Chen Challenge: Water education loan looking for mobile internet direction

Throughout China's internet history, one person has to mention it. He and Charles Zhang, Ding Lei and other internet big guy almost at the same time on the Chinese internet stage, but "late bloomer." He is Chen, chief executive officer of all company.

Known as China's Internet "Basterds Commander-in-Chief", he has been in the Internet industry for 13 years to gold, participated in a wide variety of projects: 2003, the acquisition of Cat Mop, after the acquisition of World of Warcraft China, Uume, RenRen, Donews, the network of nearly 10 web sites, The business scope involved almost all the popular concepts at the time.

Last year, Chen a boat pack Renren, everyone game, glutinous rice NET, Jingwei Network, by virtue of "Chinese version of Facebook" Concept landing NYSE, financing 850 million U.S. dollars, the first day of market capitalisation was once as high as more than 7 billion U.S. dollars, interpretation of a capital feast.

But after the feast, a year later, the Internet veteran has faced multiple challenges: in the capital markets, Facebook's share price has fallen to half, and social networks have been questioned as a bubble that has been blown too much; at the business level, everyone in SNS (social network) faces the big encirclement of Tencent, Sina Weibo and so on. Mobile Internet, in the case of Tencent's micro-letter, everyone has not found a suitable direction.

September 14, Chen received an exclusive interview with the Daily Economic news reporter for a series of issues such as the future development strategy and priorities for everyone, and how the mobile Internet was broken.

New acquisition of water Test education loan

On September 12, Renren announced a 49 million dollar investment to socialfinance, a financial services company headquartered in San Francisco (hereinafter referred to as Sofi).

The data show that this is an innovative financial services company set up by a group of Stanford University business students in 2011 to form an online loan platform to help students raise educational loans from alumni at interest rates lower than the U.S. federal government loans.

Chen, the daily economic news, said that games and E-commerce were the beginning of a social revolution, and that the next wave of social revolution would be launched in the financial and educational sectors as an investment target for why a new start-up, aged 1, was chosen. In the United States, a relatively mature peer-to-peer (point-to-point) network of small loans and education loans is a good combination.

In Chen's view, using less than 5% of the assets to become Sofi Company's largest shareholder, is a good business.

Just before, Chen a boat has been in video, social, games, group buying and intelligent business social and other completely different areas of the layout, these lines of business can be analog objects, such as Renren's analogy is Facebook, glutinous rice net imitation is Groupon, Jingwei Network for reference is LinkedIn.

According to the prospectus presented in the IPO, the company's revenue is 42% from advertising, 45% from games, and 13% from other Internet value-added services. Since the launch of the NYSE in MAY 2011, everyone has been "warning" about the fierce competition in Chinese social networks – the company's first two-quarter results have been weak as advertising revenue has slowed and investment in the group buying business and mobile internet business has grown. In the newly released two quarterly earnings, everyone game income of 22.5 million U.S. dollars, online advertising business income of only 15.1 million U.S. dollars.

Earlier, Chen in the company's internal mail claimed that everyone has been listed as the Three Kingdoms of Jingzhou, although sufficient fodder, but easy to defend.

Chen said that advertising is only the direction of SNS, there are many cases that China's largest internet business is still a game, including E-commerce and gaming, pay services will become the backbone of social networks. According to him, everyone in addition to their own development of the game, but also a large number of operating Third-party games.

1.05 billion dollars in cash plus short-term investment is Chen a boat the biggest emboldened. "As a company that continues to tap into the potential of social networking infrastructure, everyone has been watching and participating in other Internet businesses and using ' socializing ' to magnify product development, marketing and publishing on a scale. Chen says he has been looking for a diversified source of revenue.

Chen principle of "trial and error"

The era of Internet diversification has been emerging, in the 2-hour interview, Chen stressed that the future of everyone will focus on the PC and mobile phone two major areas of exerting force, the main business will include Renren, glutinous rice nets and games.

Chen that 80% of the time, energy and resources should be invested in the main industry, to ensure that the main business is constantly upgraded, the remaining 20% can be divided into the risk of a small investment in businesses, may be inadvertently inserted willow shade effect.

For outsiders to question everyone stand too big, Chen a boat response said: "Poor family children think of things naturally!" He points out that everyone is not as good as Facebook, but social networking is the equivalent of infrastructure, group buying and video sites that are used in infrastructure. "The technology of group buying was there ten years ago and why it is now because of the social networking infrastructure." ”

However, blindly layout applications, but also need to be aware of failure and correct the "trial and error spirit."

Chen For example, everyone has been trying to be a platform for professionals, doing it according to the LinkedIn model, but found it unworkable and was forced to change. Another typical example is that everyone has spent a lot of effort on layout HTML5, but has changed direction immediately after realizing the problem, "we and Facebook are aware of the HTML5 problem, the vision is good, but implementation is two different things." ”

This spirit may be related to the pioneering experience of the early Chen Zhou: 2002 he with 300,000 dollars founded Thousand Oak, just picked up that encounter SP business trough; then the transformation of the community, found that the community is not high after the turn to do the portal, the portal after a setback to try video, classified information and network downloads and other popular concepts.

Beach Mobile Internet Market

For the mobile internet market, everyone is looking for a force point like many other internet giants in China.

Earlier, 360 chairman Zhou has said that the current access to mobile Internet tickets only Tencent's micro-letter. Chen Yi-chen, mobile internet has become the future of everyone's most critical platform, but at present, everyone has not found any effective way to enter this area.

He believes that the mobile Internet is very different from the traditional internet, mobile Internet is more like FMCG, life cycle development than traditional Internet products faster. In this field, Chen one boat target is 100 million users, but currently active users only 40 million. He hopes that everyone will achieve this goal by 30% per cent annual growth rate in three years ' time.

Chen Frank, from the product properties, not a few products of DNA than SNS more suitable for mobile internet migration, but this advantage does not make for everyone to earn some opportunities.

As we all know, in the PC domain, internet companies have been accustomed to many years of constant "addition" strategy, such as a browser plus an input method. But on the mobile side, this strategy becomes extraordinarily difficult to do. "Mobile phones are subject to the screen, which means that when you turn to your phone, you need to reduce things and make the product lighter." "Chen said.

According to him, mobile business now accounts for 45% of all employees, but only 10% of the revenue comes from mobile services. However, this does not mean that Chen is not ambitious. According to the daily economic news, after the failure to create a Jingwei network, Chen moved to the mobile Internet, and developed a business based on the application of social communication business card pass.

This set of business card scanning, communication chat and business social functions as one of the products, perhaps Chen a boat pry mobile internet market "killer". From this product positioning can be seen, a different from Tencent QQ social relations chain is forming.

It also seems to be a short board to make up for the PC-side Renren. The core users of PC end Renren are college students and young white-collar workers with college education. Through the creation of new products, Chen a boat very good to the above crowd to extend, and formally cut into the mobile social business market.

If the product is widely used, everyone on the wireless side can extend to the user Address Book, and have more commercialization of the possibility, such as through business card scanning to establish a social chain, based on business relationships, users can be recommended to the platform to post the recruitment of the company, everyone can from the recruitment company to obtain a small amount of recruitment reward.

For the future of the product business model, Chen a boat is not willing to talk too much. He only said, "in the user expansion and profitability model is still in the exploratory stage." ”