Yingke investor Luo Bin: The Matthew effect in the live broadcast industry is obvious and "must be fast"

Recently, there have been constant doubts about Yingke-the controversy focuses on data fraud, but Luo Bin, its early investor and vice president of Jinshajiang Venture Capital, flatly denied that Yingke was fraudulent."Yingke has never faked, its data is very stable, and it has remained in the top 10 free list of the App Store for a long time."

Original title: Becoming a unicorn in one year, what did Yingke do right? Its investors put it this way:

"There are over 100 million registered users and tens of millions of daily active users."

This is the result announced by the popular Mobile Live Video Broadcasting application "Yingke". It took only a year to break out of the "Hundred Broadcast Battle" and stand on the forefront of the wave.

Recently, there have been constant doubts about Yingke-the controversy focuses on data fraud, but Luo Bin, its early investor and vice president of Jinshajiang Venture Capital, flatly denied that Yingke was fraudulent."Yingke has never faked, its data is very stable, and has remained in the top 10 free list of the App Store for a long time."

Luo Bin claimed to be half of Yingke's product manager and half of marketing manager, and also believed that Yingke was the most proud work in his investment career. Recently, Luo Bin accepted an exclusive interview with reporters and discussed in detail the logic of his investment in Yingke and his interpretation of live broadcast trends.

Luo Bin

The following is the dictation of Luo Bin from Jinsha River Venture Capital.

We were the earliest institutional investors in Yingke, signed the agreement earliest, and the decision-making time was the shortest, which only took one week.

Domestic Mobile Live Video Broadcasting products are the first to be popular in 17 years. In September 2015, its user base reached 1 million. We originally wanted to vote for 17, but it exposed two problems: first, the content review failed, resulting in a bad reputation; second, the application of comparison cards, first, its server is outside the mainland, and second, its technology is also flawed.

I personally tried to find 17 through Puri (note: the investment company established by Wang Sicong), but it just took Wang Sicong's investment and was not short of money. Moreover, the two sides failed to invest before meeting. But we still felt that it was valuable for investment until it was officially removed by Apple around the National Day.

I didn't see Yingke until 17 was taken off the shelves. At first, it was only ranked 17th and 18th on the social rankings, and was outside the 300 overall rankings. In fact, Yingke did it earlier than 17, because there were very few reports on Yingke in the early days, so it was very inconspicuous.

During the National Day of 2015, Yingke's data improved rapidly, the most important reason being that it enjoyed the dividend of being removed from shelves on 17 September. 17 was removed from the shelves, leaving many users only to choose to download Yingke. Therefore, during the seven days of National Day, the number of Yingke users increased by hundreds of thousands.

I found Feng Yousheng after the National Day holiday. He didn't say much, but he spoke very clearly on all issues. The first time we met was when he came to our company. I only chatted with him for thirty or forty minutes. Then he met with two or three of our partners and signed the agreement next.

Feng Yousheng is a serial entrepreneur and has run the company, so he is very sure of the future ideas and plans of the project. At the same time, when we decided to invest, Yingke's daily income was less than 100,000, but it earned 70,000 to 80,000 yuan a day through virtual goods transactions. This is what attracts me the most. It is very similar to games, where daily activities and revenue can grow at the same time, but it is not a game because its life cycle is much longer than games.

Investing in Yingke is hardly a gamble. Although in the early days, no one knew who could really do it, if you experienced all the domestic live broadcast products at that time, you would find that Yingke was the best one. Its picture quality is relatively the best, and the speed at which watching live broadcasts is also very fast, which is similar to the speed at which TV channels change. I think if we make 2C products, if the product itself is not good, we will definitely not be able to make them bigger.

Yingke is the first project I have invested in since I came to Jinsha River, and it is also the best one in my current 6-year mobile Internet investment career. Now its number of registered users has exceeded 100 million, with tens of millions active every day. Although I don't know the data of competing products, I dare to say that Yingke is the best entrepreneurial project in mobile applications in 2015, and there is no one.

"It must be fast."

Before the Spring Festival this year, Yingke received investment from Kunlun Wanwei. At that time, the capital on the book had exceeded 100 million yuan. During the Spring Festival, Yingke began to make efforts to promote and spread comprehensive advertising.

Yingke's advertisements are mainly concentrated in Focus Buildings and Cinema Lines, and it has also invested a lot of money in Didi Chuxing's on-screen advertisements. In terms of brand promotion, Yingke also cooperates with Hunan, Sichuan and other satellite TV stations and programs, typical programs such as "I am a Singer" and "Extreme Challenge". Its building advertising lasted until a week after the spring holiday, and the theater line also lasted for a very long time. The Spring Festival period coincides with the fact that the movie "Mermaid" is particularly popular, so theater advertising has greatly helped the marketing of Yingke.

Yingke will talk about celebrities and artists owned by Huayi, for example, but will not cooperate with so-called anchor agencies or guilds (Note: guilds are small entertainment agencies that form the live broadcast economic chain with live broadcast platforms and female anchors). This is Yingke's basic principle. If someone establishes a guild or other organization in Yingke, Yingke will block these anchors.

Although there are many anchors from agency companies doing live broadcasts on it now, Yingke officials will never deal with these companies. I think Yingke's live broadcast has social and media attributes. The anchors above are anchors that they like, so Yingke did not sign up for anchors.

The gift split between Yingke and the anchor is 37 to 50, and the platform gets a maximum of 70%. I won't disclose the specific income data. I can only say that its income is very good and there will be no shortage of money. At present, Yingke's marketing expenses have exceeded 100 million yuan.

You have to be fast. After we finished casting in the Yingke Round A, we told Feng Yousheng that you had to make the A+ round immediately. In the Internet field, two or three months ahead will lead a long way, and Internet companies generally have a certain monopoly. This is all true for group buying wars and taxi wars.

