Impression Notes CEO: No company without the Chinese market is not globalized

Sinorama Reporter Zhou Hengshing editor _ Yang Yi "Chinese entrepreneur" fat Fille Liebing (Phil libin) came to Beijing the next day, was Pan Shiyi, Zhang Xin couple to visit the latest Soho mansion in Beijing. Liebing is the CEO of Evernote, the world's largest cloud-notebook company in Silicon Valley, which has been doing this for the past year: entering the Chinese market. In a conversation with the Chinese entrepreneur reporter, Chinese Liebing can accurately say "impression notes" of the four characters, and in his and COO Ken Garrickson (Ken Gulicksen) handed to reporters on the business card, eye-catching "impression notes" of the Chinese logo and the Chinese name of the two people, It can be seen that they are prepared. In the face of reporters, Liebing used a few exaggerated adjectives to describe the scene of the night in Beijing: "It's so beautiful, it's amazing, Beijing is the most exciting place in the world, you can't see it anywhere in the United States." "Evernote is a notebook software, launched in June 2008, with a simple interface and stable Remote Storage function in a very short time to attract a large number of users." A note can be a piece of text, a complete page or page excerpt, a photo, a voice memo, or a handwritten note. The company's logo is an elephant, taken from an English proverb, "Elephants never Forget" (elephant implies forgets). "We dream of making an application that can become the second brain of people, recording everything and making the world smarter." "Liebing said. Evernote uses the "Freemium" (Free + paid) model, offering free services with advertising and premium services. Free users have a certain amount of traffic restrictions per month, while paid users have additional traffic and more features. The globalization service is the characteristic of Evernote. When the Silicon Valley company had only dozens of employees, it opened offices in major markets such as Russia and Japan. By the beginning of 2012, Evernote had 8 offices around the world. These cannot satisfy Liebing ambition. Writing on the official blog, he predicts that China's cloud-notes market has great potential. "China will overtake Japan and become the second largest market in the world," Evernote said. "he wrote. But it is not easy for a Silicon Valley company to enter China. In the past more than 10 years, from the earliest Yahoo to Google to Facebook, no one is not drubbing, the most successful to the number of pan-internet company Apple, but still in this year's 3.15 consumer Rights Day by the Chinese media slammed, was accused of arrogant, different treatment of Chinese consumers. The incident led to a serious decline in Apple's sales in China. But Liebing decided to try. "In the future, any company without a Chinese market is not a global company." "Evernote (Impression notes) CEO Fille Liebing (Phil libin) Evernote the firstChina is spread by some celebrity recommendations, such as Mr. Pan, who has 15 million fans on Weibo, wrote on Weibo: "There are countless mobile phones, ipads, laptops, and I think it's best to use Evernote, which is too clever." Our whole family uses it. In addition, UC excellent as chairman and CEO Yu, Shell Network CEO Ji are also Evernote heavy users. Although early through some celebrity recommendations, Evernote has won a lot of users, but Liebing understand that to really enter China, but also need a guide. The man soon appeared, Tian, chairman of China's broadband industry fund, the earliest pioneer and leader in China's internet sector, which has focused on cloud computing and large data areas in recent years. At the end of 2010, Tian through friends-Yahoo founder Jerry Yang introduced, and Liebing made contact. Tian recalled the first meeting with Liebing with interest. When he learned that Liebing was born in Russia, 5 years old with his parents emigrated to the United States, it was a whim to dial his mother's phone, inspected a Liebing of Russian-because Tian's parents were former Soviet students. He had a good chat with my mother. Tian recalls. Liebing know the relationship between the network and the market. In 2011, Evernote's management was in intensive visits to China, including the cloud Computing Conference of CBC, and the tech Crunch conference at the end of 2011. Every time I come to China Liebing and other senior level will meet with Tian, with the understanding of in-depth, the two sides began to explore cooperation details. Tian told "Chinese entrepreneur", in several conversations, Liebing left a deep impression on him: first, Liebing's determination to enter China is great. Even in the past, Silicon Valley companies have rarely been successful in China, but Liebing still insists on entering China, and has a different strategy from other Silicon Valley companies. "He thinks it is important to adapt to the environment in China, and he is willing to be flexible with the Chinese market, whether it is regulatory or product localization." The second is Liebing's understanding of globalisation. He said there would be no local companies in the future, and all the companies in the Internet age were international companies. "Tian said. Tian is deeply impressed by the failure of Silicon Valley companies in the Chinese market. He believes that the former Silicon Valley companies first focused on the United States, in product research and development, market response capacity is very slow, followed by the Chinese political