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“If you don’t know what to do to start a business, just do social networking.”

Recalling what an entrepreneurial mentor said at an entrepreneurial summit four years ago, Xu Feng showed some helplessness on his face. He told Understand Notes that it was the words of that mentor that made him determined to leave his job and start a business, and he began to take root in the social circle.

There are not many opportunities, so your shots must be steady, accurate and ruthless

As a member of thousands of entrepreneurs, Xu Feng and his team have been stationed in the Creative Industry Park in Hangzhou for more than three years. However, starting a business in the social field is not as simple as imagined. Just the word "demand" took Xu Feng and his team to ponder for nearly two years. The Beta version was also launched and several of them were dropped. In the past two years, the market hot spot has shifted from acquaintance social networking to anonymous social networking, and the proportion of users' demand for "hormones" and "loneliness" has also become lower and lower.

"Social applications must not only meet the needs of users, but also be unique and distinctive. It is really difficult to make good applications." He pointed to a research report in the social field and said that there are at least 40 social applications that can be named, and there are countless social applications in the "incubation" and "entrepreneurship" stages.

In his opinion, new social applications are born almost every day. If it lacks highlights and blindly follows the trend in terms of functions, it will be difficult for the product to stand out in the fierce market competition. Therefore, it is particularly important to identify the needs of target users and distance yourself from competing products in terms of functionality and perspective.

“But it is not easy and risky to identify user needs that have not yet been realized by competing products.” Xu Feng told Understand Notes that there are more than 40 well-known social applications on the market, which have basically met all users’ needs, leaving only some “tricky” angles for entrepreneurs to explore.

Socializing with strangers, socializing in tree holes, socializing with videos...every aspect that can be thought of is basically "famous". Some friends around him once took a different approach and tried to launch VR social networking. However, after investing a lot of research and development costs, they failed due to the limitations of hardware technology.

"Compared to industry giants, entrepreneurs don't have many opportunities to try. They can only be steady, accurate and ruthless." In order not to repeat the mistakes of his peers who took the wrong approach but died before they started, Xu Feng devoted all his energy in the early stage of starting a business to researching the social application market.

He said that after two years of needs analysis, the team found that a considerable number of young users have a small social circle and generally have social phobia. In their life, work, and study, they have a lot of emotions that need to be vented, but no one listens and they have nowhere to talk.

“Allowing users to find common topics with each other through anonymous venting is also a way of socializing.” Feeling that there were no similar targeted products in the social circle for the time being, Xu Feng decided to give it a try. So, he and his team began to develop applications while looking for financing opportunities. At the end of December 2018, they finally launched the first version of the Tucao + Venting social application and carried out market promotion with limited funds. The next step will be difficult.wait.

Whether it is social networking or starting a business, misplaced competition is all about competition. Only functions that are unique and can meet the needs of some users can survive in the fierce industry. So, by meeting unique angles and needs, can we create a social hit that is loved and sought after by users?

Demands change and plans can never keep up with the changes

Zhuang Hai is also the founder of a social application startup team in Hangzhou. He told Notes that the number of users of a mood social application launched by the company has not increased significantly since it was launched in early 2018. In addition to the "base" of 100,000 brushes, only 1,386 people have been added so far.

The so-called mood socialization refers to the anonymous users forming a paired social relationship with each other through words similar to their mood, signature, and words. They don't know each other, but the more they listen to each other's "worries" and express their concern through expressions, the relationship value will increase. Eventually, both parties can unlock the chat feature.

"Both parties are anonymous to avoid social fear, the chat needs to be unlocked, and micro-business advertisements are avoided." Zhuang Hai said helplessly that the original idea was a good one and the prospects were good, but it was a pity that the market changed too fast. When conducting market research before application development at the end of 2017, they conducted a prize-based survey among tens of thousands of post-90s and post-95s from different regions. More than 76% recognized this social logic, and more than 69% of users expressed that they were very much looking forward to the launch of the application.

However, after the app was launched in 2018, despite a lot of cost and effort invested in promotion and marketing, little traffic was achieved. Many users have become zombie accounts after receiving platform benefits.

"It feels like it shouldn't be. It was developed after painstaking research on demand, not blindly following the trend." In order to find out why this app is not popular, Zhuang Hai and his team launched a new round of social questionnaire survey among relevant users in September 2018.

However, the survey results surprised him. Just eight months later, the approval rate for the social logic of mood listening is only 32%. 14% of users said they were not looking forward to such a social application at all.

"It's just like playing games. RPGs are popular for a while, and RTSs are popular for a while. The changes are too fast." Regarding the fickle needs of users, Xu Feng also added that the needs of young user groups are very fickle. Coupled with the guidance of a large number of interest trends, it is difficult for a unique social product to meet the long-term changes in user needs.

