The entrepreneurial path of Tsinghua Beihua graduates
"Beihua entrepreneurs prefer disruptive entrepreneurial projects, and are more willing to do things that have an impact."
"Tsinghua entrepreneurial gang low-profile, not as many women and children know the company as Beida, but the top few in each sub-sector are almost all Qinghua gang."
Although their entrepreneurial paths are distinct, the two paths lead to the same endpoint
It is said that Beijing college girls can recognize whether the guy across the street is from Tsinghua University or Peking University in two minutes.
The difference is so obvious: if the boy talks eloquently about the content of the country's political system, not allowing you to interrupt half a sentence, or quickly make a sharp criticism of your remarks, then he must be from Peking University; if they are often groups of people show up but silent, just listening to you in silence, only in the opinion of the really different can not hold back to say a few words, or even talk to the girls as soon as the word would be The first thing you need to do is to get your hands dirty.
When they stepped into the school, they had already gotten the first proof of their IQ, ability, and other talents. However, like two different factories, even if the same piece of high-quality material, after four years or even longer processing, the output will be very different.
These are perhaps the two colleges with the highest entrepreneurial success rates in China, and they are the main protagonists of many exciting entrepreneurial stories. An interesting question is whether entrepreneurs from these two colleges are as instantly recognizable as their students? If so, do entrepreneurs from the same school have similar entrepreneurial trajectories?
Different entrepreneurial personalities
People from Peking University are more open and uninhibited, more willing to do influential things, and more "crossover"; entrepreneurs from Tsinghua University are low-profile and pragmatic, and are more likely to become leaders in their niche markets
When the reporter started to think about this question, the first thing that came to mind was 3G Portal's "C". When this reporter started to think about this issue, the first thing that came to mind was Zhang Xiangdong of 3G Portal, who is from Peking University. He came from Peking University. 3G Portal is the most influential portal in the wireless field, is a typical "Peking University gang" company, the entrepreneurial team of Deng Yuqiang, Zhang Xiangdong, Chang Yingming, three people are in the same class in college.
Zhang Xiangdong and a few years ago did not change, still like a college student, with romantic long hair, wearing a cotton T-shirt casual pants. He carries a strong Peking University stigma, and likes to flaunt his opinions, likes and dislikes: his favorite red five stars are all over his office, and he's got one on his laptop. Two equally impressive bicycles make the office look cramped, and people he talks to can't help but glance over.
He'd just organized a party for entrepreneurs at BYU, and not just entrepreneurs, but also his hardcore friends from school. As you can imagine, wine was a big part of the gathering, and the nine conference rooms at 3G Portal's new headquarters are named after nine famous wines, which, Zhang says, "we have a secret understanding with."
This is a habit inherited from college. Zhang Xiangdong wrote in his blog, "In college, Yu Qiang often at lights out time 23:00 on the dot, took a bunch of our friends, went to the lawn to drink beer, babbling, laughing and cursing, since the call wine gang." That's how 3G Portal got its name, "Jubang (Wine Gang) Digital". When they registered the offshore company, Zhang Xiangdong transliterated a more romantic name, Dream Bund.
"What are the ****ing similarities between entrepreneurs at BYU?"
"That's a pseudo-question, right? The three of us don't have the same personality at all." Zhang Xiangdong argued, saying something like a poem, "Independence and free spirit are the mysterious code of Peking University. We remember Peking University by remembering these two words."
Surprisingly, the entrepreneur who best characterizes Peking University in his mind is not Robin Li or Yu Minhong, but Shen Hao, publisher of 21 Newspapers. Apparently, he's not judging him by his wealth or his company's turnover, but by the extent to which he's been able to influence others. Even the contradiction between wealth and the dream of freedom (even if it is a distant dream), wealth can be temporarily sacrificed.
3G Portal did this a few years ago, when they had millions of users, they could easily earn millions of dollars a month doing SP. However, they did not do it, willing to squeeze in a small office for the acquisition of servers can be cheaper than 50 dollars more money.
