Author: Gong Jinhui
Today is the Qingming Festival, we remember the ancestors at the same time, looking back at the vast sea of commerce, many of the star companies of the year have gradually disappeared in the public eye, such as Gionee, LeTV Sports, ofo, Byton, fast sparring, Ten HuiTuan, etc., are the leaders in their respective fields, but due to various reasons, they eventually go to the same end: bankruptcy, people sigh.
Of course, the contributions made by these companies cannot be erased, but now, their only value is to be studied as failure cases, to warn entrepreneurs to learn lessons, step on the pit less, remember that ability should match ambition, and move forward more steadily and faster with dreams.
Jin Li: Gambled by the gambler Liu Lirong
In November 2018, the media exposed a shocking surprise: the culprit of the Gionee debt crisis was no one else, it was Liu Lirong, the head of Gionee, who lost more than 10 billion yuan in saipan gambling, and the amount of embezzlement of public funds may be about 6 billion yuan. In this regard, Liu Lirong admitted to participating in gambling in Saipan, but firmly denied the claim that he lost 10 billion yuan, but lost more than a billion yuan, and frankly borrowed more than one billion yuan from Gionee instead of the widely circulated 6 billion yuan.
Note that when he described the use of Gionee funds, he used "borrowing" rather than "misappropriation". It is not difficult to see that gambling was the last straw that crushed Jin Li, but it was not the direct cause, and Liu Lirong blamed Jin Li's death on marketing. He once said that in 2016 and 2017, Gionee invested more than 6 billion yuan in marketing expenses, plus more than 3 billion yuan of foreign investment in the past three years, and nearly 10 billion yuan of investment had a great impact on Gionee's capital chain, resulting in a capital chain crisis.
Indeed, in 2016 and 2017, Gionee's marketing momentum was very strong, and Liu Lirong's remarks seemed to stand up, making many people believe one thing: Gionee's money was spent on marketing, and it was the cruel mobile phone industry that killed Gionee. But Gionee shareholders do not accept this set of statements, they believe that Liu Lirong's statement is a complete lie, marketing is not the root cause of the crushing of Gionee. In fact, before the first half of 2017, Jin Li has been living a very healthy life, not to have a crisis of life hanging in the balance, why it will fall sharply, perhaps only Liu Lirong himself knows.
LeTV Sports: Indirectly implicated by Jia Yueting
In the not very long life of LeTV Sports, 2016 is undoubtedly a key year. In April 2016, LeTV Sports Xiti 8 billion yuan B round of financing, seeing that the ammunition was sufficient, it opened the purchase and purchase of the event copyright, and pocketed the copyright of the Chinese Super League, the AFC Champions League, and the Hong Kong region of the World Cup, including many exclusive resources. Also in 2016, LeTV Sports secretly did a stupid thing to completely bury its own great future.
It turned out that from April to June 2016, without the consent of the board of directors or the shareholders' meeting, LeTV Sports repeatedly paid about 4.267 billion yuan to LeEco Holdings under the control of Jia Yueting. This part of the capital outflow was signed and agreed by Lei Zhenjian, CEO of LeTV Sports, and was used by Jia Yueting for LeTV mobile phones, LeTV cars and other businesses, which laid a huge hidden danger for LeTV Sports. In November 2016, the LeTV ecological crisis broke out completely, and LeTV Sports, as one of the seven major ecosystems, was not spared, not only facing layoffs and business contraction, but more importantly, it has lost its chips to save itself.
The reason is very simple, LeTV Sports fell into a money panic, not only lost the core copyrights such as the Chinese Super League and the AFC Champions League, but also left the sports circle celebrities Huang Jianxiang and Liu Jianhong who joined in the brilliant period, plus the loss of 1.3 billion yuan in 2017, further exacerbating the tension of the capital chain. The trouble of LeTV Sports is far more than this, because of the riot operation in 2016, Lei Zhenjian provoked a lawsuit and was claimed by the core shareholders of LeTV Sports for 100 million yuan, which is tantamount to worse. In May 2019, LeTV Sports, which was indirectly implicated by Jia Yueting, was revoked its business license and has since disappeared.
Ofo: Miserable by the young Dai Wei pit
Although ofo has long been cool, to this day, there are still more than 10 million users who have not responded to the deposit. And ofo has gone from a capital darling to an abyss in just a few years, and Dai Wei, a hand, can hardly blame. The willfulness and childishness of the post-90s CEO made Ofo repeatedly make mistakes on some key issues, and the consequences caused by it were fatal, and finally he paid a heavy price for his original youthful madness and self-sufficiency, so that all stakeholders on the Ofo chess game, including investors, founding teams, employees, partners, and users, ended up losing every game.
In November 2017, two major events occurred in Ofo: one was that three executives stationed at Ofo announced their vacation without warning, and the other was that Ofo was exposed to embezzle user deposits. These two major events exposed that Dai Wei is an unqualified CEO, knowing that Ofo is in an embarrassing situation of extreme lack of money, and he can also drive away the major shareholder Didi, indirectly losing the potential gold lord SoftBank, completely will not bow his head and ask for help, and cannot bear half a grievance, resulting in the aggravation of the dilemma of the ofo capital chain.
