点： 1、公司的前几个月，需要花时间去做宣传，甚至招人等，运气好的话可能一两个月有业务上门，运气不好的话半年才有业务很难说。 2、充足的资金能让你安心做事，不至于月底到了担心付房租，发工资，这样相对就不会很被动。 如果钱不是很够，多办几张信用卡吧，实在没办法还能用上。 关于现金流 这个概念可以这样理解：早点从客户那边拿钱，晚点给供应商付钱，那么你就获得很强的现金流。我们再举个例子：假设你现在做一批广告设计，前期客户预付50% 一万块钱，如果你有好的供应商，可以把你印刷费用延迟3个月后付款，那么在3个月中你用这笔资金能做很多事，付工资，交房租，甚至做宣传获得新客户。 我们之前有过项目，前期只拿10%预付款，当时我觉得反正迟早要付的嘛，就把余款推到了年底。结果是项目进行过程中，双方各种问题就出现了，对方一句“不合作”，签署的合约等于一张废纸。 所以，前期能从客户那边多拿点钱就多拿点，说不好白忙一段时间，对方公司就倒闭了。 关于节约成本 一开始创业如果是两三个人，没有必要租个几十平方的办公室，能省则省，20平方差不多了，空间挤挤还是有的，布置温馨点，交通方便点，附近有便宜的午餐就足够了。 这里，你会有个疑问：”公司环境不好不是很难招人吗?“记住，如果你遇到这样的人，他不适合和你一块创业，真正认同你和你公司的，是不会在意这些的。 前大半年，三四个人，租了个80多平方的，很多空间白白浪费掉，每月房租就3千。所以，节约成本也是获得现金流的一种方式。 关于招人 知乎上有个《创业公司应该如何招人》，有兴趣的可以看看，这里面有些关于招人渠道和方法的，我就不讲了，基本都试过。 我的建议是：宁缺勿滥。创业者学会看人很重要，不合适的人一定要狠心pass掉。之前有次好不容易招了个程序员，每天似乎在糊弄任务，写几行代码就给我看说完成到哪里哪里了，来了一个多月，啥都没弄出来。拿了几千块工资潇潇洒洒地走了。只怪当时心太软了，想给他机会，最终倒霉的还是自己。 记住：没有人是不可以替代的。公司缺人不一定死掉，大不了少赚点，但是滥用人一定会死掉。 招什么样的人，我是这么做的，这些你可以根据自己的公司的情况来： 1、应届毕业生最好慎重考虑，创业公司培养人的成本很大。有段时间，公司人多了反而我觉得很累，后来才发现白天的时候我基本要陪着设计师做设计给她指导。但是想招有多年工作经验的，一是人家要求肯定高，而是我们不一定管得住他们。我目前的做法是，有半年到一年工作经验的，至少能找到还没有被社会同化的，薪资各方面相对也容易谈。 2、试用人阶段一般公司都是三个月，目前我们的做法是：一试用期两周，录用发正式工资，不录用没工资;二是试用三个月工资低点，正式后工资高点。这仅供参考，不过我还是建议试用三个月，两周时间很难判断一个人合不合适。 3、想要带领一帮优秀的人，得先把自己变得优秀起来。毕竟人都是现实的，凭什么跟你混，那么你钱多，那么能从你哪里学到东西。 关于管理 刚开始创业，很多事情需要创始人亲历亲为，凑钱、招人、搞宣传、做行政、跑客户、甚至扫地、擦桌子，渐渐的人多了起来，任务也分摊出去了。OK，可以放松了?NO!之前有一次出去谈业务，回来发觉没什么进展，人毕竟都有惰性，所以，做为公司的老总，要的是结果。立目标，求结果，把过程交给信赖的人。还有，细节问题不能放过。 创业是一次心灵历练的过程。每天醒来面对的不是忽然成功了，而是无数个的困难和失败，保持激情和专注。还有，需要一颗耐得住寂寞的心。 最后推荐两本书： 《创业者圣经》，很实用; 说说我自己的故事吧，典型的early stage startup，所以故事的营养可能少了些，教训多过经验。 故事从去年开始，本来在美国读phd，去年激动的和2个朋友辍学回来创业，觉得发现了the next big thing, 梦想着用技术改变互联网。这一年下来，见了不少人，听了不少故事，项目却做的很别扭，方向几经转变，founder们在vision和股权上也产生过争议，最后的项目更像是一个compromise。虽然另外两个partner还在继续尝试，我选择了退出。从这个意义上讲，这次创业目前只能算是我个人的‘失败’。现在回头来看，对于第一次创业的团队，尤其是技术型的团队，以下几个方面是要在创业以前好好考虑的： 团队：先说创始人。对于互联网尤其是移动互联网的团队，员工的 personality和技术一样的重要。员工一定要对互联网有基本的sense，要有一个相对open的personality，这个对于早期团队很重要，试想，团队早期本来就即工作辛苦又条件艰苦，再整一群昏昏沉沉的人在一起，这活儿根本没法干。我们就经历过这种痛苦的时候，开始的想法是能干活就行，后来实在受不了了，开始从大学招实习生，团队的氛围马上就好了一些。 技术，产品和资源：国内创业还是产品为王，资源为王，而且往往二者相互结合，现在流行的这些应用没有哪一个不是这样的。 方向：变方向是创业团队最常见的事情了，坚持很多时候并不是什么商业决定，试想项目进展的不顺利，投资人不买账，这个时候你要坚持，而你的partner希望pivot，并且拿着一份新的项目计划指着你的鼻子说除非你能解决现在的问题，否则你这就是拿团队的前途开玩笑，在这个时候，任何决定都和商业无关。现在我还是不知道，下一次我该怎么办，也许我等下应该在知乎上问一下这个问题。 我一定会再次创业，希望下一次，团队的skill set能完整一些，然后大家一起快点儿走，走的坚定一些。 @匿名用户 2005年在一家发品经销商处做销售工作，老板想做发廊管理软件的代理，我学了一段时间，由于老板的想法是发廊买发品送管理软件，而我觉得单独销售此软件更合适，因此跟那家软件公司打了招呼后，自己出来单干，自己做这个软件的代理，算是开始创业了吧。 干了3个月吧，卖出了3套，自己销售兼安装实施培训，再后来不干了，重新回到上家公司开始打工。