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What has "gained" been lost over the years?

What has "gained" been lost over the years?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Koi Finance

After 2021, the popularity of knowledge payment in vertical platforms has taken a sharp turn, and many people no longer rely on courses to enrich their spiritual world. Especially the arrival of the epidemic has made it difficult for many people to calm down and study, even if it is watered by "chicken soup", it cannot soothe the restlessness in the hearts of young people.

As a representative of the knowledge payment platform, the development of app in recent years is also difficult to say. According to the 2021 China Knowledge Payment Platform Ranking released by China Business Intelligence, Zhihu, Himalaya, Tencent Classroom, Dragonfly FM, and Fan Deng Reading ranked in the top 5. And got only ranked 12th.

At the same time, at the end of March, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange updated the IPO status of the parent company of "Get" App to "suspend", disclosing that the financial information recorded in the IPO application documents was expired, and the review of its issuance and listing was suspended. The listing of the creator of the mind is a good interpretation of the truth of one drum, then decline, and three exhaustion. Because previously, on April 1 and September 30, 2021, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange suspended its issuance and listing review for the same reason.

Obviously, Luo Zhenyu's abacus has not started, and the dividend period of knowledge payment has long passed. The thinking creation that cannot be listed has encountered a bottleneck, how long can it last by relying on the IP of "Luo Zhenyu"?

01 "Luo Zhenyu" IP is losing its aura

Looking back at Luo Zhenyu's latest New Year's Eve speech, there are a total of 53 stories, in addition to the stories tailored for advertisers, but also mixed with the publicity of the teachers from time to time. Netizens bluntly said that Luo Zhenyu is more like an entrepreneur who promotes products than an orator who transmits value points.

In fact, the controversy over Luo Zhenyu has never stopped. Even Li Shengshen even laughed in front of the show about Luo Zhenyu actually doing "pyramid schemes". Although there are exaggerated elements, the controversy over them is evident.

For example, in his 15-year New Year's Eve speech, Luo Zhenyu praised companies like Storm Video and LeTV as the existence of "new species". But after Jia Yueting went to the United States, he has not returned, and Feng Xin is also deeply imprisoned. In 2016, Luo Zhenyu also delivered a speech arguing that the self-media should not advertise, and would never raise funds until the last resort. But when Luo Zhenyu's Papi sauce opened a large-scale advertising tender, Luo Zhenyu gave a contextual explanation of the speech at that time, and said that advertising is a good way for content entrepreneurs to get good income.

There are many more such cases that cannot be justified. Regarding the new species incident, some netizens pointed out that in the New Year's Eve speech that year, Feng Xin as a sponsor, Luo Zhenyu had the responsibility and obligation to prove for the "gold lord", which is a normal thing. Linked to a concept that Luo Zhenyu said in an interview earlier that the company promotes, it is not difficult to understand why this is the case, not asking right and wrong, only talking about friendship.

Unfortunately, including Jia Yueting and Feng Xin, as well as Liu Chuanzhi, who was honored with the entrepreneurial spirit, and Wang Shi, who was invited to give a speech on the spot, are now in a rather awkward situation.

The only one who can compete with Luo Zhenyu's magical "poisonous milk" skills is Luo Yonghao, another old Luo who has been ridiculed as an "industry lamp".

According to the data, Luo Zhenyu's New Year's Eve speech "Friends of Time" once helped Shenzhen Satellite TV win the first place in the ratings, but by 2020, the ratings of his New Year's Eve speech at the same time period had fallen out of the top 8. From 2017 to 2020, its refund ratio is increasing year by year, 2.90%, 4.99%, 14.12%, 43.29%, in 2021, due to the epidemic situation, the speech was changed to online live broadcast, otherwise according to this trend, it is estimated that it is difficult to end with dignity.

Obviously, Luo Zhenyu's IP effect is gradually disappearing.

The establishment of the APP may be one of the turning points for Luo Zhenyu to be complained about by netizens, among which the most criticized by the public itself is the quality of the course. Some courses in the App were accused by netizens of insufficient professionalism and practicality of knowledge. In addition, it is also considered that the content on the platform is not good, and to this day, one of the best-selling courses is still Xue Zhaofeng's early economics class.

Just as the "Fan Deng Reading Club" is highly bound to Fan Deng, and the "Ba Jiu Ling" is highly bound to Wu Xiaobo, "Get" is also highly bound to Luo Zhenyu. Under this model, the traffic of IP has a decisive impact on enterprises, after all, revenue models such as membership fees, New Year's Eve speeches, and private board meetings mainly rely on the traffic brought by IP to survive. When "Luo Zhenyu" begins to fail as an IP, the loss of traffic will have an important adverse impact on the app obtained.

Therefore, with the gradual loss of users due to the failure of Luo Zhenyu's IP, the revenue of its parent company, Thinking Creation, has also begun to decline. According to the data, from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the operating income of Thinking Creation was 738 million yuan, 628 million yuan, 675 million yuan and 439 million yuan, an increase of 32.64%, -14.91%, 7.43% and 30.81% respectively year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company was 0.53 billion, 117 million, 0.4 billion and 0.29 billion yuan, respectively.

What has "gained" been lost over the years?

The loss of IP traffic "get" is in the mire, but has not found a better way out, has been terminated three times in a row, it is also reasonable.

02 "Knowledge payment" blue ocean into the past

In 15 and 16 years, with the gradual enhancement of the public's awareness of knowledge payment, a wave of knowledge payment began to blow, and many knowledge payment platforms also appeared, but then, the entire industry entered a fierce competition.

