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Exclusive|Zhihu marketing head leaves, and the education business may be spun off

The former head of marketing left and was managed by Vice President Zhang Ning

"City Boundary" exclusively learned that Song Xiaoxi, the head of Zhihu marketing, has left her post for two weeks, and she has been in Zhihu for less than two months. In April 2022, after the original head of marketing and Lao Zhihu came to the original resignation, the marketing center was taken over by Zhang Huan, the head of public relations of Zhihu. At the time, insiders saw it as a transitional option.

At the beginning of 2023, Zhang Huan also left from Zhihu. People familiar with the matter believe that the performance of the market sector in the past year may not have been recognized by high-level management.

Now, Zhang Ning, vice president of Zhihu, temporarily manages the marketing department.

Zhang Ning has been highly reused in recent years. At the end of 2017, Zhang Ning was invited by Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of Zhihu, to join and become the head of the company's strategy. In May 2021, the growth department was also handed over to Zhang Ning. According to people familiar with the matter, the split of the growth business at that time may be related to the job encroachment of the original market and growth leaders to the former subordinate employees.

According to an April 2022 article by "City Boundary", after Cai Lin, who is in charge of Zhihu Video, left due to a series of factors such as the decline in DAU, the video business was also transferred to Zhang Ning. At that time, some departing employees speculated that the video department was involved in personnel adjustments, partly because Zhang Ning wanted to rebuild the team.

In addition, Zhang Ning also serves as a special assistant to the CEO in Zhihu, and this pro-generation market business also represents the importance that the company's senior management attaches to the market and other businesses to a certain extent. An employee told Ichijie that the market and other related businesses have not been affected in any way, and "it is still progressing normally, and the April discovery conference is in preparation."

According to data from QuestMobile, in February 2023, Zhihu DAU increased by 5.4% month-on-month, which is higher than Xiaohongshu.

Since entering 2023, Zhihu has indeed made many adjustments. In early January, Zhihu issued an announcement announcing the resignation of the company's CFO Sun Wei. In less than five years, Sun Wei successively operated the company's listing on the New York Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Raising $1 billion in 10 years, Zhihu was once the darling of capital.

In 2011, Zhihu received angel round financing from Innovation Factory, and since then, in addition to multiple rounds of increase in Innovation Factory, well-known investment institutions such as Qiming Venture Capital, SAIF Investment Fund, and Today Capital have participated in it. On the eve of listing, not only star investment institutions are blessings, but also giants such as Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, JD.com, and Kuaishou are investors in Zhihu.

Among them, the one who has been with him the longest is Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Innovation Factory. Kai-Fu Lee has expressed his recognition of Zhihu and Zhihu founder Zhou Yuan in public more than once. However, once staunch supporters have also begun to "vote with their feet".

On February 13, Innovation Factory reduced its holdings of Zhihu US shares by 1.9583 million shares, cashing out 7.39999 million US dollars, and its shareholding ratio dropped from 6.62% to 5.98%. This is the third public reduction of Zhihu since 2023, the previous two occurred on January 18 and February 6.

However, these reductions also have certain market environment changes, benefiting from the outbreak of the ChatGPT concept, and Zhihu's stock price has risen sharply. On February 8, Zhihu Hong Kong stocks rose more than 57% intraday to HK$36.6 per share, and the total market value also successfully exceeded the 10 billion mark, reaching HK$11.7 billion, both hitting record highs since their listing in April last year. This may have become the motivation for capital to cash out.

In April 2022, Zhihu was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The market broke on the first day of listing, falling more than 25% at one point. Just after Zhihu's successful listing in Hong Kong stocks, today Capital reduced its holdings by 12 million shares, and "liquidation" reduced its total holdings by 78%. In addition to Xu Xin Today Capital, several other original shareholders also reduced their holdings: Innovation Factory, Qiming Venture Capital and SAIF sold 7.5 million shares, 3.1658 million shares and 3.25018 million shares respectively.

A former Zhihu employee told City Boundary that there was a circulating speculation that Sun Wei's departure might be related to capital withdrawal. "Either he is the person of the capital, has completed the task, and it is time to withdraw, or he is not, and someone must always be responsible for this." This speculation is not entirely unfounded. When Zhihu went to Hong Kong to list, some analysts said that "Zhihu is not offering shares publicly, but selling shares". The vast majority of the shares offered were from Class A common shares held by early investors in Zhihu.

The pressure of commercialization is still there, and vocational education has a higher status

According to the "City Boundary", Zhihu intends to separate the education sector to further enhance the importance of education.

Zhihu's organizational structure is frequently adjusted. "At least twice a year, the structure changes the big structure, the business direction changes five or six times, and the reporting object also changes back and forth." Previously, a former video employee told "City Boundary" that in 2021, the video department was originally managed by Zhang Rongle, and after adjustment, it was returned to the community, and the community leader was Zhang Ning. After the restructuring in 2022, Zhang Rongle will only be responsible for education and membership income.

