Zhou Yuan: When the knowledge question community meets the profit problem

Interview contact know that CEO Zhou Yuan is not an easy job because of his business trip in the United States, mail communication for two weeks before finalizing. 3 years of journalism, Zhou Yuan for the interview, not only to reply to all the questions I interviewed the outline, but also attached an article he himself has previously written for a financial magazine himself, "know why: the invitation to the founder of Zhou Yuan to answer the author."

Knowledge of the site opened in December 2010, 3 months after the acquisition of Angel Investment. As of June 2014, the number of registered users in the community has exceeded 7 million, with an average of 7 minutes per visitor in a single day.

Today's knowledge is not just a community web site for professional questions and answers.

Welcome to the planet of knowledge.

"The knowledge, experience, opinion, and judgment that a person has never shared in the brain is something that a lot of people want to know," Zhou Yuan, who wrote a passage on the Web site to answer questions about "Why do you know?"

Knowing, translating into the vernacular is "know?" "is a real online question-answering community. Elites from all walks of life share each other's expertise, experience and insights, providing a steady stream of high-quality information for the Chinese Internet. Zhou Yuan said the name is "knowledge" because it distinguishes itself from simple content publishing, and they expect it to be a new thing, full of unknowns.

December 2010, know that the team began to operate, into the beta phase. Among the first 200 users, there are celebrities like Kai-Fu Lee, Xiaoping and Ma Teng, and a group of internet people who are not known to be seen. They created 8,000 questions and 20,000 answers 40 days before they were known.

January 26, 2011 after the official release of the online, in just a few months, know that the company released a new iphone.

We're pirates, we know the team.

After the failure of the meta search business, Zhou Yuan began to do products have a completely different understanding, we must do it is the user's products. At this time a new product very touched him, its name is called Quora. This product is a new product form, it uses the question and answer this form to realize the brand-new content creation and the dissemination mechanism.

When Zhou Yuan noticed Quora, assistant Zhang, editor-in-chief of Global Entrepreneurship, also published an article, "the most exciting product after Quora:twitter." As a journalist, Zhou Yuan and Zhang joined a geek club. Two people to discuss cooperation, Zhang asked Zhou Yuan: "If we can find a sum of money, you can form a team to make this product?" Zhou Yuan replied: Yes.

Soon they got 1.5 million yuan of angel investment, and Zhang and Meta Huang became known co-founder. "The members of the meta team didn't abandon me and they decided to join at once. Zhou Yuan recalls that on the third day they rubbed a large free desk in the three-lane China Red Street and began frantically designing products and writing code. "Later things, as you can see, are on the line. ”

Today it seems that in the field of disseminating knowledge, it is known to be a landmark website. In Zhou Yuan's view, this is inseparable from their team's efforts.

In the 2011, the office area of the innovation Workshop was very crowded, with a large brand with a team name hanging on top of each team's office area, only to know that the team did not have a tag--a pirate flag. Visitors will be curious to ask: "What is this team ah?" "The answer is often a laugh:" We are pirates know the team! ”

The word "pirate" is a vision for the future team when the team was founded. Zhou Yuan said that the world's most innovative companies have previously been interpreted. When Jobs returned to Apple, he hung a pirate flag in his office and said to the ideal team, "why join the Navy if you can be a pirate?" He encouraged everyone to forget the rules and think in the most extreme ways. ”

Paul Greheum says good entrepreneurs should be relentlessly resourceful. This is very simple English, but it is difficult to translate the Chinese, and finally be Zhang translated into "Always get it." Its antonym is "helpless", helpless means passive, the helpless is hapless by the environment-passively follows the rules, rather than creating the rules.

"We want to be a bunch of people, and that's one of the criteria we hire," he said. Zhou Yuan also revealed that everyone in the team would send a copy of the hacker and painter, and the other a pirate culture. Many of them are fans of the Pirate King, who have a common goal and a personal goal of growing up.

As the knowledge grows, the issue of profitability is mentioned again and again. In this regard, Zhou Yuan said very helpless: "The outside world seems more than we ourselves are more concerned about profitability." In fact, as a company, of course, one day will be profitable, but we now and in the future for some time have not considered this matter, but also in the stage of large user value. ”

Zhou Yuan said that the team is more than agree with the so-called "user value externalities" concept. Profit is actually just one of the ways in which the user's value is externalized. "For us at the moment, profit priority is not high, and investors have reached a consensus." I agree with Zhangxiaolong's point of view, only consider the next three months of things, to do a good job. ”

Finally, the reporter asked Zhou Yuan, when people mention know, what do you want to hear most? Zhou Yuan, an engineer, replied: "I want to know the basic agreement to be everything, similar to Google's search." When people want to experience the best discussion experience in Chinese Internet, they all think about it and use it for the first time. ”