Interview with Zhiwei: From a Loss of 450,000 to Revenue of 2,000,000
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This blog post was translated by Mistral
A certain entrepreneurial youth, Zhiwei, who was quite flamboyant at 22 years old, had been silent on his social media for several months. Early this year, netizens commented that it was about time for him to do something substantial. He agreed with their assessment. At 23 years old, he began to tone down and focus on software outsourcing from a technology live platform, marking a new beginning. He provided clients with full design and development services, helping them complete small programs, apps, websites, artificial intelligence products, and blockchain products. His software outsourcing clients included educational unicorn company Xiaoyao Shenqi, online civil service examination education company Fenbi Wen, artificial intelligence startup Chuangxi Science Tower, and over 20 other clients. He completed over 40 projects for them. Since our company started outsourcing software services in 2018, the first-half year revenue surpassed 200,000 and profit exceeded 50,000. Our full-time and part-time employees have recently reached fifteen. Although the numbers are small, he grew significantly during this year and gained new insights and feelings.
Now, Zhiwei openly faced everyone for an interview. We conducted the following interview.
Answer: I believe there is a demand for outsourcing because 1) When they have a project and a concept they want to try out, 2) Instead of hiring a whole team, which is expensive in the current hiring cost situation, outsourcing is often a cost-effective solution. Our prices in the market are still inclined to be quite competitive, so finding us an advantage is being cheap, and another is flexibility. If you want to hire a full-time engineer, you need to keep them, and you can’t just let them do a project and then let them go after the project is online. We, as a reliable temporary staffing firm, are quite needed.
Moreover, some of the companies we cooperate with also outsource some projects to us. Why is that? If you have a very reliable outsourcing partner who can do the job reliably and of good quality, just like the people in your own company, sometimes your company doesn’t have the manpower to do a project, you will choose to give the project to a reliable outsourcing partner.
Internal work is usually quite costly, with engineers earning salaries of around 20-30 thousand. Our cost is lower because of the project commission incentive system, which better utilizes human resources. We can arrange one person to do both the front-end and back-end technical work, while in other companies, three people would need to do the same work. I let one person do it and give them double the money.
For example, hiring three engineers costs 60,000 blocks of money, but I only give this engineer 40,000 blocks of money, and they do all the work themselves, they will be happy, and we save money. This way, we also reduce communication costs, and sometimes it is more efficient than having two or three people.
However, this cannot be done in a company. In a company, there will be people with strong abilities who can do all these tasks, but it is too tiring, and there is no salary increase. So this engineer does the back-end, and another person does the front-end. In the company, the incentive system is: each person receives a certain amount of money each month, and I do the back-end for this amount of money, and if I do it all, I still only receive this amount of money, so the engineer has no motivation to do such hard work.: Company’s outsourcing
Project has obtained customer authorization to display other than that, we have some engineers who are part-time, their compensation will be lower than full-time. A company has some positions that are not very active, but they still have to pay a full-time engineer for the entire month. On our side, we pay based on workload, so for a project that might only take two weeks to complete, we pay based on the workload for those two weeks. Moreover, our engineers are relatively diligent people, they work as full-time engineers in large companies, and they are happy to earn a few extra tens of thousands of dollars a month as part-time engineers with us. However, to hire full-time engineers, good ones in Beijing now cost at least 20,000 RMB.
At the same time, cooperating with large companies means dealing with many people on their side, while here, one person can handle three to five people on their side. I still remember when we first started doing live broadcasting for fun, I was doing everything myself at that time, and the company was still profitable because I handled both promotion and coding. Although the profits were not large, with a monthly turnover of a few tens of thousands of blocks and a profit of one or two tens of thousands of blocks, I accumulated a lot of users, and based on user value, I was actually making a decent profit.
Therefore, I knew very early on that the more full-stack people a company has, the better it can survive. One person can handle many things, allowing the company to survive. One person can do testing, write copy, do marketing, and even do sales. In a small company, we need relatively versatile people who can handle all tasks, fill up all of their time, and they can handle many positions. If they are doing testing, let them focus on testing all day, every day. If they are doing sales, let them focus on sales. When sales tasks are not plentiful, let them also do testing.
