Author | Yu Qing
Edit | Hao Meiping
Source | The world of Fengyun Capital
Nowadays, the internet giants seem to be peping. Whether through investment, acquisition or cooperation, Internet giants have extended their tentacles to various fields, including e-commerce, mobile payment, WeChat o2o, etc., and the scale of their investment is also very amazing.
"Ten years to sharpen a sword". Knowing that the door of the capital market has been knocked on, the company that is optimistic about batj (Baidu, Ali, Tencent, JD.com) has officially landed on the US stock market, and a capital enrichment campaign has begun. Who else is the founder Zhou Yuan's "guest of honor"?
On the evening of March 26, Zhihu successfully landed on the US stock market, and the stock code was zh. Knowing that the issue price is US$9.5 per share, according to this calculation, the market value is US$5.31 billion (equivalent to RMB34.734 billion).
In 2020, Zhihu's total revenue reached 1.352 billion yuan, compared with 671 million yuan in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 101.7%. The company's net loss in 2020 was 518 million, and in 2019, it was 1 billion, narrowing by 48.2% year-on-year. However, Zhihu is still in a state of loss, and the cumulative loss in the past two years has exceeded 1 billion yuan.
The founder is worth 2.4 billion yuan
Today, Zhou Yuan's knowledge has finally stepped onto the stage of the capital market. According to the prospectus data, as the founder of the company, he held 7% of the shares after the IPO, and zhou yuan's value reached 2.431 billion yuan.
How did Zhihu develop?
Born in the late 2010 of Zhihu, its founder Zhou Yuan wrote such an answer on Zhihu in the early days of its founding. "I hope that Zhihu will become a knowledge-based social Q&A site, and everyone agrees that this is a place worth taking seriously, contributing high-quality content, and sharing the knowledge of the field they are good at, the experience they have accumulated and the ideas they have thought about."
Zhou Yuan, who graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Chengdu University of Technology, went to a software company in Shanghai to do the work of low-level database development after obtaining a master's degree in software engineering from Southeast University. After a period of development, Zhou Yuan found that he did not like to be a programmer.
After that, he turned to a career as a journalist. At the same time, Zhou Yuan's idea of starting a business also ran out. However, the first venture ended in failure. Zhou Yuan once recalled the scene at that time in a program: on the day the company was facing dissolution, many employees expressed their attitudes, "Isn't it that there is no money, we can not pay wages", he was very moved, and gave all the remaining things of the company to the team members who walked with him to the end.
Until August 2010, Zhou Yuan, who had regrouped, began to do Zhihu. At the end of 2010, Zhihu began internal testing, and officially launched on January 26, 2011, initially they also encountered large and small problems, and the five or six people of the founding team often went home at two or three o'clock in the middle of the night.
But fortunately, Zhou Yuan has the help of "noble people" along the way - among the earliest 200 users of Zhihu, there are innovative entrepreneurs and well-known VCs such as Kai-Fu Li, Wang Xing, Wang Xiaochuan, Xu Xiaoping and Ma Huateng, who created 8,000 questions and 20,000 answers in the first 40 days of Zhihu's development.
Batj gathered to know, Tencent became the biggest winner!
It is worth noting that the support of these well-known entrepreneurs and VC investors for Zhihu is not only reflected in the product, but also gives great help to the company's funds.
On the eve of the listing, Zhihu updated the prospectus, and the public offering was carried out simultaneously with the private placement, with the maximum financing amount exceeding US$1 billion. Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent and Lilith Games all participated in the private placement, subscribing for a total of US$250 million in equivalent shares.
Mustang Finance found that tencent and Baidu were its strategic investors long before the public offering. This means that since its inception in 2010, Zhihu has gathered four batjs.
Who is the biggest winner?
According to the latest prospectus, even if the shares in this private placement are not added, after the listing, Tencent's final shareholding ratio is 11.1%, ranking the second largest shareholder. Based on the current listed market value of 34.7 billion yuan, Tencent's shareholding value is about 3.855 billion yuan.
In 2015, Zhihu received tencent investment for the first time, and this round of financing also includes Sogou. For the investment of Tencent and Sogou, Zhou Yuan once said that Zhihu chose to cooperate with Tencent and Sogou because he believed that they understood and paid attention to Zhihu's products themselves, and more product cooperation will be carried out next.
Wang Xiaochuan, the founder of Sogou, said that Zhihu was the first company to invest in Sogou's strategy. If you want to do one thing to Zhihu, it is: cooperation; if you want to do two things, it is: investment + cooperation. It is very gratifying to realize these two ideals this time, sogou participated in this round of investment and launched a strategic cooperation.
It is worth mentioning that in August 2019, the $434 million F round of financing completed by Zhihu was led by Kuaishou and followed by Baidu, and the original investors such as Tencent and Today Capital continued to follow suit. This was the largest amount of financing in the history of Zhihu, and it was also one of the largest financings in the field of Internet culture and entertainment in the Chinese at that time.
How did the relationship between Zhihu and Kuaishou come about? Zhou Yuan once shared this small story: Last year, he and Su Hua attended a meeting. During the banquet, I found that Su Hua was brushing Zhihu with a trumpet, and I was brushing fast hands with a trumpet, and the frequency was not low... Two months ago, after lunch at noon, almost an hour later, we settled the cooperation.
For this round of financing, Zhou Yuan said that Zhihu and Kuaishou, Baidu, although the product form and user scenarios are very different, but in the same large field, users also have similarities, through capital cooperation with Kuaishou and Baidu, help to make valuable information efficiently connected to more people, so that the knowledge, experience and insights of friends to gain a wider influence.
It is reported that at that time, Kuaishou and ByteDance both wanted to win Zhihu, and the two sides bid for several rounds. But the fast hand even issued a death order must win, and finally voted for zhihu at a price far beyond ByteDance.
After the listing, Kuaishou's shareholding ratio will reach 4.8%, so Kuaishou will receive a shareholding value of 1.667 billion yuan.
Innovation Factory has followed suit so far, with a shareholding value of 3.925 billion yuan
In addition, Zhihu has also gathered a number of well-known venture capital institutions.
During its founding period, Zhihu received angel round financing from innovation workshops. Through the contact with the innovation workshop, founder Zhou Yuan not only obtained financial and resource support, but also brought friends and comrades-in-arms. According to the prospectus, after the listing, the shareholding ratio of Innovation Factory reached 11.3%, which is the largest shareholder of Zhihu.
Based on this calculation, the shareholding of Innovation Factory reached 3.925 billion yuan.
Wang Hua, founding partner of Innovation Factory, once mentioned that if you want to break the circle, you must take the rich media route.
Between 2014 and 2015, Zhihu received two rounds of increases from Qiming Venture Capital and Saifu Investment. After the listing, Qiming Venture Capital, Saifu Investment and Today Capital, which have been invested in multiple rounds, hold 6.6%, 5.4% and 3.9% of the shares respectively.
As a result, the shareholding values of Qiming Venture Capital, Saifu Investment and Today Capital were RMB2.292 billion, RMB1.876 billion and RMB1.355 billion respectively.
Are you a zhihu user? What questions do you most often browse? What do you think of Zhihu listing? Feel free to leave a message and express your opinion.