I completely understand.

The deposit is 200, and on average 6-10 people leave the deposit in the APP (you don’t take the deposit in and out every time you use the car, right? This is taking advantage of your laziness), Then there is 1,200-2,000 yuan left on this car. I don’t know the purchase price of this car, but I guess it won’t exceed 200 yuan. After Foxconn's large-scale intervention in factory production, it may only cost 100 yuan.

As a result, for each exclusive bicycle, at least 1,000 yuan must be taken away from the market. If 10 million vehicles are put in, then it will be a deposit of 10 billion yuan. Isn't this a rural credit cooperative?

10 billion in cash can be used to derive 50 billion in loans (don’t think about investing 10 billion in treasury bonds with an annual return of 3%). This is a basic financial routine. In the 50 billion investment market, there is a safe income of 3.5 billion per year. Excluding interest, operating expenses and other expenses, there is a profit of 1 to 2 billion.

A business that earns 1-2 billion in net profit a year. How many listed companies in China can do this? No wonder it’s valued at tens of billions!

Furthermore:

Before you get on a bicycle, whether it is Mobike or ofo, you must give your phone number, real name, and ID number ( require real-name authentication), and at the same time, you have to submit a deposit of 299 yuan (Mobike) or 99 yuan (ofo)...

01

The business model is actually a chain In this system, a good business model innovation must at least understand the following five core questions:

1. What needs will the product (or service) you plan to provide solve? In other words, who are your target users? Is it just necessary, or is it improving? High frequency requirements, or low frequency?

2. Is the market for this demand large enough? If it is a small market, it is not starting a business, it is making a living;

3. Whose cheese will your model touch? In other words, how big is your potential enemy? This determines the friction coefficient and resistance of your business, and also determines how far you can go in the end;

4. Is your model difficult to copy or plagiarized?

5. Profit model - this is the most, most, most important. Simply put, how does your business model make money? Any business model that does not consider making money is a scam. But if you can solve the problem of making money by acting like a gangster (of course, you can't break the law), I don't care whether you are a gangster or a gentleman. If I ask an entrepreneur about his profit model, and if the answer is that I haven’t considered it yet, I will now consider burning money to become users and capture traffic, I will maintain enough respect and distance from him;

The most awesome innovation is undoubtedly technological innovation. However, Chinese entrepreneurs like to be opportunistic and cannot tolerate loneliness. They are unwilling to invest in technology research and development and are unwilling to wait. Therefore, 99% of them are just pure business model innovations - the actual competition among everyone's entrepreneurship is business models.

Therefore, there is a famous saying in the real estate industry: a house is not only a location, but also a location. There is also an experience summary in China’s venture capital industry: a project, in addition to a business model, is also a business model.

02

In the more than ten years I have been a venture capital investor, I have seen countless smart business model innovations, many of which are eye-catching but also amazing. Of, there are very few.

No, it’s because there are few models that answer all the above five points. Generally speaking, if you can answer 1, 2, or 3, it is a pretty good project. Those who can answer 1, 2, 3, and 4 are top-grade projects. If you can answer 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 at the same time, you can call it "the most awesome". It is a top project.

If I were to choose the most innovative business model in China in the past seven years, I would prefer Lei Jun’s Xiaomi. He was the first to use hardware to build the Internet. He acquired users (flocks) at a dumping price that was almost unprofitable, built an ecosystem, and then looked for "pig" to pay the bill - which is also Lei Jun's famous saying: the wool comes from the pig.

There is no doubt that the smartphone market is large enough and there are enough price-sensitive diaosi users. However, the core of Lei Jun’s business model is still just a simple marketing model innovation, which will touch mobile phone manufacturers and sales. The dual benefits of channels will never last long.

Once other manufacturers follow up on channel reform (such as VIVO and OPPO), or even use technological innovation to compete (such as Huawei), your ecosystem and "pig" have not yet had time to find a good solution. The downhill road is inevitable, which is why Xiaomi has begun to be forced to expand product categories (such as Xiaomi bracelets, Xiaomi TVs, etc.) and continue to mine hardware instead of ARPU value.