From my personal experience, earning back your salary is indeed difficult. At that time, I also felt that my abilities were not bad, after all, I came from a first-line internet company. When I started my business, because I had some connections in my circle, I could get them to come and broadcast, but it still took me half a year to reach a monthly turnover of three or four ten thousand, with a profit of one or two ten thousand. I have already used a lot of resources but only earned a little money. This shows that, in my opinion, in order to earn money, one really has to put in a lot. In our company, I have put in a lot, and my colleagues are the same, even those very powerful enterprises, they also work hard. Just like Alibaba, Huawei, their engineers also have to work overtime frequently, so they earn a lot of money.
Question: In the outsourcing process, what do you think is the most challenging aspect?
Zhiwei: The challenge of the company’s scale, I suppose. We did a live quiz project, which was our first time as engineers doing outsourcing. At that time, we only participated in one project, which we could handle well. But later, when there were more projects, for example, ten projects, it was not possible to manage them all alone as we did with one project. So, you have to let others manage, not be fully involved in every project, and this brings challenges when the projects increase in number and scale.
Everyone is different, and it’s impossible for project managers to completely follow your thinking and methods. Even project managers without a technical background may encounter other problems, such as communication with clients, and it’s not possible for them to do everything exactly as you think. So, how can we make others work like you? I have gradually realized that this is not something that can be completely controlled.: Company’s outsourcing
Project has obtained customer authorization to display: In the process of managing a team from handling a few projects to managing dozens while the company scales, the question is how to make the company process-oriented and provide the best customer experience. From my experience, it’s not necessary to manage every detail during sales talks with clients, instead, focus on the essential questions.
In summary, from managing a team of two or three people on a project to leading a team of thirty or forty people handling ten projects, the challenge is to make the company process-oriented, provide the best customer experience, and ensure each employee can deliver a founder-like experience to clients even with the company’s growth.
Question: Do you have any plans for the future?
Zhiwei: The challenge is to expand from handling ten projects to thirty or forty projects at a time. I have been thinking about making the process more standardized, like an assembly line production.
Our company currently has a mix of full-time and part-time engineers. In the future, we will continue this path and hire more part-time engineers instead of only full-time ones, as there are many benefits. For instance, if we talk about exaggerating to 10,000 projects, it’s about information matching. As a information platform, we don’t actually write the code ourselves, but we know and can find good engineers. A part of the core work, I arrange full-time engineers to do. The design work influences the following development schedule, so I will try to arrange full-time engineers to do it. Other work, such as front-end web development, client-side development, and back-end management, can be arranged for part-time engineers to do.
In the future, when we expand further, we won’t be able to do all the work ourselves and write all the code. Our role is information matching, finding those engineers who have mortgages, pressure, and are relatively idle, but the client companies don’t know this information or have their contact information. So, we are here to match engineers for the client companies to do work.
For example, Taobao, the goods are not provided by Taobao itself, but it is very important for its ability to match information. It earns money from this part, and it can become a big platform because of this. Taobao can do information matching for 10,000 merchants, and we can also do information matching for 10,000 projects.
When the projects become more numerous, we will establish an internal management system. The progress, responsible persons, and team members of 10,000 projects will all enter the system. At that time, we can clearly see all project situations in the system, and all we need to do is interface with each project manager and do light supervision, without having to manage every member specifically.
If there are certain unsuitable project managers or other situations, the project may not meet expectations. We will monitor the situation and make personnel changes as necessary. In the process, we will also discover which teams and which people are reliable. We form long-term close relationships with these reliable people, whether full-time or part-time.
Another thing, we plan to take on some smaller projects first, around 5 to 8 million, which can be handled by two or three engineers. These smaller projects, we have confidence that even if they completely fail, we can still make a profit to do it again or subsidize this project with profits from other projects. At the same time, we believe that with more projects, we can accumulate more customers and expand.:Q: It seems that you are currently handling management and coordination on your own, taking care of most things. Will there be times when you’ll be too busy and unable to serve customers well?
A: Currently, there are three of us managing all the projects, approximately 10 in total. About half of the projects have engineers who are very active and self-motivated, requiring minimal management time. The remaining 5 projects need more attention and effort. We can generally manage these, but we are also discussing new projects and are often quite busy.
We prioritize serving our existing customers who have already signed on, and do our best to serve potential customers. When the pressure is high, we consider adding more personnel.
We will gradually establish a flattened organizational structure. At the bottom are the people who write code and do UI design. Next are small group leaders, and then the management layer, forming a three-tier organizational structure.