"Beida entrepreneurs prefer disruptive startups and are more willing to do impactful things." Zhang Xiangdong summarized. On the contrary, the "Qinghua gang" is more low-key, not as many companies as the Beida women and children, but almost all of the top few in each sub-sector "Qinghua gang".
Although Zhang Xiangdong's free-spirited demeanor is infectious, it's not easy to talk to him. He's so perceptive, he's ready to argue your point and leave you speechless. On the other hand, it's much easier to meet with the Qinghua gang, but they're just too low-profile and difficult to meet.
Tsinghua entrepreneurs are more like a group, although everyone has a distinctive personality, but most of the qualities are hidden in some **** under the same point is difficult to discover, only a few "brothers in the bunk" to know as well. Most of them are thoughtful, considerate, and thoughtful; every relevant detail, they will explain to you at the beginning of the conversation.
Ni Zhengdong, founder and president of Tsinghua Group, had just finished a meeting, and apologized to me for being an uninvited guest: "There's another meeting in a while, how long do you need?" He first reminded me that I had forgotten to talk to him. He first reminded me that I had forgotten to exchange business cards with him, and then when there was a slight noise in the room, he immediately stared at my recorder and asked, "Will it be affected?"
Ni Zhengdong spent six or seven years in the garden, starting with a master's degree at Tsinghua in 1996. By the time he left the school, he already had a typical "Tsinghua style" - it's hard to make a sharp first impression, he looks ordinary, dresses casually, his voice is not too high, not too low, and he's polite to everyone.
Ni Zhengdong's impression is that there were not many Tsinghua students starting businesses in China in the early days, and they were scattered. Later, the Internet entrepreneurship wind blowing through Zhongguancun, technology inevitably linked to Tsinghua, Tsinghua slowly have the soil of entrepreneurship. 1998, Ni Zhengdong imitation of MIT held the first college student entrepreneurship program competition in Tsinghua, there are hundreds of projects enrolled in the program, set off a wave of entrepreneurship of students in Tsinghua, "of which 70% of the project is to do the website. "
Low-profile, "Qing hua gang" characteristics in the Qingke revealed undoubtedly. Ni Zhengdong said, "Many people think that Zero2IPO is just a research organization, a company that organizes conferences, in fact, we also do investment, just not too say." The company's conference room, Zero2IPO has invested in the project densely pasted all over the wall.
Ni Zhengdong smiled and said, "Tsinghua people are still very down-to-earth, not too false; the idea is relatively simple, but the goal is clearer; more embracing." In a few words, he summarized it like a dissertation abstract.
He also thought about this interesting question, the same person into the Tsinghua or Peking University, why the character after graduation will be completely different? "Maybe it's because Peking University has the Weiming Lake, and everyone walks around it in circles; Tsinghua has the main road, and everyone rides their bikes straight and wild."
In Ni Zhengdong's mind, Tsinghua's entrepreneurial representatives are Xu Hang, chairman of Myriad Medical, and Deng Feng, a partner at Northern Lights. To the public, Xu Hang is not a familiar name, and Deng Feng's entrepreneurial experience before he became an investor is rarely understood. Myriad is a native Chinese medical device, but in the field of high-end medical equipment has been monopolized by overseas companies to kill a bloody road, has triggered unlimited excitement and expectations of the overseas capital market. Deng Feng was once known as one of the five most successful Chinese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, he and his two friends pulled up the company Netscreen, in the United States to create a $ 4 billion mergers and acquisitions myth, but this experience even if the occasional media, most of them are not detailed.
Deng Feng's investment philosophy is very characteristic of Tsinghua: "I want to be a farmer, not a hunter. Hunter every shot to have harvest, do venture capital need a long time to see the results. What's wrong with being a farmer for the rest of your life?"