Perhaps, dating in tree holes, which was very popular this month, may be replaced by video flirting next month. It is difficult for entrepreneurs to grasp or predict the development trend of user needs, which has led to many social applications becoming obsolete before they are completed.

"What's even more frightening is that the product has not yet been launched, and Cheng Yaojin with the same function appears halfway." He told Notes that as long as they encounter such a situation once or twice, the entrepreneurial team will lose morale at best, overturn and start over, or even declare the project to fail.

In their view, this fickleness has also caused many social applications on the market to appear to rise suddenly, but in an instant they will become "monthly throwaway" applications. As a result, with good luck, social applications caught up with the "popular" trend, became popular for a while, and were easy to follow.It is short-lived as user interest wanes. As for unlucky products, they are often stillborn and no one cares about them.

Since social entrepreneurship is so difficult, why are there so many entrepreneurs rushing to get involved in the social industry like moths to a flame? In the final analysis, it is still "hot money" that is causing trouble.

Social applications become a financing tool for entrepreneurs

According to public data, during the five years of rapid development in the domestic social field from 2011 to 2016, more than 500 social application companies received financing.

In the "2018 Social Field Investment and Financing Report" released by IT Juzi, it can be seen that although the social field has cooled down in 2018 (investment and financing events decreased by 29.5% year-on-year), the total financing increased significantly by 68.2%.

“In recent years, it has been difficult to raise funds for Internet entrepreneurship, but there are still considerable financing opportunities in the social sector.”

Zhang Xianyu is the co-founder of a startup company in Nanshan District, Shenzhen. The company's interactive Q&A social application just received an angel round of financing of 300,000 yuan at the end of 2018, which made him feel a little relieved.

He told Understand Notes that on the same floor of the commercial building where the team works, there are five startup companies engaged in the design, development, and operation of social applications. According to his understanding, some companies have been struggling in the social field for five or six years.

"Financing is the belief that supports the survival of enterprises and teams. Financing in other fields besides social networking is more difficult." Recalling the days when he was waiting for financing, Zhang Xianyu shook his head with a wry smile. He said that there are many Internet and e-commerce entrepreneurial teams he knows, and most of them transitioned to the social field last year after experiencing failures and troughs.

He feels that in the past year or two, many social applications have been favored by users and have received considerable financing. This also means that there is still a lot of hot money pouring into the social field, constantly looking for potential social products.

"Who dares to say that making social applications is just for feelings and not for financing?" Zhang Xianyu told Notes that social entrepreneurship requires a lot of money, and many entrepreneurial teams he knows have failed before Series C financing. In addition to objective factors such as changing user needs and iterative interest trends, it is more that the founding team does not have the patience to continuously operate and maintain the product. "Some directly choose to cash out and leave. To put it bluntly, it is still speculative psychology at work."

In Zhang Xianyu's view, in many cities where entrepreneurial talents are concentrated, there are still a large number of teams focusing on social application projects. Perhaps everyone knows that it is difficult to have opportunities behind mature products such as WeChat, Weibo, and Momo, but they still follow the trend in order to "trap" a round of financing.

Even if the final social application is just a small program "parasitized" on WeChat, as long as there is enough traffic data that can be used to "tell stories" in front of capital, the goal will be achieved. Zhang Xianyu said with a smile that in the few road shows he participated in not long ago, he saw several entrepreneurial teams claiming that the small games (mini programs) they made were also interest-based social applications, which made people feel speechless.

“Fortunately, we raised an angel round, and there are still many peers on this floor who have not yet raised funds.” Zhang Xianyu said frankly that in the past few years, many entrepreneurial teams in the social field have collapsed because they were unable to wait for financing..

However, there is no shortage of adventurers in this circle. When a group of small teams fail, a group of new entrepreneurial teams will be born. Everyone is developing new products and waiting hard for financing. "A small team I know has developed more than a dozen different types of social applications in the past four years, but only one has received angel round financing, and the rest have ended in abortion." Zhang Xianyu sighed.

Conclusion

The social application market is becoming increasingly segmented. Users’ needs for social interaction are diverse and changeable. Different age groups have different perspectives, different backgrounds, and different interests and hobbies. It is already a fantasy to think of another “one-size-fits-all” social software.

With the help of capital, more and more entrepreneurial teams see business opportunities in the industry and develop a large number of social products targeted at different groups of people. But how much of this stems from the original intention of socializing or dancing for the will of capital is unknown. However, from some phenomena in the industry, we can find that there is no shortage of entrepreneurs who rack their brains to create traffic data, "encircle" a round of financing and then leave. There are also many entrepreneurs who complain that young people are too elusive and that it is not easy to introduce social relationships.

Perhaps it’s not that this generation of product managers is “incompetent”, but that many teams have already been lost in the chaos of capital.

[Source: TMTpost Media Author: Understand Notes]