Q: Regarding what was mentioned earlier about engineers, designers, etc. being part-time, how do you find them?**
A: We find them through various channels. Some are people we’ve worked with before, some are referred to us by our network, and some we find through job postings or recruitment agencies. We look for people who are passionate about their work and have the necessary skills. Li Zhivēi: We started with a quzhi live, a tech live platform, which also offers design courses, with around 30,000 professionals in the internet industry as users. About one third of them added us on WeChat, discussing their backgrounds. Some were from companies like Jingdong and Ali, as well as various startups.
Through our conversations and interactions in social media, they learned about us and saw that we were offering outsourcing work, which might lead to potential collaboration. They found our returns satisfactory, and eventually joined our team as full-time employees.
People become familiar with each other gradually. For instance, helping them with a technical issue, occupying one of their weekends for 2000 yuan, or offering them a monthly part-time position of 20,000 yuan. These steps helped establish more collaborations.
Additionally, you can ask your acquaintances who might be interested and capable of freelancing. Go ahead and ask, try more, and you’ll always find someone. After that, reward their labor with money, forming the first collaboration, and gradually leading to long-term collaborations.
Currently, we have around thirty to forty people we can collaborate with at any time. I might have contacted more, and there were quite a few who were excellent but unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to collaborate with them. After narrowing it down, we now have thirty to forty people with whom we have collaborated. Around ten to twenty of them have collaborated with us multiple times.: Company project 5
FOMOO blockchain game
Authorization obtained from customer to display
: Is that customer basically the same?
Zhiwei: Yes, that’s how it is. I used to run a live platform and broadcasted my WeChat ID to all users, allowing them to add me and join my group and tech seminars directly through WeChat. They added me and knew I was the founder of this platform, seeing my WeChat moments and team and platform stories.
These WeChat friends, no matter who they were, would ask questions and I would answer them, and I didn’t block anyone from my WeChat moments, liking interesting content and interacting openly. This is very important. At the beginning, when there was nothing, you could choose to make friends in a broad way and occasionally do something for them.
We can’t guarantee that we’ll only make one product in life or that entrepreneurship won’t experience failure, but you should accumulate your own users and customers. For example, when my two WeChat accounts were full of friends, there were probably a few who deleted me after a while, but there were still 5-6 thousand people paying attention, and the most active in my WeChat moments had around 4-5 hundred people liking my posts. These are the friends I’ve accumulated.
Recently, I talked to a friend about something, and they said that the number of friends, 100, 1000, or 5000, is essentially the same from a monetization perspective, as you’re not making money with them. In the past, I used to write code and do ads myself for my quiz live shows, with the users just being viewers, and I was essentially making money alone, working hard. But if you make money with 100 or 5000 people together, it will be very different.: So, you should make your WeChat friends either be your colleagues or your customers, enabling you to closely cooperate with ten, fifty, or even one hundred people. For instance, Jack Ma has tens of thousands of people executing his ideas and hundreds of millions of merchants on his platform, making Jack Ma cooperate with many people and earn a lot of money.
The number of WeChat friends is not the point, but rather the quality and the intimacy of cooperation. I am trying to cooperate with as many people as possible, asking others when I don’t understand, and building connections with excellent people. Therefore, customers gradually came this way, as everyone is in the internet circle, and they came from my friend circle or were introduced by a friend.
This also depends on what you do. If you are a scientist, you only need a few partners to research and write papers with, focusing on your work and mastering core technologies. But if you’re starting a business, you may need help from many people.
This is also related to personal character. For example, I enjoy talking to many people and am curious about them, having been like that since my school days, when I knew most boys in my class.
When a person does what they love and are good at, they won’t feel tired. On the contrary, if someone has to chat with several thousand people, they might not be willing to do so, while I find it interesting to meet different people and learn about them. Networking is something I have been doing since I was young and have been accustomed to for many years, and as a programmer, starting a software outsourcing company’s business is a suitable direction for me. Entrepreneurship requires first doing what you are good at and showcasing your strengths.: How do you maintain connections with so many friends, or keep them focused on you?
Li Zhiwei: I am an open-minded person, I have no secrets, and I enjoy being sincere. I even share things like emotional matters, some difficulties, and daily life with them. You will find that most people only share these things with a few close friends or intimate people. But if you share them with everyone, these people will understand you better, and you will make more friends.
From a business perspective, this habit can also be beneficial for other types of workers. For example, some scientists also write their own blogs, etc. In this era, expanding your influence and opening up your heart to communicate with others and share your work with them is a good thing.