In other words, Lei Jun perfectly answered the above three questions 1, 2, and 3, 4 answered half of them, and 5 had no answer. Therefore, Xiaomi’s project is far from as good as the market imagined.

If I were to choose the most innovative business model in China in the past five years, I would vote for Didi.

The difficulty of traveling affects almost everyone. The market is large enough and absolutely high-frequency. At the same time, because it requires a lot of money to attract users in the early stage, people who are not rich enough cannot do it. This kind of innovation.

However, its flaws are also obvious: it touches the interests of almost all people in the commercial passenger car chain (such as taxis, buses, relevant authorities, etc.), and people in this chain belong to society. Naturally, we will sympathize with the so-called "vulnerable groups". The most important thing is that they are organized, not scattered individuals. If an organization wants to rebound, its strength cannot be underestimated. Moreover, after burning the money, Didi cannot see how to make money within the foreseeable time. The profit model has never been clear, which is the biggest flaw in Didi’s business model.

In other words, Didi perfectly answered the above three questions 1, 2, and 4, 3 partially answered, and 5 had no answer.

So, Didi’s project may be a good project, but it is certainly not the “most awesome” project. Only those who invest money will realize the five flavors.

If you want to choose the most awesome innovative business model in China in the past three years, there is no doubt that it is the "*** bicycle sharing" represented by Mobike and ofo - and I am willing to do it Named with the words "the most awesome".

03

***The innovative business model of bicycle sharing is very similar to the representative company Mobike - it is really admirable and amazing.

Ofo is the earliest bicycle sharing company established. It was founded in 2014 by five founders born in the 1990s from Peking University. In June 2015, ofo's bicycle sharing plan was launched and successfully obtained approval from Peking University. 2,000 exclusive bicycles. In December, ofo’s daily orders were close to 20,000. Luo Bin, a partner of Jinshajiang Venture Capital, went to Peking University to do business and saw many small yellow cars passing by on the road. He realized that this was a company worth investing in. It captured the urgent needs of students and did so frequently, so Then there was the Series A financing after the Spring Festival in 2016.

Mobike has capital from the beginning. The founder Hu Weiwei, who has been an automotive journalist for 10 years, is just an ordinary white-collar worker. One day in 2014, a friend working at the Mercedes-Benz China Design Center told Hu Weiwei , there will be a wave of innovation in personalized travel tools in the future. Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, asked her if she had ever thought about doing a shared travel project, and later discussed it with Zhang Peng, founder of Geek Park. Hu Weiwei had the support of these investors from the beginning and invited Wang Xiaofeng, who had resigned as general manager of Uber Shanghai, to serve as Mobike’s CEO.

Both are developing rapidly, as can be seen from the financing amount and valuation in the table below:

The reason why “***Bike Sharing” has developed so rapidly is that almost overnight, All kinds of little yellow cars have sprung up on the streets of many cities because of this business model, which almost perfectly answers the five core requirements I raised above.

First of all, short-distance travel is an absolute necessity. Especially in increasingly crowded big cities and during rush hours, they have always been huge pain points that cannot be solved by buses, subways, taxis, and private cars. In the past, "public bicycles" tried by some cities (such as Shanghai) almost all ended in vain due to a series of problems such as the independent administration of each district government, unclear investment entities, insufficient bicycle distribution, and difficulty in returning bicycles.

Mobike and other “shared bikes” have vehicles released by the company. You can check the nearby vehicles by opening the mobile APP, and you can make reservations in advance if you see suitable ones. There is no need for parking piles or cards. Scan the QR code to unlock the car. When not in use, just park at any legal non-motor vehicle parking spot. It charges one yuan for half an hour. The cost of using the car is so low that it can be ignored. It is also simple, convenient and easy to use, almost completely and perfectly solving the problem of the "last mile" in the city.

Secondly, the market is huge. As of December 2016, the number of users of "online car booking" in my country was 168 million, an increase of 46.16 million from the first half of 2016, with a growth rate of 37.9%. The number of potential users of ***bike sharing will not be less than this in any case.

