Talk about the imagination of the next 10 years

Author | Lan Binsheng

Edit ｜ Sang Mingqiang Ye Jing

Amazon's founder Bezos is often asked about a question: what will happen in the next 10 years. Interestingly, when Belos answered this question, "We should pay more attention to what is the same in the next 10 years?" But when the object of the question becomes Zhihu, Zhou Yuan does not seem to give it to A good answer.

Last year, when the 10th anniversary of the operation of the operation, the largest online question and answer community in China was listed on the NYSE, the issuance price was $ 9.5/ADS, but if it was listed on the listing as a starting point, it was only one year, and the highest point was 13.85 at the highest point of 13.85. The dollar has fallen by nearly 90%all the way, which has made the Zhihu after a few years, and today's market value is not as valuation 5 years ago.

By this year, Zhihu has completed the double main listing in Hong Kong stocks, but 26 million shares issued in Hong Kong stocks are all old shares sold by old shareholders. When I was listed in the U.S. stock market, in the top five comprehensive online content communities in China, Zhihu was considered the target that was considered the most characteristic and scarce. Runners have retreated, and the freshness of the concept of the Q & A community is decaying, and the imagination of Zhihu is becoming increasingly scarce.

Zhihu Hong Kong stock market prospectus

When returning to Hong Kong to go public, Zhou Yuan wrote in an open letter for all known users: "Temporarily forget the capital market." Although there are factors that are affected by the major environment, the secondary market is as a barometer to the imagination of listed companies. I'm afraid it is difficult to put aside.

Bezos said that all overnight success took about 10 years. For an Internet company, 10 years have been long enough. In the past 10 years, Zhihu has surpassed QUORA, and Quekong Q & A has been burned. The growth of how to define it, knowing that management or Zhou Yuan himself has not found a suitable solution.

01 "Isn't it just making money?"

Inspired by an American online question and answer website called Quora, Zhou Yuan decided to do Zhihu in 2010. The following year, Zhihu was officially launched. Since its establishment, Zhihu has gone through his first 10 years. In the past ten years, Zhihu's biggest change is to become a listed company from a node that successfully created a small company and successfully operated in the tenth anniversary of operation.

The first financing of Zhihu came from the Innovation Workshop. In 2011, Zhihu received an angel rotation from the innovation factory. Since then, Zhi coo has almost maintained the rhythm of the year and one round. Insufficient statistics of the eyes, knowing at least 7 rounds of financing, behind the innovation workshops, Saifu Investment, Qiming Venture Capital, Tencent Investment, Sogou, Today's Capital, Huaxing Capital, Kuaishou, Baidu and other well -known VC/PE institutions and Star company.

Knowing the 10 -year development history map source Tianfeng Securities Exchange

For a long time, Zhihu has always maintained the high style of "not eating fireworks", which is far away from commercialization. Zhou Yuan mentioned many times in an interview with the media that Zhihu was a long -distance running, hoping that the team would patiently serve core users. Until knowledge paid became the air outlet, as a representative of the knowledge field, it was logical to open a commercial long -distance running.

"Many people always ask us how to be commercialized, and I am annoying. So I took a team to do a commercial thing, isn't it just making money?" 6 years ago, Zhihu's first trial of commercialization, The new feature "value" was launched. In the official promotional video, Zhou Yuan's words of lightly wrote the words became a spell of commercialization in the future.

It is difficult to make money, especially for the content community. So far, no content community can find a business model that is through. The three carriages of the Internet are advertisements, e -commerce, and games. Among them, advertising is the most direct and easiest way to connect the large user scale of the community. In the prospectus of the US stock market last year, advertising revenue accounted for all revenue. The proportion exceeds 60%.

According to a research report released by Tianfeng Securities last year, Zhihu's Adload is about 15-20%, which is amazing. Generally speaking, products such as Weibo and Douyin are generally higher, but they only maintain between 8-15%. Vertical community users have a lower acceptance of advertising. Knowing too much advertising invasion is devastating for the user experience. See the true chapter in the sigh of knowing the taste of the taste "and" knowing the story meeting ".

The knowledge that seriously relies on advertising to create revenue can only continue to expand the size of the user along the commercial inertia. It is known that the closed invitation system is implemented during the start -up period, ensuring the high quality of the question and answer, and shaping a professional, ideal, and serious brand image. However, as the high -level strategy chose the latter between the "niche" and "the public", it was decided to become a company that "meets more people's needs". It is known that it has opened its own sinking road and followed. It is the content pan -entertainment, elite and big V to escape, and inferior coins have continued to expel good coins.

