Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Qiao Xue
Cover source | Visual China
The thinking creation founded by Luo Zhenyu is definitely one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult to list.
At the end of March, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange updated the IPO status of the "Obtained" App parent company Thinking Creation to "suspended" due to the expiration of the financial information recorded in the IPO application documents, which suspended the review of its issuance and listing. This means that the "Luo Ji Thinking" that has been bent on listing for a year and a half has encountered obstacles to an IPO. Previously, on April 1 and September 30, 2021, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange suspended its issuance and listing review for the same reason.
Prior to this, Thinking Creation intends to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and only after losing the ChiNext Board, which has been 18 months since its first formal submission of prospectuses to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, during which Time Thinking Creation has received 3 inquiries and handed over 6 prospectuses, and the road to listing can be described as bumpy.
At one end of the scale, the listing has been repeatedly blocked, and at the other end, the main product of Thinking Creation has "obtained" the number of new registered users, paid users, and revenue of the App, which have declined to varying degrees, and the highlights of Luo Zhenyu and "getting" are no longer there. The double whammy of its own problems and the entire environment has put "getting" on an inevitable downward spiral.
Can't stop the slide of "get"
Open the official Weibo of the "Get" App, the latest dynamic is to promote Luo Zhenyu's new book, in order to promote the new book, Luo Zhenyu chose to connect with Many big coffees such as Mei Luo Tianzhen and Yu Minhong in Douyin to create momentum for it.
Not in the "Luo Ji Thinking" public account founded by Luo Zhenyu, nor in the "get" App, the deep meaning of this move is that as the most well-known IP and founder of "get", Luo Zhenyu also needs more traffic outside of his own products.
The loss of traffic is first reflected in the abandonment of users. Thinking Creation also prompted in the prospectus, "the risk of limited growth or continuous decline in various indicators such as App users": from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the number of new registered users of the "Get" App under Thinking Creation was 6.8137 million, 3.975 million, 4.5646 million and 1.7203 million, respectively, and the number of new users in the latest year was less than 1/6 of that of 3 years ago; the number of new paid users in these three years was 1.6491 million, 911,000, respectively. 826,100 and 333,700, less than 1/5 of what it was three years ago.
Obviously, fewer and fewer users are willing to pay for the "knowledge that is "acquired" and "paid".
The sharp decline in the willingness and quantity of users to pay has directly caused a decline in performance. According to the prospectus, in 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021, Thinking Creation achieved operating income of 627 million yuan, 674 million yuan and 438 million yuan respectively, and achieved net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company of 117 million yuan, 40.0635 million yuan and 28.6367 million yuan. During the reporting period, both revenue and net profit showed a downward trend.
An old fan of "get" told Tech Planet that he has recharged more than a thousand yuan on the "get" app, he has gradually not "got" since last year, he believes that "the courses on the get app are no longer attractive", and he is currently changing hands on the second-hand platform to reload coupons, and his "get bei" is changing hands at a 20% discount.
The market environment is changing, but the change of "getting" is very small, and there is no technological attribute, which is why "getting" has always been questioned. However, from the data disclosed by the company in response to the inquiry letter of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, from 2018 to 2021, the proportion of its research and development expenses in the total revenue gradually decreased, 12.75%, 17.94%, 16.32% and 13.42% respectively.
As early as 2017, when Thinking Creation D round of financing, as the most brilliant company in knowledge payment, capital had given a valuation of 8 billion yuan, and now according to the prospectus, the raised funds are 1.037 billion yuan. According to this calculation, after the completion of the fundraising, the valuation of Thinking Creation is about 4 billion yuan.
Behind the "getting" market value slash is the double change of the problem of getting itself and the entire knowledge payment environment.
"Get" ebb and flow
Around 2010, at the time of the transformation of traditional media people, Luo Zhenyu, who had just left CCTV, was one of the typical representatives, at the end of 2012, with the help of Youku, Luo Zhenyu and Shen Yin joined hands to create a knowledge talk show "Luo Ji Thinking"; at the same time, Luo Zhenyu launched a 60-second voice on the "Luo Ji Thinking" WeChat public account every day, and with its intellectual personality and sharp unique views, it did not take long to capture a group of loyal fans.