At the end of 2017, ofo investor Zhu Xiaohu tried his best to match the merger of Ofo and Mobike, and almost all shareholders supported the merger, only Dai Wei did not agree, because he was worried that his power would be weakened in the future, which he could not accept. The stubborn Dai Wei's obsession with independent development made Zhu Xiaohu's heart like ashes, and he could only choose to cash out and leave. In other words, at the critical juncture of ofo's life and death, Dai Wei did not focus on the overall situation, thinking not about how to find ways to save, even at the expense of personal interests, but nostalgic for his own power, and finally made the ofo pit miserable!
BYTON: Burned out 8.4 billion but couldn't make a car
In recent years, the performance of new car-making forces has become more eye-catching, but after all, successful people such as "Wei Xiaoli" are only a minority, and more players are unknown or even fall, such as Byton. Burned out 8.4 billion yuan in 3 years but could not build a mass production car, Byton's life is getting worse and worse, after experiencing a short period of self-help fruitless, it was officially filed for bankruptcy liquidation in November last year, completely bidding farewell to the big stage of car building.
In my opinion, the fundamental reason for Byton's failure is that it does not understand the essence of entrepreneurship, does not act in a style like a startup at all, spends money completely unrestrained, and uses the top of everything. Whether it is the choice of suppliers, employee business cards or the clothing of brand store clerks, employee snacks (300 people eat 50 million yuan of snacks), spending money is extravagant, even in the extreme lack of money and have to go to Dubai to pull financing, the round-trip cost is as high as millions of yuan, so that the ideal leader Li Xiang is shocked, but also stunned.
In other words, byton is in a very difficult industry to build a car, but it spends money like flowing water, there is no way to start a business, I don't know that entrepreneurship is difficult, I must be able to save it, a penny is broken into two halves, and the result is that the money is burned out, but the car is not built. In January last year, Byton married Foxconn and Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone, striving to achieve mass production of M-Byte by Q1 this year. However, after only half a year, Byton and Foxconn could not "play" happily together, and the cooperation between the two sides was almost extinct. Being abandoned by Foxconn undoubtedly dealt a fatal blow to Byton and accelerated its demise.
Fast sparring: Blind expansion is dangerous
Last year, the introduction of the "double reduction" policy ushered in a big change in the education industry, and educational institutions that mainly focused on discipline training bore the brunt. In order to survive, they have to drastically lay off employees, shrink their business, and accelerate their transformation, the head players barely retain a trace of blood, and most of the weak players end coolly. In contrast, quality education has been less affected, and there are still many opportunities for development, but the online music sparring platform Fast Sparring, which is in it, has come to the step of bankruptcy liquidation.
In September last year, Fast Sparring announced that the "live sparring business" would stop developing, but would retain the AI sparring course and exchange it for compensation with the AI sparring class. The move of fast sparring is related to the obstruction of financing in the "double reduction" environment, and its new round of financing originally planned to be completed in the near future has been abandoned. Two months later, the fast sparring partner announced that it would apply for bankruptcy liquidation, which not only made the investors lose all their money, but also many parents fell into the dilemma of difficulty in refunding fees. In my opinion, the reason why the fast sparring fell, the "double subtraction" is at most a pusher, and the fundamental reason is still to blame yourself.
In February 2020, Fast Sparring achieved profitability and positive cash flow. However, due to the demand for online education caused by the epidemic, in order to expand the results of the battle, fast sparring has embarked on the road of crazy expansion, successively launched the "Cloud Flute Classroom", "Piano Examination Guide", and expanded the curriculum to include piano, violin, guzheng, drum kit and other 24 instruments, which has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the scale is easy to be favored by the capital market after it is enlarged, last January, xi ti 100 million yuan B round of financing, the disadvantage is to return to losses, in the absence of self-hematopoietic ability to run all the way is very dangerous, once the financing is blocked, it will fall into a passive state, which also explains why it will quickly collapse after 10 months of financing.
Ten League: Unfortunately, he became an abandoned son of Ali
At the end of March, all the businesses of Shihui Tuan in cities across the country have been shut down, and the company has entered the aftermath stage, which means that this former community group buying star company is basically cool. In the development process of the Shihui Group, Ali, which has injected capital for 4 times, has played an important role. To put it simply, Ali not only gave hope to the Ten Hui Tuan, Taobao once opened a first-level entrance for Taobao to buy vegetables (the predecessor of Tao Cai Cai), and the actual supplier and service provider is the Ten Hui Tuan, but Ali also brings great pressure to the Shi Hui Tuan, and the situation is very embarrassing.
When the community group purchase became a place of contention for soldiers, in 2021, Ali decided to personally fight, and the relationship with the Ten Hui Group became very delicate. The latter not only has to deal with the fierce attacks of external players such as Duoduo buying vegetables and Meituan Preferred, but also has to conduct internal "horse racing" with Ali MMC. To put it bluntly, the areas that are done well by the Ten Clubs can be left, and the areas that are not done well are directly done by MMC. In other words, the giant's joint hanging has already overwhelmed the ten groups, and the national strong regulatory policy has made its pressure even greater.
In March and May last year, the Shihui group was fined 1.5 million yuan for brushing orders and dumping at low prices. Penalties make it cautious in its daily promotions, leading to a sharp decline in order volume. In August last year, the Shihui Regiment began large-scale layoffs in many cities, retreating from more than 2,000 counties and cities to remaining in changsha, Wuhan and other 5 cities to continue to operate, which means that it has become an abandoned son of Ali, and most of the territory has been taken over by MMC. Since then, the Group has launched a number of self-help actions, but the results have been minimal, investors can not see sustainable profit growth, and are destined to usher in a cool ending.