Good future CEO Zhang Bangxin: Why invest in the future?

In the past year, a good future in the field of online education has invested considerable investment, only last year, disclosed 18 million U.S. dollars investment Minerva, 15 million dollar investment shell, 150 million yuan investment baby tree, Pre4gmat 3 million dollar a round of financing and so on case (see figure below), The layout is far-reaching.

And yesterday, good future chairman and CEO Zhang Bangxin in the Multi-Knowledge Network forum to make a keynote speech, elaborated the next year's investment course, analyzed the good future investment reason, the logic as well as the future investment direction and the plan. Here is the transcript of the lecture:

Why invest in a good future?

When we face online education, we try a lot. Based on just three points of view, we do a study of online education. We did a study, and in the first half of last year, we listed all the companies and websites that were able to find online education, in the May of 2014, we had a team of more than 10 people who could open up all the online education sites that could be found, and did a study for about a month or two, probably with a slip of the net, But not too much. A total of 692 projects, we have a classification of these projects.

The study found a feature that we did this second time in the second half of November. There were about 970 projects. can open the website, at that time already had dozens of projects disappeared, the website cannot open, the app nobody operates. We made a classification of these 970 projects. Discover a feature, what is the characteristic? Everyone, actually, we are sitting together today in the name of education. To tell you the word, we are not in the same industry.

Why? Because, for example, you do vocational education, Korea always do vocational education, I do primary and secondary school. The client we serve is not a single person. It's just that we did the same thing. Our customers are not the same customer, then the problem comes, the entire education industry how many customers? Careful research, mother and child, preschool, children's foreign language, primary and secondary school, college students, vocational education, vocational skills, job search, promotion ability, adult foreign language, interest category, and other comprehensive various. In fact, what is the biggest feature of each of the different categories? It's not the same as the crowd.

Speaking of which we find it difficult to do a product, in the education industry is difficult to do a product like Jingdong, the whole population is covered. Why Jingdong such products, such as Taobao products can exist? The reason is that the scope of the economy, in economics, there are two nouns, one is economies of scale, the larger the cheaper. One is the scope of the economy, when it is sold books, by the Beijing East hit very miserably.

Jingdong a mobile phone has 50 yuan profit, he can subsidize 100 books, each book is cheaper than when 5 cents, it has this range of economics. I am in this place a category of money, b category subsidy, hit you. He has to repeat the consumption, we look at the education industry, this will trouble the education industry does not have this advantage, a person reported a level 46, it is impossible to report a primary school mathematics, without such a range of economic. This cut a knife, the market range is very big, but has been cut seven or eight knives.

In the second direction, you see tools, content, services, tools, services, community, and this is not the same thing. He was cut a second knife, crosscutting, slitting, side-cut, the three knives cut down, you will find that a very large cake is made up of hundreds of small pieces.

This explains what people say: "The education industry, the cake is very big, are ants, not even a cockroach."

Therefore, the overall performance of the education industry is very detailed and vertical characteristics. You said the search engine market is not big, on the tens of billions of, but most of the Baidu took, it can do tens of billions of. The education market may be large, hundreds of millions of, but it is divided by tens of thousands of institutions.

So we found this feature in a study, and then we thought, back to our understanding of the past decade, we have to be pragmatic, focused, stronger than bigger more important. We weigh ourselves do not have this ability, we think, honestly put our own things, K12 the main battlefield to do a little better. K12 we think about it, we can't finish it. It also has a lot of forms, and can be further subdivided. Hundreds of cities, thousands of counties, we just do it in a few cities. Later we said don't worry about expansion, plus our business model. It is not our pursuit to do much about this thing. But I hope to do one thing to do this thing well, the Student parent service satisfied. This is our approximate strategy.

This is the first reason we invest, and I don't know if I'm clear about it. Because we can do our own things well, not well, the market is very subdivided. We also want to say that we can not do vocational education? We also think that the customer base is totally different from our students. We have to do products, do product analysis, first of all, you have to analyze your customers, we do not understand the customer, so we can not go to provide such things. So we're not going to do it. If you do not do this thing, do your own thing first.

The second reason, we later consider to do investment, many K12 market people come to us, we also cast, the reason is very simple, you are willing to let me vote, why don't I vote? Do K12 we have 10,000 competitors, do K12 too much. Not more than 100, not to mention one more? The entrepreneur can look at us, why am I not willing to vote? Our investment is still very open thinking.

