Let the product explain itself

A north is Yang Bo in watercress on the net name, watercress staff all call him. The North's character is introverted and stern. When the reporter arrived in the watercress office, the north was wandering outside, at that time it was 10 o'clock in the morning and working hours. Come back to see us, then immediately cut to the chase, serious face and so we ask questions.

In order to enliven the atmosphere, I played a game with the north, let him in the center of his forehead to draw a big Q word. The north hesitated for two seconds and said, "Do you want to see if my q is painted or reversed, so as to determine if my subconscious is starting with others, right?" I said: "You are really not interesting." He smiled: "Because I am the product manager." The key ability of a product manager is to be constantly on the same side as a person who is completely different from himself. ”

7 years ago, a north in the Watercress Alley near the Starbucks preparation of the original watercress program, when the product manager thought is to do a search after the great Internet products, and this subversive product is to "interest and discovery" for the logic of the establishment of people and things and people's relationship. The north thinks that this is a huge market. "Search is about typing keywords, but if a good thing is new, how can a user who has not heard of the product find it?" This requires the establishment of a link between people and things. ”

The North has never changed the direction and the logic of the position, but he also lamented the difficult process. It is relatively easy to establish the connection between people, the product structure and form are relatively unified, and the goods are diverse, which intensifies the complexity of establishing the connection between people and things, and needs diverse product forms. For more than 7 years, watercress has been based on the logic of people and things to do gradual evolution, from the original watercress music, watercress books, watercress film extended to the community's pan-interest, and then through the mobile terminal to penetrate all aspects of people's lives.

In this process, watercress has created a lot of bright spots. Although in the commercial interest, watercress and no soar, rapid on the scale of the signs, a year's revenue whether billion, is also a mystery. The north only said, "This year some months profit, some months lose money." "But the people in the Internet Circle said," This is a respectable Chinese internet company. Because the pattern of watercress is unique in the world.

Watercress has changed the way people find things: Watercress FM changed the way people listen to songs, through powerful data mining ability to find the songs you may like, and then play to you; Watercress books let people go to a website that does not offer book sale to read comments and orders.

Watercress is also the first to engage in social commerce of the third party website, now it is still Amazon, when the electronic commerce site as an important external flow importer. The map of interest also stems from watercress, which has even launched a "like" feature button that likes to share in Facebook. Watercress is a rare domestic enterprises do not copy or imitate foreign Internet products, so the north can not hesitate to tell the global entrepreneur: "We have no direct competitors." "This is the biggest value of watercress in China and the internet in China," he said.

Technical Solution Requirements

We have been looking for the watercress cooperation, said we have the channel, may help them to promote. "The answer is that every user who has used our services is our channel," said one internet company person who told the global entrepreneur. "It's bull" doesn't need any promotion.

A northern Creed is simple: a good product can explain itself. Products only in the case of homogeneity, only need to use external force to promote. After a long period of accumulation, watercress currently has registered users more than 60 million, the monthly active users more than 80 million (watercress has a large number of unregistered users visit), 2012 will be more than 100 million. In the ranking of the number of users and the standard of traffic, watercress is the top 20 in China and the top 100 in the world. So when the north heard the reporter asked why do not big watercress, he was very surprised, "watercress small?" The reason for his rhetorical question is based on these figures.

Watercress and the user formed a good symbiotic relationship. About the fresh and cultural of watercress, a North smile is the user's credit, because the content is generated by the user. He himself believes that the watercress company itself is a technical category of companies, do not have the literary fan. In a sense, the high viscosity of watercress users is also achieved through technical means.

Watercress has a strong algorithm team (known as data mining), its role is in a large number of data mining out the needs of users, and make the right recommendations. The original watercress guess and other data mining tools, but also the North I do. Since then, Watercress has joined the second line-the relationship between people, to supplement the "discovery" with interest as the core of interpersonal relationships. Now, watercress in the watercress community through the communication between people, further supplementing the algorithm can not do things. As a product manager, it is important to dig out the needs that users do not know. It's like Freud's psychoanalytic approach, we need to know what the need is behind their expression. ”

After digging out the requirements, how to use the technology to meet these requirements. In the Watercress 250 people's team, 2/3 of people are doing the technology and the product design. This is a team of passionate engineers who program in the monthly "Happy Day" contest. There are now more than 8 million users of the Watercress FM, initially an engineer product.

In contrast to the vast majority of internet companies in the country, watercress provides engineers with a relaxed environment, because they almost do not have to bear the quota of the number of users. In these 7 years, in addition to the first year because the base is small and the number of users to increase, the number of users in watercress has been incremental growth. The North's explanation is: "We do what others have not done, we need to continue to grope and trial and error." The growth of the number of users is a natural thing. "Standing in the empty, warehouse-transformed watercress office, you can almost hear the engineers" Happy Day "on the happy sound, and this time of summer, the window of the huge tree shadow is in their indifferent, lazy face.