Question: Most of your customers come from your WeChat friends. How did they develop into your customers, and how did you get them to give you the projects?
Li Zhiwei: It’s quite simple. Based on my understanding of how small businesses operate, small business development relies on constant promotion in the Moments (朋友圈) and transfer records, etc. First, let everyone know that I am doing this, so if you want to find me to do it, just message me anytime. You will find that, for example, those selling second-hand cars, they directly change their WeChat name to “second-hand cars plus phone number,” which is very direct, meaning “come on, feel free to call me anytime.”: In reality, our current channel is WeChat. If it’s public accounts or other channels, it’s the same. First, we need to see the advertisement or our advertisement being seen, either we actively go and place ads, or we see it on friends’ circles or other places asking if anyone knows a freelance team, or we see someone else’s ads. This is an information matching process. Either we passively receive this information or we actively publish information and someone sees it. Gradually, more and more people become aware and business comes in.
Apart from actively seeking out opportunities by “stirring the pot” and so on, there are also ways to get projects through indirect social connections, or through engineers we have cooperated with who introduce projects to us. I give a commission to the friends I introduce, forming a stable channel. There are also projects that come from old customers or new projects from old customers. These projects have a high level of trust and enable us to quickly close deals.
Q: If cooperating with old customers is very enjoyable, will you consider long-term cooperation?
Li Zhiwei: Of course, and there are indeed such cases. For example, for the educational unicorn monkey Small Monkey Question Company, we did some H5, mini programs, and so on. Our relationship with them is very good. Another is Zhongke Touzhu, a company specializing in artificial intelligence, for whom we did several AI-related projects, including their product manual, which we also did. These two are relatively large customers.
Q: Even if there are enjoyable cooperative relationships, there must be cooperative relationships that are not enjoyable, right? If there are disputes during the cooperation process, how will you handle it?: Yes, I have had such experiences, but they weren’t particularly unpleasant cooperations. For instance, there was a project we worked on together, which was a delivery project. When we were almost done, the other party didn’t provide feedback, didn’t actively push the project forward, and they might have moved on to do another product or project. Such incidents are relatively rare.
For example, there was another project with significant technical challenges, which was introduced by a friend. We initially agreed to pay a deposit of around 5000 for a trial, but when we started working on it, we found that we needed to bypass the WeChat protocol, which presented a significant technical challenge. So, we returned the deposit and didn’t take on the project. At the beginning, we had agreed to give it a try, and the customer could understand.
Our projects occasionally encounter such situations and some delays, but there haven’t been any particularly unpleasant ones.
Q: What if a project didn’t go through, and later this customer came back with another project, would you still consider working with them?
李智维: Yes, I am quite open-minded, and I rarely delete people. Every family has its own hardships, and no one is a completely bad person. A person who appears cold and indifferent to others might be warm and passionate in their own family or among friends. Therefore, one should be more forgiving towards strangers. Our customers have their own considerations, wanting costs to be lower, which is normal. Just like we feel that some engineers’ prices are too high, we might choose not to work with them.
It’s good to cooperate if possible, even if we don’t succeed this time, at least we’ve made contact with people who have no relation to us, providing opportunities for future cooperation.
We were dealing with a customer, in the initial stage, we did some things for free for them, such as function analysis and creating a detailed mind map, but we still didn’t make a deal, wasting a lot of time, manpower, and energy. We felt sad because time is precious but we didn’t make a deal.
So I thought we should discuss a rough price with the customer from the beginning. However, I later thought that before signing the contract with the customer, we had already done a lot of things for them. The customer could sense our sincerity, unlike other outsourcing companies that might come and ask how much for this project, which might give a calculative impression. We didn’t charge them yet, but gave them a mind map, a quote, and spent valuable time serving the customer. We believed this would make the customer feel our sincerity. Sincere attitudes are mutual.
Indeed, this approach led to an increase in conversion rates over time. If we didn’t succeed in the end, the customer would still feel a little sorry.: How do you evaluate a person, and who in your opinion is a reliable person?
Zhiwei: In my opinion, a reliable person is someone who keeps their promises. They do what they promise you to the best of their ability, and if they can’t, they explain the reasons honestly. From a communication perspective, a reliable person can clearly express their intentions, be sincere, and share their real thoughts with you. If the other party feels that our plan is not suitable, we also hope that they will sincerely tell us why. We also want to know why an engineer or designer did not join our project. So I have always thought sincerity is important.