I sometimes talk to our investment partners about the logic that I want to talk about is not the ecology, but the industrial chain, any one enterprise, we should find the position in the industrial chain, 20 years ago, the Chinese people think that investment is an unacceptable thing. Why do you want to sell the shares to you when you see me doing a good job? Isn't that what I'm doing? So 20 years ago the Chinese didn't accept the idea of investing. It was generally accepted 10 years ago that it was a good thing to get invested. But 10 years ago, we do not accept the sale of business, selling does not mean that I failed to start a business?

And in today, for example, like our future star classmate, biography network CEO Hamming students announced the transfer class was Baidu acquisition, the class when people will congratulate him, said the Hamming you have to treat, students will think that this is a very good thing, is the symbol of success. But today many people still do not accept a business should do long board, I do my things well, to find other long board to fight, such a recognition in the United States, Silicon Valley is very common things, we do a good job in their own value chain of the best thing.

Our understanding of the problem is that it is good to have a good future if we do well in the areas we are good at. The rest of us are very willing to work with the industry, whether K12 or other areas of open cooperation. We can't do everything, we can do a little bit of things. Whether we are in the city, the discipline, the category, we all show more restraint, this is based on our ability to understand, we are not able to do a lot of things team. So, that's why we're willing to invest behind us.

Third, or based on we only do a small amount of things, in fact, across the category there are many cooperation can be produced. Because we can learn from each other, for example, we do K12, can be with other categories, such as studying abroad, such as vocational education. There may be many places to learn from each other, for example, involving teaching and research, involving large-scale management, involving direct broadcast systems, many places can be directly shared. We have a lot of categories that we don't do. All kinds of arts we do not do, these can be in the source, research and development, places can have mutual reference and cooperation.

The logic of investment: technology, community and future education direction

This involves good future investment, the direction we cast, in the end what is the logic? In fact, I think so. I have three logic, and our mission is to make learning more effective. Therefore, I am optimistic about all use of technology to change the education industry team and products. Basically, we are interested in the technology of this industry, which provides technical support for the online education industry. Because I believe that technology is not just a change in education, but also a source of change in the world.

In the second category, we will be investing in community with users, and institutions that have the ability to become present.

The third category is those projects that represent our values and mission, all three of which we were casting. And we believe that the future of China's online education, China's education will be more and more good. I believe that perhaps in the efforts of our generation, China's education is very hopeful to catch up with, or even more than the western countries of the understanding of education, investment in education, the effect of the show.

We have done a project in the past year is very good, called the future star, at that point in time, we found the entire industry of 970 projects, the registration of the future Star project has 700. We opened two classes, should say the effect is also good, basically enter the list of enterprises will be promptly interviewed by various types of investment agencies, interviews are very high frequency, students will be more rapid and more effective to get money.

Next year, we may open some short-term classes, because this class may be the entire needs of teachers, we will open a number of separate classes, such as live, special technology, dedicated to do the community, we will open a special class, we have a superficial understanding of the industry to communicate and share with you.

Next year our future star may be an incubator of early angels. It's called the Future workshop. Angel, our principle is that, from the amount of investment, no more than 10 points. Do not want to be a large proportion of the shares, to provide entrepreneurs with an early support.

We actually have two or three small team acquisitions this year. In fact, we are doing the acquisition of the team in this industry. We think that some teams in the development process, suitable for a system to complete. In this case, we will also discuss with him, if he is willing to work with the future together to do this thing, we are willing to use the cash plus stock, or the way to do together.

On the whole, we are very optimistic about China's online education, although some partners say that investment in the education industry has not been successful in the exit rate. The real exit of the successful investors are not many, is said to be "VC tears." We also have a good investor friend said he said why he made investment in education, he said that investment in education, due to low returns, basically a little equivalent to social money back to society, and charity is similar.

Explain the investment in education, the success rate is not particularly high. Our overall view, in an early stage of the industry to talk about the rate of return, it is still early, now this industry still needs everyone to invest money, manpower and spiritual cultivation stage, still far from the stage of return. But this industry is beginning to see some results, such as some projects have been tens of millions of users. In fact, this has represented the industry is also slowly maturing. Therefore, I wish all of you can Shenshun in the process of developing later.