Rebirth of the Entrepreneurship Era

This community is indeed very old, and the interior is basically five-story brick buildings, which should be a product of the 1980s.

Liu Mingchao and his team work on the top floor, and there is no elevator, so they have to climb all the way up.

When going upstairs, Liu Mingchao roughly introduced the company's situation to Xu Yiyang.

This company was initiated by him. The people in the team are all alumni of Huazhong University of Technology, and all of them have studied computer software development.

They have been working in Zhonghai for two years. At the beginning, they developed their own products just like the first generation of entrepreneurs of Huaxia Internet.

However, the direction they chose is a bit weird. They developed a MUD game, that is, an online game with no graphics and all text.

This kind of game has been popular for a while in a very short period of time, but it has never been a big hit. It is a thing that has not developed much.

In Xu Yiyang's eyes, developing text online games now is no different from developing red and white machine games, because there will be no market space.

Liu Mingchao's later development was indeed as Xu Yiyang expected. After the game was developed, no interested operators were found.

A few classmates were unable to do publicity and promotion, and a few people tried their best to promote everywhere but did not attract many players, so they had to give up treatment in the end.

Making this MUD game burned up the savings of more than 100,000 yuan pooled by five people. As the major shareholder, Liu Mingchao borrowed tens of thousands of yuan from everywhere to make up for it, but it was all in vain.

Their entrepreneurial experience perfectly proves one point: on the road of entrepreneurship, direction is always more important than hard work.

As Lei Jun said, pigs can fly when standing on the wind.

If you can't stand on the wind, you may not be able to fly if you have wings.

For example, Nokia, which is now very prosperous, did not choose the right direction when the era of smart phones was in its infancy, and went all out to build the Symbian system, but it ended up in a mess.

It cannot be said that Nokia is not working hard.

It's just that they are working in the wrong direction.

People are trying to move toward new life, but it is trying to move toward death.

Liu Mingchao and his team struggled after losing the game.

But they were unwilling to give up their dreams, so they made a total calculation and decided to do outsourcing development to support the company, and wanted to contact customized work from outside to maintain their survival.

It's a pity that they have attracted a few customers who are interested in software development through the online yellow pages in the past few months, but they didn't talk about it in the end.

Liu Mingchao is still very distressed by this. He feels that although his team is small, everyone is a master, and they are all first-class talents in development, and their quotations are always about 20-30% lower than the market level. Can't even negotiate? This unscientific.

While climbing the stairs, Xu Yiyang thought to himself, whoever came here would be unwilling to cooperate with you, and there was an informal feeling everywhere.

In the eyes of outsiders, the Internet industry and the software development industry are high-tech and trendy technology industries. But when they went to the other party's "company", they found that five young cats were doing it in a dilapidated house in a dilapidated community. , this psychological gap is really too big.

Once the psychological gap is widened, the first thought of most people is disappointment, and the second thought is to turn around and leave.

In this case, it would be strange to talk about cooperation.

If I hadn't asked Zhang Xiaolong myself and found out that Liu Mingchao actually knew Zhang Xiaolong, I wouldn't have felt relieved to cooperate with him.

...

Arriving at the fifth floor, Liu Mingchao pushed open the door, Xu Yiyang felt a wave of heat blowing towards his face before he entered.

It is on the top floor itself, and the temperature in Zhonghai at the end of August is not cool at all.

After a day in the sun, the room was like a steamer.

As soon as he entered the door, besides the strong smell of cigarettes, there was also a smell of sweat, which made Xu Yiyang feel very sour...

And there is no air conditioner in this house, and there are four old men sitting in front of the computer desk in the living room, and five computers are turned on, which is no different from turning on a few electric heaters.

There was nothing effective in cooling the room, except for a creaking ceiling fan that wobbled.

Liu Mingchao said embarrassingly: "I'm sorry Mr. Xu, our conditions are a bit difficult..."

Xu Yiyang said in his heart, this is not a bit difficult, brother, it is much more comfortable to pull a line to work in the underground passage.

But Xu Yiyang didn't say it out, starting a business itself is a hard job that kills people, although most of them survived to death, but those who survived, without exception, are among the dragons and phoenixes.

Liu Mingchao introduced to Xu Yiyang the four people inside who were in front of the computer. These people were about the same age as Liu Mingchao, but they looked somewhat dull. They nodded and hurried to work on their own.

Liu Mingchao said again: "Our living room is the office area, and the two bedrooms are dormitories, with a few bunk beds inside."

Xu Yiyang nodded. He didn't expect these five people not only to work in a two-bedroom apartment, but also to live here.

Liu Mingchao said with embarrassment: "Mr. Xu, if you don't mind, let's go to the bedroom and talk."

Xu Yiyang felt that this was really not an environment for discussing serious matters, so he said: "Mr. Liu, how about it, you come with me, let's find a coffee shop to sit down and talk slowly."

"Okay!" Liu Mingchao also suddenly realized that the environment here is not suitable for discussing cooperation, so he nodded hurriedly and said, "I invite you to drink coffee."