Tsinghua entrepreneurship and Peking University entrepreneurship, the most obvious difference is the choice of entrepreneurial field. Peking University graduates, good investment network president Tou Caihe commented, "Tsinghua entrepreneurship starting point is more focused on technology, while Peking University is more focused on market opportunities, first consider what kind of resources we have, and then consider how to grasp these resources." Whether it was Zhou Yunfan who founded ChinaRen, Air Network or Deng Zhonghan who founded China Star Microelectronics, they all started with new technology, which is typical of Tsinghua's "technology school"; while Ding Jian from Peking University founded Yasin from the market demand for technology exchange, and Yu Minhong started his own business from the emergence of the examination market. Zhang Xiangdong once said to Yang Bo (Tsinghua Physics Department, Class of 1985) of the Douban network: "In 1998, the Internet boom, you do not move, I run over the hilarious."
This has also led to the emergence of "crossover" more easily at Peking University. Ding Jian learned chemical origin, Yu Minhong do New Oriental, although the identity of the teacher and dipped the edge, but the creation of New Oriental is still a cross-border. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley.
In fact, these differences are reflected in the campus life of their guitar playing and singing. The summer nights on the lawn of the Peking University library are the most memorable, but it is often the guitarist from Tsinghua who ends up sitting in the center of the lawn because of his skill. While NU students play for fun and expression, Tsinghua people are more concerned with technique and work hard at it.
Wildly different campus cultures
Tsinghua is more united than Peking, and often responds to calls for help, while Peking's entrepreneurs are more like jianghu warriors
Who is China's Top 1? This debate has been going on for years between Tsinghua and Peking, and parallel to it is the argument of who is more united?
This is not a simple question about school temperament. Harvard has the Entrepreneurs Club, Yale has the mysterious Skull and Bones, Princeton has the Eating Club, and Harvard Business School's Class of 1949 is the "class of dollars.
Each school's alumni network is a treasure. Whether it's Harvard, Yale, Oxford, or Cambridge, alumni are the most accessible entrepreneurial resource.
When entrepreneurs try to attract talent, the first thing they run into is the trust issue, "Why should I come to your company?" Some come with shares and options, but whether that translates into future earnings is unknown. And classmates have the lowest cost of trust, and it's hard to get that trust from other sources.
In the eyes of the general public, Tsinghua is more united than Peking University, and often responds to a call. Ni Zhengdong said, brainstorming we can't compare to Peking University, but on the battlefield is certainly Tsinghua powerful. The lifestyle on campus continues after they start their own business: Tsinghua students are always doing experiments and discussing with each other in groups; Peking University students are more willing to wander around the campus alone, occasionally sighing about life.
In 1998, Li Fang's article "Peking University is spring water, Tsinghua is magma" predicted what would become of the two schools' entrepreneurs: "Peking University people are famous for their arrogance, so much so that they don't care to call out their friends and associates for a certain purpose in the world. This is not the case with the Tsinghua people, who seem to have a natural spirit of group cooperation."
The "Tsinghua gang" has always been seen in groups, and that's true on campus. Liu Jiakai (a Tsinghua master's student in the class of 2009 in economics and management), who was preparing to start his own business, asked, "Can I ask two of my classmates to be interviewed together?" The next day he appeared with classmates Liu Yubin and Sun Bo. They all had previous entrepreneurial experience, and although they were in the same class, their fields were far apart; Liu Jiakai was in the consumer sector, Sun Bo was in book distribution, and Liu Yubin was in real estate brokerage.
"Last year's entrepreneurship competition, Tsinghua's wastewater treatment project made it to the finals, and of the six teams, only this one had members from the same school." They are proud that "it's still the most compatible to start a business with alumni."
Tsinghua also has such a system on campus. In the School of Economics and Management they have an additional entrepreneurship mentor, who is an alumnus who already has entrepreneurial experience. A model they are used to is to find technologies from other faculties that fit the market and then market them.
This is a distinctive feature of the Tsinghua faculty, said Toucaihe. To create a company, from entrepreneurs to investors to engineers, Tsinghua alumni can solve.
This kind of collaboration has always been among Tsinghua alumni. Tsinghua Entrepreneur and Executive Club (TEEC, Tsinghua Entrepreneur and Executive Club) is by far the most organized alumni association in China. TEEC, is more like a connector code, a secret organization, a sense of identity, a sense of belonging.