environment and culture has not given enough understanding and respect. "It's hard for Silicon Valley companies to do business in China without correcting these two points," he said. "Tian said. Dave McClure, a famous Silicon Valley angel investor, Dave MACCU that the failure of Silicon Valley companies in the past was due to a loss of understanding of Chinese culture and law. "CEOs of Silicon Valley companies should take the initiative to understand Chinese culture and law, hire more local workers and learn more about Chinese culture." "Marcum said. Tian said that from the first day of cooperation with Evernote, the two sides reached a consensus: "must obey China's regulation,The best local talent to attract, while in product development must meet the needs of local consumers. "So Tian and Evernote the first thing is to use their extensive contacts, the Liebing introduced to the Beijing Economic and Information Technology Committee of the head, with him and the leaders of the letter meeting." Liebing from several times and the official communication, slowly realized how to make the product conforms to the policy stipulation. In May 2012, Evernote announced 70 million dollars in funding. This round of financing of the Meritech is the China Broadband Industry fund CBC and VC company Capital. This marks the entry of the CBC-Evernote partnership into the capital dimension. Since then, Tian as observers (Observer) to attend board meetings and participate in a number of strategic decision-making aspects of the discussion. Tian Frankly, every attendance at the meeting has benefited. "The company's vision of products and the speed of innovation are impressive," he said. I am very inspired as a Chinese investor. "After the CBC financing, May 10, 2012, Liebing in Beijing, the" Global Mobile Internet Conference "(gmic) speech formally announced the launch of Evernote Chinese services, named" Impression notes. " In addition, Chinese official website Yinxiang.com also quickly on-line. At the same time, Evernote in Beijing to form "Beijing Impression Notes Technology Co., Ltd.", the first general manager of China is a Stanford MBA Guyi, when the entire team only 7 people. Soon, the data center in China is put into use, and all the user data of the Chinese impression notes will be stored in the server of the data center. "Evernote and impression notes are completely different services, and there is no data exchange between them," Liebing wrote on the official blog. Evernote data is not stored in the server for the impression notes, and vice versa. "Evernote has 8 offices around the world, but only China is an overseas data center," he said. Speaking of the reasons for the data center, he wrote in his blog: "The most common requirement we receive from Chinese users is the desire to provide faster, more stable and more compatible services." But because of the poor connectivity between China and the US, there is only one way to solve the problem: to establish a separate service system in China. "Soon in an open letter to Chinese users, Evernote explicitly put forward three principles: data is user, data is protected; data is transferable. "Without your permission, we have no right to view, share, use, and analyze your data." "Liebing is clearly looking forward to the Chinese market, he visited China many times a year later, and also brought back a traditional paper folding fan from China, primly on his desk at Evernote's Silicon Valley headquarters, which says" impression notes "in four characters. Speaking of the process of entering China, Guyi, general manager of China, is also quite feeling: "The government's approval is necessary, you can not be slipped in." "Guyi told theChinese entrepreneur, in China, the impression notes team is currently a full range of functional teams, covering 7-8 functions, not like other Silicon Valley companies in China with only one marketing team or business development team. "We are actually a very independent and all-round company, because only in this way can we have local response speed and local ability to act." "Guyi said. Meanwhile, in order to better understand Chinese users, impression notes also provide real-time user support on Weibo and micro-letters, which are not available in the United States. "Foreign users will not get customer support on the official Facebook and Twitter pages, and Chinese users can ask us directly on Weibo," Evernote said. "We need to understand the needs of users and see what users really need." "Guyi said. To help Chinese users save on expensive 3G traffic, all of Evernote's products have been switched on "WiFi only". Guyi admits that Evernote's Chinese users have a lot of differences in experience and habits compared to American users. "The U.S. market is more mature, we only need to provide to the U.S. user some use tips such as shortcuts, and so on, and in China, we need to slowly cultivate user habits, tell users what the software can do, and even create some content to allow users to save." In addition, the impression notes also try to work with other Chinese internet companies. It first found the UC excellent view of a large number of browser users overseas. Through the consultation, UC browser built in the memory of the plug-in notebook, so that users of the impression notes in the use of UC, you can turn the contents of the network to a key to save the impression notes; Meanwhile, as China's largest mobile browser provider, UC also want to enter the U.S. market. Soon UC released a customized version