淘宝创始人的创业经历_我们如何说服创始人天使投资于我们的开发人员工具创业公司...-CSDN博客

淘宝创始人的创业经历

Product + Networking + Blogging + Luck = Angel Investment

产品+联网+博客+运气=天使投资

Last week got an angel investment of $200K USD. Our backers are StartupLab FoundersFund (a Norwegian early stage fund) and a group of successful founders and CEO’s from Zendesk, Unity, TAT, SiteCore, OnlinePizza, and Just Eat, all organized through Nordic Makers.

上周获得了20万美元的天使投资。我们的支持者是StartupLab FoundersFund (挪威的一家早期基金)，以及由Zendesk ， Unity ， TAT ， SiteCore ， OnlinePizza和Just Eat组成的成功的创始人和CEO 小组，它们都是通过Nordic Makers组织的。

Having two groups of investors which are both highly experienced and well connected has already proven incredibly helpful.

事实证明，拥有两组经验丰富且联系紧密的投资者非常有用。

How we got the Nordic Makers investment is an interesting story though, as it involves all the following ingredients:

但是，我们如何获得Nordic Makers投资是一个有趣的故事，因为它涉及以下所有要素：

doing side projects
做辅助项目
building an awesome product
建立一个很棒的产品
blogging on Medium
在Blog上写博客
networking on Twitter
在Twitter上联网
a stroke of luck
碰运气

In this article I’ll explain exactly how it played out.

在本文中，我将确切说明它的播放方式。

我们的产品：Scrimba (Our product: Scrimba)

But first you need to know what we’re building. The product is called Scrimba and it’s a new video format for conveying code.

但是首先，您需要知道我们正在构建什么。该产品称为Scrimba ，是一种用于传输代码的新视频格式。

Think of it as coding screencasts where you can pause and play around with the code. Check this demo screencasts to better grasp the concept. Note that all this is still in beta.

可以将其视为编码屏幕录像，您可以在其中暂停和播放代码。查看此演示视频，以更好地理解概念。请注意，所有这些仍处于测试阶段。

这个想法的诞生 (The birth of the idea)

To get to the roots of how the investment happened, we have to rewind back to February 2016.

为了了解投资发生方式的根源，我们必须倒退至2016年2月。

At the time, I wasn’t a part of Scrimba. It was an idea Sindre Aarsaether was playing around with in his spare time. He wanted to improve the documentation of Imba, his self made programming language for the web.

当时，我不是Scrimba的一员。这是Sindre Aarsaether在业余时间玩耍的想法。他想改善Imba的文档， Imba是他自己的网络编程语言。

He got the idea after trying to create video tutorials, and experiencing all the hassle involved with creating high quality educational content using this format. So after a few frustrating attempts at doing screencasts, he started hacking on the first prototype of Scrimba.

在尝试创建视频教程并经历了使用此格式创建高质量教育内容所涉及的所有麻烦之后，他想到了这个主意。因此，在进行了一些令人沮丧的截屏尝试之后，他开始入侵Scrimba的第一个原型。

辅助项目和中型博客 (Side projects and Medium blogging)

At the same time, I was doing a side project together with a friend. The product was called BugRex, and it was on-demand chat for software developers in the need for help. We built and launched it in a weekend, then wrote a few articles on the experiment to gain exposure — mostly for fun and to practice launching products.

同时，我正在和一个朋友一起做一个附带项目。该产品称为BugRex，是需要帮助的软件开发人员的按需聊天。我们在周末建立并启动了该产品，然后在实验中写了几篇文章来获得曝光-主要是为了娱乐和练习启动产品。

If I hadn’t done this side project — and written about it — Scrimba wouldn’t have gotten an investment from Nordic Makers a year later.

如果我没有做这个副项目，并且没有写出来，Scrimba一年后就不会从Nordic Makers获得投资。

Let me explain how.

让我解释一下。

在Twitter上幸运 (Getting lucky on Twitter)

The reason why BugRex was so important was that it allowed me to connect with Emil Wallnér. Emil is a designer, developer, and entrepreneur who had been following the BugRex story. He liked what we were doing and wanted to connect.

