Chapter 1012: Chapter 619: Living in His Shadow
ByteDance, a company hailed as an APP factory.
This company has developed multiple apps and has a remarkably flexible organizational structure and resources.
Zhang Yiming, the head of ByteDance, once explained his company ideas in front of the dia: Develop a company as a product.
Back in 2014, he received a $100 million investnt from Shunwei Capital and Red Mountain Capital.
At that ti, ByteDance’s company valuation was only $500 million.
By 2016, the valuation had already skyrocketed to $11 billion!
Keep in mind, during this stage, TikTok hadn’t even taken off yet; it was still in the Cold Start phase.
Their formidable strength was evident.
When he received a call from Lei Bu Si, Zhang Yiming was first taken aback.
Upon hearing the ntion of Youuqu, Zhang Yiming paused even longer.
The reason was simple.
——I feel like I’m living in the shadow of Youuqu!
Or rather, living in the shadow of Cheng Zhu!
As early as 2014, Zhang Yiming had ntioned to a group of company executives and the financial backers the idea of entering the short video market.
Everyone engaged in heated discussion, discovering that Kuai Shou had already gained montum, Tencent’s Weishi and Weibo’s Miao Pai, ipai were doing well, with daily active user numbers reaching hundreds of thousands.
We’ve temporarily lost our edge.
So, how about… taking another look?
“Let’s wait and see.” This was Zhang Yiming’s final stance.
No way, now both Tencent and Weibo are in short videos, how do we compete?
The latter, thankfully, Weibo’s ipai and Miao Pai they felt posed no real threat.
The critical concern was one of the BAT giants, Tencent!
In front of Tencent’s natural flow pool, everyone is a smaller player!
If Little Ma starts large-scale investnt and traffic diversion to Weishi, ask yourself if you can bear the pressure!
Moreover, the sa story.
Once one of the two Ma’s enters a certain field, when venture capitalists invest money, they’ll be more cautious, making it harder for you to get funding.
This is the kind of pressure that giants bring!
Thus, Zhang Yiming kept observing, and kept observing for another half-year.
Let’s go on developing our Headline, safely and securely!
However, he still held a bit of a grudgingly unyielding attitude.
Because whether it was him or within ByteDance, they all felt that the current short video apps in the market, had several pain points.
These pain points would beco our strengths in the future.
Until… Youuqu erged out of nowhere!
After Zhang Yiming and the team downloaded and played around with it: “???”
Damn it, everything we thought of it has!
Damn it, even stuff we hadn’t thought of, it has too!
This is simply the upgrade version of the app we wanted to make internally, oh my gosh!
At that mont, the attitude of Zhang Yiming to observe died half inside.
Why only half?
Because ByteDance’s products were never solo battles, but team battles, thus they were called the Headline series.
Once starting to make short videos, ByteDance would launch two apps in one go, they’re not competitors, but would win together cooperatively.
Zhang Yiming even had the nas ready.
“One called Huoshan Short Video, the other called TikTok!”
“The forr’s na should be down-to-earth, and the latter focusing on being trendy!”
Seeing Youuqu after that, he just felt TikTok couldn’t work, losing the edge again!
He didn’t know why this college student nad Cheng Zhu had such synergy with his team.
“If Youuqu isn’t the upgrade of our TikTok, being more comprehensive, I would have suspected an insider.” Zhang Yiming repeatedly thought to himself.
Lately, he watched Youuqu achieve quite remarkable success in the Cold Start phase.
Moreover, it was apparent, the app had high user stickiness.
No surprise, the ratio of registered users to daily active users would be quite impressive!
This made Zhang Yiming secretly regretful.
“If, I’m saying if.”
“If we took the lead on TikTok…”
“Sigh!” Mr. Zhang sighed deeply.
Moreover, he felt even more frustrated.
Because Tencent over there found short video monetization capability too poor, leading Weishi being gradually marginalized within Tencent.
The giant who entered first, it’s taking a halfti break! Damn it!
Might even quit!
This again made Zhang Yiming have that voice surface inside.
“If, I’m saying if…”
After receiving Mr. Lei’s call, Zhang Yiming soon understood the purpose.
He wanted to discuss Youuqu with him.
Regarding this app that overtook him, he didn’t deliberately belittle it due to missing the opportunity, his response was fairly candid.
But he felt the chanism of Cheng Zhu’s side wasn’t particularly good.
“Although Youuqu and Kuai Shou aren’t direct competitors, they lack defensive type products.” Zhang Yiming stated.
This was what he considered the worst part.
ByteDance internally planned to launch Huoshan Short Video as a defensive type product against Kuai Shou.
Whether in content, tone, or user composition, Huoshan Short Video’s positioning was almost aligned with Kuai Shou.
In fact, ByteDance internally is currently prioritizing Huoshan Short Video.
If truly entering the short video industry, it would prioritize Huoshan first, TikTok second.
Lei Bu Si nodded slightly upon hearing.
He knew ByteDance’s usual “strategy”, enjoying “group battles”.
But Zhang Yiming wasn’t without reasoning.
After chatting for a while, Zhang Yiming smiled and said, “Are you planning to invest in Youuqu?”
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