In the northern eye, improving user demand through technology is always the most important. It is an enterprise that advocates the culture of engineers and does not care about the scale of revenue in the immediate term. Even if the watercress has been fluctuating at the profit critical point, even if the size of the total revenue than the same size of the company after 2 years of the current situation, the North also did not change their original intention because of business opportunities.

"Over the past 7 years, I have seen many internet companies become famous overnight, but have also witnessed their decline, such as the previous game companies and group buying companies." "Yang Bo is very opposed to the idea that watercress is a platform company, because it is too popular." "It's easy to get lost if it's just a business opportunity at the current stage of the market." Have to look at the long-term point, the first good products, and then the user size is large enough, business opportunities will naturally be greater. "It always grows into a big platform, and why am I rushing to force it into a platform now?" said Yang.

The investment side of watercress seems to have already understood the north and the watercress logic, nor is it in a hurry to push it to the public. Watercress has three rounds of financing: The first round is 2006, the founder of Feng Po Capital gave 2 million U.S. dollars; The second round is the beginning of 2010, Zhi-Xin Capital and joint venture to invest in watercress for nearly tens of millions of dollars; the third round is September 2011, Zhi Xin Capital, Sequoia Capital and Bertelsmann Asia Investment fund invested 50 million of dollars.

As partner Shiong of the Bertelsmann Asia Fund, who is involved in the third round of investment, said: "The ability to stick to the user, in the end there will certainly be a business model." The business model actually happens after the user is created. From the start, they will be small companies. ”

Moreover, the North will also emphasize, "now as long as the stop investment, watercress can instantly achieve profitability." Because watercress is a very light company, the main cost is fixed costs and personnel costs, no money to buy traffic and promotion, no orders out, no capital chain pressure. "One of the things that the north is going to do is to get its initial logic-interest and discovery, and how to get better at it."

Create a pan-interest network

In the eyes of unregistered users, watercress presents an interest-sharing website about books, movies and music. In fact, the watercress has changed dramatically. Today's watercress is not just a website, but a can provide a variety of services companies and brands.

In the watercress community, which was originally built to facilitate communication, users have produced 713 cities, 60.57 million residents and 270,000 interest groups themselves. This is also one of the future development of watercress: to encompass more interest. But this does not mean that watercress will later emphasize social, in watercress, social is for the Interest Atlas service.

A recent consideration is how to allow more outside users to see the Yan-yan in the community, and to understand the various things and interests that users share inside, such as clothing, cosmetics, etc., rather than just positioning the watercress in the sharing of books and music sites. To this end, watercress recently put the watercress guess on the home page, with a variety of good user content in the community to promote watercress community.

At the same time, watercress is also in the research and development of "other watercress" products, in this section of products, a dish, a mobile phone or a software has its own separate pages, users can comment on these individual pages; Users can also type in the "Find Something" text box "mobile", "food" and other words, watercress will help you find these "Something".

North of this definition of the future of watercress: "We may not be the most professional food website, may not be the most professional clothing site, but we must be the largest pan-interest site." "The first to do social electrical business marketing of the north, naturally familiar with the huge business opportunities, he asked us," Why we can not join this thing online shopping links? "

Every interest may become the next profit point of watercress. Import Books Online shopping links, and the book site to do income sharing, is only the first step; now the income of watercress is film ticketing, brand interactive advertising, electric quotient and watercress reading. Watercress reading is only recently launched business, similar to Amazon, the author can upload their own text through watercress, the author of their own pricing, sales, watercress and the author divided into sales revenue. Unlike the full-length novels, Watercress chose the short stories that readers could read in two or three hours, similar to the length of the article in the "Solo Regiment" of Han's. In this respect, the North's explanation is: "Now a lot of business books, the general essence of the first three chapters." Just look at the first three chapters and you can guess what's behind it. So we think the emphasis should be on short reading. "In order to ensure quality, watercress on the content of the author's requirements are very strict, the threshold is relatively high."

Watercress is a quality-oriented place, so the industry calls it a "slow company." But this does not mean that it will be insensitive to new things, but it is agile in the process of transforming to the mobile internet. The book, film, music, the same city activities split out, the formation of independent channels, it began to move naturally to the mobile end of the shift, so far watercress has been in watercress FM, watercress film, such as 7 of mobile client products. These products let watercress from the office environment and home to infiltrate people's lives every moment and all aspects. Objectively speaking, if each service is large enough for the user size, each interest service may be listed separately.

Around the "interest and discovery", the North wants to shape the watercress into a "pan-interest" network, trying to change the experience of various real life scenes through products and technology, just like watercress FM can be used to kill the debris time, the watercress movie changes the ticket experience. The north thinks that products such as tickets and cards will gradually decline, with more new technology to pay for products such as NFC (near-distance wireless technology communications). These will make a lot of things easier and infinitely possible. The idea of changing human life experiences is slowly becoming reality.