Renaissance Xu Yijong: two times to build beautiful said to meet the needs of users

Five crossing was once a pioneer of the feng Shui Treasure land.

2006 years or so, a large number of early Internet entrepreneurs were born in the five Crossing City railway station near the Huaqing Garden District, their entrepreneurial experience is mostly more than once.

These enterprises scattered in several residential buildings, there are Wang founded the net, rice, Domestic, American Regiment, the United States is late to move into the litters group, Fengxin founded Storm audio and video also in this community, there are Chen, Wu Shichung founded Cool News, Lin Chenming and Che Hui founder of a see interactive, Cao Weibin, Li Jinbo founded Instant Pass, News Hada network and so on.

Xu Yijong's first venture is also from the Hua Jia Yuan, 2005, he and had for Baidu Senior product manager Zhang Joint founder of the catch shrimp nets, 2009 closed and sold to watercress.

Half a year later, or in the huaqing garden that once crowded 80 square meters of three rooms, Xu Yijong began his second venture-beautiful said.

Beauty said in the Alexa list of China rankings, now ranked about 145. And it ranked similar to the glutinous rice net, speed network and Pacific Game Network. But unlike these sites, the beauty of the registered user is almost all women.

"We allow men to browse, but prohibit registration, you see those who use Fan Bingbing avatar, all the old man, once found firmly banned!" "Xu Yijong said," On the internet with a beautiful woman to do the head of almost no real beauty, really beautiful women usually with floret grass, puppy kitten or life as a portrait. ”

People who have seen Xu Yijong say he is energetic, eloquent, and cheerful, always with the sign of laughter. Sure enough, he can tell all things in a vivid way.

Many people also mentioned that he is a brainstorming fan, is obsessed with the spread of ideas through chatting, talk about the day can not hold. But now he talks a lot less, because he manages a company that already has 160 employees, he is very busy and gradually more cautious, especially in the face of the media with a complete set of answer system.

For example, why do beautiful say, and why the beautiful said to make this appearance.

To be a woman's business, Xu Yijong in early 2009.

At that time Xu Yijong just to catch shrimp sold to the watercress, their own break up a long vacation. At that time, huaqing Jia Yuan 331 room is empty, he every day crooked in the vacant office look out of the window. The scenery did not see, but harvest eyeful beauty. 4:30 P.M., the stall was put on, and the girls were hula-flapping up to jam the traffic. No meet, the Chengguan are coming. But the next day, the stall is still.

At the time he felt that this was the need he was looking for.

At the end of 2009, he formally began to try to practice the idea of beauty.

Lan is beautiful said the first VCs. Led the round of financing Zhu Tianyu, 2009 just from the Baidu Investment department jumped to the Blue Chi Chong Investment director, that is, in the fall, Zhu Tianyu and Xu Yijong in an annual meeting of the electric business industry met. At that time Xu Yijong was looking for the next entrepreneurial project. Two people talk about very huan, meet new entrepreneurial projects to see together.

Zhu Tianyu remembers that he and Xu Yijong explored several directions, in addition to female fashion, education and health, and so on.

The education industry was once the investor bullish, it demand is strong, prepaid model cash flow is good, be affected by economic trend small. But in fact its return did not expect so good, IDG investment elite Education, failed, Germany and capital investment Oriental standard collapse, qiming and SIG investment giant school 20 million dollars. and the medical field of investment cycle long, high investment, the failure rate of pharmaceutical research and development is high, so investors do not easily enter these industries.

Among them, Zhu Tianyu most optimistic about the direction of the female fashion Xu Yijong, although Zhu Tianyu still do not know how beautiful said the shape of the product, but he thought that the Xu Yijong of white-collar women fashion This "battlefield" analysis is very clear.

"Cut a knife in sex and cut off half the target population," he said. This allows him to focus on the product. In consumption, women's dominant ability is stronger than that of men, which is the standard we can agree with. "Zhu Tianyu said.