The traffic of the app in this competition has also begun to show a sharp downward trend. In 2017, the average monthly active life can remain above 2.5 million, and in 2019, the average monthly active monthly life is only about 1.5 million.

According to the data, in the four reporting periods from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the number of new registered users of the App was 6.8137 million, 3.975 million, 4.5646 million and 1.7203 million, and the number of new paid users was 1.6491 million, 911,000, 826,100 and 333,700, respectively.

In fact, this has a certain relationship with the user's awareness of payment. According to data from iiMedia Research, only 26.6% of users are very optimistic about the development prospects of China's knowledge payment industry, of which 51.9% of users believe that the knowledge payment platform advertising and invalid information push too much, and 49.5% of users think that the platform is not professional and practical.

Obviously, this has made users stop believing in paid courses, and consumption has become more rational and "measured". Ai Media Consulting data shows that the knowledge paid users are mainly over 30 years old, and the monthly income is mainly concentrated below 10,000 yuan. Compared with the high-priced course, users also pay more attention to the cost performance of the choice of knowledge, and if the APP wants to break through, it is necessary to tap more of its own irreplaceable value.

While losing traffic, the creation of thinking is also losing the favor of capital. In September 2020, Thinking Creation disclosed the prospectus for the first time, and before that, it has experienced five rounds of financing, of which Liu Chuanzhi, Yu Minhong, Fu Sheng and many other well-known entrepreneurs have participated. However, the prospectus shows that Thinking Creation intends to publicly issue no more than 10 million shares, accounting for no less than 25% of the share capital after the issuance, and raise 1.037 billion yuan. After conversion, the company's valuation is only about 4 billion yuan, while the company's valuation after the D round of financing is as high as 7.368 billion yuan.

To this day, Thinking Creator has accepted 3 inquiries and submitted 6 prospectuses, but it has not yet passed the review. In fact, under the high degree of binding with Luo Zhenyu, before finding a better transformation path, the successful listing is close to zero.

2017 and 2018 were the peak periods for the equity increase and change of Thinking Creation, but several three-time listing failures made the situation of getting the APP very embarrassing. At the same time, the government's subsidies for thinking creations have also declined in recent years, and during the reporting period, the amount of government subsidies included in other income of the company was 11.6667 million yuan, 14.2683 million yuan, 12.2962 million yuan and 3.3576 million yuan, respectively.

Obviously, the balance of capital is no longer tilted towards "knowledge payment", and the realm of getting app is more like walking on thin ice.

03 Biggest mistake: Missing the short video "outlet"?

According to the "2021 China Pan-Knowledge Payment Industry Report", the market size of China's pan-knowledge payment industry has maintained 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.

In 2020, Station B launched the "Knowledge Zone", and public data shows that in 2021, 183 million users have learned on Station B, and it contains a large amount of free content. At the same time, at the end of 2021, Douyin launched the "Learning Channel", and public data shows that the playback volume of pan-knowledge content on the Douyin platform in 2021 will increase by 74% year-on-year, and the playback of pan-knowledge content will account for 20% of the total playback volume of the platform. And the "2021 Douyin Data Report" shows that users listen to the total length of open courses in colleges and universities for up to 1.45 million hours.

What has "gained" been lost over the years?

This undoubtedly shows that the advent of the short video era is actually more suitable for users to learn fragmented knowledge. And the mental creation of the switch to audio obviously made it a missed opportunity.

Thinking Creator mainly provides courses, listening books and e-books and other products online through the App and LuoJi Thinking WeChat public accounts, while offline it provides general education and skills training services in the form of obtaining the Institute of Advanced Studies and "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speeches.

Compared with the knowledge payment model of other short video platforms, the content type of app obtained is relatively single, and it lacks obvious advantages in competition with comprehensive APP. Moreover, based on the popularity and traffic of platforms such as B station and Douyin, it is more able to attract more KOLs than to get in, which is undoubtedly a blow to the bottom of the pot.

After getting the APP to miss the short video outlet, and when the learning mode of fragmented knowledge is replaced by short video, if you can't find an effective breakthrough path in time, it will be further eaten by major short video platforms. Coupled with the current decline in spending power, users' desire to pay for knowledge has declined, and free short and effective learning methods have once again been welcomed by the public. The resulting business model will be further limited by a certain degree of development.

It is undeniable that the choice of thinking to invest in "lifelong education" is undoubtedly correct, in 2021, the comprehensive lifelong education industry will maintain a high-speed growth trend, the market size is expected to reach about 300 billion yuan, the next three years will maintain the growth momentum, the average annual compound growth rate is expected to be about 16%. Among them, online comprehensive lifelong education accounts for about 40%.

However, the creation of thinking has not made a content advantage, and is now facing the embarrassing situation of user loss. Competition in the field of knowledge payment is already fierce, and in the face of more competitors who have their own unique advantages, the creation of thinking is obviously lagging behind. For example, Tencent Classroom, which has newly joined the track, has a monthly visitor of up to 26 million, more than 130,000 institutions, and about 400,000 courses on the shelf. This data is already difficult to reach for the core products of the creation of the mind.

In the process of development of the APP, it once became a unicorn that was optimistic about the industry, and now it has missed the outlet and development opportunities one after another, and Luo Zhenyu's own influence is gradually decreasing, whether it can get out of the predicament or escape the fate of being photographed on the beach, it is worth the reflection and reference of the entire industry.

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