36Kr interviewed Eric a few days ago and discussed the following four questions:
What exactly is YC? What's your specialty?
As a former YC camper, Eric first gave his personal experience:
Although YC Kemp is only three months old, as the founder of Pebble, he has been a member of YC network since he joined.
For a long time after the end of Pebble camp, Eric can still directly call YC tutors for advice, especially when they are caught off guard, Eric will immediately call the tutors and say, "I need to talk to you about something. I'm in some trouble and need your help now. "
YC is like a club to him. There is a cultural atmosphere that is willing to share. The seniors are very willing to provide their own experience and professional ability for new entrepreneurs. In addition, YC is also a talent pool for entrepreneurs. When some projects are terminated for one reason or another, other entrepreneurial projects are willing to hire these entrepreneurs.
Therefore, the counseling, cooperation and advice of senior entrepreneurs, lasting interpersonal relationships and growing alumni network are the YC characteristics that Eric personally feels.
In addition, YC actually emphasizes not the incubator in the traditional sense; They don't pull entrepreneurs into a joint office space, expecting them to collide in this space. They believe that if people want to make products, entrepreneurs should stay with their markets and consumers. YC is very clear that in the early days of starting a business, office space is not what entrepreneurs need most; They need YC at this stage precisely because it can promote teams and products.
The friend of YC founder once imitated YC and founded Imagine K 12, an incubator in the vertical field of educational technology, but the latter was merged into YC in 20 16. Because they later discovered that startups in any field face very similar problems, such as how to identify the pain points of users? How to communicate with users? How to hire your first employee? And how to expand? In this way, although Imagine K 12 focuses on the vertical market, it is actually very similar to the services provided by YC, so it is better to join a larger alumni network.
YC's vision is to bring more value to the world by helping entrepreneurs, so they think that the status quo of investing in 300 companies every year is obviously far from the vision. Next, YC's ambition is to raise $654.38 billion a year and invest 6543.8+ 00000 startups; For many entrepreneurs in developing countries,1000000 USD is enough for them to verify their business ideas at the seed stage. Although it is exponential growth from investing in 300 companies to investing in 10000 companies every year, YC says this is what they are trying to do; Let their enterprises expand as they expect and choose all entrepreneurs.
In a sense, YC is more and more like Harvard, providing you with the best education, guidance and companionship, and then turning you into a part of the elite network all over the world. But I asked Eric, does this mean that YC will face a scale bottleneck like Harvard? After all, from Oxford to Cambridge to the other side of the Atlantic, the model of elite universities has not changed much. For hundreds of years, Harvard has not achieved the exponential growth in the number of students as YC hoped.
Eric said: This just shows that we need to explore the model of the next generation of universities. YC is full of people with "big dreams", but there are not enough such people in Harvard.
I asked, "How many Harvard? Dream big? People? How many Harvard graduates are there in the YC team? "
Eric said, "YC doesn't have Harvard emmm. There seems to be one. "
What is the purpose of YC entering China? What kind of startup do you like?
Regarding why he entered China, Eric admitted two points: First, there were too many new unicorns in China in recent years; Secondly, YC realized this and decided to take action too late.
Eric thinks YC will enter China in a special way. In the past, entrepreneurs had to fly to Silicon Valley for interviews and activities, but for China, they might send their partners to China, including holding more alumni activities in China. But it is still too early to discuss the specific form.
He believes that in China's entrepreneurial ecology, funds are not the most scarce; In addition, in the survey of entrepreneurs, he also found that getting YC brand endorsement, contacting the global alumni network and establishing interaction with great founders are what China entrepreneurs want more than money, especially for those startups that focus on global development.
But Eric said that not all enterprises are suitable for YC. The market of 654.38+04 billion people is enough to support many companies, such as some fast-moving consumer goods; But based on its alumni resources and vision, YC is more capable and willing to help those enterprises that focus on globalization. As for how to help them prepare for globalization in the early stage of their business, Eric said that their exploration is also under way.
YC, as always, will not set restrictions on the industry where startups are located, and companies that change the world may appear in any industry; The 1450 companies that have invested in all walks of life also prove this point.