TEEC originated in Silicon Valley and then moved to China. In Silicon Valley, the most entrepreneurial are Tsinghua alumni, who discuss technology, business models, and how to promote together, and are so united that many schools envy them. Yang Radium, a senior consultant of Northern Lights and former CEO of Palm Lintong, said, "Rarely does a Tsinghua alumnus come out to do business alone, for some reason." When he started his business in Silicon Valley, all three of his business partners met at the Tsinghua Alumni Association.
It has been said that Tsinghua people are modest on the surface, but have a kind of pride in their bones, and seem to be aloof because "you and I are not on the same path. "TEEC's rules for membership have this same feeling, and although Yang Radium said TEEC is not an elite club, and that members don't all look for success, he also said. "The requirements to enter this organization are very high, in addition to being a Tsinghua alumnus, you have to start a business, be a CEO, have a certain scale, get venture capital, and importantly someone who is not up now but will be successful in the future."
Tsinghua alumni are inextricably linked in the entrepreneurial community. Zhang Fan (Class of '89 Computer) has invested in four projects at Sequoia that are all related to Tsinghua. Ni Zhengdong said, "Many entrepreneurs in the projects I invested in are from Tsinghua," and thought for a while, "There is really no one from Peking University. Investment is a two-way street, and it's easier to reach **** knowledge among Tsinghua alumni."
This unity ensures a high success rate of entrepreneurship in Tsinghua, "Qing hua gang" often with the help of a variety of forces through the most prone to entrepreneurial failure of the period.
However, as if holding together hedgehogs too close to easily hurt each other. Tucai and said, when the company developed to a certain size, "Qing hua gang" management team is more likely to split; in addition, "Qing hua gang" company is more "xenophobic", it is very difficult to do the people of Beijing University The first time I've seen this, I've seen it in the past.
This may be a mix of long-held stereotypes. Surprisingly, there is no inter-collegiate divide in the "Peking University Gang" companies, as New Oriental and Baidu have a large number of Tsinghua alumni, and Peking University has more than 50 Tsinghua masters and PhDs. Wang Pu said, "the reverse is unlikely".
NU alumni are not without feelings for each other. Unlike the "Tsinghua gang", Peking University alumni are more like a group of warriors, connected by a feeling that doesn't require words.
Zhang Xiangdong said: "We are brothers! Brotherhood does not mean 'friendship' between girls who need to stick together all day and share secrets; it means that if a brother has something to say, I won't ask for a reason, I'll just say, "OK."
He and Deng Yuqiang, Chang Yingming character is very different, willing to share their thinking with others, can not do management and other detailed work; Chang Yingming particularly rigorous, very principle; Deng Yuqiang character of the indifferent, seldom speak. "If Deng Yuqiang said to let me do something, I must do it, no no, I do the same to them." Zhang Xiangdong said, "I can make demands like this, because I understand them, they can do it."
Peking University also has alumni entrepreneurial organizations, either like official organizations or more like clubs. The Peking University Alumni Venture Capital Association, in which Toucai and Toucai are involved, has more than 160 members, which is comparable in size to TEEC. Half of their activities have nothing to do with business, and their outdoor activities twice a month are often difficult hiking or real CS. There are more than 300 people in the MSN group, but most of the discussion is about Obama's ma or the global situation, and very few people are discussing microscopic topics.
In the entrepreneurial circle, Zhang Xiangdong has his own "Peking University brothers", Dangdang.com's Li Guoqing, where to Zhuang Chengchao. It is said that the earlier batch of entrepreneurs, Yu Minhong, Robin Li, Ding Jian and other relations are also quite good. However, the "Peking University gang" rarely piles up, and will not sit close to the Tsinghua alumni on various forums, or even just nod to each other.
