Founded in March 2016, TGN New Qichuang Shareholder Ten Square Venture Capital has invested in Nanjing Meizhibi Education Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Meizhibi"), specializing in primary and secondary school art education software development, courseware production, textbook writing, the core team has 20 years of professional research and development experience, successfully launched a variety of application software suitable for primary and secondary school art teaching, and wrote and published a number of sets of teaching and auxiliary textbooks. The company's own brand "Painting Time", which means "Painting a Good Time", is a leading brand in China's children's art education industry.
Through the "software + platform + terminal" service model, Meizhibi provides a one-stop full set of software and hardware solutions for primary and secondary school art teaching. The company independently develops software products such as "Painting Time Painting King", "Painting Time Illustration", "Painting Time Seal", "Painting Time Art Teaching Cloud Platform", "Painting Time Calligraphy", "Painting Time Book Making", "Painting Time Exhibition Hall" and other software products and launched supporting hardware products "Painting Time Multi-functional Painting Board". Its core product "Painting Time Painting King" has the first market share of art education software in primary and secondary schools, and is the only painting software in the country that has entered the national standard version of primary and secondary school art textbooks, covering 6,000 primary and secondary schools and used by more than 10 million students.
Some of the software and hardware products of Meizhibi
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Painting time· Painting King
The most popular digital painting software for primary and secondary schools
Painting time · Book sage
Natural brushstrokes, massive dictionaries, framed works, synchronized exercises
Painting time seal
Support pressure sensing, can be output to 3D printer for physical seal printing
Multi-functional electronic drawing board when drawing
China's first electronic painting board that can be operated in dual mode
Bloomberg, the founder of Beauty Pen, has been deeply involved in art teaching, textbook writing, children's art education research, digital art teaching product research and development and other fields for many years, and has led the team to develop the first art education information software system in China, "Painting Time Painting King", and is a senior art education expert in China. As an investor in Meibi, Ten Direction Ventures invited Bloomberg to share his entrepreneurial journey.
Bloomberg
National Training Program of the Ministry of Education - Special Course Expert on the Integration of Information Technology and Art in Primary and Secondary Schools
Deputy Director of digital art education and research center of "China Art Education"
Visiting Professor, Baotou Normal College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology
Founder of Nanjing Meizhibi Education Technology Co., Ltd
Standing Director of the Fine Arts Committee of Jiangsu Education Association
Standing Committee Member of Nanjing Municipal Expert Committee for Promoting and Popularizing Seal Engraving Art Education
Writing or leading a work:
Editor-in-chief of the National Art Standard Teaching Reference Book "Wonderful Digital Brush"
Associate Editor of Junior High School Artistic Quality Assessment Guidebook (Su Shao Edition National Standard Textbook).
National Specimen Su Shao Edition Primary and Secondary School Art Textbook and Supporting Teaching Software Associate Editor
Editorial Board member of the National Specimen Renjiao Edition of Primary School Information Technology Textbooks
Member of the core editorial board of the national specimen renjiao edition of the art section of the secondary vocational public art textbook
Digital calligraphy and painting printing creation tool "Painting Time Painting King" (formerly "Golden Mountain Painting King"), "Painting Time • Shusheng", "Painting Time • Seal" and other editors-in-chief
He has served as a judge for national, provincial and municipal and related art education activities for many times
Q&A
Ten Directions Venture Capital: Under what circumstances did you decide to start an art education company? What is the innovation of the project? What was the original intention of starting a business?
Bloomberg: I started Beauty Pen based first and foremost on my professional background and personal upbringing. I came from a teacher training major in art education, and initially worked as an art teacher in primary and secondary schools, and then joined a Taiwan-funded education enterprise to write art textbooks for publishing houses in Taiwan. In 2003, I officially joined the national standard edition art textbook writing team of Jiangsu Phoenix Children's Publishing House, and currently serve as the deputy editor of primary and secondary school textbooks. At the same time, I am also an expert in the integration of fine arts disciplines and information technology of the Ministry of Education, and I have a certain professional position in this industry.
Before founding Meizhibi, I had formed an education company with others to provide digital services related to textbooks for Phoenix Media. I can say that I have never been separated from the art education industry, and starting a business in this field is also a natural result.
Another important opportunity is the favorable national policy. In 2014, the Ministry of Education issued the "Several Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Promoting the Development of School Art Education", and in 2015, it issued the "Measures for the Evaluation of The Artistic Quality of Primary and Secondary School Students", the "Measures for the Self-Evaluation of Art Education in Primary and Secondary Schools", and the "Measures for the Annual Report on the Development of Art Education in Primary and Secondary Schools", and in the same year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving the Work of Aesthetic Education in Schools", and several heavy documents raised art education and art education to a very high status. In the context of policy, I officially founded the company meizhibi in March 2016.
Meizhibi can be said to be the first team in China to introduce "digitalization" into the art teaching system.