I asked, "There are many good dollar funds that have done well in China and established their own brands. How can YC compete with them? "
Eric said: "Like all startups, YC is looking for a small area that it is best at. There are also many excellent venture capital institutions and incubators around the world, but the niche of YC is to teach entrepreneurs to make what people want; Similarly, in China, we can not only provide what we have always been good at (these suggestions are also applicable to any industry and country), but also help companies with global ambitions to grow based on the resources of Silicon Valley. This is our characteristic and determines our positioning. "
As an innovative company in the field of venture capital, how does YC iterate its own products?
YC makes investment while tutoring; I have to iterate over my product.
As mentioned above, YC is far from realizing its vision, so they are also a startup company in essence. Eric says YC is changing all the time. In addition to two batches of entrepreneurial camps every year, they have been trying new businesses and iterating over some new products every six months.
Take "financing 654.38 billion US dollars a year and investing 654.38 million companies" as an example. I asked Eric how they planned to achieve this goal.
Eric said: This scale goal is beyond the current product form, so they tried the Fellowship program, providing 65,438+02,000 dollars of free funding for their recognized founders. This project is lighter than the regular YC camp, but YC provides them with as much help as possible, including online office hours and AWS. YC said that $65,438+$2,000 is not much, but it may affect whether you choose to work in a big company or start your own Airbnb.
But later, I found that this method didn't work, so I tried to share my experience and suggestions with entrepreneurs through meetings. Entrepreneurs have a good feedback on this kind of meeting, but YC thinks that the scale of the meeting is too slow, so it makes the things shared in the meeting into free recorded lessons and puts them on startupschool.org. Later this year, StartupSchool will offer a 10-week large-scale open online course, during which students can also get advice on the company's development from entrepreneurs' mentors.
Based on the positive feedback from StartupSchool, YC is trying to establish InvestorSchool to help new investors improve their judgment on projects.
YC has its own software team, about 10 people, which is rare in investment institutions. But if YC is regarded as a company that brings value to the world by helping entrepreneurs, and these attempts are product iterations made by YC in the direction of realizing its vision, then it is very easy to understand YC.
Take 36Kr as an example, how to understand "making what people want"?
So, what exactly is "making what people want"?
Eric said that he liked an example of user needs: a person walked in the desert for a long time and was dying of thirst; At this time, you handed him a bottle of water, and he really wanted it. It doesn't matter whether this bottle of water is dirty, muddy, how much it costs or poorly packaged. Everything else is to improve satisfaction. What he wants most at the moment is water to quench his thirst, and water is the best thing to solve his needs.
At that time, the "thirst" that the smart watch Pebble first solved was that people could not see the information without looking for a mobile phone. At first, Pebble was not even designed for Apple or Android, but for BlackBerry. This is Eric's own pain point, so his original intention is to let people see the information even if they can't find BlackBerry.
I asked: People must use a certain hardware for a specific purpose, so we can find the pain points of users by observing people's behavior. But do users in the media industry have any pain points? What are their aspirations?
Eric said: One of his favorite media is Buzzfeed, because they not only produce news, but also sell pots.
This matter, I wrote in the report "Beauty is not like strength, Buzzfeed starts a new stove to upgrade cooking intelligence". Buzzfeed first opened a delicious food channel, distributing exquisite food videos on major platforms to attract users to watch; When the viewing behavior inspired users to try it themselves, they simply made a smart pot synchronized with delicious videos, which not only allowed users to cook foolishly, but also promoted users to share food photos on social platforms because of the "Instagram-friendly" shape of the pot, further promoting the attention of delicious channels.
Eric thinks that when young people have 10- 15 minutes of free time, they want to see something relaxing or feel the beauty of life. Delicious videos meet this demand. He is not interested in Tasty himself, but he will order Tasty in bed with his wife. Tasty makes users willing to spend 10- 15 minutes watching it because they give users much-needed inspiration when they are eager for a better life. Then, when the users' needs are upgraded from the idea of finding a better life to creating a better life through personal experience, they hand the users a bottle of "water", a beautiful and easy-to-operate pot.
For 36Kr, we need to know what is the "craving" of users who are willing to spend 10- 15 minutes reading the information on scientific and technological entrepreneurship every day.
Eric believes that, like Tasty, they are eager to get inspiration about something; The former is about a better life, while the latter is about the future. The former wants to know what a good life is like, and wants it after knowing it; The latter wants to know what the future career or life is like, and after understanding it, he is likely to expect to be the founder and participant of the future life.
Only by understanding the thirst of news users can we focus on the "water" to quench our thirst without being distracted by the problem of "dirty, turbid, insufficient or poorly packaged".