A German Senior Investment Manager came to our school and gave us a lecture on VC. Most things he talked about seem to be general knowledge to me, but he still brought me a fresh term and an interesting picture.

A Fresh Term: USP 

When he talked about the topic what are VC really looking for, he listed some conditions:

  • strong management
  • growing market
  • sustainable USP
  • exit-IPO or acquisition target
  • “home-run” potential

The term USP which is short for Unique Selling Position is fresh to me. It reminds me something about strategy said by Michael E．Porter:

“What is strategy?” Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities. If there were only one ideal position, there would be no need for strategy.

Porter likes emphasizing on the “uniqueness” of strategy, which is also what he did in the Dialogue of CCTV a few years ago. But when Web 2.0 was so hot during 2005 and 2006, a lot of websites tagged with Web 2.0 came out with no obvious uniqueness, but all of them want to attract VC. In my opinion, Web 2.0 may be a selling point, but it’s just a general, not a unique selling point, and can’t be sustainable USP.I don’t know how these websites can survive in the fierce competition and bring revenue for their investors. The lack of sustainable USP result in the difficulties for these Web 2.0 sites to lock in their users. No user stickiness, no value.

An Interesting Picture: Who are they?

The picture below was taken in 1978 of an entrepreneur team. If you were VC, would you give your money to this company?

microsoft in 1978 

Maybe most VC won’t invest on this company according to the picture, but when you know the youngest boy on the left side is Bill Gate, what do you think?

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