Jia Yueting re-emerged: the commercialization of personal IP turned the tide
Jia Yueting once again became the focus of public opinion. The young man, who was once known as the "star of China's young and promising entrepreneurs", is now in a debt crisis and facing the risk of delisting. Just last week, Faraday Future (FF), a new energy vehicle company he founded, received a delisting opinion letter from Nasdaq, plunging the company into an unprecedented crisis.
As the founder of FF, Jia Yueting launched an unexpected plan this time - to commercialize his personal popularity IP to earn funds to save the company from danger. This can't help but remind people of his initiative to "webcast" his life a few years ago to finance LeEco. It seems that in his eyes, monetizing his influence may be the last straw.
Jia Yueting's twists and turns
Looking back on Jia Yueting's entrepreneurial journey, it can really be described as ups and downs, ups and downs.
In 2004, he founded LeTV, a precedent for pirated video websites. In 2008, LeTV changed its name to LeTV Online. In 2010, LETV launched the first Internet TV in China and became a pioneer in the industry. In 2014, LETV mobile phones were launched and entered the domestic mobile phone market. In 2015, LeEco also entered the field of electric vehicles, announcing that it would create a "future mobile lifestyle".
For a time, Jia Yueting became a hot new technology star, and was known as "the star of China's young promising entrepreneurs" by the outside world. LeTV's business is booming, with a market value of 70 billion yuan. However, as recently as 2016, cracks began to appear in LeEco's ceiling.
Due to the rapid expansion, the company's capital chain went into trouble, and the debt storm began to rage. Jia Yueting himself is also in a debt crisis of tens of billions, becoming "the world's largest personal guarantee case". At the end of 2017, Jia Yueting, his wife Gan Wei and three daughters fled Beijing overnight and moved to the United States, starting a life of exile.
Just when people thought that Jia Yueting would retire from the stage, in 2018, he reappeared in the public eye, with a new entrepreneurial dream - to build a landmark high-end electric car.
FF and the "dilemma"
In 2020, FF, founded by Jia Yueting, finally completed its merger with a special purpose acquisition company and officially listed on the NASDAQ. However, the joy of going public was quickly overshadowed by the company's operating conditions.
The problem of funding has always been a curse that FF has been hard to shake off. On the one hand, FF has very little cash reserves, which is not enough to support mass production; On the other hand, FF's debt problems have also made the capital market shy away from it. In 2022, the FF delivered less than 20 vehicles, with almost zero sales.
At the beginning of May this year, FF received a delisting opinion letter from Nasdaq, and the company is facing a very large risk of delisting. If it is really delisted, FF will completely lose its financing channels, and the outlook will be even bleaker.
Personal IP to save FF?
In the face of such a crisis, Jia Yueting finally launched a new self-help plan - the commercialization of personal IP. In his latest video, he said that he will try to make some money as soon as possible through the commercialization of personal IP, part of which will be used to pay off debts, and part of it will be used to save companies and subsidize car manufacturing.
The so-called personal IP is nothing more than using one's own popularity and influence to earn commercial benefits. For Jia Yueting, although he is now infamous, he still has a certain degree of popularity at home and abroad due to the sensational effect for many years.
He can continue to live stream online, endorse certain brands, attend business events, etc., and always make some money as long as he is willing to monetize his influence. Compared with ordinary people, he is still a lot more famous after all.
Whether FF can really be saved by personal IP is still unknown. Jia Yueting himself said that this is just an attempt to "do his best", and it would be good to subsidize the company's basic operations.
FF Inner and Outer Diseases
In addition to the funding issues, there were also disagreements within FF's management.
Co-CEOs Jia Yueting and Matthias Müller disagree on the company's development path. Jia Yueting hopes to be able to mass produce at one time; Matthias, on the other hand, advocated small-scale trial production first to prevent risks.
The contradictions between the two have not been able to reconcile, which is also an important reason why further financing and development of FF has been blocked. Jia Yueting even bluntly said in the video that he may not be appointed as co-CEO.
In terms of the external environment, FF still faces many challenges.
Competition intensifies. Starting from 2023, a number of new EV manufacturers will successively achieve mass production and launch their own new models. In comparison, FF's technology and products are a bit backward.
The dilemma of the upstream supply chain. Affected by the epidemic and geopolitics, the global shortage of automotive chips persists, and the upstream supply chain is facing great pressure.
The uncertainty of the macroeconomic environment has also cast a shadow on the prosperity of the new energy vehicle market.
The outlook for FF is still very unoptimistic.
Jia Yueting's "Last Stand"
For Jia Yueting personally, FF is his "last stand".
For so many years, he has been fighting hard to get out of the debt crisis and make a comeback. The main reason why FF chose the United States is that it hopes to use overseas markets to raise funds and get rid of the impact of domestic debt entanglement.
FF didn't make its mark in the U.S. market as it had hoped. Now, under the dual pressure of debt and delisting, Jia Yueting has to once again use the self-redemption method of "IP commercialization" to support the company's barely maintaining operations.
But whether you can really save FF with your personal IP is probably difficult. Some analysts even believe that Jia Yueting's move is nothing more than a final preparation for the future "bankruptcy reorganization".