One proof is that in December 2013, Luo Zhenyu launched the "most unreasonable member recruitment in history", easily raising 8 million yuan in one day. At that time, money was still very valuable, not the era of talking about a small goal at every turn.
The rise of knowledge payment stems in part from people's unknowns and anxieties about the information age. Therefore, those voices that seem to be more authoritative in the economic and Internet fields are quickly accepted and held high, which is to "get" the dividends of the times that have been obtained.
After listening to Luo Zhenyu's speech, Chen Chen, who just graduated from college, was quickly attracted by Luo Gao's superb language expression ability, he downloaded the "Get" App, and hoped to broaden his horizons and conduct self-analysis here, facing a job search after graduation, he purchased several courses on career planning and workplace image, but after a study, Chen Chen found that he still did not know what type of work he was suitable for, and the job search process was still hitting a wall.
There are not a few people like Chenchen who have higher expectations for knowledge payment, but the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment.
"Get" is indeed the highlight of the field of knowledge payment, in 2017 "Xue Zhaofeng's Economics Class" in the "get" App launched, only 70 days of subscriptions exceeded 100,000, 2018 column subscriptions reached 340,000, according to the price of 199 yuan per copy, Xue Zhaofeng alone brought 67.77 million yuan of revenue to the platform, according to the "get" revenue of the year, Xue Zhaofeng alone contributed nearly one-third of the platform.
Subsequently, "get" successively out a number of knowledge stars such as Xue Zhaofeng, Xiang Shuai, Wu Jun, etc., but with the loss of time, the public's aesthetic fatigue of the big V is also intensifying, and the dry content of the big coffee is gradually output, such as "get" the app's first online subscription column product "Li Xiang Knowledge Internal Reference", no matter how much efforts Li Xiang's team has made, it can not stop the decline in subscription volume, the content opening rate has declined, and the influence of big V has gradually been overdrawn. After 3 years, it was forced to shut down.
In 2017, Xue Zhaofeng joined "Get", and in 2019, the subscription reached 460,000, and now it is 560,000, which is also more than 2 years, only an increase of 100,000, and it can be seen that the growth rate of subscribers has slowed down sharply. Another example is Wu Jun of Silicon Valley, in 2019, as the fourth largest supplier, its sale of the course "Letter from Silicon Valley" has a total of 148,000 people to join the study, and now only 166,000 people, only about 20,000 increases in 3 years, which may not be as fast as the increase in fans of a knowledge blogger on Douyin.
Even the influence of Luo Zhenyu, the largest IP on "getting", young people are getting less and less buying, taking the "Friend of Time" New Year's Eve speech as an example, from 2017 to 2019, its refund rate has increased year by year, to 2.90%, 4.99%, 14.12%; in 2020, the proportion has risen to 43.29% due to the epidemic.
On the other hand, some people also believe that "getting" sells "light knowledge", and an old user who "gets" for 3 years tells Tech Planet that "getting" is becoming mediocre, the curriculum is getting lighter and lighter, from hundreds of annual classes to more than a dozen small lessons, which makes the "get" content quality can not be precipitated, and users can only continue to increase their income by pulling new users after loss.
"Get" is indeed becoming "light", Tech Planet query found that the courses on "get" are roughly more than ten to dozens of lessons, the content is readable, the pursuit of short and fast, short course cycle, catering to the characteristics of modern people's fast pace of work, but correspondingly, it also brings users to question the level of the course, and even criticized for "selling knowledge anxiety".
Some companies will purchase "get" courses for employee training, and Xiaochao's company will open "get" members for employees, but because everyone's enthusiasm for learning is not high, Xiaochao began to do the second-way dealer business, buying accounts from colleagues at low prices, and then reselling them to earn the difference. But according to Xiao Chao, before at least one account could be sold every month, but from the end of last year to March this year, now a single has not been sold.
Another major failure of "getting" came from the wishful thinking that Luo Zhenyu had played.