The reason why it is called "team" is because as early as 1998, when our team was still in a Taiwan-funded enterprise, under my leadership, we developed a painting tool software called "Beauty Pen", which was the first software system in China that combined information technology and fine arts. After leaving the Taiwan-funded enterprise, because our team was mainly based on research and development, in 2000 we reached a consensus with Lei Jun, the general manager of Kingsoft at the time, and Kingsoft was responsible for sales, and launched this software under the name of "King of King of King".
So from 2001 to 2006, we and Kingsoft operated Kingsoft in the form of cooperation, but the main creative team behind it is still our current team. Jinshan Painting King can be said to be the founder of the standard art professional teaching software in the basic education stage of China at that time, almost every computer room has it, which is part of the teaching materials and teaching.
But we also became one of the first teams to be hit hardest by piracy, when piracy was rampant, and it is still the case today, which indirectly prompted me to create the company Meizhibi in 2016.
After 2000, our country put forward the plan to realize the informatization of teaching by 2020, when I and other experts from the Ministry of Education believed that the concept of intellectual property rights should be instilled in primary and secondary schools to students, so that they have a sense of legitimacy, which I think is an opportunity. At that time, after research, we estimated that more than 40 million students were using Kingsoft, and if we could transform a small number of students who used pirated software, we could achieve relatively large social value and economic benefits.
In addition, because I came from the education industry, there was also a part of the emotional factor in starting this business. I think that the balance of education starts from the balance of art education, because the balance of main subject education is constrained by various social factors such as financial input, teachers, and student sources in various places, but there is no gap between rich and poor in fine arts. In terms of painting and handicraft, it is possible that left-behind children can do better than urban children.
So I set a goal at that time, hoping to let the children know that drawing can help others. If urban children can exchange their works on our platform by improving their own painting level, even if they exchange a school bag, a piece of clothing, and then give it to children in remote areas point-to-point, they will achieve the purpose of using art to help others. Painting cannot be directly converted into money, but it can connect people who want to collect, and give it to children in need by bartering.
I want to be helpful to others and valuable to society while achieving business success, and I think that's what most people start a business for.
Ten Direction Venture Capital: What was the initial positioning of the company? How has development changed so far?
Bloomberg: Meizhibi has always been positioned as "China's largest basic art education service provider", the main change since its establishment is the expansion of the service field, initially we were mainly engaged in the digital construction of art disciplines such as painting and animation production, and have gradually developed into the entire "big art" field, including calligraphy, seal engraving, illustration and other traditional and modern art into our platform.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: How is the current team composition of the enterprise?
Bloomberg: Our founding team has three people, of which I am a children's art education industry background; Vice President Chen Song is a big data background, and is also one of the earliest professionals engaged in mobile Internet in China, who started his own business in 2004 and obtained multiple rounds of financing; our CTO Hou Yugang is a computer graphics technology background, graduated from Fudan University, with many years of software development experience. At present, our team has about 10 people, requiring each employee to be responsible for the maintenance and update iteration of 1 to 2 products, and be a good lecturer of their own products.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: What is the core competitive advantage of the enterprise?
Bloomberg: In May 2016, the state officially released the standard for the allocation of art teaching equipment for primary and secondary schools. I participated in the preparation of this standard document, among which the four items of art teaching software, art teaching network system, video materials, and electronic painting board were formulated against the four products of "Painting Time Painting King" (formerly Jinshan Painting King), "Painting Time Art Teaching Cloud Platform", "Painting Time Resource Library" and "Painting Time Painting Board" at that time.
In addition, I also wrote "Painting Time Painting King" into various teaching materials, including Renmei Edition, Renjiao Edition, Su Shao Edition, Xiangmei Edition, Zhejiang American Edition, etc.
At the relevant policy level of the art education industry, one is the national curriculum standard, that is, the source of the preparation of teaching materials; the second is the national equipment standard, that is, the discipline is equipped with teaching aids; the third is the national training standard, I myself have a deep degree of participation, and the beauty pen can almost be said to have no competitors under the support of the three major industry standards.
Ten-Party Venture Capital: What pain points in the market have the products and services provided by enterprises solved? What social value is generated?
Bloomberg: Since its establishment, Meizhibi has developed a series of software products related to art education, from the traditional Chinese traditional culture painting software "Painting King", calligraphy software "Shusheng", seal engraving software "Seal", to art-related illustration, art materials, stop-motion animation, word making, collection, mounting and other software; to answer questions, evaluation software, to examine the understanding of art; as well as more than 100,000 words of calligraphy dictionary "Book Dictionary", can make a picture book "book making", 3D virtual exhibition hall "Exhibition Hall", "cloud platform" and so on... It can be said that all aspects involved in the field of art education have been digitized, filling a big gap in the current education and training industry.
I found a phenomenon in the circle of the education industry, most of the enterprises get together to do the main discipline of education and training, non-main discipline products and services are very few, which is a big pain point in our To G industry, local governments have demand, but can not find service providers. What Meizhibi is currently doing is to provide this part of the missing products and services in the education system to local governments to meet the development needs of this discipline.
