800 Guest: "Cottage" entrepreneurial also crazy

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In the 004 June, Li, a software developer at Oracle, returned from Silicon Valley in the US. At that time, the United States Independent SaaS (online software) manufacturer Salesforce has been widely recognized by the market. Li was clear at the time that although the Chinese market was not necessarily ready to accept SaaS, the successful business model in the United States would certainly be in China as scheduled in five or six years.

With such a judgment, Li propped up a SaaS banner-800 Guests: "Do China's salesforce." Salesforce in 2006 's successful listing, but also let Li see hope. As a result, SaaS products that are very much like Salesforce, but with far lower prices, are starting to appear in China. At the beginning of 2009, the humble domestic SaaS maker was given a 17 million dollar investment in the United States venture capital Sierra Ventures combined with Ivy, the first time a domestic SaaS company had received venture capital from abroad.

The triumph of the cottage

Since 2004, the establishment of 800 customers, Li has been leading 800 of guests in obscurity, until Kaoshaoyi to join. Kaoshaoyi has been a senior vice president of Ufida, in China's software industry quite famous. "The first thing I did was to take the team and make a beautiful business plan and start looking for an investment," he said. "Kaoshaoyi told the China Business newspaper," the most important thing for SaaS manufacturers is to form scale, so it needs a lot of money. Kaoshaoyi is currently the general manager and chief application expert of 800 guest companies.

However, a small company such as 800 guests is unlikely to attract industry attention. "We are the world's leading leader in the field of SaaS Salesforce products, the product is similar, but the price is very cheap." "In the face of the Salesforce version of the query, Kaoshaoyi no taboo." Instead, he says, domestic VCs do not have a common interest in SaaS. On the contrary, the U.S. venture capital agency Sierra Ventures The reason why the 800 guests, precisely because 800 guests like a "cottage version" of the Salesforce.

Salesforce's marketing slogan is "I'm not a management software", and it's a high-profile way to advertise my differences with traditional software. At this point, 800 of passengers also walk the same path. 800 customers put forward the concept of "software Terminator", that the traditional mode of software modularization is bound to end, although the path of SaaS may not be unimpeded.

800 customers and most of the domestic SaaS manufacturers have a different, is to imitate Salesforce first from the CRM (Customer management System) software, rather than financial software to start. Kaoshaoyi analysis that "financial software is in fact accounting, ERP is to do inventory, only the company's financial and related personnel to use, the number of users have limitations." And CRM is the foreground business, the company many personnel will use, the user quantity is huge, this is actually Salesforce success secret. "However, many SaaS companies in the country do not think that finance is the application of SaaS start-up, so it is mostly from the financial software start to attract users."

Per-client fees have become an industry consensus for SaaS vendors. But 800 of customers in the 4 years of exploration, but also expand the other business model. For example, in addition to the most basic according to the client and the use of time charges (the current charge is 60 yuan/day), but also through the network for users online implementation, online training, charging standard is 300 yuan/person, and the newer business model is to develop the hosting business. "We've done a client's hosting and now look at the effect is good." "Kaoshaoyi revealed.

When many domestic SaaS firms are wavering on the path of personalization or generalization, 800 customers aimed at the difference in business models and the low cost of information investment in the SME market, determined to the online management software "Do like QQ space", not only to meet a variety of user needs, but also to enable modular low-cost delivery. Kaoshaoyi said: "Our technical platform is very flexible, for the needs of different customers, we have specialized technical personnel to provide solutions and maintenance, and the charge is very low, enterprises will be very happy to accept." ”

In fact, in the last two years, SaaS manufacturers more and more, such as Microsoft, Ufida, Kingdee, and so on, each name is not small, but VCs difficult to meddle in the SaaS business of these large companies, and such as 800 customers such as independent SaaS vendors, but more likely to attract investors attention.

Success or failure of scale

SaaS in the industry seems to be a "big business", only large manufacturers, large investment in order to build this platform. According to the reporter understand, domestic SaaS manufacturers so far, there is no profit, and the families have done a "loss" plan. A person of Kingdee said: "We are not anxious, the group gives us sufficient time, Salesforce the second year of listing is still losing money!"

Loss is indeed an unavoidable reality. In this respect, Kaoshaoyi is adamant: "We will continue to do SaaS, and only SaaS." Facing the head-on competition of big companies such as Ufida, Kingdee and Alibaba, Kaoshaoyi bluntly: "They do the traditional software package, while doing SaaS, not willing to give up any future opportunities, but they will never allow the SaaS business impact of their own packaged software revenue." So it's hard for them to really take the power to do it. ”

For 800 of customers, funding is no longer a problem after getting 17 million dollars in investment. However, how to quickly increase the number of users in the short term, especially how to improve the number of paid users, is the biggest challenge for 800 of customers. Kaoshaoyi said that while there was no explicit betting agreement with the investors, the investors demanded that paying subscribers reach more than 20,000 in two years, compared with only 100 of the current 800 customers. "SaaS is about scale, and if you can't do it, the enterprise still won't succeed." Cao Kaibin, deputy general manager of the world information.

Investors said

Sierra Ventures that SaaS replaces packaged software has been an irreversible development, and that the US venture has invested in nearly three years as a cloud computing and SaaS technology company. With the help of Salesforce, the time has come for China to develop SaaS, in such a situation, it is necessary to seize the opportunity to seize the domestic market to develop the number of users. 800 customer by virtue of Salesforce successful experience of reference and reference, already have a mature product and team, this is our fancy 800 guest's main reason. At the same time, the persistence and concentration of 800 customers for many years in the field of SaaS is also a cause of our investment.

Third Eye

CCW Information deputy General Manager Cao Kaibin that at present many enterprises in the country began to imitate the Salesforce model, but 800 guests are the earliest and most "like" imitators. However, at this stage, the user awareness of 800 customers is still low, I expect 15 will be relatively mature. I suggest that companies try to get SaaS applications from four directions: first, to provide value-added services to customers, the second is to provide value-added services upstream, three is to do system integration, four is to do communication and synergy tools.