People to 40 have a lot to think about and one of them is unwilling and Slack superscript

Preliminary understanding of IMO (full name: IMO Yi-mu network) products, I am very puzzled. On the one hand do not understand why the Tencent TM and RTX before doing a business market "QQ", on the other hand is why such a Do "Enterprise QQ" Company has existed for eight years, and also in the recent declaration of their own completed a round amount of financing.

Then one afternoon, I and the IMO CEO who happened to go to Beijing on business Chowen chatted for an afternoon, probably understand this more than I older "entrepreneur" in thinking about what, want to change what. The content will be integrated in an interview with the new president of the company, Liu Xuan, the former general manager of the Greater China region of Skype. This is two, at least in the process of my contact, work experience (emphasis on the environment) and product concept are close to the people.

Liu Xuan is a "99% of the time in the past 17 years to work in foreign companies," the most recent job was acquired by Microsoft and internal status rose, and even replaced the Lync brand Skype. Said to be the general manager of Greater China, but most of his time in the United States, which is far from China's market and management atmosphere. But from the other side, the United States is an enterprise management concept and business services products are far beyond the domestic place.

Before joining Microsoft, he had already contacted a lot of B-side business. According to his description, these businesses, including Skype, which was just bought by Microsoft, are more focused on "business" needs. This refers to "enterprise" more refers to managers, IT staff, procurement department. Enterprise Services through the enterprise management structure and the actual needs of the research, will be suitable to solve the problems of managers, performers through sales to their front, and then through the decision-making level to promote the staff. "But Skype has also recently been transformed, and it needs to be more directly aligned with the needs of front-line employees." Lync into Skype is also a reason Skype has 350 million months of live users, which is a strong brand, "Liu Xuanming said. He believes that Enterprise services need to get rid of the pure party B trading relationship, more areas to study the user's consumption and use behavior. Especially in the second half of 2014, through the impact of the C-side to promote the adoption of enterprise solutions to become a trend, "the combination of Apple and IBM confirms this trend, Apple is the king of the C-end products." Now the concept of corporate office BYOD more and more popular, employees use more debris time on their own equipment to complete the work. The user's feelings will have an impact on the enterprise, so the need to cultivate user habits to affect the enterprise decision-making.

After nearly two years of domestic fighting, the entrepreneurial circle gradually understand that the C-end market BAT is an unshakable ruler. In-service and in-ecosystem complementary services become a mainstream viable means of survival, just like in the mobile phone market, there used to be a very good product, but the market weak brand user experience in the personal Micro Bo coldly sent a sentence: "In the mobile phone market, or live or die, or millet." Since IM Enterprise Services to start from the C-side, Tencent becomes difficult to bypass the topic.

We have in the "about Pan-SME light collaboration on Pan-SME light collaboration, I do not understand the" said that the domestic reality is the current most popular enterprise Synergy tools namely QQ and micro-letter. Even though many employees and even leaders are very excluded from working in a social tool that deeply precipitates personal relationships, there is no doubt that the coverage and availability and stability of real products are the ultimate compromise for domestic companies. Besides Tencent has RTX (formerly Tencent TM).

For ordinary users, RTX's popularity is even lower than Tencent's TM, but that does not mean that they are in the corporate market-at least CBSI, a successful multinational group in China, is using RTX. But in Chowen (IMO founder, CEO) and Liu Xuan Ming, RTX due to the lack of Tencent investment in the product. "Rtx has so far no mobile version, which will create a very fragmented user experience on the users ' devices, and there is no way to meet the communication needs of the office in different situations with a single tool," Liu Xuan told me. At the same time, Liu Xuan Ming think that the current IM category although Tencent accounted for the absolute mainstream, but still in the market segment there is a lot of space. "Tencent is playing a circle of acquaintances, so there is a chance to go public." IM This area of space is very large, enterprise number exists because the enterprise staff began to use micro-letter communication, but some people will use two of micro-signals, some people do not want to add the boss, do not want personal life and work together, this is our opportunity, "Liu Xuanming said."

As for the domestic giants ' consistent "let startups try to make mistakes, and then buy or copy into the market" style, Liu Xuan that there is no need to worry, he believes that even if the RTX in the product is enough to make them more competitive in terms of usability, the enterprise market is also a good thing. On the one hand is to let more people find the needs of the enterprise market, on the other hand, if Tencent really put more resources to optimize RTX products, is to show that the market is mature, at the same time there are better products. He believes that the current QQ and micro-letter are "people to pull the circle, no theme and mixed voice." Such communication reduces efficiency and does not form a matter-centric discussion. Chowen once told me they spent a lot of energy optimizing the basic functional experience of the IMO Desktop Client window drag and file intranet transmission, they (Chowen and Liu Xuan Ming) All think that the excellent product experience can promote the staff to accept a purely work content-oriented independent communication tool.

In Liu Xuan's eyes, micro-letters set up in the public cloud, while providing only free services, which makes it reliable for users to provide assurance and advanced services. The information security of public cloud cannot be guaranteed, and the user cannot find the person in charge when the information is not delivered and the message is not answered.

Admittedly, although the Chinese market in the product and market understanding is not very much, but Liu Xuan Ming is the domestic companies contain the competitive goods analysis and the difference of ideas expressed very perfect and meticulous person. It also makes me wonder why he didn't expect to go ahead with Skype's successful product, but at a time when he chose to join a domestic start-up company. His answer was also interesting:

First of all, I have personal development needs. People to 40 years old will have a lot of thinking about life, I hope to change. The mobile internet craze is a big trend, with 600 million of China's 1.3 billion people being netizens, a market that is more imaginative and explosive than the US.

In Liu Xuan's eyes, IMO is an incomplete start-up company: It is a company that has a history of about eight years, and has "accumulated enough in its own field and technology". He believes that the domestic market does not have a platform-level products, so should do more aggregation. IMO used to do communication tools, now do synergy, in the future to aggregate more things, solve more problems, in the communication outside the integration of e-mail, approval, attendance and other Third-party professional services. He wants to work with startups and the giants of the traditional enterprise market, choose products that users like, and form low-cost, efficient solutions. He cited an example, before the IMO to do the entrance, although through the API to connect the original service, but will cause experience inconsistency, and the incomplete flow of information. In the future, they will make an aggregation platform and try to achieve the IMO as a transit point, can search for direct access to different content and services, without the need to switch back and forth between different services.

Yes, this is very similar to the popular Slack abroad. I've always been outside. Foreign business markets are more awe-conscious and rational, because they rarely talk about "subversion" under the existing market system of giants, nor do they replicate products, but rather focus on optimizing existing workflows. Slack is a product that optimizes workflow aggregation information through mobile Internet and product experience. Liu Xuan Ming recognized the next concept of IMO and Slack very close, but they do not want to and it on the mark, he thought "the emergence of Slack is an inevitable, is the original product shape changes." And for us, the expectation is to do a cross screen of the C-terminal experience, and the formation of ecology.

Their new strategic slogan is "Everything to connect the enterprise", and 2014 in various forms of the different form of the "C-round" financing strategy is the same, but the first time I heard this sentence really from the mouth of Liu Xuan Ming.