The art discipline cultivates children's creativity, and they are the talents necessary for The future transformation of Our country from "Made in China" to "Created in China", so the social value we create is reflected in the cultivation of future talents. This is also a principle of our choice of investors, we hope that investors will not be a simple business investment, but have some impact on social value.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: What is the biggest challenge the company has encountered since its inception? How did the team respond and solve it?
Bloomberg: The challenges we had were mainly in terms of competitors. Every time Meizhibi launches a product, there will be a group of competitors to imitate, such as the field of calligraphy, and at most there are more than 30 companies competing with us. Our response is also very simple, one is to continue to deepen our other product lines, do not participate in the industry volume; second, to accelerate the progress of product development and update, many companies can not catch up with us, they slowly give up. Because of my personal background in the industry, many of our competitors, including larger companies, have great respect for me.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: How do you view the development prospects of the art education industry? What are the current difficulties?
Bloomberg: In October last year, the two offices of the CENTRAL Committee issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving School Physical Education in the New Era and the Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving School Aesthetic Education in the New Era, which once again strengthened the 2015 policy. At the same time, the Ministry of Education said that "4 provinces in the country have carried out aesthetic education examination scoring, and 6 provinces and 12 prefectures and cities have begun to score aesthetic education in the middle school entrance examination, and strive to fully implement the aesthetic education examination by 2022."
In the past five or six years, as long as you pay attention to this industry, you can find that the number of art and music teachers recruited in various places has increased. I think the future development of the art education industry is very promising, especially at the To G level, but the biggest difficulty is that many companies have not done a good job in the To G side.
Now is an era of To G, and the future is also in the To G industry. In the traditional thinking, investors generally believe that the To G industry is risky and is more affected by policies and personnel changes, but I think that in China's environment, not only my art education industry, practitioners in all walks of life should eat the policy thoroughly.
It is believed that the huge impact of national policy changes on the industry in recent years can also make everyone realize that policy is one of the lessons that enterprises must do. I think that in order to do a good job in enterprises, we must reach a consensus with the relevant responsible persons of national policies and industries, and accurately interpret and grasp national policies and industry policies, which is precisely the ability that many enterprises lack.
At the policy level, we have certain advantages, and even I am a participant in policy formulation, so our grasp of policies will be faster and more accurate than other companies, which is why Meizhibi's product updates and iterations are faster and more targeted.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: What are the new plans for the future development of enterprises?
Bloomberg: In the future, we will continue to closely follow the policies, for example, the General Office of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee and the General Office of the Provincial Government recently issued the "Implementation Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving School Sports Work in the New Era" and the "Implementation Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving School Aesthetic Education in the New Era", which is aimed at how to specifically implement the documents of the two central offices.
We see the "key tasks" part, put forward the "integration and expansion of aesthetic education teaching: primary and secondary schools should expand calligraphy, seal engraving, dance, drama (opera), film and television, sculpture, photography and other aesthetic education courses...", I think these are entrepreneurial opportunities, but also we may expand the curriculum areas in the future.
The next stage of the meizhi pen planning mainly has two aspects, the first is to seize the opportunity of aesthetic education in the examination, accelerate the promotion of the art evaluation platform we have cooperated with a shanghai enterprise engaged in art examination services, and the second is to adjust the existing teaching products in a targeted manner to keep them closely linked with national policies.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: Since the establishment of the company, what are some classic cases worth sharing?
Bloomberg: There are two main classic cases, one is our product "Painting Time Painting King", which is the first national standard textbook in China that stipulates that every child must learn software, which has a far-reaching impact on our company and the industry.
The second is about my personal academic background, which is one of the core strengths of Beauty Pen. I am the only person in the industry who is both the head of the company and the editor-in-chief of the textbook, and at present, the local government tender is increasingly valued academically, and my interaction with the education system as an expert has played a very critical role in our project to obtain the government.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: What impact has the epidemic brought to enterprises in 2020?
Bloomberg: The impact of the epidemic on us in 2020 is mainly in terms of government budgets. Since our industry generally belongs to the relevant departments of physical health and arts of the education system, under the outbreak of the epidemic, a part of the overall budget is temporarily allocated to the health department for the purchase of epidemic prevention materials and facilities, so many enterprises engaged in sports and art disciplines have encountered an existential crisis, and we are relatively lucky to persist.
Ten Directions Venture Capital: What are the expectations and vision for the future development of the enterprise?
Bloomberg: In the future, I hope that Beauty Pen can transform products into services. At present, our products enter the school through bidding and agents, which creates a lot of resource loss in the middle. I look forward to the ability to send platform products directly to schools in the future and operate through service fees. If we can provide products to schools directly at a lower price or by charging a service fee for giving away products, then even schools in economically disadvantaged areas have the opportunity to use our products. Establishing this direct sales plus distribution service model is also the purpose of our future financing and long-term planning to expand the market.