Even if you are a wealthy person who doesn’t care about travel costs at all, once you have experienced the pain of driving a private car from Dongcheng to Xicheng for three hours, and then another hour to find a parking space for a friend to eat. , you know that most of the time, I would rather take the subway. After getting out of the subway station, ride a Mobike to the roadside of a restaurant and throw the bike away. It is so refreshing and refreshing. Therefore, you can regard almost all urban office workers as a target group.

Thirdly, this thing hardly touches the interests of any "tycoon" in the old world, except for motorcycles - and motorcycles are the targets of almost all cities. Moreover, motorcycle taxis are all "underground parties" without an organization and are completely useless.

Finally, and the most "admirable" thing is that "***Bike Sharing" has a very clear profit model from the beginning: deposit. After understanding this, you have to sincerely admire the person who came up with this model.

***The profit model of bicycle sharing is to partially realize cash through time-sharing leasing, collect deposits to recover funds, realize cash flow and expand (see the figure below):

The cost of time-sharing rental is actually not important at all. Whether it is Mobike or ofo, I believe they all know clearly: even if there are 100 million users, using it for one hour a day, they will only earn 100 million in revenue. It needs to face the delivery and hardware loss of more than 10 million bicycles, plus other management expenses. More importantly, due to its short-distance characteristics and its benchmarking against public transportation and traditional "public bicycles", its pricing space is limited.

Therefore, they have no hope of making money from the rental fee of 1 yuan per hour.

Pass what?

Deposit - This is an extremely genius innovation.

Before you get on a bicycle, whether it is Mobike or ofo, you must send your phone number, real name, and ID number (real-name authentication is required). At the same time, You also have to submit a deposit of 299 yuan (Mobike) or 99 yuan (ofo).

For any Internet company, it is a great blessing to be able to obtain user registration and a phone call through long-term operations. The gameplay of "*** bike sharing" is equivalent to picking up a girl. When you meet a girl for the first time, you get all the identity information and phone number of the other party - this is an extremely demanding requirement for users, and many users who have a strong desire for privacy will definitely resist it. But "***Bike" has been realized in one go by solving the pain point needs.

The most important thing is that it also allows users to open their wallets - this is the last link of any business model and the most coveted link.

The reason why this is a genius innovation is because the deposit of 299:

1. It is refundable, so most people will not resist paying the money;

< p>2. It can be refunded, but the company will not automatically refund it, and most people will not take the initiative to ask for a refund, because they have to pay for the next time they use the car. The result is that a large amount of money is deposited in the company, which is equivalent to being occupied for free;

< p>3. The deposit cannot be used and cannot be used to support the rental fee. This means that the money will only increase and never decrease;

4. Since a deposit corresponds to one registered user, not one car, this means that placing a car can lock in far more than 1 user. Mobike currently locks 8 people into one car, which is equivalent to placing a car and getting a "deposit" of 2,400 yuan (300*8).

In this sense, every bicycle launched by Mobike is similar to a savings bank. The financial institution with the most branches in China is the Agricultural Bank of China, with more than 24,000 branches and 30,000 ATMs across the country. On January 23, 2017, Foxconn became Mobike’s new strategic investor. This cooperation is expected to significantly increase Mobike's bicycle production, with the total annual production capacity expected to exceed 10 million units - and each bicycle is a mobile savings point.

Assuming only 10 million vehicles are launched, and each vehicle is locked to 8 people, with a deposit of 300 yuan per person, the total accumulated funds will reach 24 billion - this is the most classic Internet finance method.

Don’t focus on solving profits, but solve cash flow. Instead of selling hardware, we collect deposits to make up for cash flow, which reduces the cash expenditures incurred by general Internet companies through massive subsidies to cultivate users. This is Quite a clever move.

In other words, "***Bicycle" solves 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the above models (see the table below):

Only 4 is slightly flawed , but it doesn’t matter because the most critical profit model issue has been solved from the beginning – this meets the definition of the “most awesome” model.