Job Network together held its first press conference in Beijing

Reporter Ma Hui Beijing reported

Log in with the homework network, the bottom right of the page beating a set of data, it is easy to attract your attention: the country has 29,412 primary schools, 145,552 teachers, 70,147,77 students are using a homework network.

In July 1, this set of data were 29212,144964,6884159. In other words, however, for half a month, this Internet company focused on K12 students online operations added 200 schools, 588 teachers and 130,618 students.

On July 16, a homework network held its first press conference in Beijing, announcing the completion of a $ 20 million C-round financing jointly invested by Tiger Fund, H Capital, Shun Fund and others. Allegedly, the completion of this round of financing, the market valuation will reach about 100 million US dollars.

All this, from the website in October 2011 formally launched so far, less than three years.

The key is to "together"

"Looking for three years, finally found the reason for these three parties to stay on the platform, so naturally our users on the platform grew up." The growing number of users, so that together with the founder and CEO of the operating network Liu Chang tone assured.

What he refers to as "three parties" refers to "teachers", "students" and "parents". One of the biggest difficulties in online education, especially in the area of ​​K12, is to take into account the different needs of the above three parties. However, with the selection of a homework network, the demand of doing homework is cut off.

Website set up a "teacher", "students", "parents" three categories of accounts, and links up three links. On the same platform, the teacher can arrange homework, check homework, grasp the whole class to master the situation; students can finish their homework, PK with classmate, communicate with teacher; parents can know students' homework and learning situation through mobile phone timely, communication.

Since this product is going to the K12 stage, teachers are the first to target users. How to make teachers like and continue to use, designers have thought a lot of tricks.

For example, primary school English teachers who used to leave their homework for students may require their children to face the recorder at home when it comes to speaking. Students may be tapes or recording pens when they make homework. A working network is the use of voice recognition technology, students landing site as required practice spoken, the site will automatically modify the spoken assignment, the students finish their homework, the results can be printed out immediately, the teachers do not have to modify their own.

"When it comes to the Internet, the first thing is to make the user less burdensome and stressful," Liu Chang said. "We can automate it online in the traditional sense."

For students, the site is in accordance with the requirements of the textbooks will homework "gamification", such as dictation exercises on the use of the game clearance mode, so that students according to play pronunciation to determine the correct balloon, hit it, you can comment As a shooter.

A similar design, to varying degrees, to meet the needs of users, but also enhance the viscosity of the product. According to Xiao Dun, co-founder responsible for product design, the first batch of students to log in homework network homework, to today has more than 30 months, 25% of these early users stay on the site, the user is not lost Too high, "better than an internet product."

In addition to intelligent network operations, a working network also uses the big data technology and intelligent algorithms to analyze students 'learning situation. According to the weak knowledge points reflected in the students' homework, it can effectively push the learning content and test questions effectively Improve learning efficiency

Liu Chang uses five I to summarize the characteristics of a homework network: Interactive, Interesting, Immediate, Intimate, and Individualized.

From 50,000 to 100 million U.S. dollars

The rise of the job network together is not always easy.

This story should start from 2007, although some may inevitably fall into pieces, but it truly reflects the arduous and cruel start-up. Two of the founders of the True Fund, Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang, acted as the protagonists of the two acts before and after the drama, while Liu Chang in the middle played the protagonist in the latter half of the story.

Seven years ago, as an angel investor, Xu Xiaoping met three young people in Silicon Valley who mastered a speech technique that corrected the details of English pronunciation. Xu Xiaoping thought it was a chance to subvert the new owner New Oriental, but his old man Wang Qiang poured him cold water: "At that time, Teacher Wang told me," Xiaoping, this can not be cast because it is just a technology, is not Product '. "Xu Xiaoping recalled.

Both insisted on their own opinions, Xu Xiaoping voted 50,000 US dollars, Wang Qiang on the wall. In the next three or four years, the company has been exploring the transformation, has undergone a change of leadership and has shown signs of a bottoming out in 2009, with Xu Xiaoping making a second round of investment of one million U.S. dollars.

Seeing that an Internet company once defined as "no future" by itself has survived for more than three years without finding any new financing, Wang Qiang can not help but lament its "vitality." In 2011, he tried to play the role of a savior - this time, Wang Qiang not only invested himself, but also personally appointed the chairman of the startup. "This is the real cast more than 100, I am the only chairman of the board."

"In 2011, when we look for who will decide the future and who may be in charge of the helmsman of a larger aircraft carrier, God sent Liu Chang." Wang Qiang recalled this period and hesitated again and again.

As Wang Qiang used to be under the command of the New Oriental, Liu Chang was the Assistant Vice President of New Oriental Group and the Principal of Changchun New Oriental and the youngest Assistant Vice President of New Oriental. Later, for personal reasons, Liu Chang left New Oriental, ready to start.

One day in October 2011, at 12:30 PM, Wang Qiang dialed Liu Chang's phone at home in Xu Xiaoping. When he learned that Liu Chang was in Beijing and was ready to start a new career, both Wang and Xu were extremely excited. They told Liu Chang that there is an initial start-up in hand at the start-up and asked if he wants to come forward.