Advertising and content ecology fall into a vicious cycle, which is also a change that has undergone real changes in the past 10 years.

02 Zhihu's business anxiety

Nowadays, there are three major sources of revenue, namely, advertising business, member income, business content solutions, vocational training and e -commerce services, etc. are classified as other business income. Zhihu's full annual financial report in 2021 shows that the proportion of revenue of non -online advertising business has reached 61%, of which the income of business content solutions has further increased from 10%in 2020 to 33%, and paid membership income accounts for accounting Ratio 23%, other 5%. However, business content solutions are actually based on content with accurate online marketing for brands and merchants. It is not much different from the "soft and wide" that the public understands. In order to make the story of the income structure look more complete, the imagination space of commercialization is greater. If the advertising business and business content solutions are uniformly set up, the revenue proportion is as high as 72%, with a total scale of 2.13 billion yuan.

The key to the problem is that compared to the head company, the competitiveness of the advertising business is not strong. The "2021 China Internet Advertising Data Report" shows that the four companies, Alibaba, Bytes, Tencent, and Baidu, account for 78%of advertising revenue. The industry TOP5-10 companies are JD.com, Meituan, Kuaishou, Xiaomi, Weibo and Pinduoduo. Zhihu is just one of the 5%of the other companies. The remaining online advertising flows are eaten together, and there are platforms such as Xiaohongshu and B station of the content community.

The source of the "China Internet Advertising Data Report 2021"

Not only that, the report also mentioned that in 2020 and 2021, the annual revenue of Internet advertisements increased by 13.85%and 9.32%year-on-year, but the increase was -4.35%and -4.53%, respectively, both declined. In the context of weak advertisements, in the secondary market, it is not necessary to develop more business through development and leave more imagination for the market.

This point, from Zhihu's 2021 financial report, can be seen that in addition to business content solutions, membership income is also regarded as a place to reflect the change of commercial products. In 2021, Zhihu's paid membership income was 669 million yuan. The year -on -year increase of 108.6%, so what is the prospect of the member economy of Zhihu?

Taking Amazon as an example, Amazon's PRIME members are now one of the world's largest membership system, attracting 120 million users worldwide, and a membership fee of nearly 1,000 yuan a year, almost hard to imagine in China. Of course, this is mainly due to Amazon's further refinement of the understanding of fast delivery services. In addition to reservation at a specific time delivery, there are timely delivery status reminders and so on. Compared with competitors, Amazon has formed an unspeakable competitive advantage in terms of express network.

Coincidentally, just like "Amazon", "streaming media, Netflix. The content barriers and copyrights formed by Netflix's "Stream Media+Self -Making Content" have promoted the growth of user payment revenue, so that the company has more content budgets, and more content investment in turn continues to promote high -quality content. In the end, more revenue (member scale or ARPU) is finally redeemed. Such a flywheel effect makes Netflix a global streaming giant and a typical player of the member economy.

On the other hand, the membership service system "Salt Selection Members" mainly include unlocking high -quality answers, free e -books and Live. The problem is that reading e -books on Zhihu is not as good as reading and WeChat reading. Listening to Live is better to get Himalayan. Paid unlocking high -quality answers has a meaningful meaning of fishing. As a Q & A community, the answer to finding the questions you care about is the fundamental purpose of using the software. Locking the high -quality answers of the well -known bloggers is obviously easy to generate the discomfort of mandatory payment and robbery.

Not only that, the most important membership rights and interests are bound to the answer, and it also determines the ceiling with a lower paid business of members. Whether it is Amazon or Netflix, the platform is providing some valuable services or content for users, but the respondent is not a monopoly resource. Besides Essence The direct consequence of it is that knowing that there is no way to lock the respondent in Zhihu. In recent years, the loss of a large number of high -quality bloggers has gradually collapsed, so that users can be willing to be willing to pay for the reasons for knowing the payment. The less you come.

03 Where is the second growth curve of Zhihu?

Charles Handy preached in the second growth of "Second Curve: The second growth of" S -shaped curve "": Before the first curve reaches the peak, find the second curve that drives the second flight of the enterprise, and the second curve must be in the second curve must be in Before the first curve reaches the apex, the vision of the sustainable growth of the enterprise can be realized.

