Yu Long, female, Bachelor of Electronic Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, MBA from stanford graduate school of business. He is currently the founding and managing partner of Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund. Here is my Yu Long: What kind of female entrepreneurs do investors like? For your reference, I hope to help friends in need.
On March 26th, the sixth open class "Special Session for Female Entrepreneurs" sponsored by Entrepreneurial State was held in M Theater of Beijing Oriental Media Center. This open class invited outstanding representatives of female entrepreneurs and investors selected by the entrepreneurial state to express their unique views and opinions. In the open class, Yu Long, CEO of Bertelsmann's China headquarters, delivered a speech entitled "What kind of female entrepreneurs do investors like?" Speech. The following is the dry training of Yu Long's speech by Entrepreneurship:
Is gender really that important?
Good professionals, good entrepreneurs and good investors are all more important than differentiation. Now women are in a very warm environment. Now they choose to start a business not because of life, but because they want to do something interesting. This is the status quo of the industry. Many women are actually cutting into pure intelligence and even artificial intelligence, including big data analysis. We have also seen some excellent entrepreneurs serving at the enterprise level. Female entrepreneurs like Liu Qing and Gong Haiyan may have different dimensions of success and successful heavyweights. But we all saw that voices from different corners were saying, I really want to be myself.
How can female entrepreneurs get money?
There are three main points:
First, entrepreneurs had better have entrepreneurial experience. At least you can have working experience in a startup. Ideally, you should bring your own team with management and handling experience, at least 10 or more. Moreover, when communicating, we should pay more attention to avoiding some preset female images.
Second, you should try your best to show that there is a very, very powerful thinking process behind your entrepreneurial concept. You may change frequently. You should show them that you have actually persisted. You should prepare as much as possible or have some hard evidence with very high quality and data to communicate with him.
Third, we should provide you with a more overall idea, and don't lose to a detailed image.
The following is the full text of shorthand:
Hello everyone! I'm glad to share it with you. When I came, Mr. Nan gave me a topic "What kind of female entrepreneurs do investors like", which is usually a topic that investors don't like. It will only say what kind of quality, personality and direction you want your entrepreneur to have, and it will have a little enlightenment. Today, I came to the scene to see friends from other places, and not only women participated in entrepreneurship. I want to discuss with you some realities in the entrepreneurial environment.
Is gender really that important? I often say that good professionals, good entrepreneurs and good investors are all * * * more than differences. In fact, they may all be particularly diligent or keen, particularly efficient and have special personality charm. They can organize talents they don't have and encourage others to move towards a goal. They can also convince others with virtue, or have other qualities. In which direction are women born superior or stronger?
Let's look at the current situation of female entrepreneurs. Today, we are very happy. Manager Nan pointed out that it is spring now. What does the capital market think of these women entrepreneurs? These women are not forced by life. In many choices, they want to make the world a better place because they want to do something more interesting. They can easily become treasurers. They can attach themselves to someone, become rich and beautiful, and simply survive.
But in fact? Let's take a look at the entrepreneurial industry related to women. The first thing investors can think of, and the industries that can pay attention to women's entrepreneurship are nothing more than so many models. Women, dressing up, fashion, selling milk powder, caring about children's education, and looking at early childhood training. This is the direction of our thinking. Maybe we can add a social interaction to this concept, so the time will be higher, because these people will chat and turn all the gossip into interaction, which is the future social network. Think again. What else can we sell? In fact, I think this is also a misunderstanding. Can women really only sell wedding dresses and flowers? Of course we can, but we can do more.
This is the status quo of the industry. We see that more women are actually cutting into pure intelligence and even artificial intelligence, including they are also doing more big data analysis. We have also seen some excellent entrepreneurs serving at the enterprise level.
These women come from China and abroad. Let's look at their backgrounds. In fact, some people have a very good life. For example, like this one, she founded Washington post, which is a very good media. Before, she was a reporter. After writing several books, she decided to establish her own media kingdom. As soon as she passed by smoothly, she married an oil tycoon and was very influential in politics.
There are also good people who have been married before, just Mrs. Beckham. Today, she has established a personal image and brand for her own brand, her own products, her own unique products and execution, which is very successful.