Before listing, although the average monthly active users of Zhihu were growing continuously, the increase in the payment rate of the average monthly user subscription was not obvious. Zhihu has always been in a state of increasing income without increasing profits. Therefore, Zhihu tried everything to accelerate the pace of commercialization.

A few days ago, in an exclusive interview with "China Entrepreneur" magazine, Zhou Yuan also bluntly said that Zhihu's income structure is composed of two curves, namely community business and vocational education business.

Specifically, Zhihu's revenue is mainly divided into four major segments: online advertising, paid membership, content commercialization solutions and other businesses (mainly including vocational training and e-commerce services). In the three years from 2019 to 2021, Zhihu's advertising revenue declined year after year, with a decline of more than 50%. At the same time, the proportion of content commercialization solutions has increased year after year, with a year-on-year increase of 617.2%.

In addition to the common selling of advertisements and paid members in the content community, Zhihu after listing has placed its revenue pressure on the content commercialization liberation plan, that is, "Zhi+".

"Zhi+" is a content solution provided by Zhihu's commercialization team for enterprises and individual users at the end of 2020. In essence, Zhi+ is to match accurate traffic and find a more suitable solution for brand owners. But too much commercialization can also lead to one result - the community atmosphere deteriorates, and the quality users slip away at an accelerated pace.

In the past two years, "Zhi+" has been the fastest growing business segment of Zhihu's commercialization, but other businesses do not see the prospect of significantly increasing revenue. Some operation employees told "Shijie" that Zhihu's self-operated e-commerce is relatively difficult, "Products made on this platform of Zhihu cannot be sold on this platform of Zhihu." "For example, there was a team that specialized in making coffee, but found that it could not be pushed on Zhihu, and the traffic was small.

Another Zhihu commercialization partner revealed that Zhihu has significant commercialization pressure, "Almost all business lines have revenue targets, including communities. "Because the traffic pool is small, the internal focus is more on traffic monetization efficiency, and the community business and commercialization departments are also competing.

In this context, the status of vocational education is becoming more and more prominent. Zhou Yuan once said that the construction of education ecology with vocational education as the core is one of Zhihu's long-term strategies. It is also an outlet to balance the community atmosphere and commercialization.

"Vocational education is an extension of the community ecology, and the community is the entrance to vocational education, and the combination of the two is very obvious." Zhou Yuan once explained the logic of Zhihu vocational education in an earnings call.

2022 is regarded by Zhihu as the starting point of the second decade. In the first quarter, Zhihu reflected vocational education as a separate business in its financial report for the first time. Revenue of 39.5 million yuan accounted for about 5.3% of the total revenue, becoming another source of revenue after advertising revenue, paid membership revenue and commercial content solutions. In the same period in 2021, Zhihu's vocational education income was only 3.1 million yuan, less than one-tenth of the first quarter.

According to Zhihu's latest third-quarter financial report, the vocational education business contributed 78 million yuan of revenue, a year-on-year increase of 457.5%. The scale of paying users also increased by 300% year-on-year.

College students and newcomers within five years of entering the workforce are the main paying users of vocational education. This coincides with Zhihu's mainstream user group. Zhihu users under the age of 30 account for more than 73%, according to the latest announcement of 97 million monthly active users, the total number of more than 70 million. This may be the strength of Zhihu to do education.

Since 2019, Zhihu has begun to lay out the vocational education business, and has successively built a Zhihu education business structure system by various means such as joint operation, self-operation, and external investment. At first, Zhihu as a platform provided online sales conversion of courses, and teaching services came from third-party educational institutions. The first batch of partners include: Mantou Business School, Zhiqun, Career Inquiry, Greedy Technology and other career improvement institutions, as well as overseas educational institutions such as Orange La Graduate School and Tudou IELTS.

At the same time, Zhihu expands the hinterland of vocational education through external investment. In August 2021, Zhihu Investment Financial Accounting Online Training Company Character Education, which is the first time Zhihu Education has invested in an education company. In October of the same year, Zhihu invested in the online study abroad examination training institution Paopa Education.

Zhihu has absorbed and integrated these investment education platforms to further layout the adult vocational education track. In June 2022, Zhihu App launched the "Learning Area", which became the entrance to free education courses. In October, Zhihu completed the acquisition of vocational education company Pocket Gardener, whose product "Teacher Together" focuses on teacher preparation services. In December, Zhihu launched a special teaching platform "Zhixuetang" to provide specialized adult vocational education services.

It is not difficult to see that Zhihu will continue to make efforts in vocational education and create a business matrix of "adult education and training (character education, party education) + adult education platform (Zhixuetang App) + content knowledge education (Zhihu)", providing the source power for continuous hematopoiesis for Zhihu, which is eager to turn losses into profits.

However, there are many players in the vocational education market, including education giants such as New Oriental and Good Future that have been entrenched for a long time, as well as the head players in subdivisions such as Zhonggong Education and Chalk Education. Zhihu, which has no professional education genes, needs to continue to work hard if it wants to stand out.

Author | Zhao Zikun

Edit | Dong Yuqing

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