Gong Haiyan: layout of online education

On the computer screen of primary school student Li Ming (not his real name), the left side is a static electronic white board. The right side is a video dialog box between him and Clay teacher Jia Liping. He is learning the skills of restoring Rubik's Cube with Jia Liping.

Jia Liping, who just graduated from Beihang University, is a master of Rubik's Cube. He can blindly restore two Rubik's Cube within 1 minute and can also restore a Rubik's Cube within 10 seconds with one hand operation. This skill has made him a real master in Jiangsu The popular "Magic Godfather" on TV's "The Most Powerful Brain" program has also become the first teachers to start classes in "That Good Network." At this end of the computer, Jia Liping want to do is face to face with the students thousands of miles away, teach him to restore the superb art of Rubik's Cube.

In addition to Jia Li-ping such a quality education teacher, there are many "good net" there are a lot of K12 (primary and secondary basic education) in the field of teaching teachers in all subjects, and even some can share the superb knowledge of college entrance exams - this in 2014 July official appearance of the site, is the removal of the century CEO margin aura, join the online education industry Gong Haiyan, in just a year and a half under the third move chess.

In early 2013, Gong Haiyan launched the "91 Foreign Education Network" that uses the Internet's remote audio and video for interactive teaching in real time. In November, more than six months later, she launched a platform for all disciplines and quality teaching resources sharing platform "K12" network". Now, she also wants to use live, interactive form, to do a online education field both academic and quality education courses teaching platform.

Why did Gong Haiyan launch three different websites in a year and a half? What is the necessary connection between these actions? In the slow field of online education to explore, entrepreneurs from burning money to make money how far the road to go?

Three moves a year

By the end of 2012, Gong Haiyan took the initiative to unload the halo of the chief executive of the NASDAQ listed company in the United States and put himself into a new field of online education and started his own second start-up. Soon in early 2013, Gong Haiyan launched the "91 foreign teachers network."

Like the founder of the "Century Jiayuan" website, "91 Foreign Education Network" was also born from Gong Haiyan's own needs - she wanted to do a non-examination for the purpose of learning a foreign language website, on this site, the United States Foreign teachers and Chinese students can remotely face to face, real-time interaction, without leaving home you can learn the most pure spoken English.

According to Gong Haiyan said, "91 foreign teachers network" is now developing very rapidly, from the income point of view, this year last year to have more than ten times the growth. But there is a problem in front of Gong Haiyan just a few months after the "91 Foreign Teachers Network" went online. In China, such a non-test-oriented teaching market is really too small and its growth scale can support Huge cost investment?

Trying out the water in this small, incised market segment led Gong Hai-yan to realize that basic primary and secondary education in China is truly a potential market because there are hundreds of millions of potential users here. As a result, Gong Haiyan in November 2013 into the field of K12, launched the "Ladder Network."

The advantage of "ladder net" is its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it has tens of millions of questions, millions of coursewares and tools to help the teachers form a group rehearsal, prepare lessons and assign homework, and can solve the problem of basic education to a certain extent "The distribution of quality education resources is not balanced" issue. However, its problems are also highlighted: the database is difficult to become a competitive barrier, but also extremely bad money.

Gong Haiyan's solution is to provide students with massive high-quality educational resources, to expand to also meet the individual needs of students, and provide rich and colorful online courses and other value-added services. So in "Ladder Network" was born only six months later, Gong Haiyan has launched the main "interactive live" primary and secondary online education platform "that good network."

Split 91 foreign teaching network

At present, China's online education market is not yet a successful model for reference, so Gong Haiyan's second venture is not from the outset.

For a year and a half, Gong Haiyan has undergone a change from the direction of foreign teachers to the field of K12. Now she tries to use the two sister websites "Ladder Network" and "Netsu Network" (the former is free for quality education resources Sharing platform, the latter is an interactive live course platform) provides a new "reference roadmap" for the exploration of China's K12 online education.

On the very day when "That Good Network" was officially launched, Gong Haiyan confirmed that the "91 External Education Network" that has now achieved a balance of payments was split in early July 2014 and will operate as an independent company in the future.

"91 foreign teachers network from last year to 10 times this year to achieve revenue growth has been on track, I do not need to worry about." Gong Haiyan explained that this is to make a free hand, go all out to attack K12 Online Education, the main focus on "Ladder Network" and "That Good Network".

"In the past period, 91 foreign teaching nets and ladder nets were operated by two different divisions, and after the splitting, 91 foreign teaching nets remained as a subsidiary of our company." Gong Haiyan said: Just financially, let the team operate independently and give them more room. "

To some extent, the split out of the network has become Gong Haiyan groping for online education operating rules of aquatic products, Gong Haiyan now really want to do, there are hundreds of millions of potential users in the K12 online education market to find Own location. However, whether it is to do "Ladder Network" or "That Good Network," Gong Haiyan must face a series of questions: how to grab off-line with those offline training institutions students spare time? More importantly, how to make money in the future?

How far is it from burning money to making money?

At the end of last year, just founded "Ladder Network" is the time, Gong Haiyan once said that in the first year invested 150 million yuan to expand the scale, hope "ladder" on the number of students can reach 5000000.

In the past six months, Gong Haiyan and her team spent lots of money and attracted a great number of primary and secondary school teachers to this platform by storing a large amount of preparation materials, PPT templates and examination papers, hoping to motivate students and parents through teacher resources Settled. "There are more than 70,000 teachers now and more than 600,000 students are using ladders." Gong Haiyan said.

It can be seen that although the rapid development, but the size of the "Ladder Network" is still a long way from the expected value of Gong Haiyan. What is more difficult is that the problem of "ladder network" covering teachers' resources, attracting students and burning money will also exist in "That Good Network".

In Gong Haiyan's view, the offline education and training institutions such as New Oriental are the same in their spare time as the online education websites, but in contrast, the latter can save students and their parents spending time on the road.

"The most important thing to start with is changing the habits of users from offline to online. Once you start experimenting with online learning, you find that you can find a great teacher online. Maybe he is far ahead of your class The level of teachers, but also more than your community training institutions near the teacher's level, parents will be recognized. "Gong Haiyan said.

Gong Haiyan, for example, said that one of her teachers and friends opened a Mathematical Olympiad online and later wanted to do online education. The teacher said to 203 of his students: "You go online and send two experiential lessons for each person. If you feel it is acceptable after class, then you can follow me online and if you feel that online courses I will refund the remaining tuition to you if you do not experience it properly. "As a result, his students were not lost.

A student's parents feedback that since the next move to the line, or the teacher's class, or these courses, but no longer have to run a long way to pick up children, children learn, parents can also do their own home Things.

Of course, this case only shows that online education has its advantages, but it does not mean that an online education website such as "Netsu.net" can quickly get rid of the money and make profits.

"As a start-up, it is difficult to think of the profit model at the outset. Now that it receives a copy of the student's money, it gives the teacher a copy of the money, if it can be large enough , There will be a difference in the middle, which is the basic profit model for all training institutions and online education. "Gong Haiyan said:" It is only possible to make a profit if the company's scale is very large. "

"In the early stage, all people were burning money and making money. When many people are able to buy a course, this course is likely to make profits. We are moving slowly in this direction." Gong Haiyan believes that there will be more and more Parents are willing to find teachers for their children online classes, but do not need to worry about the parent's payment habits, so if there is a large number of high-quality teachers, there are a lot of willing to learn the students, the future profitability is not much of a problem.