Enterprise Growth S -curve chart

Amazon's growth curve is probably the best model. Amazon has experienced many business changes today. For example, the first online bookstore is opened to marked the Bano Bookstore in the United States; God's "cloud computing", which has been secretly deployed and continued to advance in 2006, is the AWS business. Today, AWS accounts for half of the global cloud computing market, and its profit contribution to Amazon accounts for 63%.

To some extent, Amazon's AWS cloud computing business has rebounded a new Amazon. After the appearance of AWS, there is another choice of enterprises, that is, there is no need to invest huge fixed assets, no need to build a complex system, and can use the cloud services provided by third parties to complete the system construction faster, more flexible, and lower cost. "No user has put forward the demand for Echo." This is what Echo and Alexa launch for many years, and Bezos said in the letter to the shareholder's letter. Coincidentally, before AWS, no one has tried this way. There is never such a request for customers. Traditional enterprise operating ideas advocate that enterprises should strictly keep confidentiality in their core capabilities and strictly prohibit foreign biography.

Amazon is obviously good at disruptive innovation. The biggest feature of this disruptive innovation is that it has created a new and stable market demand. However, in contrast, when most other companies, when the business anxiety that has gone through the rapid development period and faces mature periods, it is often chosen to stack the business form on the basis of the existing market demand, trying to share a share in the existing market.

Zhihu is no exception. Last year, I opened the Zhihu APP. There was a eye -catching "live broadcast" in the upper left corner. The homepage was a video area. The membership page was purchased from a member page. From videoization, live broadcast to e -commerce, Zhihu had tried it again. Nowadays, the video bar and the live broadcast entrance quietly disappear from Zhihu's homepage, membership purchases have been buried deeper, and the road of commercialization has died before steady. Based on video, it can be seen that the simple business imitation cannot let Zhihu draw a second growth curve.

In June 2018, Zhihu APP was revised. On the homepage structure of "Following", "Hot List", and "Recommended", the "Video" area was added to show the short video content on Zhihu. The short video duration is 3 to 5 minutes. In addition to the popular science orientation of the content, the content also includes life, food, fitness, travel, film and television, good things and other dimensions.

However, in the short video track, there are too few users who can connect with Douyin and Kuaishou. Regardless of whether it is Douyin's interest connection or the trust connection of fast hands, the connection objects of the two are extremely extensive and can be directly connected to ordinary people. But on the other hand, the short video audience seems to be restricted to a handful of users who are willing to accept video content in the Q & A community. The difference in connecting the crowd has caused the natural weakness of Zhihu in market competition.

In the face of this weakness, if you still choose to enter the game, you know that you will inevitably face a choice: is it just positive for short video giants such as shaking, or choose differentiated competition? If the natural disadvantaged knows, if you are upright, you must invest more resources. You need to have a head institution that is willing to invest in your dreams, or slowly create your own core advantages, such as stronger and optimized algorithms that are stronger than other software, but but Obviously not very realistic.

And if differentiated competition, there is a small amount of traffic in the short video market. According to the report of the Kazi data, the perpendicular proportion of short videos in different fields is very uneven. The top five are living information, children, funny, fashionable beauty, and food. Essence

The positioning of Zhihu is always the Q & A community. : The supply side of high -quality videos cannot keep up.

Not only that, when you return to the demand side, the user comes to Zhihu. The answer to searching the question is a direct purpose. Relatively speaking, the text logic is clear and can be read. When can the answer to interest be seen.

According to the previous reports of the "Finance and Economics" weekly and Tech planets, the Zhihu video department has been downgraded and integrated into the community department. Cai Lin, the general person in charge of the video, left in March and has been in office for less than one year. In addition, nearly a hundred people in addition to the product, or the internal "living water" transfer community and membership business, or being laid off. Organizational changes reflect strategic adjustments, and strategic pointing to the future, obviously knowing that it still has not figured out at the strategic level, how to draw a second growth curve.

At that time, Nokia stabbed the Saipan system and fell from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the valley. The blackBerry mobile phone once was replaced by the full keyboard because the full keyboard was replaced by the touch screen. It hurriedly announced the end of the smartphone business 6 years ago. The reason for this has lost its second 10 years. For Zhihu, what are the innovations that cover the entire industry? Maybe they have already surged, but managers have not noticed, or may never come.

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