For entrepreneurial projects on the outlet, cash flow must be the most important.
In fact, the focus of the past two years is becoming the mainstream of the market, and the death of diversification has also given those blindly expanding business owners a heavy lesson.
The pseudo-demand created in the past is being rapidly "eliminated" by the market, the Internet model of "burning money" for users is no longer popular, and cash flow and profitability will become an important measure for startups in the future.
After sharing bicycles, will the next one be a shared charging treasure?
My answer is yes.
Buffett once said that at low tide you can only see who is swimming naked. When the industry is sluggish, it is possible to judge the advantages and disadvantages of a company.
In the past two years, those companies that blindly chase the wind have been hit hard, such as the former star enterprise Jumei Premium. In 2020, Jumei was privatized and delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, and its delisting appeared extremely "deserted" compared to the spirit of the listing.
Constantly chasing the outlet, constantly participating in or investing in various variety shows, and speaking for themselves. Those who once sold swords eventually broke themselves. In 2017, Chen Ou spent 300 million yuan to win the controlling right of Shenzhen Street Power Technology. At that time, this project was also an outlet project, and Chen Ou once made a bet with Wang Sicong for this project.
According to Jumei's financial report, in 2018, the shared charging treasure on the outlet quickly became one of The important revenues of Jumei.
According to relevant statistics, the market share of street electricity at that time was 40%, but even so, Chen Ou did not play a good hand.
Subsequently, many capitals also looked at this cake, and making money or not making money is not the most important. What matters is hundreds of millions of users. At that time, in addition to Ali, Hillhouse Capital, SoftBank and later the US group. It is reported that before 2019, the share of merchants and operators was five or five points, and after the Meituan entered the game, it adopted an ultra-low share or even no share strategy.
Therefore, after 2019, the voice of merchants is getting bigger and bigger, so in order to ensure profitability, they can only raise prices, but this is a model of exhaustion and fishing. In fact, from this stage onwards, we have found that the price of shared charging treasures is increasing madly, from the initial 0.5 yuan / hour to 5 yuan / hour, and some places even increase the price more.
With the thinking of the Internet, this is to complete the closed loop and then start raising prices.
Of course, this money-making model is not enough to support the withdrawal of capital, so listing has become the ultimate goal. On April 1, 2021, the Monster Charging Treasure landed on the NASDAQ. As the "first share of charging treasure", from 2020 to 2021, the revenue of Monster Charging was 2.809 billion and 3.585 billion, and the net profit was -3.131 billion and -4.985 billion, respectively, and its stock price also fell from the highest 10 US dollars / share to 0.94 US dollars / share, a decline of more than 90%.
At that time, the impact of the IPO with the monster was also Xiaodian Technology, not only that, the merger of "Search Electricity" and "Street Power" was also preparing to impact the IPO, but at present, only the monster was successfully listed, which showed that the logic of the industry was changing.
Recently, Xiaodian Technology was exposed to plan layoffs of 2,000 people, and the proportion of layoffs in many departments reached 50%, mainly involving front-line business personnel such as BD. Not only that, Zhumang Technology, which was formed by the merger of Street Power and Sodian, has also been laid off due to mergers and acquisitions. At the end of 2021, the former employees of the street electricity marketing department have been laid off.
So from the impact of the IPO to the layoffs, why do companies change so drastically in just one year?
I think it is still the logic of the industry, the previous capital through the "burning money" low-price model in exchange for users, when the completion of a certain proportion of the market share, this kind of money-burning behavior becomes unsustainable, so they began to raise prices, but there is always a limit to the price increase, when each charge forgets to pay back, a day charging up to 30 yuan, the natural drawbacks of this model will appear, then users will be forced to choose to bring their own charger, once the concept is reversed, the industry will become extremely vulnerable.
In addition, the charging treasure industry and the mobile phone industry are more close, if the mobile phone industry shrinks, then the shared charging treasure industry is bound to be affected. In addition, in the past two years, the epidemic has repeatedly changed, and the offline consumption scenario is also changing, and the industry logic of sharing charging treasures as a non-essential consumption item has also changed.
At present, the industry has become more and more difficult to make money, the future with the passage of time, if its profitability continues to deteriorate, it is not excluded that the shared charging treasure industry will become the next shared bicycle industry.