When it comes to a reliable person, for example, you can look at how they work, whether they are punctual, and whether they fulfill their promises. If it’s the first time cooperating, we usually sign a contract, which is a promise recorded in writing. Of course, there will be some exit clauses in the contract, such as family emergencies, which can be promptly informed.
A reliable person has strong abilities, works quickly, is good at cooperating with people, keeps their promises, and is excellent. We have cooperated with many people, and reliable people do their work well and quickly, respond promptly, and timely reply to messages. If there are indeed recent busy periods or problems with the project, they can honestly say so.
If you cannot give the other party a promise, or if it is impossible to fulfill it, you should refuse them in advance and clearly express your real thoughts.: What have you learned in the past six months about communication skills and dealing with people, since you interact with so many people?
Li Zhiwei: I have come to realize that cooperation between people is a kind of agreement. The reason there is deceit is because people deviate from previous agreements, causing deceit. Regardless of whether it’s with a lover, parents, or everyone, the relationship between people is a kind of agreement. If you don’t fulfill this agreement, people will get angry.
There are unspoken agreements, such as when you ask someone for help, they help you, but when you need their help next time, you don’t help them back, which is not recognizing kindness and is a form of deceit. For example, when a boyfriend and girlfriend are together, they promise to be exclusive, but if one of them falls in love with someone else during this period, it is a breach of trust and a form of deceit.
For a project, clearly communicate what the terms are, how much it costs, and what needs to be done. Try to clarify as much as possible at the beginning. If there isn’t clear communication at the beginning, and additional work is discovered halfway through, without a clear compensation, conflicts are likely to arise. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, problems may arise during the process. In such cases, both parties can supplement the agreement to keep the project going.
After making an agreement, you must fulfill it. If you can’t, don’t make the promise in the first place. Communicate openly about all aspects and confirm as much as possible. I agree with Li Jiacheng’s words on how to expand a business, he said one must incur losses.
Sometimes when we recruit engineers, there are some we really want to collaborate with, even though their price is higher, we make some sacrifices in the early stages, allowing us to work with this engineer once. Money is indeed just a few ten thousand blocks, the key is that we made something out of this situation.
Towards customers, we are the same, a little less money to take on the next project is acceptable, I’ll take a loss; collaborating with excellent engineers, I’ll take a loss.
Why did Li Jiacheng say that expanding businesses entails incurring losses, and that the key to being a person lies in taking losses? The reason is that, in most cases, both parties care about their interests, everyone is calculating, right? Only if you are willing to take a loss, then you will get the opportunity to do this thing. Later, you work harder to make it successful, the money you earn may be less, but you have gained this opportunity and the experience of working with the customer and the excellent engineer.
For example, we may work with some engineers who are slightly more expensive, but they are excellent, we try to collaborate with them as much as possible. Gradually, we have many excellent engineers on our team, and we have many customers who trust us, isn’t it natural that both sides can give us a good price, allowing us to earn more profits? Customers trust us and pay a premium, engineers think this channel is good and are willing to make concessions, so naturally we can become more prosperous. I found that the more I lose, the more people I can cooperate with, and the more opportunities I get. The essence of losing money is that I don’t care about short-term gains, I value long-term benefits and experience accumulation, and I am willing to lose a little in the short term.
So our company still has me, and I have hardly offended anyone these years, so to speak, I have hardly wronged anyone. The teacher lent me money, I lost it, but I got it back. Our company now has over 50 million yuan, and if we were to settle accounts at any time, I could make it up to him. In the business world, anyone who has given me money, I owe them. The more money someone gives me, the more I owe them.
Our company, to be honest, has not made anyone unhappy, put anyone in a difficult position, or exploited anyone’s interests. The engineers and designers have not complained about anyone working with us. Although some projects may have stalled because the other party did not push for payment, I will distribute the money based on everyone’s workload. When there is not enough money, I will invest a little of my own to ensure our cooperation is successful, and I will bear the loss.
In dealing with people, we should think long-term, actively cooperate with excellent people, and often, for the sake of the overall situation, losing a little can make everyone comfortable, making it easier for us to cooperate. Then, we will serve our customers well and serve well those with whom we have close relationships and intensive cooperation. I believe this is the essence of dealing with people. My emotional intelligence is not high, but dealing with so many people is simple. The principle is that if you are good to me, I will be good to you. Every person, every agreement, every promise, we should make every effort to fulfill. When engineers and contractors have disputes, I will mediate.
