「Core Tips」
Byte's securities business APP "Dolphin" ushered in a highlight moment in the news of being sold, for Bytes, which has been valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, cutting a 20 million project will not stir up a little splash. However, if you connect the many apps that have been scrapped before and after the byte, you can't help but sigh that the B side of the APP factory is actually an "APP cemetery".
Author | Yang Guang
Edited by | Wang Shan
On one working day in mid-2021, Wang Chuan took a day off and deliberately went to Shanghai to get a cross-border bank card.
Wang Chuan was an employee of Byte East China Company, at that time Byte was testing a cross-border securities service, there were transaction commissions for internal employees, and the bank participated in the business internal test, which could help users transfer funds overseas to buy Hong Kong stocks, and the handling fee could also be reduced.
However, from the beginning of 2021, the market value of technology Internet companies listed in Hong Kong has been declining. At the same time, the cross-border Internet brokerage business in the domestic "unlicensed driving" state has aroused regulatory attention. By September 2021, news of Byte's possible sale of its securities business spread across the market. Wang Chuan was poured a basin of cold water, and finally the cross-border securities business that participated in the internal test was not solved, and the bank card he applied for has been quietly lying in his wallet.
This is not the first financial project that Byte abandons, and it certainly is not the last.
At the end of February 2022, the news that Byte's securities business APP "Dolphin" was wholly acquired by Hualin Securities landed, with an offer of 20 million yuan. ByteDance responded that it would completely divest its securities business.
For bytes already valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, cutting a 20 million project may be just a routine and won't make a splash. However, if you connect the many apps that have been scrapped before and after the byte, you can't help but sigh that the B side of the APP factory is actually an "APP cemetery".
1. "Dolphin" stranded
The end of the Internet factory is financial realization, which is not exempt from the byte with a large amount of traffic. However, compared with several other giants, Byte's financial business started late and was more low-key.
In 2015, Byte began to build a financial business team internally, but it was not until two years later that it launched the first financial product "sodium magnesium stock", which mainly provided stock market information and market data, which is the predecessor of Dolphin stock.
In 2019, sodium magnesium stock was renamed Dolphin stock. In addition to providing stock quotes and financial information services, by the beginning of 2020, Dolphin has also begun to provide customers with account opening and real trading functions, but need to jump to the page provided by the broker to complete. That is to say, in this process, dolphins mainly play the role of de-streaming brokers, and do not intervene too much in account opening and transaction commissions.
However, for shareholders, convenient transactions and low handling fees are just needed, and there are many shareholders who change the door in order to point commission preferences. The service provided by Dolphin is highly fungible, and the jump to the brokerage has cut off the stock trading experience, which explains why Dolphin has only registered more than 12 million registered users and only more than 300,000 monthly livestock from its launch to September 2021.
For stock trading software, trading commissions are the bulk of revenue. Dolphins did not swim into the core area of the business, and the benefits were naturally not too rich. Hualin Securities disclosed in the announcement that in 2021, Dolphin's revenue was 28.5 million yuan and a loss of 1.64 million yuan. In January this year, Dolphin's revenue was only 13,900 yuan, and the loss exceeded 440,000 yuan. As of the end of 2021, the company's net assets are -79.51 million yuan.
In the exploration of byte securities business, Dolphin is mainly responsible for domestic business, while Squirrel Securities and Stellar Securities are responsible for overseas business. In September 2021, it was reported later that ByteDance intends to sell its securities business, with an overall valuation of about 500 million yuan to 1 billion yuan.
Today, Dolphin is taken over by Hualin Securities for 20 million yuan. ByteDance said that in addition to the Dolphin Stock APP and Wenxing Online, other entities in ByteDance's securities business are also in contact with potential counterparties or in the process of internal shutdown.
In the past few years, in addition to the securities business, Byte has also made great strides in the financial fields such as payment, Internet small loans, and insurance brokerage. Overall, the financial services strongly related to the core business of Byte continue to be strengthened, while those that are testing the waters and have little relevance to the main business are abandoned.
Payment and consumer finance related to e-commerce form the two engines of the byte financial landscape. At the beginning of 2020, the new crown epidemic brought fire to live e-commerce, and Byte also accelerated the relevant layout. In June 2020, Byte set up a first-level department named "e-commerce" to coordinate the e-commerce business of apps such as Douyin, Toutiao, and Watermelon Video, and more frequent payment needs urgently need a payment license to improve the commercial closed loop.