Xu Yijong described the new product form between the electrical quotient and the society. In 2009-2010 this time point, SNS in the ascendant, Beijing-east and other large electric dealers have also begun to show the power. This is also the pulse of the market that Zhu Tianyu and his team can touch. The two people agreed that the choice of the "battlefield" is a very fertile land.

But at this point, Xu Yijong doesn't fully know how he's going to get into this new field.

He first thought of doing online community, observing the "I Love Discount Nets", Yoka and other women's fashion forum, but also visited some fashion women editors, vague profit model soon let him give up; then he turned to the product. One day at the end of September 2009, Xu Yijong and Beauty said that now the operation Director of dinner together, Xu Yijong asked her, do you want to know what your girlfriends are buying? The director said, kinda wanted to.

So, the technical team in the National day before making a call "stroll" client plug-ins, as long as you and friends of the computer installed the plugin, the browser will open a sidebar, sharing each other's online shopping products, while shopping, while chatting. Xu Yijong also "proudly" leaned on the plugin to help his wife pick a pair of snow boots.

But "stroll" eventually only four or five people installed, and are acquaintances. Plug-ins to bring a lot of trouble, a while browser compatibility problems, a while communication problems. is not suitable for early promotion.

At this time, Xu Yijong also noticed the microblogging model. August 2009 Sina Weibo has just launched a beta version, micro-blog officially entered the Chinese-language online mainstream people's vision. He felt that girls like to read things, 140 words can let them nag, and then impart the experience of dressing.

March 2010, Beautiful said the first version of the line, basically is the form of vertical micro-bo, users can publish merchandise links, automatically generate pictures and other information, you can focus on the likes of people, have a simple commodity library.

After the line, Xu Yijong and colleagues the most important task is to pull users. They mixed in various shopping guide group, but just send a few links to be kicked out. The hard is not the soft. They found the owners, asking for 500 yuan a month, with people in the circle to play beautiful said. As a result, the first 100 people who dragged in were run.

Xu Yijong remembered a book called Bridging the Chasm, which was famous in Silicon Valley, where a new product, good or bad, was initially accepted by only 2.5% of users because they were exploratory and willing to accept a piece of junk. Xu Yijong encouraged the team, even the iphone, to start with only 2.5% of the users supported it. Although he himself said this is not a strong, in the heart of the drums, "We have not found that 2.5%."

Since May, beauty is slowly improving, with two groups of users already on the scale of more than 100 people. One day in July, there were more than 400 online users. Xu Yijong Ecstasy, pulling all the staff to the leopard to celebrate. In the third quarter, the flow of beauty said doubled.

This is also the stage, Xu Yijong from the blue-chi venture to get the first investment.

Lan's Silicon Valley headquarters, once a company called "like.com" in the US, is similar to beauty, and is a picture search engine made by Stanford's Ph. D. image recognition technology, allowing users to search through a large number of products and find products similar to those of the selected product. As a result, users buy shoes, bags, watches, jewellery, clothing and other goods, not even enter the search for the item, the project was acquired by Google in 2010.

Xu Yijong is also pondering the search with images, he hopes to be more effective to achieve sharing.

At this time the United States pictures of the website Pinterest "Waterfall Flow" appeared. The next thing is much smoother, 2011 6 July Beautiful said the way from the vertical micro Bo into the form of the poster, the same as "waterfall flow" layout, the user clicks on the "waterfall stream" in the poster picture directly jump Taobao and other merchandise pages. The change quickly attracted a large number of users.

At the beginning of May 2011, Beauty said that the second round of financing of Sequoia Capital had been completed, and the third round of financing of GGV Capital had been completed by the end of October 2011, with a total investment of nearly 30 million dollars. After the third round of financing, Xu Yijong also sent 2000 yuan to each employee as an incentive.

Also happy with the VCs. Zhu Tianyu revealed, "We are beautiful said the earliest investors, enter the price is relatively low, after the third round of financing is completed, we have dozens of times times the book income, the return is quite impressive."

Xu Yijong's two startups show signs of success.