Author: Wu Meimei Editor: Judy
Source: IT oranges are in 2023, and there is capital investing in social projects? In the "little thing" of social entrepreneurship, it is always closer to feelings and original intentions, and seems to be far away from business and money. To this day, in the social industry with behemoths such as WeChat and Facebook, there are still unmet social needs, and new social projects are still emerging and getting investment. In the entire 2022 year, the big companies in the global social field did not make many splashes - in the United States, Tesla CEO Musk first acquired about 9.2% of Twitter's shares for $2.8 billion, becoming Twitter's largest shareholder. After that, Musk planned to completely acquire Twitter, although there were several twists and turns, but finally came to fruition - Musk officially entered Twitter, this international social product is undergoing major changes. In China, on the last day of 2022, "Douyin Chat" was quietly launched, and Douyin, with more than 600 million daily active users, is still trying to climb over the mountain of social networking while folding multiple social apps such as Duo Flash, Fei Chat, and Party Island; On the other hand, Blued Blue City Brothers, a Chinese concept stock social company and LGBTQ community, was privatized in August 2022 due to a long-term low stock price and officially delisted from NASDAQ. Looking at the startup level, the number of social startups that have received new financing worldwide is also very few, and it has reached the bottom of nearly a decade.
Although the financing and entrepreneurship of the social circle is quite unpopular and niche, there are always new opportunities, and we have also seen new social projects that capital pays attention to more vertical segmentation.
It is worth paying attention to new projects of foreign social networking
In the semi-acquaintance social circle, there are two new projects worth paying attention to: OneRoof in the United States and Smiile in Europe. In early January, OneRoof, a neighborhood networking program in the United States, closed a $3.2 million seed round in funding. To date, OneRoof has received a total of $4.45 million in investment. OneRoof aims to connect people in the same residential building around common interests such as hobbies. It helps people living in the same apartment building connect, exchange information, buy and sell items, and create opportunities to meet in real life, creating a sense of community. Smiile is a French social networking platform that brings together all players living in the local area on the same platform, where residents of the same neighborhood or city can exchange objects, family carpools, or services, among others.
Source: Smiile official website According to official information, Smiile currently operates in 5 countries including France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, covering 28,000 communities and 500,000+ resident users; At the same time, the website supports English, French and Japanese.
According to Crunchbase, Smiile currently raises around €3 million.
A new Chinese social project worth watching
Founded in 2021, RoseTech is independently incubated by the data business of DeepTech, a leading technology innovation service platform. With the needs of scientific researchers as the core, Luoxiang Science helps the exchange and integration of production, education and research, the transformation of scientific research results, and gathers scientific research information, academic interaction and resource cooperation platform. Up to now, Luoyi Science claims to have more than 100,000 registered users, of which more than 20% are researchers.
Source: The official website of Lotus Science In addition, RoseScience has developed the Web3-oriented scientific research community product "Sciverse" in the context of active Web3 innovation. Based on blockchain and related technologies, the product creates digital identities for researchers, clarifies the ownership of benefits of scientific research results, and advocates data assetization and data circulation. In October 2022, Zhongke Chuangxing, an early investment institution in the domestic hard technology track, invested in the Series A of Luoxi Science, with an investment amount of tens of millions of yuan. IT Orange analysis, this investment is the layout of the most advanced link of the entire scientific research industry chain, which is convenient for better understanding and docking with scientific research workers, and helping them do a good job in early project business incubation. Founded in August 2020, Shenzhen Aldebaran Network Technology Co., Ltd. is an interest community service tool provider, mainly solving the management difficulties of activities, personnel and content of vertical communities, and redefining the revenue distribution method between "product-community-user". In November 2022, the company received an angel round of financing from Laiya Capital with an investment of millions of yuan.
Source: LattePlus/Latte official website
According to IT Orange, the product developed by the company is called LattePlus, and users can join various clubs, sign up for activities organized by the club, and view photos/texts/videos shared by organizers. At present, the clubs on the LattePlus/Latte platform are mainly based on common sports, including frisbee, football, badminton, etc.
China and foreign 2022 Social financing similarities and differences: different stages, similar directions
According to IT Orange data, there were 34 investment events in the primary market social sector in 2022, a 62% decrease from 89 in 2021. Among them, there were 20 overseas social events and 14 domestic ones. Thirteen funding rounds occurred in the US, accounting for 65% of overseas social financing.
In terms of financing amount, the number of financing events in the social sector of China and the United States in 2022 is similar, but the financing amount is far from the same. The United States raised 3.25 billion yuan, far more than China. The main reason behind this is that American Social not only has early stage investment, but also has multiple mid- and late-stage financings in 2022, including C2C creative learning community Domestika received $110 million in Series D financing; C2C event publishing/ticketing booking management platform Events.com announced a $100 million strategic financing round in 2022, among other things. Almost all of the social projects financed in China in 2022 are in the early stage, and mature social companies have no new financing. In addition, India, France, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Iceland, etc. have 1 or 2 sporadic social company financings. Looking at the direction of the social companies that have obtained financing, the new social entrepreneurship project is basically reaching out to a group of strangers, or neighbors on the same floor who are in a state of half-acquaintance and half-strangers. In terms of solving the needs of dating, social projects generally need to meet one of the three core needs of life, emotions and industry communication, and there is no clear boundary between the three, which can correspond to three types of social segmentation projects: interest community, marriage and dating, and business socialization.
The data shows that regardless of China and abroad, interest communities are social projects that investors are more willing to invest in, and compared with more purposeful social networking such as marriage and workplace growth, the atmosphere of interest social networking is more casual and relaxed. In addition, the social projects that have been invested in are increasingly focused on small circles, serving only people with specific attributes. For example, the with/micro to voice developed by Beijing Yueer Qingxin Technology Co., Ltd. is a female voice companion community application; Red Pine Academy serves the elderly who are retired in China; The Project Z community serves young Gen Z users interested in Web3 in Europe and the United States; Huancheng Interactive Entertainment has developed a social app that serves the Muslim world. It is worth noting that like the HackerRank project in the United States, which was established earlier and has experienced 10 years of development, it has transformed from a social network company/programmer community into a platform that provides technical recruitment and programming training, and its current business model is to charge the B side of the enterprise to help enterprises recruit and train programmers. At present, interest communities and workplace social projects, including Red Pine Academy, Lingzhi, and Domestika, tend to have a clearer business model than pure social projects, they gather specific user groups and provide them with live or recorded courses to charge. Here, education and socialization are a logical combination, and the path of making money is more feasible. However, in the same profit model of providing paid courses, there are also differences between social/community projects at home and abroad, and more B2C institutionalized courses are operated in China, while C2C is mostly in the United States, and the course provider or event organizer is an individual. In addition to product establishment, how to obtain target user groups and how to commercialize is still a major proposition for social companies.
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