Different entrepreneurial weaknesses
The technology is strong, the product is good, but it is too far away from the customer, which is the weakness of the Tsinghua gang; and not focusing on it is a common mistake made by the Peking University entrepreneurs
Even if the Tsinghua University and the Peking University have a successful entrepreneurial success rate that makes the rest of the universities in China envious and even jealous, they still have to go through the frustration and even jealousy. Entrepreneurs still have to go through setbacks and even failures to understand the true meaning of entrepreneurship.
The "leftovers" are king. Whether you're from Peking University or Tsinghua University, this is an unbreakable truth to measure success. So, what kind of mistakes are the Tsinghua and Peking University gangs prone to make on the road to entrepreneurship?
Technology is a common Tsinghua complex. Liu Jiakai, Liu Yubin, and Sun Bo, from the School of Economics and Management, which is not "technical", have always affirmed: "Technology, technology is very important!
But Ni Zhengdong reflected, "Tsinghua entrepreneurs often make a lot of mistakes, one of which is too fond of technology, too proud of their products."
"It's like a chef telling a guest that the food I make is just fine, just eat it." Ni Zhengdong cited the example of many websites with strong technology and good products, just too far away from the customer.
Toucaihe, on the other hand, believes that management is another problem that Tsinghua entrepreneurs are prone to encounter, most centrally embodied in cash flow. Luo Jianbei, a former director of Tsinghua Venture Park, has witnessed the ups and downs of many Tsinghua entrepreneurs. When talking about the reasons why most companies are in trouble, she puts it simply: "Many typical .COM companies, burn money more."
Tong Zhilei, a Tsinghua graduate and chairman of Chinese Online, reappeared after a few ups and downs, and in the reality of entrepreneurship really understand the basic truth of the textbook, "The first thing is to create income, the enterprise to profit as the goal! A business's own business should always be enough to keep its own company afloat. Capital is just leverage that allows you to jump a step or hold up tenfold. It is always just the icing on the cake and not the snow."
And then do the company, Tong Zhilei the company's fixed costs as far as possible to the minimum, the original he even wanted to rent a thousands of square meters of office space, and then reduced again and again, their own office is only six or seven square meters, but the Chinese online is already China's digital publishing field of the number of companies.
"Peking University gang" is more likely to make some idealistic mistakes. They have dreams, but when they practice, they find that the reality of the access is not so. Zhang Xiangdong, who had failed to start his own business, said his idea was good, but it was not so in practice. So now he prefers to start a business with Deng Yuqiang and Chang Yingming, because "everyone has different abilities to focus on, so that everyone can do what they are good at".
"Failure to focus" is a common mistake made by entrepreneurs at BYU. Tocai and cited an extreme example, he had facilitated an investment, but the entrepreneurs today do this and tomorrow do that, and did not make efforts to develop the main business, "and even made several girlfriends. Perhaps because of harboring some kind of heroism complex, some people will feel that they can do anything, can not resist the temptation, "and the road to success is the most difficult to resist the temptation."
However, this is a bit of a generalization of the entrepreneurial confusion of the Qingbei entrepreneurial gang, and entrepreneurship is, after all, an all-encompassing test of personal ability. The entrepreneurs' abilities are so varied that no one can say whether they are successful or not, and they don't even dare to categorize them with a cold framework. An interesting fact is that, at a certain scale, whether Tsinghua University, or Peking University in the entrepreneurial brand will gradually fade. Search engines are called "very technical", but Baidu's founder Robin Li came from Peking University, Baidu can compete with Google's important reason is that behind the technology there is Chinese culture in the support. The founder of Douban, known for its humanistic flavor, Yang Bo, came from Tsinghua University, and the site, which is evaluated as "the most quality content", is very fond of algorithms, and all kinds of content are presented on the Internet after a rigorous combination of logical algorithms.
Zhang Xiangdong summarized that entrepreneurs from Tsinghua University, Peking University, or other backgrounds have some similar qualities, such as the desire for freedom and resilience. But whenever a company reaches a certain size, there is a similar business philosophy behind it. Successful entrepreneurship, perhaps to meet 10,000 conditions, the ultimate winners are similar.
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