Produced the "New Horizons" in-depth reporting team Phoenix Network Technology
Author | Jiang Lu
Edit | Zhao Ze
Core Tips:
1. The current Kuaishou, whether it is the performance of the capital market or the operating performance, has no small problem. In the face of the sniper attack of Douyin and WeChat video numbers, Kuaishou has not even been able to show a strong attack and effective defense capabilities.
2. Since its listing in February this year, Kuaishou's market value has plummeted from HK$1.7 trillion at its peak to HK$433 billion at present. In the first half of the year, Kuaishou's revenue maintained growth, but the loss was also expanding, with a loss of 4.77 billion yuan in the second quarter alone, an increase of 146.2% year-on-year.
3. Some internal employees of Kuaishou said that it seems that Suhua has turned behind the scenes, but it is more like a concession made by the management for development. "Dual-core management is over, but the company is at the helm of both founders."
The fast hand plagued by "big company disease" finally began to save itself.
After the close of the last trading day in October, Kuaishou announced a major organizational restructuring, with founder Su Hua resigning as CEO immediately and another co-founder, Cheng Yixiao, taking over the position. Su Hua continued to serve as chairman, executive director and member of the remuneration committee of Kuaishou.
This personnel adjustment is crucial for Kuaishou. Because the current kuaishou, whether it is the performance of the capital market or the operating performance, there are no small problems.
Since its listing in February this year, Kuaishou's market value has plummeted from HK$1.7 trillion at its peak to HK$433 billion at present, evaporating nearly 70%. What is even more embarrassing is that in the face of the sniper attack of Douyin and WeChat video number, Kuaishou has failed to show strong attack and effective defense capabilities.
Some voices believe that the reason why Kuaishou is in trouble is largely due to the dual-core management structure within the company. A former Kuaishou employee said, "Kuaishou's internal main product operation, games, e-commerce and other businesses are in the hands of Cheng Yixiao, and Suhua is mainly responsible for the company's strategy, investment and financing." If Cheng Yixiao does not cooperate and support resources, Su Hua's management is like talking on paper. ”
Although Kuaishou denied the discord rumors and said that the new CEO continued to report to chairman Su Hua, in fact, Kuaishou has been making drastic adjustments to the organizational structure.
Now, the founder of THE GIF, Cheng Yixiao, has returned to the front of the stage, and the manager Su Hua introduced by the investors has retired to the backstage command, can the internal management efficiency problem be solved after the reassignment of the two positions? Cheng Yi, who is responsible for the business, can he lead The Fast Hand to break the game?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > Su hua and Cheng Yixiao, fighting together for eight years</h1>
Unlike other founding teams that fell apart after success, the alliance between Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao is a rare good story in the Internet industry.
The predecessor of Kuaishou is "GIF Kuaishou", a GIF generation tool founded by Cheng Yixiao in Beijing in 2011. Although GIFs set off a wave of GIFs at that time, and Cheng Yixiao was also well-known in the Internet circle, the good times were not long, and the just-started Kuaishou encountered transformation difficulties in 2013.
Just when Cheng Yi was laughing and confused. Investor Zhang Fei brought him an entrepreneur, Su Hua. At that time, Su Hua was doing a social e-commerce project called "Circle". Zhang Fei believes that Su Hua understands technology, has worked in Google and Baidu before, and has many entrepreneurial experiences, and can complement Cheng Yixiao. Cheng Yixiao also deeply agreed, and invited Su Hua to join Kuaishou.
In order to pull Suhua to join, Cheng Yi smiled and was sincere, took out half of his 80% shares and half of Zhang Fei's shares, and made up a 50% share as an option pool, distributed it to Su Hua and his 7-person team, and gave the CEO position directly to Su Hua.
After several communications, Su Hua joined Kuaishou in November 2013. Later, things did go very well, after the Suhua team joined, cut the fast manual map function and transformed the short video community, and joined the algorithm recommendation system at the end of that year, so that the growth of fast hands broke the game.
(Su Hua, one of the founders of Kuaishou.) ）
In 2014, GIF Kuaishou officially changed its name to Kuaishou, and in 7 months, the platform DAU (monthly active users) grew from 1 million to 10 million.
In the eyes of the outside world, the addition of Suhua is a watershed in the history of Kuaishou's development. After Su Hua joined, Kuaishou can become the Kuaishou that is well known to the outside world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="118" > dual-core management loose</h1>
For a long time, Kuaishou has implemented a dual-core management system within it, that is, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao have their own division of labor and sit on an equal footing.
Specifically, Suhua is responsible for the company's strategy and key decisions, including strategic direction investment and acquisition, overall management, etc., and Cheng Yixiao is fully responsible for the main product-related matters, including business incubation and operational development such as e-commerce and games.
Su Hua and Cheng Yi smiled, one in front of the stage and one behind the scenes, jointly promoting Kuaishou into the fast lane of development. Since the second half of 2016, the organizational scale of Kuaishou has also begun to expand rapidly, and it has successively established a commercial promotion department and a marketing department; in 2017, Kuaishou began to prepare for international business, and the number of employees surged from the original two or three hundred to thousands of people.