BugRex之所以如此重要，是因为它使我能够与EmilWallnér联系。 Emil是一位关注BugRex故事的设计师，开发人员和企业家。他喜欢我们正在做的事情，并希望建立联系。

We scheduled a chat on Skype and got along very well. Though we didn’t find a way to cooperate directly, we decided to keep in touch.

我们安排了在Skype上的聊天，并且相处得很好。尽管我们没有找到直接合作的方法，但我们还是决定保持联系。

As you’ll see a few paragraphs down, being contacted by Emil was a huge stroke of luck.

正如您将看到的几段下来，与Emil的联系真是太幸运了。

Lesson learned: by sticking your neck out, you position yourself to be connected with interesting people. That’s always a good thing.

经验教训：伸出脖子，可以让自己与有趣的人保持联系。那总是一件好事。

快速启动 (Launching fast)

In the summer of 2016, Sindre asked if I wanted to join starting a company around Scrimba. He had a functioning prototype and Kjetil Holmefjord in StartupLab FoundersFund was interested in investing. To make a long story short, I said yes, quit my job and started working on Scrimba full time in November.

在2016年夏天，辛德雷问我是否想加入在斯克林巴(Scrimba)附近成立一家公司。他拥有一个可运行的原型， StartupLab FoundersFund的 Kjetil Holmefjord对投资感兴趣。长话短说，我同意，辞掉工作，从11月开始全职从事Scrimba。

We decided to launch a beta version as soon as possible in order to get feedback. So by early December we sent invites to everybody we thought might like it.

我们决定尽快发布一个Beta版本，以获取反馈。因此，到12月初，我们向所有我们认为可能喜欢的人发送了邀请。

关键推文 (The crucial tweet)

This included Emil. He tried it and loved it so much that he tweeted it out to a bunch of relevant people he wanted us to connect with.

这包括埃米尔。他尝试过并且非常喜欢它，以至于将其推文发布给了一些我们希望与之联系的相关人员。

This tweet opened up more doors than we could have ever imagined.

这条推特开了比我们想象的更多的门。

It lead us to Nordic Makers and three other potential investors, and also lead us to what’ll likely be our first paying customer.

它使我们找到了北欧制造商和其他三个潜在的投资者，也使我们找到了我们的第一个付费客户。

优质产品的重要性 (The importance of a great product)

Let’s stop up here for a moment and look at what happened. Getting the beta in the hands of Emil turned out to yield great returns. So there’s a strong case for for showing your product to as many people as possible, rather than being secretive.

让我们在这里停留片刻，看看发生了什么。最终，将测试版交给Emil可以带来丰厚的回报。因此，有充分的理由将产品展示给尽可能多的人，而不是保密。

But this wouldn’t have worked with just any product.

但是，这不可能只适用于任何产品。

By impressing Emil, he was willing to actively involve his peers on Twitter.

通过给Emil留下深刻的印象， 他愿意积极地将同行吸引到Twitter上 。

So it ultimately boiled down to the quality of product. Had our beta version been a landing page or an InVision mockup, this strategy wouldn’t have worked.

因此，最终归结为产品质量。如果我们的Beta版本是目标网页或InVision模型，则此策略将行不通。

Lesson learned: a great product opens doors. So if you have one, share it with as many as possible. (And don’t ever try to force someone to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement!)

获得的经验：出色的产品为您打开了大门。因此，如果有，请与尽可能多的人共享。 (也不要试图强迫某人签署保密协议！)

Also, I don’t want to downplay the fact that Emil himself was learning to code, so he was in our target market. People who are technical or have tried to teach or learn coding resonate much more with Scrimba than those who don’t have technical insight.

另外，我不想低估Emil本人正在学习编码的事实，因此他在我们的目标市场中。与没有技术洞察力的人相比，有技术经验的人或试图教或学编码的人在Scrimba中产生的共鸣更多。

This has also played out in our fundraising.

这在我们的筹款活动中也发挥了作用。

If you want investors for a dev tool product, seek out people with a technical background.

