Reflections on Hong Kong's internet entrepreneurship: Discovering Small and beautiful markets

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A year ago, Sina an article "Why Hong Kong people do not love Internet entrepreneurship", in my side of the entrepreneurial circle aroused wide echo. The author's argument can be summed up as follows: The market is small, no venture, Hong Kong people do not understand the mainland, and not so familiar with foreign countries. Frankly speaking, intuitive, in place, is a language. The contribution of Hong Kong to the Internet over the years seems to be simply to provide the best overseas listings for Chinese Internet companies outside Nasdaq, and to be poor at startup output. All along, even I think that Hong Kong's Internet entrepreneurship is only a simple business procedure, a tax-friendly, and a rapid iteration of technology products, but a recent first-hand experience with the founder of a Gogovan (high-speed van) application has made people rethink When the domestic giant O2O to fight and burn money, some of Hong Kong's stealth alternative advantages began to turn into sweet cakes. Small but the United States market space is still quite a lot, all the team to see whether the planning implementation is appropriate.

The key is to look for small and big market opportunities

Let's look at the myth of the Hong Kong market too small.

This is mainly directed at the 7 million population capping market capacity, inertia thinking that the potential user base is not enough to prop up a decent internet business. To equate a simple market with a population seems to be a habitual thought by the internet industry. In fact, the local small only because of comparison with the mainland market, the need for a large number of user-supported pure online platform business model is undoubtedly too narrow, but easily asserted that the market size is not enough to support other Internet business model but the rash. At least in the Hong Kong market, some of the characteristics of O2O should have a good potential, because the expansion of the O2O model itself in the mainland is very vulnerable to each region of the user group culture gap. Instead, countries with a smaller population base have a larger market because of buying habits and cultural factors. You see, Korean Music main overseas market is often Japan rather than the United States. The fact that most people are still used to buying CDs because the Japanese have not been baptized by Napster is an example of an American embrace of itunes music to download consumption patterns rather than pay for expensive CDs.

Chatting with the overseas returnees, we all realize that Hong Kong and the services of some traditional developed countries still have a lot of stagnation in the web1.0 era. This is because the traditional vested interests of the group has been a perennial channel monopoly, and then, the rapid pace of life of these cities have developed a variety of people accustomed to the slightest hesitation of the traditional pay behavior, it can be said that all waiting for the o2ostartup to break the frame of the Subversion release. To ask any of the students in Hong Kong who are studying abroad, the various fragmented services in Hong Kong are generally expensive and less transparent and efficient. Decoration, freight, printing, design, local shopping guide and so on, there are many examples, the data is still stay in the discussion area, and some even lack the most basic Internet data integration. Personally, it is this kind of market that gives O2O the space to thrive, as the earlier cities will have more old town reconstruction projects to cut into.

Media attitudes and marketing cost considerations

In addition to the product experience, the biggest factor in the success rate of entrepreneurship is marketing costs and exposure. Marketing is the start-up of the largest early expenditure, the original "online promotion cost is far below the line" is the King of Internet entrepreneurship, however, in recent years, a variety of domestic electricity dealers under the outbreak of various flow costs straight after the advanced market. As for other low-cost cock silk commonly used promotional means, such as social networks, text messages, leaflets and so on, due to the long-term flooding of the country, the effect of promotion is often greatly discounted. Moreover, the first-line city has long been in a variety of advertising fatigue bombing, now the comprehensive war between Tencent Ali swept O2O field, O2O rapidly reduced to rely on the money hit the game, small team can not afford to play.

In contrast, in recent years overseas social network in Bangladesh, Pakistan's Click Farm participation and cost, social marketing cost-effective improved. Moreover, many O2O easily cut into the industry because of the oligopoly of the traditional channels, resulting in a rare promotion of competition phenomenon. To gogovan their experience as an example, in the product has not been online for half a year, the founder of the spread of leaflets everywhere, on the line after incredibly win a large number of drivers and killed each other a unprepared. In the course of handing out flyers, traditional oligarchs have been ignoring their defenses! Relatively domestic after several years of impact, the face of Internet subversion and the sense of crisis-free traditional industry rivals may have become a rare species.

As for the O2O, it is also an important proposition how to detonate the mainstream media because the offline experience is generally aimed at the non digitized community life. Hong Kong is a great example of the high average age of Internet users and a region where media culture is not strong and that mainstream media, including portals, remain a powerful conduit for access to information. But surprisingly, to get the traditional mainstream media attention threshold is often more than the domestic low.

