Chapter 611 Living in his shadow

Byte, a company known as the APP factory.

This company has built multiple apps and has a very flexible organizational structure and resources.

Zhang Yiming, the head of Byte, once said in front of the media his idea of ​​running a company: Develop a company as a product.

In 2014, he received US$100 million in investment from Shunwei Capital and Red Mountain Capital.

At that time, Byte's company valuation was only US$500 million.

By 2016, the valuation had soared to US$11 billion!

You have to know that at this stage, Byte and Douyin haven’t even started yet and are still in the cold start stage.

Its terrifying strength is evident.

????????????

When receiving the call from Rebus, Zhang Yiming was stunned for a moment.

When the other party mentioned the word "youqu", Zhang Yiming was stunned for a longer time.

The reason is simple.

——I feel like I’m living in the shadow of Youqu!

In other words, living in Cheng Zhu’s shadow!

As early as 2014, Zhang Yiming mentioned the idea of ​​entering short videos to a group of company executives and the backers.

After a heated discussion, we found that blockbuster players are already gaining momentum on the market. Penguin's Weishi and Weibo's Miaopai and Meipai have reached hundreds of thousands of daily active users, and they are all developing well.

We have lost the opportunity for the time being.

So, why not take another look?

"Wait and see." This was Zhang Yiming's final attitude.

There is no way, now both Penguin and Weibo are making short videos, how can we fight this?

Fortunately for the latter, they are not afraid of Meipai and Miaopai on Weibo.

The key is Penguin, one of the three giants of BAT!

In front of Penguin's natural flow pool, everyone is a grandchild!

Once Xiao Ma starts investing heavily in Weishi and attracting traffic, I’ll ask you if you can handle it!

And, again, the same sentence.

Once one of the two horses enters a certain field, venture capitalists will be more cautious when investing money. If you want to raise funds, the difficulty level will soar.

This is the sense of oppression brought by giants!

Therefore, Zhang Yiming just waited and watched for half a year.

Let’s just settle down and finish our [headlines]!

However, he is still a bit evil-minded.

Because both he and ByteDance internal staff feel that there are several major pain points in the short video apps currently on the market.

These pain points will become our strengths in the future.

Until Youqu was born!

After Zhang Yiming and others downloaded and played it: "???"

Damn it, it has everything we thought of!

Damn it, we didn’t expect it to be there too!

This is simply an upgraded version of the app we wanted to make internally, oh my god!

At that moment, Zhang Yiming's wait-and-see attitude was almost dead.

Why is only half dead?

Because Byte's products are never produced alone, but are a team effort, that's why they are called "Toutiao Series".

Once it starts making short videos, Byte will launch two apps at once. They are not competing products, but they can be linked and win-win.

Zhang Yiming even thought of a name.

"One is called Huoshan Video and the other is Douyin!"

"The name of the former should be more down-to-earth, while the name of the latter should be trendy!"

After seeing Youqu, he felt that Douyin was no longer possible and he had lost the opportunity again!

He didn't know why this college student named Cheng Zhu had such a tacit understanding with his team.

"If Youqu is not an upgraded version of our Douyin and is more comprehensive, I will wonder if there is an insider." Zhang Yiming thought like this many times in his heart.

Later, he gradually watched Youqu achieve brilliant results in the [cold start stage].

What's more important is that anyone with a discerning eye can feel that the user stickiness of this APP is very high.

If nothing else, the ratio of the total number of registered users to daily active users will be quite beautiful data!

This made Zhang Yiming secretly upset.

"If, I mean if."

"If we were the first to make Douyin"

"Alas!" Mr. Zhang sighed.

There was another point that made him even more frustrated.

That is because Penguin dislikes the poor monetization ability of short videos, which makes [Microvision] gradually marginalized within Penguin.

The giant that entered the game first, it took a halftime break!

Might even drop out!

This made that voice pop up in Zhang Yiming's heart again.

"If, I mean if."

After receiving Mr. Lei's call, Zhang Yiming quickly understood the other party's intention.

He wanted to discuss pomelo fun with himself.

Regarding this Youqu who was one step ahead of him, he did not deliberately belittle him because he missed the opportunity, and his answer was quite pertinent.

But he felt that Cheng Zhu’s mechanism was not particularly good.

"Although Youqu and Kuaishou are not direct competitors, they do not have defensive products." Zhang Yiming said.

This is where he feels the worst.

For example, [Volcano Video], which was originally planned to be launched internally by Byte, is a defensive product that targets blockers.

Regardless of the content, tone, or user composition, the positioning of [Huoshan Video] is almost the same as that of Block Player.

In fact, Byte currently pays more attention to [Volcano Video].

If we really want to enter the short video industry, we will first focus on [Huoshan] and [Douyin] as a supplement.

When Rebus heard this, he nodded slightly.

He knows Byte's usual "playing style" and likes to play "group fights".

But what Zhang Yiming said is not unreasonable.

After chatting for a while, Zhang Yiming smiled and said: "Are you planning to invest money in Youqu?"

"I'm sure I have this idea." Mr. Lei did not hide it.

After Zhang Yiming received the affirmative answer, he suddenly felt blessed.

"Can you bring our bytes with you?" he suddenly said.

This sentence stunned Rebus.

Why did you become a team and invest money?

“I think our Byte investment in Youqu still has many natural advantages.”

"For example, we have [Toutiao], right?" Zhang Yiming began to talk.

Today's Byte is not a giant.

He knew very well that Cheng Zhu would definitely have no shortage of financing partners.

Therefore, all he can do is give Mr. Lei a ride.

Everyone is not optimistic about short videos, but I am really optimistic about its prospects!

I really won’t be willing to get involved in the short video field!

The time has come on December 22nd.
To be continued...