of the browser in North America, the browser in the Evernote of the Hundred treasure box to be promoted. This type of resource swap is beneficial to both sides. UC's partner strategy director Robert Tanner has said that UC's nearly 1 billion large user base can make UC a huge platform "to help Chinese companies move overseas and help overseas companies enter China." and Evernote COO Ken Garrickson says Evernote is willing to help Chinese partners expand globally, while leveraging their strength to grow in China. January 2013, the impression notes and micro-letters began to cooperate. In Guyi's view, micro-letter is not just a chat software, but also an information island, how to store this information is the impression that the notes are good at, and micro-letter is to find a focus on the product experience of a reliable partner. "We love each other at first sight. "Hilio says. After a week of contact, the two sides quickly decided to co-operate, making the decision without even notifying the headquarters of the Guyi. Soon, "My impression notes" are on line, and through this micro-letter plugin, users can bind their own impression notes, thus saving the content of the micro-letter to the impression notes. This plugin was immediately popular as soon as it was online. In addition, Evernote still in his ownMicro-letters are recommended in the Treasure box to help micro-letters enter the U.S. market. "As long as the Chinese users need, we will be in the future to develop more services for Chinese users of products." "Guyi said. Liebing also has a view of Chinese companies moving overseas, saying that many Chinese companies have left the impression of "plagiarism" in the United States because they only "plagiarize" in China, and people in other parts of the world have no access to their products. "Chinese companies should not be limited to the local, but to the global, to show users around the world their products, so as to win respect." "Although impression notes have found many local allies in China, they have also met local rivals," he said. One of the biggest rivals is NetEase's Youdao cloud notes. Youdao Cloud Note is June 28, 2011 NetEase's Youdao Search for the introduction of the cloud Notes software, than Evernote late launch three years, but more than the impression notes to a year earlier, there are already 15 million users. Youdao Cloud Note Head Shangwei Air told "Chinese entrepreneur", Youdao Cloud notes in fact and impression notes technology accumulation is different. "Beginnings Search started, our technology was based on cloud." Shangwei said. He also said that Youdao Cloud notes have been focused on the Chinese market, can concentrate resources to develop suitable products for Chinese users. "Unlike the impression notes, all of their product line functions are the same throughout the world," he said. "We understand Chinese and have Chinese natural language processing technology," Shangwei said. "In the storage of data, Youdao Cloud notes also support the import and export capabilities. "We have always treated our users ' data in a peaceful manner, because we know that to best serve the cloud, we cannot lock our users ' data into our own." Shangwei said. Shangwei that in the current market is still very small, two companies do not need to fight a life-and-death. In the future, he believes, China will have billions of active users of cloud notes. "The market now has great potential, China is upgrading the manufacturing industry, there are many knowledge workers will need cloud note service, we are willing to and impression notes together to nurture the market." Shangwei said. Guyi also has the same view: "We are not thinking about who we are competing with, but how we help our users." Still, friction is unavoidable. Not long ago, impression notes turned off an open interface that was exported to the Youdao cloud notes. There is no positive response to this impression note. In May 2013, Liebing led the top brass to the new "Global Mobile Internet Conference" (gmic) in Beijing. After attending the Pan Shiyi dinner, Liebing the impression notes in Beijing's office, where Chinese employees celebrated the first anniversary of the impression notes entering China. The next day at Gmic's rostrum, Liebing announced the official release of the impression notes Enterprise (Evernote Business) in China and delivered a keynote speech. In the past year, impression notes have grown to 5 million users in China with nine products; Liebing's prediction became a reality, China overtook Japan as the second largest market after the United States, and the entire Chinese team has grown to 18 people. Tian revealed that over the past year, the Chinese team has basically met the expectations of the headquarters. "The Chinese team is satisfied with the passion of the product and the progress of the work, and one meeting called on other teams to learn from the Chinese team." "At present, the impression notes through the establishment of the Chinese localization team, and the government to fully communicate and other measures, and did not repeat the mistakes of Silicon Valley predecessors." But the future is still foggy. Liebing is not very concerned about profitability, he clearly thought very long: "We enter China for 10 years do not pursue profit." "We've learned a lot from Silicon Valley companies in the past. I don't know whether we will succeed in China. If we fail, we want to provide new materials for the next Silicon Valley company that enters China. "Liebing said.