So why be patient with people? Because after dealing with so many people, you can understand various things. For example, boyfriends and girlfriends may delete each other as friends, and they may not know who broke the agreement, so each feels deceived and deletes the other or does something else. People’s relationships can be fragile, so it’s understandable why they sometimes quarrel, and this is normal. I should put others’ interests first in dealing with people, sometimes sacrificing my own interests for the greater good; keeping every promise, expressing myself clearly in doing things, making sure both parties understand our agreements, and addressing any differing opinions before starting cooperation. If issues arise during the process, appropriate compensation should be provided to appease everyone. This is my understanding of how to handle people.
Question: How do you manage your company? How do you run a good company?
Managing a company, we currently manage a team of around 20-30 engineers and designers in a development team. “Transparency” is very important, and we use GitLab, a code management system, allowing me to see all engineers’ commits and track everyone’s progress, seeing what everyone has done.
Transparency is essential for effective monitoring of team members’ work since not everyone has strong responsibility or time to do their tasks. Therefore, being transparent allows me to identify issues early and intervene. Managing a company requires great transparency, and responsibilities must be clearly defined.
We pay our part-time engineers on a commission basis, and everyone knows how much they earn based on the amount of work they do. Responsibilities must be clearly defined. The reason for company chaos is unclear responsibilities, with no one knowing what they should do, and no one organizing everyone to do it. We manage the company well using an outsourcing project model, and most company matters are discussed in the work group, keeping everyone informed.: The founder of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio, stated: “Strive for extreme transparency.”
To manage a company, transparency is one aspect, along with sincere and honest communication, allowing each person to express their genuine thoughts. Additionally, a company is a profitable place, and although it’s essential to maintain relationships, if your superiors are not lenient towards you but demand strictness, while you are lenient towards your subordinates, then all the pressure falls on you. If the pressure on employees is minimal, as a manager, your pressure is significant; you must enable the team to share your burden.
Managing a company involves clear and distinct responsibilities for everyone, and everyone should take on the pressure, making everyone conscious and proactive in doing their tasks. This is one of my thoughts on managing a company. Of course, as our scale is still small, we will likely have new thoughts when we reach a larger scale.
Question: What recommendations do you have for engineers in the workplace?
Li Zhiwei: I have always advocated for openness and trying new things. It’s meaningless to repeatedly do simple tasks. An engineer should not just do simple page work and repeat it but should continuously learn and acquire new technologies. I realized this problem has existed for the past 5 years, from middle school to high school, the best achievement was getting into the provincial competition in programming contests. I found that I hadn’t learned anything in these 5 years. In my spare time, I was repeatedly solving simple programming problems. At the same time, I was alone, without exchanging ideas with others, and didn’t learn from stronger people.
Regarding your question, let’s talk about myself and share some role models, idols in my life, both in my work and personal experiences.
Zhiwei: I pay attention to some people in this era, like Wang Xing, Cheng Wei, Zhang Yiming, and many people in the internet circle. I’m also interested in people like Steve Jobs and Sun Zhongshan. Recently, I’ve been reading some books about human civilization and the Earth’s development history, such as “Civilization’s Dawn.” In fact, the great people in the world throughout history have been my role models, and I pay attention to their related biographies and works. However, the key is to practice and think for yourself, as other people’s examples cannot truly teach you how to do it.
The person who had the most significant impact on me is Paul Graham, the founder of the world-renowned startup incubator Y Combinator. He inspired me to start a business, and he encouraged young people to do so. I read and translated his articles, deeply studied his thought processes, and tried to bring his thought processes into my own mind as much as possible. However, there were still many things I didn’t understand, and I could only stay at the level of the text. People’s thoughts can be difficult to change at times, so I first acted and then thought about his views, and later my understanding deepened. I’m grateful for having taken that first step.
In my younger days, I remember opening a Word document on the computer and writing down my dream of changing the world with technology. The person you care about, value, want to do, and are interested in is your fundamental operating system. Although the specifics of personal life may be unpredictable, like how I do freelance work this year and might do something else next year, your professional career will always be related to your fundamental operating system. I was interested in entrepreneurship, business, success, and technology during my youth. I used to read relevant news and books, and then I met a role model, Graham. I imitated, memorized, and translated his ideas, and practiced them, which indeed led to improvement. I also read Li Haowen’s book “Regard Time as a Friend” in middle school. He is now an investor in our company. Ten years have passed in a blink.
