With 3 years of time, it has become the largest crowdfunding platform in China, and now, the roll call time is diluting the identity label of "crowdfunding", and the positioning after reversing the direction is: intelligent hardware launch platform. I was surprised to hear CEO Zhang You talk about this.
Similarly, the "crowdfunding network", which started last year and was promoted by Cyberspace Finance, has also begun to try to enter the sensitive area of crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding in the case of little improvement in the traditional crowdfunding model.
The two crowdfunding websites that have been made up of wind and fire are already the largest representatives of the domestic crowdfunding platform, and others such as Dream Chasing Network, Taomeng Network, etc. are facing vertical fields and are relatively niche; the leaders are invariably busy with transformation, and the biggest internal factor is that the overseas crowdfunding model is difficult to work in the domestic market; the biggest external factor is that the rise of intelligent hardware and the Internet financial fever have given new opportunities to the products in the marginal area of crowdfunding.
First, the overseas crowdfunding model is difficult to implement at home
One set of data that is often endorsed by the crowdfunding industry is that the World Bank predicts that the global crowdfunding market will reach $300 billion by 2025, of which $50 billion will be in China. But looking at the present, China's crowdfunding market and overseas market are two worlds.
Most of the domestic crowdfunding websites borrow from the models of overseas KickStarter, Indiegogo and other companies, and there are several common models in crowdfunding: donation crowdfunding, in-kind feedback crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding, and bond crowdfunding. The type of physical feedback is the most acceptable, and the previous two are in this direction. The roll call time is also introduced in China according to KickStarter's crowdfunding model, but KickStart's profit model of taking commissions is difficult to work in China.
Before seeing the product, domestic users are still less motivated by pure support and can give support without asking for returns. Therefore, there are few users who are willing to support crowdfunding in China, and the money that can be raised is very limited, even in accordance with foreign practices, it is difficult to maintain development by charging a commission of about 10%. The roll call time was simply changed to a free model in the first half of last year, and no commission was charged.
Crowdfunding network last year to implement a large project for inWatch crowdfunding, according to industry insiders, the final million scale of crowdfunding, a large part of the actual is in the form of crowdfunding network investment to complete, in the country to really from the user's hands to promote the original purpose of the project this crowdfunding original purpose, it is difficult. As a result, the crowdfunding platform has become a publicity platform for many product exposures, project promotions and public recognition.
KickStarter earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year by taking commissions (3 million people raised $480 million in 2013). There are some good projects in China that have also begun to pan for gold on KickStarter for the purpose of financing and being recognized by the international market. A recent case is Antvision Technology, which makes virtual reality helmets, successfully raised $210,000 on KickStart in 7 days. Shenzhen Umiji Technology's smart watch Omate simply regards KickStarter as a sales platform, with tens of thousands of units shipped on crowdfunding channels last year. However, in the domestic market, it will be more difficult to raise 100,000 yuan, and more participants are out of the need for product exposure, which is a point that they all agree with in the communication with a number of entrepreneurs who participated in domestic crowdfunding attempts in the early days.
Second, the opportunity of intelligent hardware
I remember that when I interviewed Zhang You in mid-last year, smart hardware was only a small category of crowdfunding projects in the name of time, and what helped him establish his early reputation had nothing to do with intelligent hardware, but a number of literary and art crowdfunding projects, concerts, travel books and the like.
Now they have completely changed this direction, and the Slogan in the home page tab has been changed to China's largest smart product launch platform. The three crowdfunding projects are classified into fashion technology, creative design, and literary and artistic life, most of which are the first type of projects, creative design has been empty, and there is only one comic project that has been successfully crowdfunded in literary and artistic life lying there alone.
Why? I asked Zhang You, and Zhang You told me the answer with a picture, which summed up in one sentence that the future opportunities are in the Internet of Everything, and smart hardware is a key role in it. The example that makes him feel that smart hardware is still promising is that whether it is smart home, smart wear or sports products, they are still in the more basic 1.0 era, and they are still far from the ideal state of "smart" hardware.
