Is producing content a process of draining yourself? Where will content startup unicorns emerge?

Your words, your knowledge, your voice, your looks, your talent can all be easily converted into money and become hard currency. This is the best era for content entrepreneurship. However, although content entrepreneurship has become a popular concept in 2016, there are no "unicorns" yet, that is, large companies with a valuation of more than 1 billion US dollars. On the other hand, technological waves such as the sharing economy will always give birth to unicorn companies in three to five years or even less time. So, will content entrepreneurship produce unicorns? If so, in what directions?

Content startup unicorns may emerge soon

Before discussing whether content entrepreneurship will produce unicorns, we must first clarify what content entrepreneurship is. This may seem like a new concept, but it has actually been around for many years. For example, the popular operator SP era ten years ago was considered content entrepreneurship. The difference is that current content entrepreneurship is not just about "relying on channels and producing content", but about productizing content and turning it into services to acquire users, thereby forming many business models.

"Content developers", like webmasters and App developers back then, began to think about demand, users, monetization, and operations, rather than just producing. In this way, the operators of WeChat accounts who write code, the Internet celebrities on platforms such as Meipai, the experts who answer questions on Fenda, or Papi Jiang and Luoji Siwei, can all be considered content entrepreneurs.

Can content entrepreneurship create billion-dollar companies?

If you rely on your own strength, this is almost impossible. Even superstars, such as Papi Jiang, cannot do this. The content economy itself is an attention business, and attention is positively correlated with the quality and quantity of content. However, content is not a standardized product and cannot be mass-produced. The quality and quantity are closely related to the creator's creative ability, which often grows linearly over time. There will not be exponential growth in industries such as social networks and e-commerce.

If Papi Jiang can only produce one video a day, no matter how hard she works, the number of videos she can produce in her lifetime is basically fixed, and the imagination space of her commercial value can be basically estimated, just like traditional entertainment stars, how much money she can make in her lifetime is highly certain. Facts have proved that many content creators will go downhill in the later stages, and producing content is a process of draining themselves. Only a few can continuously produce high-quality content.

Therefore, if you only rely on your own strength or the strength of a few people to produce content out of inertia, it is impossible for a unicorn to appear. Some people say that Papi Jiang’s valuation of 120 million yuan is a huge bubble, and it is still a long way from 1 billion US dollars. Another benchmark, Luoji Siwei, is valued at 1.32 billion yuan, which is 10 times away from being a unicorn.

Is it impossible to create a billion-dollar company by just developing content?

Of course not. A group of Internet giants that existed earlier than BAT, including the three major portals, are essentially content developers. Listed platforms such as Autohome can also be considered content entrepreneurs.

However, these platforms can grow because, in addition to the content itself, they also have products, communities, platforms, services, and strong relationships with users, which is their core value. There is no doubt that our content entrepreneurship will eventually upgrade from content production to user management, content productization, service and platformization. At this time, it is not difficult for unicorns to emerge, and it may happen in the foreseeable future.

In which directions will content startup unicorns emerge?

Content entrepreneurship can be divided from multiple dimensions: according to the content form, it can be divided into pictures, videos, live broadcasts, and audios; according to the content industry, it can be divided into entertainment, fashion, technology, automobiles, real estate, finance, sports, etc.

Live streaming and video are the hottest right now, and there are more ways to monetize in industries such as entertainment, real estate, finance, and automobiles. Therefore, these fields are more likely to produce unicorns. Relatively speaking, the combination of video and entertainment has the largest space and is the best track at the moment. Therefore, entertainment video is expected to give birth to the first unicorn in content entrepreneurship, and it is no coincidence that Papi Jiang has become a content entrepreneurship star.

In addition to the track, the direction is crucial to whether a content startup team can become a unicorn. Now, a large number of content startup teams are seeking to productize, platformize and service content, and try in different directions to break through the ceiling of the "pure content production" model. Specifically, there are the following mainstream directions:

1. IP incubation

This is the ultimate goal of content entrepreneurship, to make content an IP and thus have vitality, so that it can produce high-quality content like "cell division" and last forever.

The IP here is not just a celebrity, a brand, or an image, but a powerful content incubation mechanism. In the traditional content era, Disney, which was good at IP, has hundreds of celebrity images starting with round-eared Mickey Mouse, such as Snow White, Toy Story, etc. Only through the IP incubation model can content creation break through personal brands and achieve exponential growth in quantity.

At this point, many content creation teams in China are still at the stage of creating "single IP", such as Luoji Siwei's IP is Luo Zhenyu, and Papi Jiang's IP is Papi Jiang. There are also some who try to incubate IP: Baozou Comics has successfully created IPs such as Wang Nima and Zhang Quandan; Big Dream Factory, which owns Big Laugh Workshop, has incubated many IPs around characters from Journey to the West.

What is the difficulty of IP incubation? If IP is related to "people", there will be great risks, because individuals who can become IPs are rare, and once they become IPs, they are fully capable of establishing their own business. The value of the incubation agency becomes an agency, which is the same as the traditional entertainment economy, with very low value. After Luo Zhenyu and Shen Yin separated, Luoji Siwei had nothing to do with Shen Yin. Only virtual IPs that are separated from people, such as NBA games, virtual characters in the Avengers, and literary works such as Journey to the West, can truly belong to the incubation platform.

