The replication tradition of Internet entrepreneurship

Summary: Groupon, an American group-buying website, has valued $1.35 billion trillion after investing in DST, the Russian Internet investment Company. In the miracle-rich internet industry, this figure is not too big. But the problem is that Groupon is a start-up company, the company set up time

Groupon, an American group-buying site, has valued 1.35 billion dollars after the Russian internet investment Company's DST investments. In the miracle-rich internet industry, this figure is not too big. But the problem is that Groupon is a start-up, and the company is only 18 months old, and the company has more than 200 employees. Such crazy valuations make Groupon the hottest company in the internet industry for two months, and it takes two years for Facebook to reach level 1 billion valuations.

A person with a good sense of smell immediately discovers that the viability of a replicated Groupon is significant: it is not only simple and reliable in business models, but also easy to operate, and the only thing that needs to be done is to open up online merchants. As a result, Groupon's group buying model began to show a viral replication effect, with Russia, China and Western Europe showing a large number of sites cloned Groupon.

"Copy/Paste innovation", this is the "Washington Post" to the group buying site Groupon clones of the evaluation. The article mentions the Russian website Biglion, "It is not only to copy Groupon's business model, but also directly steal Groupon's web design and navigation, and even smaller details." Groupon, of course, notes that the clone from China, its CEO Mason specifically mentioned a domain name for groupon.cn (Tuan Bao net) website, he said without a word of derision: "It goes faster than biglion, because it directly to the name of plagiarism." ”

It also looks like a story of an entrepreneur copying the American model, but more than ever--in quantitative terms. 400, a conservative estimate of the number of people who replicate Groupon in China over the past six months, surpassing any popular apps on the Internet. Bai CEO Wang Jianyue that group buying sites in China have a special logic that distinguishes them from other countries: "The threshold is low, and China seems to have enough space to accommodate hundreds of or even thousands of localized services such as group buying, which gives many grassroots entrepreneurs a chance to see what they can do first. ”

The replication tradition of Internet entrepreneurship

The replication of the Internet is not a new topic. China's Internet from the start, every popular site can almost find its foreign prototype, the old generation of portals are standing behind the Yahoo, a new generation of social networking sites are obviously Facebook's shadow, and Tencent's earliest Oicq looks like the Chinese version of ICQ.

It is now well known that internet companies, with their "plagiarism" titles, rely on copycat tactics to emulate their copycat targets. And after web2.0, the chances of the Chinese Internet industry relying on imitation to succeed appear to be greater, because those who rely on UCG (users create content) to survive, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, bloggers and so on, Without exception, the Chinese market has not been defeated first. Science and technology blog TechCrunch on an article called "China Internet: Why do imitators win?" Article analyzes the successful business rules of Chinese imitators: "Chinese Internet entrepreneurs will copy existing business models, but in the process they will rethink and reshape the business model and process." This not only makes them profitable as soon as possible, it also makes them beat multinationals at home. ”

Groupon's group-buying model is much simpler to use than the "rethink and reinvent" business model of the Portal or IM – simple enough to make money directly from copying. Wang Jianyue said: "Imitation of Groupon, technical things can be solved in one day, business model may be less than a week to learn." "And from the commercial cost," do group buying site and put a sweet potato stand no difference. For grassroots entrepreneurs, group buying does have enough appeal. It may not provide much profit, but it has a good balance between risk and profit, even if it does not succeed, it will not lose money excessively. The only worry is that hundreds of group buying sites are swarming with excessive competition.

The fact that group buying is not a winner-take-all market may alleviate some of the anxiety of the replicator. Yanping, director of the Internet Data Center, said: "The number of group buying sites will never be few years later." Because group buying has a very strong characteristics, distance to the nearest consumer place, distance from a certain area nearest place, a class of consumer entertainment in the nearest place there are group buying, it will be ubiquitous, including the future existence of the form of group buying, is not a station. "Wang Jianyue's view is similar, he talked about the cost of outside the market," the cost of starting a low, so most sites will not be bad live ".