Since the state has now suspended the issuance of payment licenses, Internet companies can only obtain them through acquisitions for the time being. In August 2020, Byte acquired Wuhan Hezhong Yibao Technology Co., Ltd. to obtain a payment license. This is a full 9 years later than Alipay and Tenpay, which won the payment license in 2011.
Commercial factoring is an important part of the e-commerce supply chain. In January 2021, Hainan Zijiao Commercial Factoring Co., Ltd. was established, which is wholly owned by Byte. A factoring practitioner told Leopard Change that this can smooth the e-commerce supply chain a lot. For example, the supplier has accounts receivable in Byte, in order to get the money in advance, you can sell the accounts receivable to the factoring company at a discount, and finally byte pays the money to the factoring company.
Byte's consumer finance business is mainly through microfinance companies. In October 2021, Byte wholly acquired Shenzhen Zhongrong Microfinance Co., Ltd. and pocketed the online small loan license. At present, the "assured borrowing" and "DOU installment" businesses in the Douyin APP are all carried out in cooperation with Zhongrong Small Loan Company.
In the context of the overall slowdown in the Internet industry and the fattening and thinning of bytes, the adjustment of its financial map has also slowly unfolded, and the ecological correlation with e-commerce and vibrato is not strong, and the business with poor blood transfusion effect is either coldly received or peddled, and "Dolphin" stranding is only one of them.
Byte is known as the APP factory, Lei Feng network founder Lin Jun once commented that Zhang Yiming has always been decisive to kill, never love war, do an APP and abandon an APP is equally common. Under the aura of explosive applications such as Douyin and Toutiao, no one may know how many apps Byte has made, and how many hassies have become cannon fodder.
2, APP factory in the cannon fodder
In fact, for a long time in its development, Byte is not divided into multiple business units by business line like other companies, but is only divided into three core functional departments of technology, User growth and commercialization, which are responsible for retention, new and monetization.
Many analysts say that these three steps are the core of any mobile product from scratch, from small to large, and also create a huge APP factory.
Sitting on a large amount of traffic, ByteDance, once the new outlet is found, a number of new projects will be launched in this system to chase hot spots, like an assembly line to produce a variety of APP.
Yi Yang, an employee of byte's former product post, told "Leopard Change" that every time Byte looks at a track, it will generally do a number of homogeneous product matrix punches and rushes, and it is good to survive one or two. In the field of short video, byte is like a pepper noodle, and once launched a number of APPS, covering long/medium/short video subdivisions.
In early 2016, byte's senior management team once again held a closed-door meeting to discuss how to make short videos. Byte's anxiety came from the explosive growth of competitors, so much so that many Byte executives at the time thought it was too difficult to catch up with Kuaishou.
In order to stop Kuaishou, in September 2015, based on the short video content of today's headlines, Byte launched the first short video APP: Headline Video. But Zhang Yiming was not satisfied, and after the closed door meeting, Byte launched a small video of the volcano that integrates short video + live broadcast. For a long time after that, the volcano videos occupied the C bit of the byte, and they were all loved by thousands of people. Even if Douyin is online, the resources obtained at the beginning are far less than the volcano videos.
The sudden emergence of Vibrato inside the byte was a bit unexpected, and at first it was only as a pilot of music short videos, and did not attract much attention. But later the story is very familiar to everyone, vibrato counterattack, volcano small video gave up the C bit.
Byte employee Lin Hao told "Leopard Change" that after "falling out of favor", the volcano small video had hoped to develop differently from vibrato and watermelon, but the effect was not good, and gradually became an accessory to vibrato, and the name was also changed to "vibrato volcano" version, and also redesigned the new LOGO according to the vibrato style.
"The byte's LOGO matrix reflects the status of each app in the company. Toutiao is the company's first product, which has always been the first in the matrix, and the second is Douyin. The volcano small video LOGO used to be in the matrix, but now it has been removed. Behind Douyin is the watermelon video, which focuses on medium-long videos. Lin Hao said. The number of users of the volcano small video is also rarely disclosed separately, generally announced together with douyin, and the number of daily active users disclosed by douyin will be marked with small words 'including vibrato volcano version'. ”
"Borderless" bytes are not willing to let go of every outlet, regardless of whether the company has this piece of business genes, first test the waters and then say, so the APP factory has produced all kinds of track products, social communities, games, e-commerce, education, medical care, entertainment, corporate services, information, search... All have had byte figures.
However, behind the vigorous miracle, more APPS have acted as denominators, which have been shut down due to regulatory factors, and more are assembly line APP production logic The probability of success is not high.
