Showgood story: A Hong Kong people in the domestic ten years pioneering road

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Tiger Sniff: Perhaps someone knows Showgood this company, perhaps someone has seen "the story of the Soldier", "Dahua Three Kingdoms" and so on once hot flash animation. Later, there are a lot of good works of the Showgood Web site silently poured out, and its founder has something to say.

I am Chen, in the domestic entrepreneurship more than 10 years of Hong Kong people, founded in 2000 the first domestic Flash animation company--showgood;2005 for a variety of reasons I left, and now created a strange treasure. From Showgood to Chico, I would like to share with you my experience, I hope to give now and I walk on the entrepreneurial path of some inspiration.

Believe that the Internet will change the world--showgood.com

1999, the network economy swept the world, one of the US Blue Mountain Electronic Greeting card company is very hot, on their website, users can send each other beautifully designed electronic greeting cards. This kind of interactive form makes information spread, wildfire, global spread, is absolutely viral, fast and violent. I was thinking that if I could design a series of characters in an e-card to be sent in a large amount to attract enough eyeballs to gather a certain degree of popularity, like the animated characters in Disney, it would be a huge business prospect.

So in 2000, I came to Guangzhou to set up an electronic greeting card network company, I hope one day to have their own "Mickey Mouse."

Change--from internet company to animation company

In the process of developing a series of electronic greeting cards, I am thinking: how to shape the image can be more popular? I chose four themes, and I found different people to develop them separately. At that time, a group of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts students to help us make electronic greeting cards, I chose one of the students responsible for the three countries this theme. In the process of development, my requirements are constantly changing the upgrade, slowly develop more content than an electronic greeting card can carry the range, unknowingly formed more than a minute of network animation.

After the completion of the work on the company's website, feedback quickly came, the most popular is the Three Kingdoms series, considering the lack of resources at that time, I stopped the other three series of content development, full development of the Three Kingdoms series.

After three years of development from 2000 to 2003, hundred people on this project made a different contribution to make the "Big Three" series won the support of many people, and even a lot of foreign netizens are very like our works, extended to develop the works including MV, "Soldier Story", " Three foreign biography "and so on; products have dolls, books, DVDs and authorized development of online games. According to NetEase has provided data: "Dahua three" single works monthly browsing volume of more than 160 million. In addition, the first comic book on the sale of more than 100,000 albums, cartoons are a lot of TV scrambling to steal, Showgood also from a original intention to just issue an electronic greeting card network company shook the body into an original animation company.

Reflection: Network Television (SGTV) and exit

In the 2001, with the popularity of "Big talk", I believe that the potential of the network economy is enormous, and after further reflection on the power and speed of the free transmission of the network, I have a bolder idea--SGTV.

SGTV is to build their own content publishing platform, on this platform for our members to provide independent development of the original quality products and quality services, and we are charged with advertising fees and a certain membership fees to support the platform to better operate. The world of the network is free, so, everyone can watch at any time, not limited by the times, thus producing enough eyeball economy, this is the biggest value of SGTV. (This business model is the same as a pay-for-watch channel for the current domestic music video TV and the overseas Netflix launch.) )

But the idea was too advanced at the time, and none of the people and investors involved in the day-to-day operations of the company understood. There was an investor who retorted on the spot: "Do you know how much it costs to build a TV station?" Then he went straight away. Very helpless also very regrettable, SGTV the general direction is correct. The current video TV and Netflix shares have reached tens of billions of.

No matter what other people think, I will stick to it. In 2002, in order to be able to launch the SGTV, I set up a project team specifically to develop the specific fee content. So, "the story of the Soldier" series of animation was born.

In 2003 years, we finally set up a message paid to watch the platform (there was no Alipay, small pay and other online payment channels), "Soldier Story" the first month of income more than 2000, the second month more than 30,000, to the third month has reached 90,000. But as soon as the platform was profitable, the government happened to be releasing a red: All SP companies were not allowed to do the charging business. At that time, the application for a full network SP licence required 10 million of the registered capital and the mainland licensing applications were not open to Hong Kong people, so we could not continue to do so.

Of course, as a content company, we can also through television, audio and book publishing these traditional ways to publish animated content, but always the end of the year, because the publishing company and our cooperation is always in the signing of a formal contract, paid one or two times royalties, after the legitimate piracy. Finally, other shareholders have lost confidence in the domestic policy and business environment and have no desire to re-enter. I've been struggling for 2004 years. By 2005 years, after several financing, I have lost the control of the company's day-to-day operations also have no right to speak, plus and other shareholders operating philosophy of disagreement, I chose to leave.

Now summed up, in addition to the above, as the SP company on behalf of the red, domestic piracy rampant and so I can not change the reasons, there are a few questions:

① deviate from beginner. In fact, Showgood's vision is a network technology company, and "Big three" success makes me in the process of operation is too biased in the content development and ignore the network platform of operation, in SGTV this aspect does not have enough investment;

② not understanding of the thoughts of the mainland employees;

③ management team is missing;

④ policy and the limitations of the business environment.

⑤ Capital is poorly run. March 2000, the network economy bubble burst, internet companies around the world are basically not financing, at that stage I was very difficult to find some small angel investors, large investment companies in those years basically withdrew from the market, and I contacted the investors are in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, where most of the investors in Hong Kong were unwilling to "Investment" Internet companies are only willing to do traditional "business", so it is difficult to have the capital to implement this matter.

Finally, under the influence of these internal and external forces, the result is inevitable.

Re-planning--the development path of soft and hard combination

Looking for almost a year, in 2006 I plan to train their own professionals to make up for the lack of the previous production team. I am in Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places and colleges and universities to carry out school-enterprise cooperation, and hope that in the process can have time to develop enough animation to support SGTV content requirements.

At the end of 2008, Showgood also has a small episode, the company also financing success, shareholders put forward hope I go back to participate in the operation of the company, in response to the external market situation analysis, I put forward a company's overall operation of the program: 1, the production of "Dahua Three Kingdoms" series film as the largest promotional means; 2 Development Hand tour at the same time, 3, build SGTV mobile phone version, through the three projects to promote each other to develop the company. But there was a lot of interference during the operation, and I left again at the end of 2009. If any one of these projects is successful, it may be possible to drive the entire company to the plate.

When the iphone was launched in 2007, I vaguely sniffed that the platform might be able to achieve SGTV. Until 2009 when the ipad was launched, it chose to do the content of the early childhood education on the iOS platform, and then step by step to do the preschool education version of SGTV. However, in this process I found that the iOS on the platform does not show all my ideas, many features we can not achieve, and secondly, when we provide applications, most parents do not want to pay to download, or even choose to pirate.

2010 I decided to do an early childhood education SGTV on the Android platform. At the same time, I want to add a new element-hardware sales (tablet). Why Join hardware sales?

① with the popularity of the ipad, I think in the future tablet computer market in its development direction should be broken down, there will be different functions, different purposes of the tablet, one of them will be early childhood education;

② domestic consumption habits, most consumers are less willing to pay for apps, but they will pay for a hardware;

③ Millet successfully proved that the "Internet + content + hardware + Services" business model has a great development prospects, has become a powerful weapon to convince investors and the team.

In terms of capital operations, I have encountered many different style of investors, Hong Kong investors most of the interest in a project to want to hold; The new company's Angel financing has been successful in January this year, and the size of the company is expanding.

But how good, I only choose those who are willing to let me go to the operation of the investors, they will only when I need to help me, basically do not participate in the day-to-day operation of the company, this time I would rather take less money also to control the whole company's development rights.