“STARTUP BLOG.” Part 1. “HARD THING ABOUT HARD THINGS in CHINA”. Following the example of Ben Horowitz and showing a reality of doing business in China

Today I visited Allen, the CEO of WE+, one of the coolest co-working spaces in China. Awesome shaker. We know already almost for 1 year. I helped him to get introduced to the Finnish Startup community and key shakers there. As a result and with a clever hard work of a few key pioneers WE+ decided to put their Europe base in Helsinki.

Allen is interested on me and my companies potential to bridge Finnish and Nordic talents to their growing ecosystem. I talked, I thought great stories of how we bridge the companies and a few awesome highlighters that we already worked with. But I perhaps had come to the meeting a little unprepared and got a big bash and a wake up call.

“Lauri, I really want to cooperate with you, we know already from 1 year and we have great relationship. But what you are proposing now is just bullshit and it sucks! You need to bring me a concrete plan, how it all is executed, what’s the value for me and our company, and how you will run it.”

Basically Allen was talking about as simple thing as business model – and explicating that as clearly as possible. He’s also a highly jubilated investor.

Cool, thank Allen, got my lesson and wake up call.

I called one of my trusted external advisors, former Nokia insider and a great tech talent, Mr. Lari Iso-Anttila, who resides in Shanghai with his family.

“What you gotta do is to highlight three things:

• what are the benefits for him, business assets?
• What benefit do you get yourself of it
• What are the fruits of your cooperation?

Or in other words:

• what are the benefits for both of us, how it’s done, what are the goals for it?

Lari during his Nokia years and before used a model “4-6-10” to make a case for a decision-maker about a new project. It comes from 3 points: 1 ) What to do. (4 points on this). 2 ) Your benefits. (6 points on this.) 3 ) The bigger goal, what we can reach together. (10 points on this)

It’s usually the last part that gets goosebumps for people.

The point is not that I wouldn’t know that these models and working formats exist, it’s more of whether you can implement them automatically in your everyday life. An entrepreneur gets sometimes more, sometimes less windows of opportunities. It’s up to him, how to use those.

Another point that I have been thinking about lately is: how much time you should focus on “planning” and making out of business plans – if they anyway change along the way – and how much for the execution and getting cases in, which is in the end even more important. (Putting yourself into the water, the sort of Lean In method.) What’s the perfect balance? And what’s that balance in China, where you need more experience from the different, sometimes challenging markets?

I think it’s about 70-80% of cases, 20+% of planning. You can’t neglect that fully, but you learn and test your model best by doing. Sunzi says that the battlefield changes constantly, like a water floats in a river, will never be the same, no patterns work in the actual situation, but a great general takes the victory from the constantly changing natural flow. Check I Ching.

But you need positioning before you go to the battle. Otherwise you can’t take the victory, even if you see it in front of you.

Awesome stuff. I love it in China. Doing entrepreneurship and doing it in China, is probably the most interesting combination there can be in the whole world right now.

Welcome to join in!

Lauri Tammi is a China and tech enthusiast and the founder of a tech consultation company, Mingle, 梦路咨询, which helps the foreign startups land into China through matchmaking, knowledge and practical support. Lauri lives in Hangzhou and operates to Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing. He’s the co-founder of Slush China and MA graduate from Aalto and Turku. He speaks fluent Finnish, English, Chinese, Swedish, French, and Spanish. He’s hobbies are football, theatre and Chinese culture. 

Contact Lauri directly through WeChat (tangming100) or telephone +86 150 6715 7088.