More and more difficult "time difference" imitation

"Copycat" is the first impression of Silicon Valley on China's Internet. But it is hard to deny that the imitation strategy itself is the result of business logic-China and the United States in the development of the Internet natural time lag, doomed the former step on the latter's footprints walk. Wang Jianyue that "plagiarism" misunderstanding the entrepreneur: "China's internet is probably 7 years later than the United States, does not mean the technical late, but refers to the user late." So China will follow this path even if it does not refer to the United States. Now with the United States for reference, and the reference is clearly reasonable things, but not, that is not silly? ”

"The maturity of the user", this frequently mentioned vocabulary most vividly elaborated the Chinese and American internet market time lag. A lot of outsiders don't have a mind to do is, in the Alexa rankings, why a hao123 of no technical content of the flow of more than Google China and Tianya. Wang Jianyue said: "This stage of China's internet has led to the application of the Internet, which has appeared in the United States." If China does innovate in the Internet industry, such as innovation in the US, it must be out of the real world. You can't bring entrepreneurs into a hole for innovation. ”

The only exception seems to be Alibaba, Ma Yun at the outset that he would go to the local route: "I think China must have its own business model, is not ebay I do not know, is not Yahoo I did not see clearly, but if around SMEs to help SMEs success, we have the opportunity." "It is clear that Alibaba did not imitate the object. However, he later founded Taobao and Alipay, outsiders clearly see them with ebay and PayPal (PayPal) shadow. In fact, whether imitation or not, it is not difficult to see Ma Yun tends to localize business thinking, Alibaba grasp the lifeblood of small business marketing, and Taobao is the most lethal free transaction fee policy, the two directly corresponding to the business-to-business and Consumer-to-consumer market, so that Alibaba Group sitting on the position of E-commerce boss.

Alibaba's success illustrates an unmistakable truth: there is still a chance of success without the American model. But not every entrepreneur has Jack Ma's insistence and judgment. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are accustomed to moving foreign success stories directly. But the reality is that it is increasingly difficult to catch a time lag to replicate a business: "Where is the difficulty?" The United States is constantly leaking business opportunities, such as group buying this matter, if not the United States model role, 5 years after the possibility of many people still in time. But now that the United States is leaking out what the future looks like, a lot of people are rushing in. Even if you're particularly calm, it's reasonable to know that 5 years later, but you have to go in now. If you do not rush in now, 5 years later you will be one of the Red Sea, this is a very cruel process. ”

Why Tencent "only copy do not buy"?

Beware of Tencent, which is almost the consensus of all Chinese entrepreneurs. The strong stickiness of QQ makes it possible for Tencent to launch any one of its products to intimidate rivals, which makes it possible for venture capitalists to anticipate the risks beyond the product itself: will Tencent intervene in the field? No doubt, "take other people's way, let others have no way to go"--Microsoft once the Hegemony style and in Tencent's body was played incisively and vividly.

The bigger problem for entrepreneurs is that internet companies like Tencent are as simple as the path to development--"just copy it." This makes Chinese entrepreneurs have to face the reality that if their own projects and Tencent crash, there is almost no choice but to make the strongest, or only survive in the shadow of the Giants. This is well illustrated by the decline of independent blogging sites and microblogging sites after a portal attack. And the common "takeover" in the US is the third way Chinese entrepreneurs find it hard to see.

Behind this is another bleak reality of China's Internet: Startups don't have the capital to confront big companies, and entrepreneurs are weak in the marketplace. This makes "big companies have no reason to buy", Wang Jianyue said: "I (big company) people are the strongest, the funds are the strongest, the user is the strongest." Everything is the strongest, why should I buy you? ”

This contrasts sharply with Silicon Valley. In 2009, Facebook bought the social aggregation website FriendFeed, and Mark Zuckerberg paid 50 million dollars for the 12-person start-up. This is not the point. In the ensuing process, FriendFeed's founder, Brettes Thelles, became the CTO of Facebook, and the remaining 11 were all on Facebook. The takeover case, which the entrepreneur is happy to bring up, is an important rule in Silicon Valley acquisitions: acquiring start-ups, both acquisitions and acquirers. Obviously, Facebook sees the double value of Brettes Thelles--his founding friendfeed is good, but his previous career as a product development manager such as Google Gmail is equally important. This confirms Wang Jianyue's judgment that many American entrepreneurs are very strong. "The most American people are in startups, big companies can't beat them, they can only buy." ”

In fact, Silicon Valley's most powerful entrepreneurs are not from big companies like Google and Yahoo, but from PayPal. PayPal was acquired by ebay in 2002, but over the next few years the company's former staff spawned dozens of internet companies, with a total value of $30 billion trillion. Among these, the best is the Chen-founded YouTube, and slide, yeep are also regarded as highly competitive start-ups. Scott Dietmer, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital consultancy, said: "The proportion of former employees who start their own business or invest in new businesses is the highest in Silicon Valley." "Then there was this strange phenomenon in Silicon Valley: Entrepreneurs from PayPal formed a group that was very powerful and mysterious, and people used to call it the" PayPal mob ". "The New York Times" and "fortune" have reported some stories of the "PayPal Mob." But the reason why PayPal has so many successful entrepreneurs is still a mystery.