"You can come and see if we have the chance to realize your passion and dream on our platform, and if you will, come immediately," said Wang Qiang.

Half an hour later, more than 1 o'clock in the morning, Liu Chang carrying satchel entered the home of Xu Xiaoping. A month later, Liu Chang formally entered the venture as COO, with operations network also formally launched operations the same month.

At the beginning of 2012, the business model of a homework network was basically finalized and Liu Chang officially assumed the post of CEO.

Since then, the snowball began to accelerate the rolling, in June 2012, a working network gathered 200,000 primary school students.

At the same time, the team building is also improving. Co-founder Xiao Dun graduated from Cambridge University. He has studied at world-class universities such as Harvard and MIT. The core management teams of other companies come from Google, Baidu, Sina, Sohu, Tencent and Alibaba. Top Internet companies, and the best education companies in China, such as New Oriental, Learning and Thinking, as well as emerging Internet startups such as UMC and Lanting.

"At present, this team can be said to be one of the strongest teams in China's online education community today," Xu said.

With the rolling development of business, capital is also pouring in.

In 2012, Lei Jun led the Shun Fund A round of investment 5 million US dollars; in September 2013, a job network to complete the B round of financing 10 million US dollars (Shun to contribute 5 million US dollars, Wang Qiang, Xu Xiaoping invested 5 million US dollars). Recently, the Tiger Fund and H Capital, Shun Fund jointly invested 20 million US dollars, contributed to a job network C round of financing.

Three years, together with Education Network make a facelift, jumped into a valuation of 100 million US dollars in the scale of online education companies.

The highest of seven dwarfs

July 16, a job network in Beijing International Convention Center breath opened two conference.

The previous one was to announce that the company financed 20 million U.S. dollars. Wang Qiang, Xu Xiaoping, Liu Chang and others injected ice into the ice sculpture. The "2000" figures on the white ice sculpture gradually became pretty red.

The next one is more like a meeting of supply and demand. The venue was filled with leaders from all over the country in the field of traditional publishing, most of which are institutions that publish teaching aids.

These veteran publishers, sitting in their chairs, listen to the long-faceted CEOs on stage, Liu Chang, telling their own businesses and opportunities for cooperation in the future.

"We want to share with you what we have done over the past three years and share our view on the changes that have taken place in China's education over the next decade. In the face of this change, we have prepared for three years in the hope of serving the ground. Training institutions, publishing agencies, school information, free and lifetime free service to millions of teachers and students parents in China. "Liu Chang said.

Obviously, after having 7 million primary and secondary school students in China, a working network tries to build a symbiotic ecosystem with the idea of ​​a platform-level enterprise like Apple or Xiaomi. At present, they are in close communication with various publishing houses, educational institutions and education agencies.

According to Liu Chang's statement, they will then have to think about the commercial value of this platform and the future cooperation model with third parties. "Our goal is very clear. It will be 10 billion-scale school newsletters, hundreds of billions of teaching aids and trillions of Scale offline teaching and training industry to transform. "

As Chairman, Wang Qiang is confident of the future development of a homework network together. He has an estimate that by the end of December this year, a working network could bring together no fewer than 10 million students in China's public primary schools. And next year, the number of primary and middle school students who work together online will triple on this figure.

Wang Qiang still has higher demands. He even conceived that this site, which starts with primary English listening and speaking operations, can be targeted with the help of intelligent big data computing technology in the future to target targeted "target-based" pushing of content only to individuals Not targeted at many people, completely changed the traditional mode of learning.

Imagination is undoubtedly a pleasant thing, but to reach lofty goals, the road needs to be step by step. For an online education company like Job Network, which is rapidly evolving, the challenge is everywhere.

First of all, as a platform-level enterprise, it is necessary to ensure a sufficient number of users. However, compared with more than 200 million primary and secondary students in China, there are still a lot of room for development. In the future, this enterprise must maintain its current growth rate.

Second, the development of new products. As a result of a work network has been identified to K12 to a higher stage and try to cover all subjects of basic education, not just the current English, math. Different audiences, different courses, will pose a huge challenge to new product developers.

In response, co-founder Xiao Dun deeply touched: first-year primary school students and third-year students are very different, first-year primary school students attach great importance to experience, concerned about this product is not fun, and the third year students are completely regardless of whether or not Fun, they only value the content, just look at the results. Mathematics and English are very different, language is a tool for the application of the class, the process of accumulation, mathematics may be a point of knowledge, make it clear that the students will understand.

"We will have a new product release in July and August, which will be completely different from the previous product," Xiao said.

At the end of the interview, the reporter asked Liu Chang, founder and CEO of Homework Network, "Do you have an opponent in your eyes?" This somewhat obscene CEO cut the words, "no." Immediately, he switched to a more accurate interpretation of their own - "Now, we are the seven dwarves in the highest one."