Nowadays, Yingke has nearly 100,000 people broadcasting live broadcasts every day, and the number of popular live broadcasts hovers between 20,000 and 30,000 daily. Relatively speaking, small platforms with only one to two hundred people broadcasting are actually very difficult to survive.

"Wolf, keen, and well-organized"

Before we invested in Yingke, it was actually very short of money. But Feng Yousheng is the kind of person who is neither humble nor arrogant. He talks with you about financing with a very equal attitude. The first time he met was when he came to our company, and the second time he met was when I went to their company. He will not chase you or beg you.

There are three criteria for my founders: first, wolfness, second, keen strategic insight, and third, having a pattern and being a person. Feng Yousheng was basically satisfied.

He is typically introverted and easy-going. When I went to their company to do DD (Due Diligence), I talked with their three founders for a whole day. Whether we voted for him or not, he insisted on keeping me for dinner. He does basic etiquette very well, and you will feel very comfortable dealing with such people.

He is also a relatively straightforward person. Whether the project is valued at 100 million, 120 million or 130 million, he doesn't care. He thinks it's okay if you are suitable, which is relatively straightforward.

I think this group of Internet people in the Hunan Department is very powerful. Yingke CEO Feng Yousheng is from Hunan, Momo CEO Tang Yan is from Hunan, the father of WeChat Zhang Xiaolong is also from Hunan, and many outstanding social product entrepreneurs or product managers are from Hunan. I don't know why this is, but it's an interesting phenomenon. I often joke that I want to invest in more projects from Hunan people.

In addition, Feng Yousheng used to work as a civil servant in Hunan. A civil servant who is willing to quit his stable job and come to Beijing to start a business must have ambitions.

I like people who resign as civil servants and start businesses. First, people who have no background and are admitted to civil servants based on their own abilities in the past few years have at least a very good IQ; second, people who have been civil servants for two or three years actually have a better understanding of China society, are good at dealing with the world, and have a good pattern; third, civil servants are relatively stable jobs, and he doesn't want to do it anymore. To put it bluntly, isn't he just want to do something bigger? Such people are wolf-like and ambitious.

"There will only be one or two Mobile Live Video Broadcasting."

Feng Yousheng's original idea of being a movie guest originated from his early experience making Domi music. There are many artists in music, but the vast majority of artists have no market. He wondered why these artists couldn't sing live. This was his earliest idea. As you can see, there are many people singing on Yingke now.

In addition, Feng Yousheng found that there are two problems in making music: first, copyright costs are too high; second, users have no payment habits. So later, whether he was doing Meelive or Yingke, he had two principles: first, don't touch copyright matters, and second, it would be better for users to pay.

More than 50% of startups have undergone transformation. For example, before the transformation of home for dinner, the business was to book visits. Didi used to make parking apps, and Xiaohongshu first wanted to do overseas travel.

Yingke is also an example of transformation. Before Yingke, Feng Yousheng was working on Meelive, a live voice platform for international students. The monthly income was about 600,000 yuan, which was actually enough to support a team of more than a dozen people. But he quickly realized that this was not a big deal, so he transformed himself into an Yingke.

Company decisions are not like investing, because once a transformation changes occur, the entire model may be reversed, which often requires the founder to be very determined, wolf-like, and dare to execute.

Yingke's data has proved that it is currently the best entrepreneurial project in the field of Mobile Live Video Broadcasting. Their team has great experience in operating live broadcast communities. In the previous voice live broadcast platform for overseas students, they operated 200,000 to 300,000 community users, with hundreds of thousands of monthly revenue.

In the Mobile Live Video Broadcasting industry, there are not many profitable projects, but Yingke is one of them. Although there are some articles on the Internet that slander Yingke, I want to say that Yingke actually did not fake it. Live streaming swiping is a very troublesome problem. Usually platforms solve it through some technical means, but swiping is always inevitable. Yingke tries his best to prohibit swiping, but sometimes there is no way out and it continues to ban it repeatedly.

What's more, the impact of swiping on live broadcast platforms is not as great as that of Taobao. Spending on Taobao products is very harmful to users, but the live broadcast platform is an entertainment platform after all, and not everyone is staring at one person, so there are many choices. If I don't like you, even if you get first, I won't look at you.

Generally speaking, a business is successful if it makes money. But from an investment perspective, we definitely need to find companies with more than US$1 billion. As a founder of a company, you must be able to find good ideas, and then you must be very suitable for doing this.

I have always believed that the appearance of air vents must be due to certain environmental changes. The rise of e-commerce is actually based on the rise of the entire PC Internet. The prosperity of taxiing and takeaways is due to the popularity of mobile hardware. Mobile Live Video Broadcasting has become a popular outlet because of 4G coverage. Moreover, mobile live broadcasts have more potential than PC live broadcasts because of more application scenarios.

Large companies, especially those above US$1 billion, have seized the window of environmental change. Investing requires staring at the market every day. Every investor can make sense when talking about the general direction, but whether each time can be accurately judged is the core issue.

Therefore, investing is not a particularly busy job, but it requires you to pay attention for a long time, especially to seize opportunities at critical times. You need to focus on them at a specific time. Just like investing in Mobile Live Video Broadcasting, you can't enter early or late.

Mobile Live Video Broadcasting is bound to be the future trend. Every tuyere will welcome a large number of participants, as has always been the case in China. Now giants are also involved, but giants don't say that everything can be done. For an Internet company, there are some things it can do, but some things it cannot. For example, Tencent can make WeChat, but it cannot make another Momo.

The Matthew effect in the live broadcast industry will be very obvious. The larger the platform, the larger the platform, the smaller the platform, the less the opportunity. In the future, there may be only 1 or 2 companies left in this market.

Editor: Nancy