But as Kuaishou grew, subtle changes also occurred within the company.
In 2020, the top 50 employees of Kuaishou published "Talk about our company's illness" on the company's intranet, and the article directly pointed out that Kuaishou was "plagued by diseases" - airborne managers, disappearing bosses, factions, and business secretly competing. The veteran employee asked unceremoniously in the article, "Isn't there not so much competition between Su Hua and Yi Xiao in these two years, and is it still as close as before 2017?" ”。
The torture of internal employees exposed the internal management problems of Kuaishou. At the same time, in terms of external competition, the impact of the rise of vibrato on Kuaishou is getting bigger and bigger. Kuaishou had a DAU of 200 million in May 2019, and two months later, Douyin announced that its monthly active users had reached 320 million.
What is even more embarrassing is that since the listing of Kuaishou in February this year, the market value has fallen from HK$1.7 trillion at its peak to HK$433 billion, and the market value has evaporated by nearly 70%.
The two founders are not unaware of the problem of Kuaishou. In June 2019, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao released an internal letter to all employees, in which they wrote: "We are very dissatisfied with the status quo, loose organization, Buddhist attitude, 'slow company' is becoming our label." It makes it hard for us to sleep. Since the end of last year, starting from the two of us, the Kuaishou management has conducted deep self-examination and reflection. ”
Some management information experts said that the contradictions between founders will always intensify after the company grows and develops. Kuaishou initially introduced Su Hua, a professional manager, which can be said to have buried hidden dangers.
When the company is developing at a high speed, all problems can be compromised or even diluted. However, if the problem is not solved, it will eventually appear and become an obstacle to the company's later stages.
(ByteDance's Douyin is definitely a fierce rival of Kuaishou.) ）
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="119" can > Cheng smile turn the tide? </h1>
Under the internal and external troubles, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao made changes. This time, Cheng Yixiao stood in the foreground, and Su Hua served as chairman, spending more energy to focus on long-term strategy.
"Kuaishou needs a spokesperson, which is undoubtedly the best decision to calm the market sentiment." Some investors told Phoenix Network Technology that for enterprises, the existence of a backbone can ensure the execution of the organization and the stability of personnel, improve the efficiency of business execution, and reduce the cost of upward management.
From an external point of view, after the listing of Kuaishou, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao always appeared in front of the public at the same time, but none of them seemed to be able to represent Kuaishou alone. This is not a good thing for Kuaishou in the fierce market competition.
In fact, since its listing, Kuaishou has been carrying out drastic reforms. In September this year, Kuaishou launched a new round of business structure adjustment in the direction of closed-loop business units, realizing the transformation from a functional structure to a division system.
In terms of structure, wang Jianwei, the original product leader, was adjusted to the person in charge of the main station production and transportation line, the former X7 business leader Xiaogu was adjusted to the head of the e-commerce business department, the original commercial business head Ma Hongbin was adjusted to the head of the commercial business department, the head of the international business department was Qiu Guangyu, and the head of the game business department was Xu Jie. Among them, Wang Jianwei, Xiao Gu and Xu Jie reported to Cheng Yixiao, and Ma Hongbin and Qiu Guangyu reported to Su Hua.
For the handover of the CEO position, some kuaishou internal employees said that it seems that Suhua has turned behind the scenes, but it is more like a concession made by the management for development. "Dual-core management is over, but the company is at the helm of both founders."
Judging from the reporting relationship, Su Hua really did not "retreat behind the scenes" like Zhang Yiming, Huang Zheng and others. According to the announcement of Kuaishou, Cheng Yixiao, as the CEO, will be responsible for the daily operation and business development of the company, reporting to Chairman Su Hua.
According to the voting rights calculated by the different rights of the same shares, Su Hua holds 39.1% of the shares, Cheng Yixiao holds 30.95%, and Su hua's voting rights are also greater than Cheng Yixiao.
At the moment, Kuaishou is encountering his own moment of life and death.
Since the Spring Festival, the growth of Kuaishou DAU has basically stagnated. According to QM data, the DAU of Kuaishou has hardly changed in the past three months, staying at about 100 million. In contrast, in 2017, Kuaishou's annual DAU growth exceeded 60 million.
In terms of operation, although Kuaishou's revenue has maintained growth, its losses are expanding. According to the financial report, in the first half of the year, Kuaishou's revenue was 36.2 billion yuan, an increase of 42.8% year-on-year; the net loss was 9.69 billion yuan, an increase of 54.2% year-on-year. Among them, the net loss in the second quarter was 4.77 billion yuan, an increase of 146.2% year-on-year.
In the capital market, Kuaishou's stock price has been cut off, and the downward trend has not yet ended.
There is a long-term depression of "big company disease", and there is a step by step of vibrato and video numbers, in such a situation, can Kuaishou open a new situation? Both the market and Kuaishou want to know the answer as soon as possible.