Gradually understand, why a lot of VC investment will ask: you this product how to make money?

Liang Ning in “product thinking 30 talk”, mentioned: the war of the Internet is product and flow. Is your product tough enough? Where do you get the traffic from?

Huami Technology huang Wang said: Internet thinking, my understanding is to focus; Second, communicate directly with users through the Internet to promote rapid iteration; Third, word of mouth spread, word of mouth spread fastest.

However, I think, a product can be long-term positive development, also not mentioned at all, that is cash.

On April 3, another big thing happened on the Internet: Meituan bought full control of Mobike in a cash and stock deal.

Wang Xiaofeng, CEO of Mobike, admitted that his attitude has always been to insist on the company’s independent development. Why did mobike, one of the first and not a bad company, choose to be acquired? One of the reasons is that there is no profit model, that is, no way to monetize. With this acquisition, the bike-sharing landscape may change again.

In recent years, the concept of sharing has become very popular. As a new business model, bike-sharing has only developed for more than three years. In fact, this business model is very clear. After having products and traffic, it starts to make profits by charging fixed fees. However, having an obvious business model often means it is not a good business model. This business model means you end up with a steady stream of traffic. The battlefield on the Internet has always been a dog-eat-dog one, and no company has easy access to traffic. This is an Internet company from many to few, from weak to strong process. In the current fierce competition of bike-sharing, it is hard to see the dawn of profit. It can be said that this is a protracted battle, which depends on who can stick to it in the end and eventually become the leader of the industry. Before this, taking the future business model to the current product is obviously not a very imaginative approach. According to an internal financial report of Mobike, the daily orders of Mobike last year were about 10 million, which is more than one order per car per day based on the 9 million vehicles. However, the income of the order is far from enough for the investment cost due to the preferential measures such as free deposit and cancellation of monthly card for new users. The future user growth is slow and the old car depreciation increases, the business income imagination space is getting smaller and smaller.

In other words, there’s no money to be made, and if you don’t want to die, you need to grab a leg and see if you can survive. As a high-frequency application, shared bikes have serious product homogeneity. Before becoming a dominant company, in addition to relying on the backer, in fact, we need to think more about how to rely on the existing flow for cash, not in the future profit model as a bet.

Things will change too much in the future, but as long as the present can be realized, let oneself alive is the most important. After all, as long as everyone else is dead and you’re alive, you’re the best one alive. In fact, at that time, talk about profit model instead of meaning.

Clearly, Mobike is not doing a good job.

QQ is now a well-known product, many young people may not remember the first version of this is called OICQ, the first version was officially released on February 10, 1999, after the launch of the product burst, showing a strong growth trend. The product is good, and there is no lack of traffic, but it has not found a good business model. And because of the parabolic new and daily activities need to buy a large number of servers, once led to Tencent’s internal books burned without much money, and even to the brink of bankruptcy.

Ma was thought of selling the company still, drama, however, almost all companies have received ma or li said “I don’t understand tencent technology and the value of intangible assets”, others put forward only by tencent “how many computers, how many tables and chairs to buy”, the valuation of the company, the largest up to 600000 yuan. I do not know whether these enterprises regret now.

Here’s what happened: The number of signups had exploded, millions of users, and the company was dying because there was no payment model and no money to buy servers. Zeng Liqing, one of the founders of Tencent, prepared a 20-page business plan to raise capital, but when it came to the paragraph about profit forecast, he couldn’t understand it. He revised it six times and still couldn’t explain it clearly.

Even IDG (American International Data Group), which eventually invested in Tencent, was not fully confident of profitability, but felt that: OICQ is indeed a popular and good thing, although no one knows how it makes money;

Visible, Internet companies in addition to products and traffic, to find a good cash model is how difficult.

Fortunately, Tencent survived the crisis until the launch of QQ Show, although it had not yet found a suitable cash model. With QQ Show, it has found a profit model that suits it. This profit model, let QQ truly bid farewell to free tools, become a golden egg penguin. Its copycat, ICQ, has never found a way to make money. It is the point of profit that links Tencent’s products and traffic into a ring, making the whole product ecology actively run, which is a gorgeous upgrade.

The war of the Internet, always a bit bigger Internet company, is product, flow, realization of the trinity of play, one can not be dispensable. Has not been strong because of the product or temporary flow and a dominant situation. And realization as the ultimate goal of all commercial activities, naturally playing a decisive role.

Finished!

For more timely information, please follow the official wechat account of iBrotherGang.