2. Investment layout

Luoji Siwei initially only created content around Luo Zhenyu's reading program. After successively obtaining A/B rounds of financing and having a certain revenue capacity, it began to use the cash in the account for investment. What has been disclosed is that it has jointly invested 12 million with Zhen Fund in Papi Jiang, and also recently invested in Fenda. A person close to Luoji Siwei revealed that its investment projects are not limited to Papi Jiang, but also include Boya Primary School, which is engaged in children's knowledge education, and Zhang Yijun, which is engaged in emotional intelligence education. When investing in content teams, it is more concerned about teams with complementary user groups.

Content entrepreneurs who invest in other content teams generally have more surplus funds, which may be due to the completion of huge financing or strong hematopoietic ability. Investment is not a pure financial investment, but more of "spending money to buy time" to achieve faster expansion and achieve the exchange of content creation capabilities and target user groups. Strong content entrepreneurial teams will eventually take the business investment route, which is no different from the development of other Internet industries.

3. Peripheral business

The idea behind this direction is to gather a certain number of users through content, then think about their common needs and provide services for them. Some people also call it a community.

Luoji Siwei initially only shared books, and later began to sell tea and other products favored by intellectuals; after accumulating a certain number of military fans, "Military Sub-Plane" began to try to organize military fans to go to Russia to experience battlefield culture, or special tourism services such as hunting; NBA provides audiences with services such as NBA games, NBA music, NBA peripherals, NBA variety shows, etc.; Big DreamWorks provides related services such as online comic publishing, online live variety shows, and online artist brokerage.

On the one hand, exploring peripheral businesses is the purpose of IP, and the essence of IP is to tap into derived value; on the other hand, it is also an attempt to monetize. The profit margins from selling content or advertising are relatively limited, while peripheral businesses can magnify the monetization space several times.

4. E-commerce

The essence of the content industry is the attention economy. In the PC era, it was called traffic, and in the mobile era, it is called attention. Whether it is traffic or attention, there is a monetization funnel. The closer to the transaction link, the higher the monetization efficiency. If you only do advertising, it is not difficult to support your family and make a fortune, but you will never be able to grow big.

Therefore, whether it is Internet celebrities, NBA, or self-media, many are trying to integrate with e-commerce. Instead of advertising for other businessmen, it is better to become a businessman themselves. Luoji Siwei labeled Luo Zhenyu as a "businessman" in its exploration of social e-commerce; after MK, a makeup artist from Guangzhou, had more than 1 million followers on WeChat, he began to use e-commerce as one of his core businesses, selling beauty products with a monthly turnover of nearly 10 million; and the American beauty Internet celebrity Michelle Phan's monthly subscription model of beauty gift boxes Glam Bag, which is talked about with great success.

These content developers are all trying the "store in front, content in back" approach, cleverly combining content with merchandise to deliver them to fans.

To realize the e-commerce of content, the field must be suitable for e-commerce. It is still difficult to achieve this in long-decision fields such as automobiles, real estate, and finance. On the contrary, it is relatively easy to combine content with e-commerce for quick-decision products such as maternal and child care, beauty, books, food, and travel. Moreover, only by gathering users to form strong connections, strong trust relationships, and continuous purchasing desires, can the e-commerce routine be smoother.

5. Open Platform

This is a relatively big story. After a content developer becomes big, he or she will attract more "content developers" and everyone will play together to solve the difficult content development problem of "continuously producing high-quality content". Playing in a group can also increase momentum and make the company bigger and stronger.

After receiving investments from Zhen Fund and Luoji Siwei, Papi Jiang launched the Papitube content open platform. The story was "building an open source platform to incubate more Papi Jiangs." However, the results were minimal. Two months later, the Papatube channel only updated five videos. Although each video received more than 100,000 views on WeChat, the corresponding video creators did not receive the corresponding titles, let alone create a "second Papi Jiang."

What's the problem?

Papi Jiang is a content creator, but now she is trying to turn herself into a channel. However, this channel is far less powerful than video websites, WeChat, and Weibo, which can give contributors 10w+, but it can only do this, which feels a bit like a dragonfly skimming the water. The IP incubation model mentioned above cannot firmly bind IP individuals through strong organizational relationships such as enterprises. Whether Papitube's submission model can successfully incubate the next IP-level content developer and establish a stronger connection with them (not just a publishing channel) is still a big question mark.

However, the difficulty of Papitube becoming an open platform does not prove that content entrepreneurship cannot take the path of open platforms. Some have been very successful, such as video websites such as iQiyi, which have successfully incubated a large number of IPs, and online literature platforms, but they are platforms with strong channel and incubation capabilities, and have become self-contained, completely different from pure content developers. Therefore, it is almost impossible for content developers to become content open platforms. How can developers grab the jobs of AppStore?

Where will content entrepreneurship go after it becomes big? I think it is nothing more than the above five directions. If you are just doing content, the first four directions have greater opportunities. They can overcome the fundamental problem of "single content production cannot ensure continuous quantity and quality" of individuals or teams, and break through the advertising form in the commercial space. The imagination space is magnified several times. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before unicorns appear.

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As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.