Text | Gao Xiaoqian
36Kr exclusively learned that Xiao Yi, chief operating officer (coo) of network audio company Dragonfly fm, has left his job.
"Time to say goodbye, two years of time pass quickly, rest is for a more powerful departure, I wish the little dragonfly fly higher and higher, everyone goodbye." On September 29, Xiao Yi wrote this in the WeChat circle of friends.
36Kr asked dragonfly fm in this regard, the other party confirmed the news, and said that there is no suitable coo candidate at present, and the founder, chairman and CEO Zhang Qiang will temporarily act as an agent. According to another person familiar with the matter, Xiao Yi will choose to start a business in the next step.
Xiao Yi joined Dragonfly fm in November 2017 as a coo position, responsible for the company's strategy and daily operations. Prior to that, he worked at Huawei Consumer bg as The Content Management Director of Cloud Services, where he was responsible for product lines such as video, music, reading, and smart home.
In the two years since joining Dragonfm, Xiao Yi's performance includes: proposing 1 billion cash support anchors for three years, increasing investment in cultural content, such as "Xiao Yearbook", etc.; increasing the layout of membership business, launching Super Member Day and "9.1" Listening Day activities for two consecutive years, and launching joint members with Youku and others - as of July 2019, the number of Dragonfly fm super members has reached tens of millions; promoting content cooperation with content platforms such as today's headlines, Huawei, Baidu and other hardware platforms, bringing "ecological traffic"—— At the end of January this year, Dragonfly FM announced that the "ecological flow" MAU exceeded 100 million.
"The previous performance, everyone can see, he mainly wanted to start a business." Dragonfly fm insiders said that Xiao Yi's departure was not due to poor performance. Another piece of information that can prove this is that Xiao Yi recruited from Huawei is still there, and Zhu Feng is also the company's vice president.
Xiao Yi's departure may only be a personal choice, but looking back at the development of Dragonfly FM, it seems that the development is not as desired, especially the financing and listing.
Dragonfly fm is the first audio company to propose to go public, and last year Xiao Yi also revealed that the company plans to go public in 2-3 years, but there is no new development this year. In contrast, according to Zhitong Finance, Himalaya FM plans to IPO in Hong Kong or the United States next year, raising $500 million to $1 billion, with an overall valuation of about $5 billion.
Meanwhile, Dragonfly FM has not received a new capital injection for some time. Dragonfly FM's last round of financing was still stuck in the round of financing of 1 billion yuan two years ago, in September 2017. In August last year, according to the self-media "IPO Early Knowledge" report, Himalaya completed a new round of financing of $460 million. Since then, Xiao Yi has also said that a new round of financing for Dragonfly FM is also in progress. However, Dragonfly's financing has not yet followed.
At the moment, both Dragonfly FM and Himalaya are in the red.
According to the equity transfer information released by the Beijing Equity Exchange, the audit data of Dragonfly fm's parent company Microphone Culture in 2017 showed that its operating income was 260 million yuan, with an operating loss of 178 million yuan and a net loss of 173 million yuan. According to the financial network, Himalaya is not profitable. In 2017, 41.26% of Himalaya's revenue came from advertising sales, 50.1% from paid business, and smart hardware accounted for only 8.64% of revenue. Gross margin in 2017 was 57%, with a net loss of RMB108 million.
For Dragonfly FM, in the absence of new funds, self-hematopoietic ability is particularly important. But in the past two years, Dragonfly FM's various initiatives have been mainly invested.
In this context, Dragonfly FM has begun to experiment with B-side business. 36Kr learned from Dragonfly FM that Dragonfly has incubated a start-up company that does HR saas system, Shanghai Dengyin Information Technology Co., Ltd., which mainly does human resource compensation, performance and organizational effectiveness, and has obtained angel round financing.
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