("Leopard Change" is based on incomplete statistics based on public information)
Among them, Goku Q&A, which burned 2 billion in two years, was shut down, after being described by the media as ByteDance's first defeat.
Zhang Yiming's public platform APP is not much, once because Douyin and Ma Huateng are tearing up in the circle of friends, and once is to wave the flag for Wukong Q&A, pointing out that the founder of the competition knows that the founder is a bit arrogant about his platform author, which shows the importance attached to this product within byte.
In order to grab users, Byte has subsidized 2 billion yuan to content creators, and also spent a lot of money to dig up big V from Zhihu, hoping to make up for the content gap in a short period of time. However, the uprooting of seedlings did not help, after the subsidy, the popularity of Wukong Q&A continued to decline, and the number of monthly active users fell from 1.21 million in October 2017 to 679,000 in July 2018, and then announced the strategic abandonment.
By the end of 2021, Liang Rubo, the "new boss" who took over Zhang Yiming, led Byte to make a major structural adjustment, realize the BU of business lines, and six major business sectors surfaced.
The adjustment of the organization also hints at the quiet change in the style of the APP factory, and the supporting role of the middle office department is reduced, which means that the number of apps that need new support has decreased.
3. Product manager of the flowing water
Behind each vanished APP in the Byte Factory, there is a story behind it, and there is a group of lonely product managers.
Many big guys in the Internet are product managers, such as Tencent's Ma Huateng and Zhang Xiaolong, Xiaomi's Lei Jun, Byte's Chen Lin, etc. The role model, coupled with the core position in the project, makes the product manager a hot position in the big factory. This is especially true in app factories.
In March 2012, Chen Lin joined Byte as an early core employee, successively served as the product manager of a number of core products, and became the CEO of today's headlines, the head of Byte's innovation business, and the CEO of Dali Education. In 2014, Chen Lin manipulated the acquisition of Tuba, and Zhang Nan, founder and CEO of Tuba, thus entered byte and became the first product manager of Douyin.
The style of the company's top management often determines the company's corporate culture, and the product manager is highly respected in byte, but behind every premature APP, it means the "failure" of the product manager.
In the quiet of the night after work, Aya took advantage of the fact that there was no one at the company and moved the workstation to a corner of another work area.
Starting tomorrow, she will bid farewell to the aura of the product manager of the big factory and "demote" to do product operation. She didn't want others to see her leave lonely, so she chose a booth at night.
Originally a product manager at Byte, Aya is used to giving orders in the project team, which is the highlight of her career. But the good times didn't last long, and her project was yellow. HR asked her for several rounds of communication, and finally confirmed that the transfer product operation was at least easier than finding a new job. Although in her view, the product operation is far from the product manager scenery, to do dirty work is tiring, not to mention, if there is a problem, you also need to come out to carry the pot.
Product managers are a popular position in the Internet community. Data from the Emerson Institute shows that the demand for product manager positions ranks second in the Internet industry. At Byte, the product manager was equally impressed. Byte HR Wang Yang said that in 2021, the school will recruit more than fifty resumes for product managers, which is more than the number of applicants for many IT positions, which shows the popularity of the byte product manager position.
But behind the glamour, the product manager also has helplessness. On the social software vein, some users who are certified as byte employees say that the product post is not better than research and development, as long as the same technology can be transferred, the product manager to find a job restriction is too much, many times can not necessarily have the opportunity.
Yi Yang said that according to his understanding, after the project was stopped, the product manager was negotiated to transfer more jobs, after all, the company laid off employees to lose money. New projects are already nine deaths, if there is a rush to lay off employees, who is willing to take the lead?
Xiao Qian, who has worked at Byte for nearly five years, told "Leopard Change" that according to her observation, if the new project is initiated by the original team and the new project is stopped, everyone can continue to do the original old project or start a new project. If the new project is an independent team, once it is stopped, many times it can only be transferred or consider leaving. In particular, if the number of people involved is not large, HR may negotiate to give 1 month to find a job or compensate N+1.
Chen Rui, chairman and CEO of Station B, once said, "The products of the headline system are vigorous miracles, and such products only have scale effects, no network effects." ”
This effort is largely achieved through the efforts of employees, superimposed on the powerful traffic pool of the byte system, in the Internet expansion period, the scale effect is easy to produce effects, but when internet traffic peaks, the past set of methodologies does not seem to work so effective.
After the project was frustrated, Yi Yang left byte. At the same time, under the strategy of fattening and thinning, the APP factory began to focus more on the core business, whether it is personnel or APP trade-offs, the pace of bytes is accelerating.