Chinese class Instagram entrepreneurial ferocious growth: hit money to live in need of innovation

Rome was not built in a day, and Instagram's success was not an accident.

On April 10, only 13 employees of Instagram were bought by Facebook at a sky-high price of $1 billion. Is it just an application version of "shoot"? What's so amazing about the dazzling filter features? Who will be the most successful replicator in the country?

"Daily economic news" reporter in-depth to the image processing, image social application developers, survey China's "class Instagram" story. From the experience of these entrepreneurs, you may find the answer to the hotly debated topics in the industry in recent days: are Chinese internet giants trying to kill innovation in small and medium-sized teams by imitating or copying?

Fruit: with fast braking 360

Each release of a new product, fruit technology, the entrepreneurial team will celebrate together and share a piece of cake. In the week of December 2011, they ate 6 cakes in 7 days.

Fruit Technology CEO Xu Xian told the Daily Economic news reporter, every 3 weeks, his entrepreneurial team will update the product version, every six months they will guarantee more than 18 important updates, each new version they are trying to launch a "bright spot" to stick to the user, these are the agile development must do the homework, is also in the domestic mobile internet to do a product survival law.

Fruit technology's most well-known application, called Camera360 (cell phone photography master). Camera360 's inspiration comes from the accumulation of technology from Xu Xian and friends who once worked for a software company called "domestic Photoshop" and accumulated a lot of photographic processing technology before starting the company.

October 2010, Xu Xian and another founder of the formal establishment of fruit technology, so far, its core product Camera360 has 30 million of independent installed capacity, and in this year to 3 million ~500 million new users to achieve the speed of growth, the user growth rate even more than the Instagram.

"Unlike Instagram, we define Camera360 as a pure photographic tool, its main function is to gradually replace the card machine function, and add a series of software processing to optimize the user's shooting experience." "Xu Xian said.

He also points out that Instagram's success lies in the combination of excellent photo-taking and community-operating capabilities, and that community operations are not the forte of the fruit, so they don't consider setting up a community, and are not optimistic about the simple replication of Instagram by domestic companies.

"iphone users are generally very fond of taking photos, mainly because Apple products have good hardware and software, it has a clear lens, good photosensitive effect, fast reaction time, flexible software calls and powerful filter applications, these features firmly stuck to the user." In fact, the significance of the use of photography is to optimize the shooting effect of the mobile phone, for example, the general photographic software has been processed by photographs than ordinary photos have a better sense of hierarchy, but also more valuable preservation. "Xu Xian said.

In Xu Xian's view, image optimization of photo applications and its social functions, cloud storage and other attributes so that it has the ability to eliminate the card camera in the future functional advantages, has a good market prospects, and this is his refusal of many large companies to buy the intention of the important reason.

"Our entrepreneurial team is basically 24, 25-year-old young people, because of the short version update cycle, many people on the team have to work 6 days a week, work 12 hours a day, really busy like a war, it can be said that everyone on the team have high expectations of the product, And this hope is like a lighthouse to guide us, can not stop fighting, in China to make a canon like a world-class enterprise. "Xu Xian said.

It is understood that at present, fruit technology has a total of Camera360, Photo360 (Photo post-processing) and Movie360 (camera filter) three core products, access to the Jingwei venture investment of tens of millions of U.S. dollars, the company also plans to launch the next round of financing in June, for the platform development Strategy, and strive to achieve more than 60 million of the user size in the year.

Pushpin: LBS Data Excavator

Jefflin grew up in the United States, he first came to China in 1993 to start a business, 2003 again, the current Czech Republic is his fourth time to participate in the start-up company.

"Compared with my first visit to China in 1993, the entrepreneurial environment is much better now," he said. At that time, it is difficult to find an angel, VC or private investment, and now entrepreneurs want to get the money has become easier. Domestic entrepreneurial environment is characterized by: broad market, opportunities, but the investors are very cautious, and demand a high return. "he said.

Compared with other developers, Pushpin developers seem to be backed by trees to cool the shade. Zappos (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. is a GEOSOLUTIONSHOLDINGSN.V. Joint venture with Sina. At present, its "Pushpin" and "micro-territory" two application.

Jefflin, President of the Asia Pacific region of the company, told the Daily economic news that since the April 2011 version, Pushpin had learned Instagram's social properties, added community-sharing features to its products, and downloaded more than 5 million apps. At present, the main direction of its business is based on the location of data mining.

It is understood that Pushpin can analyze users with the same interests and make recommendations to each other, and can achieve geographic aggregation of information, allowing users to find other users in their vicinity, as well as photos taken by them, to enhance interaction between users.

"After 10 years of data accumulation, Google has been able to achieve the search Word Intelligent Association, intelligent error Correction and other human functions, we are doing the same, the first to accumulate the user's geographic information, his electronic device properties, his footprint, his activities, pictures, and so on, and then let the data to build the business model. "Jefflin said.