An internet education entrepreneur's experience and thinking: Mouse + cement is still a good model

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Over the past period, the domestic Internet education is very hot, as a member of many entrepreneurs in related fields, I founded Aurina (orichinese.com) is also in this wave growth. Because of the particularity of the subdivision industry (education for Chinese as a foreign language), there may be some differences in my entrepreneurial path, which will give you a share.

First, the start-up process

As early as a few years ago, when I was studying in France, I had a related entrepreneurial idea.

At that time I met a lot of Chinese friends who grew up in France, although they would never volunteer to learn "complicated" Chinese, but their parents wanted their children to learn their own language. Knowing this demand, I began to teach some Chinese-Chinese friends, and then even the non-Chinese "students", because the body in foreign countries, the mind is also regarded as the dissemination of national culture, so do a very serious and motivated.

At that time, online education in foreign countries has been relatively hot, also known as the "Education circle", I met a school with the German youth Felix, he is a very thoughtful person, we often exchange online education-related content, and even a joint venture, but later because Felix mainly want to do online Consultation, there are some differences with my ideas, and eventually failed to develop together.

Due to the previous teaching of Chinese and this is not a successful entrepreneurial experience, after returning home, I contacted a few are also from abroad to return to the high school students, but also found in the domestic education and training industry for many years of friends, together to explore the idea of doing online Chinese teaching, we all expressed interest. After a period of consultation, at the end of 2012, we founded the Aurina.

Aurina Original Vision, in addition to the achievement of a career, more or less some national feelings, it can be said that through the Internet technology, breaking the geographical boundaries, Chinese and Chinese culture to the global.

2013 was called the Year of online education, the Internet education was shouted unprecedented, although more than 10 years ago this concept, but in fact, we are involved in the field (online foreign Chinese) is basically a piece of blue sea, the same industry does not have particularly successful cases can be used for reference, need to explore their own step by step.

The initial team was divided into two project groups, in charge of Internet technology, the project team quickly set up the network learning platform and devote large resources to promote it. At the same time, the project team responsible for content and curriculum products, while constantly developing and producing new online course products, while producing topics, rich platform content.

After a period of hard work, we finally set up their own shelves, the site's traffic and related consulting also to a more stable stage, and soon after the first real people online one-on-one user. At this time, a friend is very optimistic about us, invested 1 million. This is the first money we have made, and our efforts have been affirmed.

Ii. Development and transformation

The road to entrepreneurship is not too much respite, although the online learning platform has begun to bring us users and real income, but the development process there are two problems we have to consider. First, the development of the platform is a relatively long process, and in the upfront costs (including daily operating costs and early trial and error costs) is very high, if according to the current rhythm, will certainly encounter bottlenecks; second, in the current online education industry technology and mode, it is difficult to completely replace the offline learning experience and effect.

These two issues don't seem like a big deal to many people, but we can really feel the importance of doing it, and the team thinks it has to be changed. Entrepreneurial road is inflexible, not innovation, there is no way to go.

But the issue of "How to change" has been divided within the team, the main difference is the "Teaching Experience Center project." The so-called Teaching Experience center, is specially for the offline Chinese students to establish the experience center, currently mainly choose to open in the domestic first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places) in the concentration of foreigners to live or work in the place, providing teaching and other related cross-cultural services.

The reason why this project is not recognized is mainly in two aspects: first, the establishment of such a network center must cost a lot of human and material resources; the second is to do the Internet industry team members feel not cool, with offline too much relationship is the Internet education retrogression. This is not cool, but also many circles including the investment circle of friends views.

Innovation is always difficult, after a long period of discussion, the team is finally ready to open the "Teaching Experience Center Project", 2013, the first Chinese teaching Experience Center in Beijing International Trade CBD established. It turns out that the role of the Teaching experience Center is actually beyond our expectations. Its function is mainly embodied in the following aspects:

First, the offline teaching center, as a offline platform, enriches the product content, and has great help in developing teaching methods, enriching teaching products and improving teaching quality.

Second, the offline teaching center has greatly improved the stability of the revenue and improved the conversion rate of local users.

Third, the offline teaching Center brings the higher quality service for the user, the enhancement of teaching effect and the optimization of the user experience make the students more willing to recommend and share us to their friends. It has brought a good reputation and attracted more students.

Four, the offline teaching center makes us not only stay at the level of language training. By providing a wide range of services to our students, we are becoming a platform for the students to come into and learn about China. This makes our future development more possible.

Within six months, the Beijing CBD Teaching Experience Center has received more than 100 users, the project is ultimately recognized by all the team.

Third, the road of innovation

In order to further enhance the online learning experience, the technical team opened a new project--pandarin in the second half of 2013, while operating under the Teaching Experience Center line.

Pandarin is a combination of panda and Mandarin, and its positioning is an online Chinese language learning application based on online education, with a good learning experience and a large number of scientifically distributed exercises for learning content.

The East Asian language family, which is represented by Chinese, has been unable to find a more scientific "standardized" learning tool because of its own particularity in "participle" and "grammar", which leads to the application of advanced learning methods in many other languages. Just do a simple APP, the content of the course on the website literally to the mobile end, the significance is not big, but if really want to do some real learning methods on the exploration, there are a lot of difficulties.

So the team members take the initiative in the spare time to learn a foreign language (such as I learned Korean) accumulated a lot of language learning experience, coupled with the experience of offline teaching, we find an interactive, game-learning style.

The Pandarin project encountered difficulties from the outset, and as a cross-cutting product, it was difficult to solve the double difficulties of "computer technology" and "linguistics study". In the joint efforts of team members, we draw on the various achievements of language research at home and abroad, including many practical experience of foreign Chinese teachers and linguists research results, using a lot of manpower and related computer technology, finally at the end of 2013, Pandarin beta version finally on the website.

The project is still being perfected, but the scientific learning method, the entertaining learning mode and the open learning content give us reason to believe that in the mobile internet era where the fragmentation learning is prevalent, Pandarin will certainly provide a powerful complement to the online education of Chinese as a foreign language.

Iv. Future Prospects

Looking back this way, it is not easy, we may miss a lot of opportunities, many times is not the best chess, we have been suspected and self-doubt, but we are still standing today, is about to tomorrow.

We will adhere to the online education platform and offline learning experience combined, fashionable is the mouse + cement (at least after a period of time to try, this is the best model today). On the one hand, improve online content, on the other hand plan to create new home and abroad Learning Center, in order to seek greater development opportunities.

Entrepreneurship on the road there are a lot of exploration, not every step is optimistic, not every step will harvest success, but only efforts to try to have the opportunity to develop. China is also the Internet education business partners, we peer.