Author | rice cooker
Source | GLG IPO
Provide professional information in the field of IPO and pay attention to the new shares of Gelonghui
Ten years later, Zhihu is finally going to IPO.
Ten years ago, a group of future Internet super unicorns were born in batches. The year 2010 has unquestionably become the first year of the internet history in China. Nowadays, Xiaomi, Meituan, iQiyi, etc. have all landed on the capital market in recent years. Kuaishou, which is slightly behind the listing process, will also be heard in the middle of next month.
On Wednesday, Zhihu just reported the news of writing an IPO report and listing application. It is likely that it will be the last unicorn to be listed in the ten-year period. Although it seems that Zhihu's listing process is only a few steps behind the giants. But in fact, a few steps behind, step by step.
What is the experience of traffic monetization difficulties?
Ten years of grinding a sword, it is inevitable that it is a little late. Although I know how to catch up with the shuttle of this wave of IPO waves, is it really time for this commercial company, which is known for its "elite", to go public? At present, there is still a question mark.
If you want an IPO, you must win a higher market capitalization through "storytelling". The story must be logically self-consistent and look promising. Interestingly, Zhihu has always been seen as the Chinese community with the most stories and the most storytelling, but now when it is its turn to play the protagonist, we find that its capital story is not so simple to tell.
One speculation about knowing that the pace of landing on the capital market is so slow, one possibility is that executives believe that the company is currently undervalued and that the listing will suffer. But why do you have such concerns?
According to the data, as of December this year, the number of registered users has reached 370 million. The number of questions and answers is as high as 260 million, which is double from 130 million last year, and the number of questions has exceeded 44 million.
In contrast, the more social and entertaining tantan and Ali's shared bicycle Hello travel users have just recently exceeded 400 million. In today's Chinese Internet industry, Internet companies that are not from Tencent, Alibaba, and Byte, especially companies that do community, can achieve this achievement, which is quite remarkable. Therefore, Zhihu does not have to worry about traffic problems.
However, listed companies must first consider the problem of business model, and traffic monetization is the key to the hematopoietic ability of Internet companies. Tencent and NetEase have found games, Ali and JD.com are deeply involved in e-commerce, and other Douyin and Baidu are more generally dependent on advertising. At this stage, although there is traffic, it is obvious that a good monetization model has not been found.
Zhihu is essentially a Q&A community, which is why it is called "Quora" in China. From this point of view, the most important business value should be the huge amount of knowledge accumulated in the past ten years. The logic of knowledge realization is the most typical one of Luo Ji's thinking.
In September this year, Luo Ji Manufacturing announced the listing on the Growth Enterprise Market .GEM. According to the prospectus, the company's revenue in 2019 was 630 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to the mother was 120 million yuan. Among them, the online knowledge service business is its core business, contributing 66% of the total revenue and about 400 million revenue. The valuation of the listing of Thinking Creation is about 4 billion yuan, compared with the valuation of 8 billion yuan after the completion of the D round of financing in 2017, the valuation has been cut off, which can be called "bloody listing". Coupled with the decline in monthly activity of the product, the operating income of Thinking Creation fluctuated significantly.
Paid for by knowledge alone, the creation of the mind has not been able to maintain a strong upward trend. The encounter with the creation of thinking may show that in China, where copyright awareness has just awakened, knowledge payment is not yet a mature business model.
Since 2016, Zhihu has begun to test the field of knowledge payment, and has successively launched "Zhihu University", Value, Zhihu LIVE and the salt selection business that is currently the core of knowledge payment. However, with the cold concept of knowledge payment, the knowledge payment business has not become the main force of Zhihu revenue.
Moreover, I know that I am not invincible on this track. Get, online education, ten-point classroom, dragonfly, lychee and so on are all peers. In addition, there are also platforms such as B station, Douyin, and Kuaishou; giant Baidu and today's headlines are gradually digging into this field.
Of course, zhihu undoubtedly belongs to the head platform, but in the face of limited market capacity, crowded tracks, and competitors who have studied subdivisions or have stronger strength, whether they can maintain sufficient competitiveness for a long time remains to be verified.
In addition to knowledge payment, are there other monetization models?
Zhihu's "betrayal"
From the white snow of Yangchun to the people of Lower Riba
At present, I know that I am also seeking change.
Imagine the scenario where you know what to do, subway? firm? classroom? Obviously, in today's more popular video content, due to the limitations of content carriers, it is difficult to occupy too much of people's time. Maybe students and office workers will use zhihu more when touching fish. Maybe listening to books software will be a better choice for fishing? Users have doubts about the use scenarios of Zhihu because Zhihu itself is not very clear about its own positioning.
In 2019, Zhihu launched its short video project that is film, but the project was disbanded after only one month of internal testing; in June this year, Zhihu opened the e-commerce function, creators can bring goods; in October, Zhihu re-entered the short video, added an independent video area on the home page, and launched the "Haiyan Plan" to encourage creators to publish video content.
Zhihu is in place in terms of outlet, but whether it is short video, long video, e-commerce or live broadcast, Zhihu has strong competitors, b station, vibrato, Taobao, Douyu, which is not easy to mess with.
