How fast is it to make money in losing money

In the middle of last year, fast founder Chen Weixing in a dark horse interview, said in today's 3 years, money is not what we think about, now we focus on what we need to do is to pass new technology to the civilian population and small business to provide unimaginable convenience, until most of the users enjoy the basic services under the premise, Let's consider how to make money with incremental services. This is the cost of innovation and the technological revolution, and one of the most important ideas of our creation, the painful loss of suffering. In the end why do Chen Weixing to lose money business?

Why is a taxi app burning money?

As with any innovative product, a product needs to be designed, developed, marketed, value-added services designed and then entered into the profitability phase. The particularity of the taxi app is: as a human product, to change the most common people travel and pick up habits, education time cost is very high. In order to speed up the habit of cultivation, coupled with competition, so that we in the market development of the cost of a sharp rise. "Quick Taxi" the monthly expenditure is close to 3 million, employee's salary and benefit, driver's subsidy and various market expenses each account for One-third. Among them, the extra expenses of employees, drivers ' subsidy and market cost are the special costs during the incubation period. And because of the particularity of the promotion of the line, the development of the industry is a long-term competition, so, who can endure to the end, is the final winners.

Three forces in a taxi app

The Internet is a free time, as long as there is competition, through the basic services to the user fees is impossible. There are three of them in the taxi app market, and they have their own calculations, but most will die quietly in the near future.

The first forces, various and relevant government departments have "relationship" speculators. These people are used to marketing government projects through "relationships," get the government's high order, while reading about the old media consulting, which industry is hot he works with the government which industry, even by lobbying their friends in the Government, through the application of financial support programs, licensing access, policy monopolies, fishing law enforcement, Drinking tea threats and other traditional means, access to advantage resources into the industry. We have encountered such a competitor in Hangzhou, "tick a Taxi" in Shenzhen also encountered fishing law enforcement, behind a "blood correction" company. Unfortunately, these companies are basically bully, can only gain a single region advantage, no scale can not wait until the future generation of value-added services to the stage of making money. A simple account, even in the local taxi app company, if the products and operations, at least 30 to 40 people of the size of the team, including compensation and welfare office costs and miscellaneous support, a year can not be less than 4 million of the cost, which does not include the promotion of passenger costs. Who's going to come out with this money? How long can we support it?

The second force, the major taxi companies. Because of the strategic considerations, the taxi company will worry about the future of the taxi app as a user source, will have a negligible impact on its ecology. Therefore, every big taxi company's information center will take the taxi app as a strategic project. Similarly, even if it is cheaper to promote drivers in-house, the basic staff costs will still be unavoidable if the service is to be done well. For taxi companies, drivers can be happy to work and do a taxi app as important, and as a traditional taxi company, a serious lack of internet genes. How to do fine and thin taxi app and how to promote, will become the taxi company's own app bottleneck. And because of the competition, can not finally scale effect. In the end, it turns out that a taxi app is just an employee benefit, and that partnering with app equals free employee benefits outsourcing. As a result, the taxi company's app may be there for a long time, but future partnerships with the National Taxi app will be the mainstream. The life cycle of a taxi company's taxi app will be proportional to the patience of the company's High-cost team.

The third force, the Internet-born taxi app company. As is known to all, the current taxi app relies on VC to gamble the future, to the high investment generation. There is no doubt that these companies can provide the best products and services, but in the face of high costs, anyone can duanliang death. "Quick taxi" to take refuge in Alibaba, "tick a taxi" to take refuge in Tencent, in the Internet industry taxi app has become a giant game. Other taxi apps I find it hard to believe that the VC will continue to burn money, transformation and death in the year. At the outset, I talked about this project with Ma Yun, only to ask: At present, it seems to be burning money, or not to fight? Ma Yun only said: Hit! Of course, if there is no dream, the loss of money, we will not always play.

Taxi app in the full media attention of the halo, whether independent companies or large companies of the department, are suspended "lack of money" this sword of Damocles. The Government's control has become a bait for speculators and a burning lamp that burns the ropes of a sword. And the media is a booster for this farce. Within a year, we will see tragic and ugly endings.

Who will live to the end?

From the first day of project promotion, I said to the team, this business to see who can live to the end. Only with a dream, Quixote can survive.

First of all, to carry out continuous and stable product innovation. Quick taxi from the first day of development, we are not positioned as a dedicated taxi tool. We have designed the user and chat system for the software, in order to be able to expand the service more conveniently later. And taxi is just our first step to get users and brands, the second step is intelligent travel, and then the third step of the integrated service app call platform. For users, the future of the fast taxi can not only call the taxi, but also can be called to business vehicles, drivers, even home economics, tourism and so on.

Second, know how to manage cash flow. Once the government has stepped in, the high cost of market promotion should be flexible enough to be controlled, and actively cooperate with the Government to minimize the loss. Even in the harsh environment, we need to have the courage and ability to survive.

Finally, never forget your dreams. We dream of moving the internet so that small businessmen like taxi drivers can put their services online, in order to achieve greater viability, so that small workers are not difficult to do business; we dream that every ordinary person, the future has a group of services around him around, and then life. Of course we have to pay for the service providers.

Innovation always takes time and patience and requires steady growth. An industry that has been hyped up by the media has flooded the market with ignorant people, making the leading companies ' valuations ridiculously unsustainable and attracting immortal Jiangshan. In the face of innovation, we need to create a good atmosphere together to avoid strangling in the cradle. The whole country is doing the Chinese dream, we are losing our dreams-but this is just the price the young innovators are happy to pay!