We see that the above two beautiful women are both from America. They are not the CEO of the company, but they have all experienced more than two great venture capital enterprises, accumulated their own experience in the process of rapid development, and then were invited to sit on another rocket. Although they are not CEOs, they have also made contributions to the world. For example, from Google to Yahoo, and become the head, the mood is very different. In addition, the female member of Facebook brought something different to Facebook.
There are many reasons why women choose to start a business today, and their backgrounds are different. Liu Qing, a princess born with a golden key. This is the director of Goldman Sachs, how beautiful, reading the press release, like a princess married to our world. Look at Gong Haiyan, a girl from the countryside. She was on the road and didn't give up her efforts.
These female entrepreneurs may have different success dimensions and success heavyweights, but we all saw voices from different corners. One voice said, I really want to be myself.
Everyone must remember a cruel reality. Entrepreneurship is a minority, and female entrepreneurs will still be a minority. You can't become the mainstream, and you are destined to go alone. This society will not embrace you so warmly, change all prejudices against women and recognize you overnight. Only after a clear understanding and preparation, we will not forget that there must be winter waiting for us besides this spring, which is moved by our bright smile today. The possibility of holding capital support must be much lower than that of men. In the United States, only 65,438+00% of female entrepreneurs can get venture capital.
What exactly is female × entrepreneur? Because I really don't know, maybe I can give some answers with some enterprises I have invested in. Please wave to Bao, the co-founder of Lagou. Actually, she will share it later, so I won't repeat it. We are not all entrepreneurs who invest in female CEOs. We see many female core entrepreneurs and female executives here.
We invested in a company called Hulai Games. We voted for Zhang Lili, the wife of this company, but Lily never showed up. I said, what if one day your company is really divided? She said I was stupid. I choose my family when there are contradictions. The company above is also made by husband and wife, and I think this collocation is relatively stable.
Our company's internal entrepreneurial team, BMG, is a woman in our company's team. She is a very loyal music lover. One day, she said that I wanted to start my own business internally and become the CEO of BMG China.
Later, we also absorbed more female senior officials. For example, ICLCK is an advertising company that does digital precision marketing, and a woman who joined has worked in the advertising industry for many years.
Companies like Aunt Aunt are entrepreneurial, dominated by men, with a high proportion of female executives.
We see that the Wizard of Oz 40 years ago is different from today's Hollywood blockbusters. Look, she has many friends. Everyone has advantages and disadvantages. They overcome difficulties, support each other and finally find the answer.
What does Dabai teach us today? A person saving the world is actually the world of many venture capitalists today, but a person wants to find a particularly strong person to save the world.
Do you really want this? I don't know if I can change my vision. Can women really only raise children and sell flowers and milk powder? Look at these two boys. On the left is my uncle Chuck, and on the right is Chen Qi. Buy buy's attitude towards life was solved by two boys. They don't feel that their horizons are limited by boys. What I want to share with you later is that women entrepreneurs often emphasize this point when communicating with people. They all answer 10 thousand questions like this. I am a woman, I am a woman, of course I understand, I am a woman, of course I know how to dress better than you, I am a mother, and I have a third-grade daughter. Of course I know where the problem of education lies, and of course I know where the pain point of logistics lies. It's different. For example, these two boys have completely constructed different product frameworks and data systems, so that girls can have fun. I think we can really think about whether girls can do the opposite, use our eyes, use our unconventional thinking to crack financial big data, and think about how to be a rookie girl who is better at stock trading and playing games. Participating in the sports meeting has a different experience and brings you dislocation competition.
I can get rid of it myself. Why not start a business? I just returned to China after giving birth in new york in 2008, and I was thinking about what to do with all entrepreneurs. Finally, I decided to participate in about 50 companies and share their joy of success through investment, because some companies have a downturn in their growth, and going through ups and downs with these entrepreneurs is also a greater life experience and richer, which may be the biggest gain for investors.
Take a step forward, break through the bondage of tangible, asexual and internal and external, and thank God that my sharing is finally over, without writing, and I don't know how to go on.