Paying for knowledge is not of much use for the time being, and advertising is still the main source of income for Zhihu. However, limited by the limitations of content carriers and company volume, in the case of the Internet advertising market is increasingly monopolized by a few "bad" companies, Zhihu's advertising business cannot be said to be very successful.
But if you can't afford to provoke the big ones, can't you still provoke the small ones?
At the end of 2019, Zhihu began to expand the online text business: it is necessary to grab business with reading. In Zhihu's mall and salt selection column, you can see a large number of online novel e-books and virtual story paid columns, creators can get members to read click shares, salt selection column subscription fees and copyright transaction fees in Zhihu.
However, after years of development, the online text market has formed a pattern of super and many strong ones, led by Reading, Jinjiang, Douban and the newly entered Ali and Today's Headlines. Although zhihu participated in the war at this time, it was obvious compared with the traditional online text platform. For example, the cultural literacy and acceptance of readers are higher, and the literary themes are more extensive. Moreover, whether it is a reader or a creator, they generally have more pursuit of logic, writing, connotation, etc. Perhaps, the network article may become the next flashpoint of Zhihu, but at present, this attempt has not been successful for the time being.
In the process of continuous exploration, the biggest problem of Zhihu began to stand out: it never had a continuous business line that was supported. It is difficult to cultivate core users to develop payment habits in businesses that span too wide and too complex, after all, in a single field, users can find more subdivided platforms.
In addition, the sense of separation between services is also easy to cause discomfort to users. The loss of both creators and readers is a fatal injury to the content community.
Before it evolved into today's "people on the moon, just got off the space capsule", I know that in the early days of its establishment, it was still very elite. The so-called "talking and laughing have a great confucianism, and there is no white ding", professionals from all walks of life gather together, not just talking. The registration method of invitation + real-name system greatly guarantees the quality of users and a good atmosphere in the community.
However, on the one hand, since 2016, Zhihu has plunged into the tide of commercialization.
"The forest is big and there are all kinds of birds", after the release of registration, it is inevitable to sacrifice some user quality. Coupled with factors such as declining professionalism, increased entertainment, and more advertising, the harmonious atmosphere and user experience of the community are inevitably undermined. Elites have their own pride, for example, Zhihu's active user and investor Kai-Fu Lee has been separated from his friends for a long time;
On the other hand, the incentive system of Zhihu is insufficient, and most of the respondents are engaged in "voluntary labor". Coupled with the rise of new platforms such as today's headlines and b stations, a large number of high-quality creators have left under the attack of internal and external affairs. 17 years of today's headlines high-paying digging more than 300 "big V", this year's half-Buddha immortals turned to station B after the circle, are typical cases.
It is impossible to maintain the original "Yangchun White Snow" temperament, and simply be a grounded "Lower Riba person". Nowadays, Zhihu positions itself more as an entertainment community, and look at Zhihu's hot search terms. I have to say that it is too similar to Weibo. But how should I distinguish myself from Weibo, or communities such as Hupu and Douban?
epilogue
When you are not fully prepared, you may have other considerations as to why you chose to conduct a US stock or Hong Kong stock IPO at this node.
On the one hand, under the global spread of the epidemic, the Fed's quantitative easing policy has greatly improved market liquidity. This year, there is a serious divergence in the trend of US stocks and the state of the US economy. In this case, the heat wave of US stock IPOs was pushed to a climax. So far, there have been 430 IPO deals in U.S. stocks this year, the highest level since 2000.
Among them, the stock price of Wunong Online soared 31 times in the three days, Airbnb soared 113% on the first day of listing, and DoorDash Inc rose 86% on the first day of listing. The Fed continues to send money to the people, the vaccine good news makes the economy expect good, to put it bluntly, the current US stock IPO market, even if it lacks fundamental support, can be hot.
On the other hand, in the case of the Internet industry losing the traffic dividend, the market has entered the era of stock game. The competition within the industry is becoming more and more fierce, the giants fight each other, and the little brothers behind them do not hesitate to let go, competing for the place to the head. In this case, it is undoubtedly a good choice to seek to enhance their competitiveness by landing in the capital market.
The Internet predators who came out at the same time as Zhihu have been listed successively, and the "little brother" Kuaishou, who is a year late, has even become the leading investor in the Zhihu F round of financing. Compared with Zhihu, they who have stepped out of the "peach blossom source" of traffic dividends, even if they are not the top leaders in the industry, have at least found a new world of sudden enlightenment.
And Zhihu is still "walking along the edge of the river, not knowing the distance of the road", looking at the road ahead, "as if there is light". But where is the "light"? Ultraman tells us that if there is no light, it becomes light on its own!
Over the years of accumulation, I know that there are still many big Vs with real dry goods, such as the well-known basketball, football, Jin Yong, the writer in the field of food, Zhang Jiawei, the writer of the food field, Li Yanyan in the field of music, director Lu Yang and actor Zhang Yi; compared with Weibo, Hupu, Douban and other communities, the quality of users is relatively high.
Therefore, in the age of entertainment to death, Zhihu still retains something that can be called a "pure land". This is the advantage of Zhihu, and it is also one of the reasons why it is still optimistic about capital.
How to realize the "Pure Land" is a question that needs to be answered urgently.