In 2017, it was the rise of short videos such as Douyin Kuaishou, but at that time, he focused on storing traffic water to his own "get" small platform, starting from March 2017, the "Luo Ji Thinking" program changed from video form to audio, from weekly broadcast to small daily broadcast, and fully transferred to the "get" APP, all other audio and video platforms are no longer updated, ignoring the opportunity to make a platform rise, and can be called "perfect" missed short video outlet.
Nowadays, the time shift is easy, and those who want to turn around have also encountered more opponents.
More and stronger opponents
Luo Zhenyu once told such a proud story: He saw such an order in the background of the "get" mall, and the address was left opposite the auto repair shop in a town in a certain ethnic autonomous county in Guizhou, and he bought a copy of "General Knowledge of Economics". "If such a person were not our disseminator, he would probably never know what economics is for the rest of his life."
To this day, this story full of self-improvement still sounds touching.
However, to provide such a platform for disseminating knowledge and broadening horizons, it has long been more than "getting" one.
On the track of main knowledge payment, there are already many institutions such as Fan Deng Reading Club, Chaos University, and Ba Jiuling, which have divided up the originally small knowledge payment market with "getting". On the other hand, the knowledge payment market has a more generalized trend, and short video platforms have also begun to use knowledge as a power track, and "get" faces a larger opponent.
In 2019, Station B opened the internal test of paid courses; in 2020, Station B divided the "knowledge area" into first-level partitions, and public data showed that in 2021, 183 million users have learned on Station B, and this contains a lot of free content.
On the other hand, the "2021 Douyin Data Report" released by Byte mentioned that the total time spent by users listening to open college classes in Douyin this year exceeded 1.45 million hours. Douyin also began to notice the potential energy of knowledge content, at the end of 2021, Douyin launched a "learning channel", public data shows that the Douyin platform in 2021 pan-knowledge content playback volume increased by 74% year-on-year, pan-knowledge content playback accounted for 20% of the total playback of the platform, and these data multiplied by DAU (daily active) more than 600 million douyin, will also be a huge number.
And only the vision is limited to the knowledge payment model, first exposed the contradiction between supply and demand, generally speaking, once the user's needs are met, it will be precipitated on the Internet product or platform, but the knowledge payment is different, if the user has been upgraded with thinking cognition and competitiveness, the value of these knowledge payment products is no longer valuable to them, which directly leads to the result of user survival instability.
Chen Ke, an old member who recharged on "get" for 2 years, told Tech Planet that he completely abandoned "get" this year, more than 2 years, he has listened to hundreds of books in "get", recharged thousands of yuan, he believes that the course of getting on has appeared to be lacking, although it has been updated, but there are so many big coffee, there is no updated dry goods can be output, for a new user who has just contacted, may feel novel, but for old users, it is not attractive. Unable to satisfy his curiosity and exploration of new fields, he was recently taking photography-related courses at Station B.
The courses that can be offered on "Get" are mainly based on economics, algorithmic techniques, and history, while the content of quadratic, niche, science fiction, dance, and music that is closer to young audiences is not involved. Although the long-tail effect of the Internet is often reflected in the creation of extraordinary value for a small number of people, compared with vertical platforms, comprehensive platforms can better meet the diversified needs of users and promote user growth and increase payment.
The Internet has fragmented time apart even more, and learning is never the only option, or even the first choice.
Regarding the decline in users, the explanation for this is that the environment of home isolation during the epidemic period has increased the public's demand for online entertainment consumption, the demand and willingness for online independent education have been relatively weakened, and to a certain extent, online learning time has been squeezed by other recreational activities.
The data in the "2021 China Pan-knowledge Payment Industry Report" shows that the market size of China's pan-knowledge payment industry has been maintained at an increase of more than 40%. "Short video + live broadcast" has become one of the most popular mainstream positions, with more than 70% of users learning through short videos.
Generation Z young people do not understand spending thousands of yuan to grab a speech seat, they deconstruct authority, but they are more willing to brush zhihu, pay attention to the UP master of the B station, brush the vibrato blogger, these free and massive pan-knowledge content, is a little bit of dissolving the knowledge payment empire built by Luo Zhenyu.
Young people still "love wisdom and seek truth", but the problem is that the times have changed, the way young people study has also changed, and the "getting" without much change is also getting farther and farther away from their highlight moments.
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