American Pomelo Chen Fangyi: Scorpio O-Blood, maverick entrepreneur

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June just completed the 35 million dollar C-round financing of women's health management application app Grapefruit, is once the second venture of college entrepreneur Chen Fangyi.

The 1986 Scorpio O-Blood entrepreneur, born in Putian, Fujian. He is the eldest of the family, there is a younger brother below. With most think of the first child more sedate different, Chen Fangyi from childhood more rebellious. He said that it was his decision to change his profession and start his own business.

2005, Chen Fangyi into the overseas Chinese University of the professional is bioengineering, but to the big two o'clock, he transferred to the computer science. He had his own consideration when he was a professional. He in December 2010 as a university student entrepreneurship representative to the CCTV "struggle" section of the interview, said that bioengineering professionals want to reach a certain level, must learn very top-notch things, but the network start-up cost is very low, as long as the implementation of the ability to do well.

2008, still in the Chen Fangyi of the junior college founded a shopping guide website-return network, and set up Xiamen Inspiration Ark Information Technology Co., Ltd. Back to the net in 2011 more than 4.2 million members, for the electricity business to bring sales of 400 million.

April 2013, Chen Fangyi launched the application of American pomelo based on mobile phones, and set up Xiamen Mei Pomelo Information Technology Co., Ltd. Its main function in addition to menstrual record and prediction, there are pregnancy, pregnancy, childcare and other functions, there is a female community "she she circle."

Grapefruit can be based on the user in the tool app records and community behavior analysis of the user's physical condition, to provide weight loss, beauty, health and other aspects of the recommendations, the development of personalized health tasks.

Up to now, the grapefruit has 10 categories of nearly hundreds of highly active social circles, the daily average number of users posted 2.1 million posts, the Community daily average of more than 100 million times, including love, fashion, food and other topics of user participation in the high.

In January 2014, Pomelo was awarded a 15 million-dollar B-round financing by the Jingwei venture. In May alone, the $35 million C-round financing was received by the Haina Asia Investment Fund (SIG).

As a male, why choose to make a big fuss over women's menstrual period, and what is the logical relationship with their previous entrepreneurial experience? Chen Fangyi Choose to move technology to respond.

B round, "founder Chen Fangyi and his team at the same time to vote 5 million dollars" What is going on?

Because this is not our first time to start a business, so we all have some savings. So in the second round of financing, our founding team have taken their own money out with the vote, improve the team's shareholding ratio, we have confidence in the development of pomelo. Our current executive team is the first person to start a business.

Why change the grapefruit to a community?

We are mainly through user surveys. At the beginning of the female product, we asked each product manager to understand the user's needs. In the process of user survey, product manager found that users have to post on the grapefruit, share the demand.

What channels do you, as a man, know about women's needs?

There are a lot of ways. Like I'm going to call a couple of girls at a dinner party. Talk to them about this product and the physiology of the problem (later, girls do not like to eat with me).

I also often look at user feedback. First, the user's feedback is to say that it is not good to use, and then the user will be in the feedback of the new features to make some improvement suggestions.

How do you start a business in women's needs?

Our company will brainstorm. Some girls mentioned the point of female menstrual period. We've always wanted to start a business in the vertical, because bat is too powerful. Women are the biggest vertical market. As a result, we just found a way to do the menstrual period.

What is the logical relationship between Pomelo and your previous venture?

We're positioning ourselves as a technology company, hoping to get ahead of every technological wave, so I'll look at trends before I do a project. The return of the net is to catch up with the 2008 to 2013 of the electricity business tide. Grapefruit is now the mobile Internet tide.

How big is the market?

We are through the user's demand point to develop products, the user's demand point more, the market is bigger. So you'll see that we're growing faster. Pomelo in September 2013 has 10 million users, January 2014 growth to user 30 million. Users broke through 50 million by June 2014.

How do you convince investors?

We thought about the product very well at the beginning, so when we talked to the investors, the investors understood what was going on. We started with a round of financing, is a relatively smooth process. Our A-round financing is our team's original investors, the perilous peak huaxing.

"There are insiders who said you wanted to turn off the company to work for a big company," Financial Weekly reported.

Never thought about it, don't know who burst the material. I am more fortunate, the university began to catch up with the wave of the electricity quotient, the whole process is relatively smooth. But I think a problem for college students to start a business is to take their own team at the outset, and the vision may be limited. Because it's not like working in a big company, there will be experienced people carrying forward.

Judging from my own direct experience and the indirect experience of observing other people's experiences, I think the biggest risk to college students ' entrepreneurship is the stagnation of their horizons, and money is not a problem. Even if lose money, that can compensate how much, at least is a trial and error process.

What problems have you encountered during your start-up?

is to do the return of the net, do not know how to promote. But most of it went well, and the return network became the second largest rebate site. Now to do the beauty pomelo, are the second pioneering, more experience.

Grapefruit online time than aunt, but in the App Store ranking is higher than aunt, how to do?

We do not care about competitors, the product has been our focus of the entire company, only to do their own good. The market is large enough to support many products to explore the female market.

Do you do hardware? If so, what is the form?

From the feedback we have gathered, users are in need of wearable equipment. According to the feedback we have now, the person who prepares the pregnancy wants to record the body temperature; So we will drive the hardware plan according to the user's demand.

What is the gender ratio of your team now?

Our team has a total of 150 people, a part of the market in Beijing, the rest in Xiamen. Product team has more than 50 people, responsible for products, operating more women. The technical team is predominantly male.

Are you scorpio O-blood?

How do you know?

Look on the Internet.

"Haha," that's all known. I am November scorpio, O-type blood.

Do you feel like a Scorpio?

I think I'm kind of like a Scorpio, quite maverick. I think my parents gave me the biggest education is to indulge me. I'm the eldest in the house and a brother. But my parents basically don't care about me. I have made my own decisions from turning major to starting a business.