DingTalk acquired the collaborative office manufacturer "I come to WOLAI", and the dispute over the documents of large manufacturers became intense

Author|Deng Yongyi Editor|Su Jianxun Yang Xuan

36Kr exclusively learned that DingTalk has completed the wholly-owned acquisition of collaborative office manufacturer "I Come to WOLAI".

A person close to my Wolfai team revealed to 36Kr that my senior management team at Wolfai has now withdrawn from the actual business of the company. After the completion of the acquisition, its production and research team will be converted to DingTalk regular employees, and the customer service team will be transferred to Alibaba's outsourcing team.

According to Tianyan, on March 5, several core team members of my wolai (Shanghai My Cloud Network Technology Co., Ltd.) have withdrawn from the company's shareholder list. The legal person of the company has become Ye Jun, president of DingTalk, and the company is 100% controlled by Alibaba.

36Kr asked DingTalk for confirmation on the above news, and DingTalk officially said: I have joined DingTalk in the wolai team, and will be responsible for the research and development of intelligent collaborative documents and the product design of personal documents.

Among them, the personal version of the document is a lightweight version of the DingTalk plan for individual users. At the DingTalk product launch conference in December 2022, DingTalk revealed that it will launch a personal version to provide users with a lighter efficiency kit, and my wolai products will provide a lighter product experience for DingTalk individual and small team users.

Intelligence is also the focus of investment of Internet companies this year. Previously, some media reported that Ali Damo Academy is developing chatGPT-like conversational robots, which are in the internal testing stage, which may deeply combine AI large model technology with DingTalk productivity tools. I came to wolai to be responsible for the research and development of intelligent products, which also means that DingTalk or make intelligence a focus of product development.

I Come to Wolfai is a collaborative office platform founded in June 2020. The founder is Ma Ruila (formerly known as Wang Jiamin), the founder of the former Chinese Music Starry Sky and Internet Movie Library (the predecessor of Mtime). Marila is a serial entrepreneur who served as co-founder of My Lai Property Map and co-founded WeFun in 2012.

My product form is a block-based note-taking product - on a blank canvas, users can freely combine text, tables, pictures, audio and video and other content according to their needs. The product integrates real-time collaboration, sharing, and storage, allowing enterprises and individuals to build their own information libraries and workflows based on information organization.

I come to the wolai product interface

"All-in-One" note-taking products like this have been a major trend in collaborative office platforms in recent years, and its industry benchmark is Notion, which was founded in 2012. Notion's latest valuation has reached $10.3 billion.

After the "PLG" (product-driven growth) concept fire in 2020, many followers of Notion also appeared in China. I came to Wolai to be one of them. In 2020, I came to wolai to obtain tens of millions of yuan in financing from Ceyuan Venture Capital, which 36Kr reported.

For DingTalk, the acquisition of me to WOLAI is more for business collaboration considerations - to replenish product capabilities faster to cope with the increasingly fierce competition in the collaborative office track.

With the end of the user growth dividend brought by the epidemic, the fierce battle between several major collaborative office manufacturers continues. The focus of competition has gradually shifted from competing for user scale to high-quality revenue.

In 2020, after the "Cloud DingDing" strategy was merged into Alibaba Cloud, DingTalk began a series of strategic shifts. A typical example is that DAU was originally the core business indicator of DingTalk, but after the "integration of Cloud Ding", DingTalk actively adjusted the target - not 1 billion, but 1 million (paid enterprises).

Ye Jun, the head of DingTalk, said in public reports that "the DingTalk team turned around in flight, at least 90 degrees."

To make big revenue, you have to really pay attention to product features and experience. The collaborative office suite can be roughly divided into IM, documents, mail, conference and other modules, and the goal of DingTalk after the "cloud DingDing" has become to do "Microsoft Office" on the cloud, and the acquisition of me to Wolai is a supplement to product functions and experience.

In terms of document modules alone, DingTalk's investment in the past was not large. An investor in the enterprise service field told 36Kr that the size of the DingTalk document team is about 100 people, while ByteDance's Feishu document has more than 300 R&D personnel alone.

If compared from the resource priority of the product entrance, DingTalk documents are not as valued internally as Feishu and Tencent Docs - Feishu places the document module at the primary entrance of the App, and Tencent Docs has a separate App, but DingTalk documents are located at the secondary entrance in the DingTalk App and are hidden deeply.

However, today's acquisition shows that DingTalk will further develop its efforts in the document module.

A senior practitioner of collaborative office said to 36Kr, "DingTalk should realize that documents are a module that cannot be bypassed in collaborative office. The documentation product seems to be an entry-level module, but it is actually difficult to do a good job in the experience, and it still takes a certain amount of time to accumulate. ”

As early as October 2021, DingTalk announced a strategic shift from large-scale to deep-value. Ye Jun once said that after forming a strategic lead, it is necessary to go back and polish, complete and strengthen the capabilities of general products such as audio and video to improve product experience. At that time, DingTalk released a series of collaborative products such as DingTalk and self-developed documents, which were regarded by the industry as a signal for strategic investment in documents, audio and video, and accelerating the ability to catch up with products.

In March 2022, DingTalk wholly acquired the real-time audio and video PaaS company "Paileyun" to strengthen its product technology strength in the audio and video field.

The acquisition of my visit to Wolai can be seen as a continuation of that strategy. I came to wolai and the previous acquisitions of Teambition and Paileyun, corresponding to DingTalk's increased investment in three types of collaborative products: documentation, project management, and audio and video.

In Notion-like document products, many people in the industry have said to 36Kr that I came to wolai are the best in China in terms of product power and experience - directly acquiring a mature team or product in exchange for more time, which is a more efficient way for DingTalk.

Documents are actually the earliest subdivision of the domestic collaborative office field, and typical products include graphite, Evernote, etc. However, years of attempts have shown that most Chinese companies are very willing to pay for single-function products, which has led to the companies in the track being basically in a small and beautiful stage.

The impact I have had in the last two years since I came to Wolai has been quite a bit. On the one hand, I came to the Notion-like product track where wolai is located, the threshold for use is higher, and compared with the general document, the target group is actually more niche. In the past two years, there have been many new players on the track. According to 36Kr's understanding, when the number of registered users I came to Wolfai reached hundreds of thousands, the growth began to be weak.

On the other hand, several large manufacturers that have mastered the entrance of enterprise traffic have continued to invest at the document level to make products go to a large and comprehensive route, which is another shock for startups.

"Most users are not willing to pay for a point function, but after DingTalk and Feishu get up, they are willing to pay for the whole family bucket product." The above practitioners said.

After I come to wolai to join DingTalk, the advantages of product strength and experience are combined with the scale advantage of DingTalk, and such problems will be changed, which is why manufacturers are gradually making office suites go to "All-in-One" and do deep integration. In 2023, as DingTalk, Qiwei, and Feishu all turn to compete for KA large customers, this "competition" in products and experience will continue.