Ning: 2013 startup ideas from the hottest app founder Casino

Ning, the founder of the hottest app in the 2013, refuses to make fast money and wants to go a long way.

Zhangxiaolong thumbs up.

In 2013, the Ning team released a record number of new more than 3 million users in a single day and ranked first in the app rankings in more than 80 countries. Micro-letter eldest brother Zhangxiaolong exclaimed: "Your growth rate is too exciting!" In the second half of 2013, the Magic camera received two consecutive rounds of investment in a few short months.

The camera is not the first product developed by the Ning team, but it is the closest thing to her entrepreneurial intent: to help people express their humor and personality and create more happiness in life. The camera has made almost no profit attempt so far, Ning's answer at first glance almost idealized to willful, "as long as can not charge for no fee." ”

Minus the cut.

Originally and the team said, the user breakthrough 1 million, take everyone to five-star hotel burst a meal. But before it was ready, this moment was unexpected. Ning to the team members of the announcement, we are a little silly, at this time the product is officially online less than 30 days.

The Magic camera was launched in 2013. The Android version was launched in June, and the iphone version, launched in September, topped the App Store free list on the 4th day. Online 6 months, registered users reached 65 million.

Such bursts of data make people's praise and puzzled Qi. Image processing software, why does it suddenly fire like this? The doubters speculate that either the data is adulterated or the money is actually being popularized. Some people worry, will not fire a dead?

"The Magic Camera is now 65 million users, half of the overseas users, here is completely without any means, I can not affect so many countries, so many languages, so many people." "Being asked much, Ning explained. The pace of this growth has not occurred to them, but for this goal, they actually prepared for 5 years.

For 5 years, for a long time, she and her partner had a team. Investors are very concerned about making a magic camera and before it's hot, not only because it's a new model, but Ning even feels it has to do with the identity of her female founder.

The camera is not the first product of the Ning team. 2008, the company's start-up business is mainly the production of personalized comic gifts, and then sold to domestic large state-owned enterprises and foreign companies. In 2010, Ning the opportunity to make a personal passport for the Shanghai World Expo, but the technology was still more dependent on hand drawing. The huge passenger flow at the expo highlights the technological bottlenecks at the time. "Too slow!" This forced them to look for technological breakthroughs as quickly as possible.

During that time they were frantically making technical improvements, and finally the personalized passport production time from 10 minutes to 10 seconds, 5 seconds, fully automated.

At this time, Ning made a decision to stop offline business, to 2C mode. Compared to the 2B business tens of millions of yuan ceiling, 2C business imagination is obviously larger. Ning began to consider the development of the app, the form of software to achieve a fool of the operation, so that users can make their own comic image.

But this step is too big.

They then launched two products: Comics Weibo, said the little people. Now, the technology of these two products is still very advanced--all the mobile clients that translate semantics into cartoons. For example, using text or voice to enter the "engineer of the Human soul", the client produces semantically consistent comics. They also won the "Innovation Star" award in the "Entrepreneurial State" magazine for the Innovation China 2013 Spring Race finals with the product "the little People said".

These two products sound beautiful, but the result is that users do not buy, the response is flat. Later summed up the reason: technical difficulty is too large, the implementation of the effect is not rich, user operation is not easy.

In the background implementation, these two products are actually the portrait into the comics technology and semantic recognition technology superimposed together. It is necessary to have a rich comic material, but also to the semantic and comic, and then turn the portrait into a comic. These technologies need to be developed by themselves. Moreover, due to the superposition, limited by the current development level of semantic recognition technology, the technology of portrait conversion into comics can not be fully played out.

So, Ning decided to back up a collection, based on the most basic graphics production needs, focus on the portrait into a comic technology, the development of the demon Diffuse camera. The team focuses on providing rich, exquisite comic material to simplify user operations.

"Our idea of developing products is to do subtraction. The beginning is to let users play more creative enthusiasm, the result is like a professional software, in fact, increased the difficulty of user operation. So the Magic camera is very simple. "Ning said.

A reduction to minimalism. The 1.0 version of the demon diffuse camera has only 15 footage.

Subtraction is not only the product, but also Ning themselves. "Over the past 5 years, I've thought about how to make money and tell stories that investors are willing to listen to," he said. But this time I was more confused, do not know what the future will become, because I feel more and more distant from the original intention of my business. So when I return to who I want to be, the reason for starting a business, instead of looking at other people's identity mode, direction, I feel clear. ”