Therefore, I have paid attention to business, efficiency, success cases, and technology since childhood. My thinking and cognition may not change overnight by reading many books and experiencing many events, but they will change gradually.
Moreover, I learned a lot from people around me, such as LX, the vice president of Yuan Zi Library, TQ, the technical responsible person of Xiao Yun Sousuo, and ZXD, my first boss who is now an Alibaba technology expert. The process of working with them taught me a lot.
Role models are necessary, but many things still require real practice to grow.
Answer: I hold a positive view on investment. Receiving investment brought me more resources and opportunities, which helped me to expand my business and improve my team. It also forced me to be more accountable and focused on achieving results.
Zhiwei: Firstly, after obtaining the investment, it is necessary to learn how to manage your wealth reasonably and use it in the right place. Wasteful spending is not acceptable. Properly using money is a skill. When you don’t have the ability to match this wealth, the wealth may be quickly spent.
It’s not just that you’re not using the money correctly, but your attitude will also change. For instance, when I received a 50,000 RMB investment from Li Xiaocai teacher, my attitude was still ambiguous. I quickly spent it on hiring people, no longer willing to work hard myself to recruit people personally, or to pull people into the group. I felt that I couldn’t manage it, so I wanted to train my management abilities by hiring people. The company hadn’t yet made profitable businesses, so I recruited quite a few people. My attitude became even more ambiguous, floating, and I felt that the company had money, so I was the manager.
If these funds were the money I had earned myself before, I would have felt that they were precious, but now this 50,000 RMB was investment money, not my own, and I didn’t feel the hardship of earning money, didn’t sharpen my knife on my employees, and therefore lost 45,000 RMB. My abilities weren’t yet up to managing these funds.
Some people around me who have started businesses and received a lot of investment and then lost more than ten million, and then became low-key, the excessive pressure may have crushed some people, making them lose their vitality. I received 50,000 RMB, even if I lost it, I could still earn it back. I am very grateful to Li Xiaocai teacher, and he didn’t give me a lot of money. If he had given me 300,000 RMB, I might have lost more and it would have taken longer to earn it back, and the pressure would have been greater.
I believe that for entrepreneurs, it’s not a good thing for money to come too easily. Young entrepreneurs, no matter what business they create, be it opening a restaurant or any other business, big or small, if you’re not a high-ranking manager in a large company with a high social status and strong abilities, I suggest not taking other people’s investment for your first time starting a business. despite not needing to return this money, it is a debt of gratitude, which cannot be neglected by others. Li Xiaolai teacher told me not to worry, it’s fine, take it slowly. But I haven’t defrauded anyone of so much money, there is still great psychological pressure.
For young people just starting out in business, their knowledge is quite limited. If you are an engineer, you may not understand how to recruit people or make sales, so if you want to start a business, you can first grind it out, using the money you earn yourself, no matter how little, to start a business, earn a little at a time, and make one step at a time, success requires time. It is often reported in social news that money given to young people to start a business has been burnt out, some have run away, and I am beginning to understand. Easy money and too much money can ruin a person.
If you are a high-level manager in a large company with many connections and management abilities, raising millions of dollars to start a business is quite good, but I have no right to judge them. However, as a first-line engineer coming out to start a business like me, I suggest we first earn some money.
Q: Have you earned money now? How is the current state of your business? What’s your feeling about it?
Li Zhiwei: Currently, our company’s revenue for the first half of the year is around 200 million, with a profit of over 50 million. We have done over 40 projects for clients. There are no major achievements, but at least we can sustain a team. In fact, I have failed in doing more things. My previous attempt to do a self-media to accept broadcasting and find teachers also failed. The more detailed one is our previous attempt to do “interest live” to invite hosts and teachers, which was not well received and failed.: There’s a saying that goes: Why is Silicon Valley cool, because more failures happen here. Sun Justise, being the first billionaire in Japan and an investor in Alibaba, said: My whole life has been mostly failures.
Because earning 50,000 or 100,000 dollars is small change, but what can’t be bought back with money are experiences, successes, failures, skills, methods, and understanding of society and human nature. Now, the money being earned is still small change, for long-term accumulation, long-term refinement of oneself, and waiting for that day when one can do great things.