There is a popular saying in Internet circles called “subtraction”, especially “subtraction for products”. Generally speaking, some foreign services are used as benchmarks. For example, twitter is a very simple network service. But if we look at domestic network services a little bit, almost no successful product or service is “subtracting.” More than 90% of services are all fancy and complicated.
This matter is very confusing. Where is this subtraction? Or ask again: Should we do subtraction?
A friend who is doing investment told me that now in the field of investment, entrepreneurs can no longer tell stories. But this does not mean that entrepreneurs have to use millions of users to convince investors. The story can still be told, but the story must be at least logically side-by-side: either 2B or 2C. In other words, this entrepreneurial product either has enough reasons for customers to pay, or there are enough reasons for users to use it. He called this kind of product and service that can be at least one side up as “groundedness”, and some friends call it “pain points” satisfied and belong to “rigid needs.”
How can I get to the top?
I know a person who resigned from the commercial media and started his own business. According to his own resources, the industry he entered is “management consulting and leadership training”, which is obviously a 2B business. The specific method is to access various external consultants and training lecturers at one end and access to the enterprise at the other end. This idea excites him at first: as if the future is a Tmall platform for management consulting and training. But in actual operation, it is very painful, because it seems that everything can be done, but nothing can be found. So, his first reduction was to cut management consulting and concentrate on leadership training. Later, he discovered that China is very large and there are so many companies that need to be accurately positioned. So his second subtraction is to provide leadership training for growing companies. The so-called growing company refers to the annual income between 100 million and billions. If it is too small, the demand for leadership training is very low, and if it is too large, he thinks he can’t reach it.
After three months, he found that he still made a mistake. Because the scope of the word leadership is too big, so big that sometimes it makes customers feel “purely foolish.” So he did the third subtraction, subdividing the concept of leadership into three dimensions, and specializing in training in these three dimensions. After doing this for a while, his experience is: This time he feels a little solid.
After hearing his story, I was a little disapproved at first. Those who are engaged in training and consulting, can’t run up to open the big net. I even thought that if he came to ask me when he first started his business, I would tell him straightforwardly that he shouldn’t spread too much. Later, I thought about it again. In fact, this seemingly inconspicuous case actually tells the entrepreneur how to lean aside. There are just two questions: Who is it for? What kind of needs to satisfy? An extended question is: Is this kind of demand a strong demand for this kind of people? If these answers have very positive and practical answers, then it is a ” At least close to one side of the story”.
The core of these problems is actually the product logic (of course you can call it service logic). The function of the product does not necessarily need to be subtracted, but for the startup company, the product logic must be subtracted. In the process of strengthening the product logic, depending on the needs of the situation, whatever function should be provided, there is no need to stick to the word “simplicity”. Clear and prominent logic is enough.
