MIT在线课程笔记:创业第一步
2015-02-21

要不是亚马逊搞了一个学 MIT 在线课程送 AWS 代金券的活动,我可能永远不会花 50 美金报名上一门讲创业的课。

Entrepreneurship 101这门课是为创业小白准备的。主要就围绕一个问题:当你有一个创业点子之后,接下来应该做什么。

废话不多说,直接上笔记(摘录的英文原文 + 我用中文写的总结体会):

Successful entrepreneurs must have extreme self-discipline, because they have few resources, no reputation, and a very finite amount of time in which to succeed.

创业者必须有很强的自律能力。是吗?可我知道有一些优秀的创业者并不是特别自律。嗯……也许他们有他们自律的地方,在一些事情上以极高的标准要求自己,外人不了解而已。


Articulate the idea. Describe it. If you aren’t sure how, focus on answering these questions:

如何有条理地阐述你的项目,有这四点做纲领,就不会跑偏。


And we’re going to do it with great focus, and deselect everything else and not get distracted.

我倒觉得追求 great focus 要分时候,在目标确定之前可以探索得广一些,一旦目标确定就不要再分心。


Now you’ll ask, what if AJ and NVbots chooses the wrong beachhead market?

What you want to do is if it’s going to fail, fail quickly, eliminate that option, and focus on the other ones that are higher potential.

Action will produce real data, and that data will tell you whether your beachhead market will or will not be viable.

Beachhead,就是海军抢滩登陆的时候首先要抢占的滩头阵地。只有先占住这个阵地,后续的战斗才好展开。连beachhead都拿不下,就没有然后了。

Beachhead market 是首先要进入的目标市场,如果实在拿不下,可能是你选错了目标,就赶紧换一个。所谓的专注,就是切忌同时追逐多个目标,逮一只兔子都要费好大力气,何况同时逮三只兔子。


> Start asking the following questions to characterize them. They fall into three broad categories -- demographics, motivation, and behavior.

Demographic questions would be questions such as the following: What’s their gender? What’s their age range? What’s their income range? What’s their geographic location?

Questions about motivation are, what motivates them? What do they fear most in the world? Who’s their hero?

Questions about behavior are, where do they go for vacation? Where do they go for dinner? Where do they go before work? What newspapers do they read? What websites? What TV shows do they watch? What are their watering holes?

给用户画像,该从哪下笔呢?一般从三个方面:

  1. 自然划分(年龄,收入,地理位置)
  2. 动机(对什么深深着迷,对什么避之不及)
  3. 行为习惯(尤其是闲暇时间都干什么)

Specificity wins over generalities every day.

Because of that, if you just do a tops down, you’re very likely to overestimate your TAM, and you’re very likely to leave without some really clear understanding of the market.

Too much top down analysis makes you focus on spreadsheets, not customers, not real customers.

The best way to estimate TAM is to determine the number of end users that fit your end-user profile through a bottoms up analysis. We often call the bottoms up analysis counting noses, because you’re getting very specific.

TAM 是 Total Addressable Market 的缩写。如何估算你的目标市场规模?有人拿计算器摁几个数字就以为是答案了。我有个朋友曾经做了一个搜索类的产品,他说根据某机构发布的市场调研,人们用智能手机20%多是用来搜索,如此高的比例,乘上智能手机用户总量的庞大基数,得出结论是这个市场无比巨大。其实只要看看身边的人是怎么用手机的,真有20%是在搜索吗?

想起一个老掉牙的故事,在民国前后,一位外国资本家得知中国有几亿人口,却几乎没有人家里有钢琴,它觉得这是个巨大的商机,哪怕只有百分之一的家庭从他这里购买钢琴,就可以大赚一笔。殊不知当时中国家庭对钢琴的实际需求,连万分之一都没有。


Generally, I recommend a TAM between $20 million and $100 million per year. A TAM over $1 billion raises red flags. Your beachhead market is either not specific enough, or there will be formidable barriers to entry.

如果远低于$20,000,000这个数量怎么办呢?

So if you’re going into a beachhead market with a TAM of 0, or another very small TAM, you will need to know why you’re doing it.

如果还没想清楚赚钱的办法,能不能开始干呢?这要看具体情况,如果是开一家包子铺,就应该一上来就有利润,因为它只能靠卖包子赚钱。但如果是创意驱动型的公司,比如互联网相关的公司,未来可能会有海量的用户,到那时自然有人教你该怎么赚钱。可是一开始的时候入不敷出,需要花钱怎么办,往下接着看。


An innovation driven business, need to attract cash from investors or other people, customers.

And if they attract it from investors, their founders will start to cede control of ownership. And control of it will pass over to the investors.

That’s not necessarily a problem but just a trade-off that you should know.

需要钱但没钱,就找投资。一般投资人在购买了股份的同时,也会拥有一部分对公司的控制权。经常有创业的过来人提到不要失去控制权,值得警惕,但也不一定都对,因为有的时候,投资人确实能帮你补上短板。


Some entrepreneurs are comfortable with less ownership and control while others are not.

There’s no right answer. You should decide what’s right for you.

But let me say, that if you want to build a great company, it’s hard to be in control it. There’s a saying by Noam Wasserman at Harvard and Matt Marx here, you can be in control, you can be king. Or you can get rich and have big impact. But it’s hard to be a rich king.

作为创业者,你可以选择做一个国王,拥有对公司的绝对控制。也可以让出一部分控制权,让别人把你带到更大的舞台。但是两者很难兼顾,就是说如果执意把投资人挡在门外,你虽然是国王,但也许永远只是小人国的国王。


Your end-user profile tells you who your end users are, but your persona makes your target end-user tangible, unambiguous, and concrete. It is much easier to focus your mind on one person, then many people all at once.

The persona should be a real person, not a composite, not an abstract. It should be someone you know and you have interviewed in the context of your startup and you can remember.

我理解 persona 是一个个鲜活的具体的人,而 end-user profile 是他们的抽象。想了解你的用户,就从某一个具体的人开始。了解一个人,最好能面面俱到,一些看似无关紧要的事,比如爱看什么电视节目,喝什么饮品,穿什么衣服,看什么书玩什么游戏,手机的首屏有哪些应用,这些细节会给你一个更加丰满的用户画像,帮你找对感觉。


Steve Jobs once said, “I’m as proud of the things that we’ve done as the things that we have not done,” meaning he’s real proud of the things that he didn’t do.

You have to know what not to do, and the anti-persona can help you in that regard.

不做与做同样重要,哪个网站都经历过几次不愉快的改版,不仅要了解你的用户想看到什么,还要了解他们不想看到什么。一个创业者对用户的了解,必须比了解他的三姑二舅还要多,用户有什么习惯和好恶都要去了解,这是一项无止境的修炼。


笔记就只有这些了。视角各有侧重,我没有写入笔记的内容,不一定没有价值。这门课的所有课件都列在下面,欢迎下载:

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