如果您希望投资者购买开发工具产品，请寻找具有技术背景的人员 。

Technical investors are almost always more interested in Scrimba than non-technical ones.

技术投资者几乎总是对Scrimba感兴趣，而不是非技术投资者。

埃米尔(Emil)→乔尔(Joel)→北欧制造商 (Emil → Joel →Nordic Makers)

Anyway, the first person I connected with from Emil’s tweet was Joel Larsson, managing director of the Fast Track Malmö accelerator. Even though it wouldn’t work for me and Sindre to relocate to Malmö and potentially join their accelerator, he graciously offered to help us anyway he could.

无论如何，我从Emil的推文中找到的第一个联系人是Fast TrackMalmö加速器董事总经理Joel Larsson 。即使这对我和Sindre搬到Malmö并可能加入他们的加速器都行不通，但他还是乐意提供帮助我们。

One of the things he did was to introduce us to Hampus Jakobsson, a partner at Nordic Makers and the founder of TAT (sold to BlackBerry for $150 million USD).

他所做的一件事是向我们介绍了Hamdicus Jakobsson ，他是Nordic Makers的合伙人，TAT的创始人(以1.5亿美元的价格出售给BlackBerry)。

We scheduled a Skype with Hampus and were blown away by the enthusiasm and thoughtfulness he had for the product. It immediately became clear that we wanted him onboard as an investor.

我们与Hampus安排了Skype，他对产品的热情和体贴震惊了。立刻变得很清楚，我们希望他成为投资者。

We soon scheduled meetings with some of the other partners in Nordic Makers: Benjamin (who runs NM’s day to day operations), David (Unity), Alexander (Zendesk) and Lars (SiteCore). For every meeting we were grew more and more sure that we wanted these guys onboard. By the end of January, we reached an agreement.

我们很快安排了与北欧制造商的其他一些合作伙伴的会议，这些合作伙伴包括本杰明 (本人负责NM的日常运营)，戴维 (Unity)，亚历山大 (Zendesk)和拉尔斯 (SiteCore)。对于每次会议，我们都越来越确信我们希望这些人加入。 1月底，我们达成了协议。

获得热烈的介绍 (Getting a warm intro)

You could claim that we might as well have emailed Nordic Makers directly, but that probably wouldn’t have worked as well. They state on their home page that it’s better to get an intro through someone they know, and Hampus also writes this himself.

您可以声称我们也可以直接通过电子邮件发送给北欧制造商，但这可能效果不理想。他们在首页上声明最好通过认识的人进行介绍，并且Hampus也会亲自写这篇文章。

This is actually a test for many investors. You should be able to network your way to them.

这实际上是对许多投资者的考验。您应该能够与他们建立联系。

It actually makes sense: you’ll face much bigger challenges as a founder, so if you can’t network your way to an investor, how will you overcome all the hurdles you’ll face when getting your business off the ground?

这实际上是有道理的：作为创始人，您将面临更大的挑战，因此，如果您无法通过网络与投资者建立联系，那么如何在开展业务时克服所有的障碍？

This can seem discouraging for many developers, especially if you prefer writing code over social gatherings with potential investors. But networking can be done in many ways. It doesn’t have to involve going to startup events every week. A good start is to share your work online and write about it. By doing this you’ll automatically attract interesting people. For us, Twitter and Medium turned out to be enough to reach Nordic Makers.

对于许多开发人员来说，这似乎令人沮丧，尤其是如果您更喜欢编写代码而不是与潜在投资者进行社交聚会。但是可以通过多种方式进行联网。不必每周都去参加启动活动。一个好的开始是在网上分享您的作品并进行撰写。这样，您将自动吸引有趣的人。对我们而言，Twitter和Medium足以吸引北欧制造商。

Finally, it also mattered a lot that we got along with Hampus on a personal level. In other words, remember to be nice. You’re much more likely to get an investment from someone you get along with.

最后，在个人层面上，我们与汉普斯人相处也很重要。换句话说，记住要友善。您更有可能从与之相处的人那里获得投资。

Summing up, I’d say the lesson of this story is:

总结一下，我想讲的这个故事的教训是：