Xu Yiyang smiled slightly and said, "I'll invite you, let's go."

...

Xu Yiyang drove Liu Mingchao to the coffee shop of a star hotel in the city.

After sitting down in the coffee shop, Liu Mingchao was a little cautious about the surrounding environment, looked at the price list, and finally asked the waiter for plain water with a blushing face.

Xu Yiyang directly ordered a cup of latte for him, and some small desserts, and paid in advance.

Liu Mingchao was a little embarrassed, and hurriedly took out a small notepad from his pocket, and said, "Mr. Xu, please briefly introduce your product requirements and what functions you want to achieve. I will record it here, and then calculate the workload and give it to you. If you think it’s suitable for an offer, we’ll start working together, if it’s not suitable, just say it, it doesn’t matter.”

"Okay." Xu Yiyang said: "I run a chain training institution, so I want to put the daily work management, student teacher courses, and class fee records in the software, and there must be a backend, and all data will be transmitted to the backend in real time. It is convenient for the leadership to review."

Liu Mingchao said seriously: "What about the function?"

Xu Yiyang said: "Financial management, student management, teacher management, class schedule management, and consumption balance management, all operation records must be kept at the same time."

After all, Xu Yiyang introduced his functional requirements in detail.

Liu Mingchao carefully recorded each item in his notepad. After Xu Yiyang finished speaking, he thought for a moment and said: "The whole work is divided into three parts. The first is to develop a client for each branch. ; Then develop a management background, the background can directly use the web page, no need to develop the client; "

"The third part is after-sales. For any outsourced software development, considering that Party A may not have technical personnel, Party B must provide after-sales for a certain period of time. After the development of these two products is completed and the test is launched, we will be responsible for one year. Basic maintenance, if there is a problem, please contact us to solve it at any time; if you have new product requirements that need to be upgraded or secondary development, we will price it according to the workload."

Xu Yiyang nodded and said, "How long will it take to finish? I'm in a hurry."

Liu Mingchao thought for a while and said, "If you work overtime, it will take more than a month."

"So fast?!" Xu Yiyang was surprised.

Liu Mingchao nodded, and said to Xu Yiyang with a cautious and awkward expression: "To be honest, our company is in a difficult situation now, and we don't have any projects in progress, so if you are willing to cooperate with us, then we will devote all our energy It’s all used in this project, judging by your needs, more than one month should be enough.”

After finishing speaking, the other party asked nervously: "But Mr. Xu, just to be on the safe side, can we sign the contract for two months?"

Xu Yiyang immediately agreed, saying: "No problem, within the acceptable range."

Then, he asked again: "What about the price?"

Liu Mingchao thought for a while and said, "I'll give you the lowest quotation directly. I'll charge you 150,000 for the whole set, plus one year of basic maintenance."

"150,000?" Xu Yiyang couldn't believe it.

Among the companies I visited today, the highest quotation was 300,000 yuan, and the lowest quotation was 200,000 yuan. Unexpectedly, Liu Mingchao only quoted 150,000 yuan.

Liu Mingchao thought that Xu Yiyang thought it was too expensive, so he hurriedly said: "Don't look at it as just over a month's work, but it really takes the hard work of the brothers, five first-class programmers, and each of them must work for at least 12 hours a day to guarantee the completion. And there is also basic maintenance for the next year, even if you find a part-time technical maintenance, you will get 1,000 yuan a month."

Xu Yiyang smiled slightly, he already had a general idea in his heart.

Software development is different from buying and selling actual products. The cost of software development is basically manpower and energy. Therefore, depending on individual circumstances, the price fluctuates greatly.

To make an inappropriate analogy, it’s like a labor-intensive part-time worker. When the market is good, you may not want to do it for less than two hundred yuan a day, but when the market is bad, you may rush to work for a hundred yuan. Yes, if he encounters difficulties and can't even eat, maybe he won't be hungry for three meals, and he is willing to do it.

Liu Mingchao's situation should belong to the latter.

In his view, now has reached the critical point where we can't continue. If we don't receive another project, our team may be disbanded.

Therefore, even if the market price is 50% off, he is willing. After all, this is a life-saving business, which can no longer be measured by the market price.

This also means that the price still has room to drop.

However, Xu Yiyang didn't want to take advantage of others.

In particular, he wanted to get acquainted with Zhang Xiaolong through Liu Mingchao in the future.

Thinking of this, Xu Yiyang suddenly had an idea. He said to Liu Mingchao: "Mr. Liu, I won't bargain anymore, let's sign the contract at 150,000 yuan."

Liu Mingchao was overjoyed, and hurriedly said: "Mr. Xu is so refreshing! Let's go back later, and I will prepare the contract! After the contract is signed, you pay 30% first, and then pay 30% when the project is halfway through, and wait for the project to go online 40% upon delivery.”

Xu Yiyang waved his hand: "Don't bother, I will pay the full amount directly."