This chart divides the development of network technology into three stages, before 2008 was the era of the PC Internet, which has made Sohu, Sina and other Internet companies; after 2008 to the present is the era of mobile Internet, which has achieved the three giants of BAT; the next will be the era of the Internet of Things of everything, which will produce new giant companies.
For the transformation of the roll call time, a simpler understanding is that since the domestic crowdfunding platform has become a place for project exposure and publicity, why not go with the flow and do this alone. The best representative to endorse it is BroadLink, a smart home startup that has received tens of millions of dollars in investment since it landed on roll call in February 2013.
In a later exchange, he elaborated on the logic of the so-called launch platform. The development of a hardware project is divided into rhythm control of early development, the debut of intermediate products, and the docking of subsequent channels. They want to engage with entrepreneurs in all three ways, and the key is to make the product debut on their platform. Hardware projects are exposed through this platform, and roll call uses the resources of the first project to gather channels and developers and become a center.
Third, whether Internet finance can save crowdfunding
"It wasn't until the end of last year that I found a little bit of a crowdfunding feeling at the beginning of the year." Wangxin Financial CEO Sheng Jia recently lamented. Although the crowdfunding network, which has been established for only one year, has tried new points many times, the promotion of crowdfunding in China is not significant.
The crowdfunding network under Netinfo Finance is only one of its Internet financial products. So, from the beginning, the crowdfunding network's approach was not quite the same as KickStarter's overseas model. In the past year, although packaging has implemented several projects, it is not satisfactory in terms of scale and crowdfunding influence.
Its recent move is to seek a change, while the crowdfunding network continues to promote traditional crowdfunding projects such as technology, publishing, design, etc., it has set up another sub-brand original association and begun to enter the sensitive area of equity crowdfunding. In fact, the so-called equity crowdfunding is more like a kind of financing with crowdfunding labels, and the participating players are still investment institutions or angel investors, which is completely different from the general public of crowdfunding users.
According to a person in charge of the original society, the core of equity crowdfunding is "optimizing capital allocation and simplifying the investment process." Therefore, equity crowdfunding is actually closer to financial investment, and it is far from the commonly understood "crowdfunding".
Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler also recently publicly stated that even though the Jobs Act in the United States has given the green light to start-up companies to invest in equity crowdfunding at the judicial level, Kickstarter has no interest in the equity crowdfunding model and will not get involved in this field. His rationale is, "The reason we like Kickstarter today is because people are willing to pay for cool-looking projects and get excited about them, and it has nothing to do with making money." ”
Fourth, whether the choice of transformation is reliable
The transformation of crowdfunding networks and roll call time is a choice that goes with the flow. Borrow the shell of crowdfunding and go the other way. Is this a reliable choice? For the equity crowdfunding of the crowdfunding network, if there is no policy risk, it will be a very helpful model for domestic early entrepreneurs, so that the threshold of investment and financing has been lowered. But this is getting farther and farther away from the concept of crowdfunding itself.
I am conservative about the transformation direction of the roll call. "Intelligent hardware launch platform" This is a relatively vague positioning, first of all, the roll call itself is not a large channel provider, at the same time, it is not a vertical media form, more like a combination of the two, plus crowdfunding model packaging.
Its advantage is that it has accumulated a large number of intelligent hardware innovation projects, with popularity and brand base, Zhang You said that its goal this year is to find 2500 to 3000 smart device projects. Its role is that of users, smart hardware entrepreneurs, smart hardware channels, investors, and Internet companies.
However, due to Baidu's re-promotion of the Baidu Insider plan and JD.com's re-promotion of the JD+ plan, these means for smart hardware are also surrounding the intelligent hardware innovation projects. How to refine its core competitive advantages and explore a viable profit model is difficult.
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Sohu IT Guoren