In the case of Gogovan, the founder, Steven, who had been asked to go to the door for a report shortly after Steven, suddenly found the newspapers scrambling to interview the young man, who was the first. This happened a few months ago before the taxi software boom, you can not help but ask before the recent giant participation in the taxi application report craze has been quiet for a while, what is the small number of applications in the use of electrical goods in the end of the ability to cause local reporting trend? It is rumoured that the reporter heard that Gogovan developed rapidly, Grab a lot of traditional radio calls to the market share, and bring a wave of entrepreneurial boom. Plus entrepreneurial people from the silk, very much in line with the requirements of the media darling. Let's take a look at the Gogovan data from the media, which has been on the market for 3 months 20–30% (but the average daily is more than 4,000 orders), with subscribers and order growth averaging over 100% a month in a row ( Successful regional startup data, but not earth-shattering, at least domestic mainstream media certainly dismissive.

The same data, the same young cock wire on the Internet to attack the story, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there is a great news, but in the country to get a long numb media focus is really difficult! Not to mention the news that we see every day of the tick-tock and fast Wars is all about the number of billions of millions of eyeballs.

Sometimes, compared with the domestic Internet business articles and the reports of the mainstream newspapers in Hong Kong, we will find some time to reverse the mirror feeling (the latest example is when the domestic warlords are in the layout of Internet television, Hong Kong's most entrepreneurial companies are struggling to fight for traditional television licences). This reminds us that the domestic Internet over the years to the only fast-breaking pursuit has long been in the speed race to the surrounding area. Even feel that in the domestic O2O competition environment increasingly cool environment, those who lose the opportunity of entrepreneurs can consider retreat to Hong Kong a try to make a comeback.

Lack of venture capital, but high quality of financial intermediaries

There is no doubt that the absence of venture investment is a major short plank of Hong Kong's innovative economy. But the individual finds that there is no shortage of examples of entrepreneurs being bought in Hong Kong. To catch up with the entrepreneurial model of the tide and mixed up the point of the entrepreneurs, generally do not worry about no buyers. The category of investors will also be relatively wide, from foreign companies, peers, other real economic investors have (of course, with the amount of small also has a relationship, after all, not the Internet Montana is not as shot as bat). The famous Openrice website is easy to master many times, when the Youbuyibuy set up quickly sold to Groupon is an example. Even some of the less popular reading-sharing sites like Anobii can be targeted at sky-high prices by large groups such as HMV. The personal guess is that although there are few VCs, there are a lot of young financial intermediaries in Hong Kong who can go back and forth. This has to do with the massive influx of Chinese returnees to European and American investment banks every year after 2005 years (local people even dubbed the "concession" in central), many of whom have transformed into capital intermediaries. This is especially good for tech entrepreneurs without financial experience, because nothing is more exhausting than financing, as Paul Graham has repeatedly mentioned. Think of it as a good thing to have a returnee from Goldman Sachs to help you run your finances without a cushion. This is by no means a bluff, pure financial talent oversupply. Back in the case of Gogovan, the founder who had not been with finance soon ushered in the former Ziff (well-known hedge fund) partner.

Tapping foreign capital against domestic market?

I ask myself, "the Internet people in Hong Kong do not understand the mainland, nor do they know foreign countries" can only sadly sigh. Yet the other side of this remark is to remind us that Hong Kong remains the best contact for domestic and overseas markets.

Think of the annual visit to the domestic Internet companies, and found that after the meeting foreigners fund managers generally in the private exchange of views on the domestic companies published data expressed disbelief (often with the Chinese analysts form a strong contrast), and even cynical. Because of the mixed domestic market, often have been criticized, causing outsiders always suspicious stereotypes. On the contrary, the Hong Kong team's data growth rate is small, but it coincides with the eyes of foreign entrepreneurs that the digital water is necessarily smaller first-view. Do not underestimate this layer of additional information transaction cost burden, often lead to negotiations of the results of the result are some can not see the psychological factors.

See all the above factors, we can deduce that, since the Hong Kong market O2O into opportunities everywhere, the traditional industry has been lax in guarding against the difficulties of media focus, and finally close to those foreign companies who are looking forward to Hong Kong as a springboard for mainland markets (or local management to persuade across's bosses to hit the money to look forward to) Geographical location, with domestic market experience but the team who lost in the investor's contacts can actually consider via Hong Kong's strategy to get funds to attack the mainland. This strategy was previously used on the PC Internet (basically banning foreign participation), or pure network platform (can only be the domestic winner to do) on all is not feasible, but in the mobile end O2O mode to occupy a subdivision of the regional market becomes feasible (plenary resolution on the Division of foreign capital liberalization such as services, education, medical care, Culture and so on happened to be all O2O subdivision area.

As long as the team pats the right Hong Kong entrepreneur to overcome some of the local elements, the chances of a speedy attack on the local small market are much simpler than the Elephant wolves dancing in the increasingly Red Sea market in China. In conjunction with the media exposure the honeymoon period quickly attracts the returnees of a brand-name investment bank to help the go-between, in order to start the team in Hong Kong commodity domestic background and experience, to persuade foreign investors to buy shares all over the mainland to attack the vanguard of the market is not what wishful thought. Once the foreign aid is received, the competition at least has ammunition to hold the domestic market ticket. In bat to accelerate the integration of O2O ecology today, is a unique strategy option.