Zhang Yaqin Says China's Entrepreneurial Environment Does Not Contain Silicon Valley

Zhang Yaqin, Microsoft's senior vice president and chairman of Asia-Pacific R&D Group, had new insights into what kind of young people are more successful in entrepreneurial success. He even put forward five DNAs for successful entrepreneurs: a keen desire for knowledge, a spark of creativity, and a simplified abstract concept. Ability, possessing knowledge and focus, taking risks after careful consideration.

Zhang Yaqin is a world-class scientist in the fields of communications and software. In the past, young people discussed with him more about how to become an outstanding software engineer. With Microsoft's "Cloud Accelerator" project aimed at supporting young people in China in July 2012, as the project's final reviewer and entrepreneurial tutor, Zhang Yaqin began to think more about youth entrepreneurship.

The “Cloud Accelerator” project is a youth entrepreneurship project launched by Microsoft in the United States, Israel, India, and China. The selected startup team can enjoy Microsoft’s free office space, multi-faceted training and mentor support, and technology within six months. Operational guidance, financing opportunities, cloud computing resources and other support.

Although his background is in technology, Zhang Yaqin's unique advantage is that once the world's richest man, Bill Gates, was a mentor when he joined Microsoft, he could say that on many issues, he got Gates's "true biography." In addition, in recent years, Zhang Yaqin has repeatedly had the opportunity to directly talk with the Wizards of the business world, including Buffett and Welch. He is also a risk partner of IDG Capital and an advisor to entrepreneurial companies of the Yajie Chamber of Commerce.

The current "Cloud Accelerator" project has been conducted in China for two periods. Thirty young entrepreneurial teams have enjoyed free lunches supported by entrepreneurship. In the process of selecting entrepreneurial teams, combined with his past experience, Zhang Yaqin hopes to share more of his experiences with entrepreneurship with young people.

In Zhang Yaqin's view, the entrepreneurial activity of Chinese young people is not low in the world, especially in Beijing, whether it is the number of new start-up companies, their influence, or the scale of venture capital, or even the institutions of various incubation support. Nothing will lose to Silicon Valley. It can be said that in some cities in China, the entrepreneurial atmosphere is still very strong, especially the hardware environment is not inferior to the international community. If there is a gap, there may be a gap in the overall quality of the soft environment and entrepreneurial groups.

Zhang Yaqin explained that the soft environment includes intermediary services, training of entrepreneurs, and various types of support that entrepreneurs want. Specifically, the problems that start-up companies may encounter include, registration may take longer, and due to the limited availability of listing channels, companies have to pay more for listing.

As for the entrepreneurial culture, Zhang Yaqin said that Chinese young people may not be innovative in the entrepreneurial process. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs will consider more about what innovations they want to launch, so that both Facebook and Google will appear, and not everyone will do social networking sites or search engines. There is no shortage of young entrepreneurs in China. Once a certain product and model is successful, many people will imitate it. Zhang Yaqin said that in fact, in terms of entrepreneurial products and models, he does not completely deny imitation, but he should have his own innovation on the basis of imitation.

He said that in the early days of the Chinese community in the United States, there were also such problems. For example, if one person earns money by opening a restaurant, it will attract many people to open a restaurant and start a restaurant; if someone has a good laundry business, it will bring The laundry is packed. Why can't we change our minds? Someone opens a restaurant to make money. I open a laundry shop or a supermarket. Together, we form a complementary business circle and work together to earn money rather than vicious competition.

Zhang Yaqin said that innovation should be the most important DNA for young entrepreneurs. In addition, as the core soul of the team, the person in charge of the entrepreneurial enterprise should also dare to take on the task, and he must carefully ponder over many issues rather than relying on wishful enthusiasm.

As Bill Gates' apprentice, Zhang Yaqin has the opportunity to listen to Gates's entrepreneurial stories many times. Zhang Yaqin hopes to share with young people interested in starting a business. Entrepreneurs can have lofty dreams, but more importantly, they should take every step, especially the first step, down to earth.

Zhang Yaqin recalled that Bill Gates did not expect that he would become the richest man in the world one day at the beginning of his career. His initial ideal was to invent a machine capable of writing programs, but as his business path became clearer, Gates said. The next steps in the plan were also upgraded, from programming to operating systems, and later to upgrading the computer to the desktop.

Zhang Yaqin tried to tell the young man through the story of Gates. He must be ambitious and ideal. He must be down-to-earth and, more importantly, have a reasonable and clear path to entrepreneurship.