To be honest, I think the real you are hard to change. Today is an open class, so I need to share something. What deep-rooted traps most people may have? They can't help but feel some limitations and characteristics, so I said, who is more likely to win our financing better? At least ideally, you should have had entrepreneurial experience. If you have had a successful entrepreneurial experience, it is better to do it again. The next best thing, at least you have worked in a start-up. Ideally, you have led a team yourself, and have experience in managing and dealing with people, at least a team with more than 10 people. Thirdly, when communicating, we should pay more attention to avoiding some female images that people usually presuppose. For example, girls are more emotional, and you may need to be relatively calm when communicating. Above all, don't be too subjective. Don't answer every question. Because I am a woman, of course I know better than you. You don't say! This is a vivid demonstration, but I have to give a very specific example. This matter, the matter of dressing up and taking selfies, has been showing you that I really saw something you couldn't see.
Second, it is just right to stop after this point. Of course, it is more likely that you know women better than women. They may suspect that you are not logical enough, so you should try your best to show that there is a very, very powerful thinking process behind you. You may change frequently. You should show them that you have actually persisted. This was done step by step after six months of careful consideration. You may be confused, in charge, and insensitive to numbers, so as far as possible, you should have some hard evidence with very good quality and data to communicate with him. Even if you don't actually have it, try to sharpen your knife at the last minute.
I think women are too narrow-minded to accept opinions, so when communicating, I may remind myself that I must not repeatedly emphasize that I must be right. Sometimes it's ok to turn around and tidy up a little and go back to digest. Show that you can listen more, and don't be vague. In addition, narrow-minded also means that when evaluating competitors, it is suggested that we should have a little mentality, a little learning mentality and a little positive energy mentality, and don't sell ourselves short. We are advised to be more active when evaluating our competitors.
Third, we should provide you with a more overall idea, and don't lose to a detailed image. In other words, are there people in your team who you think are complementary and better than you? Where do they come from? How do you persuade and attract them to come to your side and give evidence? This is something we attach great importance to. As an investor, how do you try to motivate them? This time also largely reflects your sense of security, your self-confidence, you are not afraid of people who are stronger than you to join your team, and you have done it.
The presupposition of female entrepreneurs in other people's minds is that you will feel insecure, so please show your weakness sincerely when communicating and expressing, and don't be too aggressive. Even so, I have done another thing better than her position, but others are worse than me, or I am like this today, but it is only accidental. The worst answer is that she is worse than me. I think this is particularly important. Perhaps at least 15 outstanding representatives elected here today have experienced this for a long time, or have never fallen into such a quagmire, but this is my own observation or personal feeling, and many investors will have such a preset for women.
Another cruel fact is that for all-female teams, the probability of getting investment will be lower. Today, I am particularly willing to bring you to reality and see how we can do better. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. It is very likely that some people are particularly good at technology, some people are particularly good at property, and some people are better than men. However, many people don't think so. So if you are going to take the exam, there may be boys in the team combination. From the direction of data architecture, from the previous successful experience of leading the team independently in other entrepreneurial teams, and from a larger platform, your investors will also have more confidence in you.
I don't know if the dry goods I can think of count, but that's probably it. This is from the bottom of my heart, but you can only listen for a while. What I want to say is that these are technologies, not Tao. This trend of female entrepreneurship is unstoppable. I think the strongest entrepreneurs in China must have the highest proportion of women in the world, because culture has given us an independent and strong heart in the past few decades, and the whole society is tolerant and accepting female leaders and bosses. I think the communication cost between us is lower than that of other countries. The financing tips just mentioned are for your reference only. The most important thing is to be yourself. You don't have to play a woman looking for hope in despair. You can't eat this set, but if you are a girl, acting skills must be learned, and sincerity can impress people the most. If you are just a person who is very delicate and sensitive to products, you can face him directly, like me, and then accept that I have a strong partner, a strong subordinate, or he is on the way, but this is really my unparalleled strength.
This is what I'm going to do today. Be yourself. It's great to see everyone so happy and beautiful that there is no need to toss and turn. I wish you all success, thank you!
Yu Long, female, Bachelor of Electronic Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, MBA from stanford graduate school of business. He is currently the founding and managing partner of Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund. Here is my Yu Long: What kind of female entrepreneurs do investors like? For your reference, I hope to help friends in need.
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