Group buying in 2014: from smoke of war to reshuffle

Before he met LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Shen Boyang had never realized his change. He flew to the United States to meet with LinkedIn's global executives, and in just two days, he talked with more than 20 global executives - he talked with HR about how to build corporate culture, with CFO about the importance of establishing data analysis, and with PR about the differences between Chinese and American media.

Just five years ago, when Shen Boyang decided to leave Google to start his own business, he managed less than 10 people at most. After chatting with Chen Yizhou, chairman of the board of directors of Renren Group, he took five engineers and a product manager to start Nuomi Tuan, an internal business of Renren.com. Five years later, he managed a team of more than 2,000 people, and unknowingly, he had completed a huge transformation.

It was the most difficult integration period after Baidu acquired Nuomi. Shen Boyang finally chose to leave and accepted the position of President of LinkedIn Greater China.

At this moment, the smoke-filled war of group buying is entering the decisive battle.

Market from chaos to concentration

According to the market statistics report released by professional group buying navigation website Tuan800 in June this year, although the cumulative transaction volume of domestic online group buying in the first half of 2014 reached 29.43 billion yuan, the best performance in the second half of the year, the number of group buying websites has dropped sharply to 176, compared with the peak period of 5,058 in August 2011, with more than 100,000 practitioners. The survival rate of group buying is now only 3.5%. Among them , Meituan , Dianping and Baidu Nuomi occupy more than 84% of the market share.

The ending of Nuomi.com also opened a new chapter in the group buying war. The three major Internet giants Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba have entered the game. After experiencing the unprecedentedly brutal reshuffle of the Thousand Group Buying War, this war is starting a new cycle.

If we draw a dividing line between China's Internet and mobile Internet, group buying is at a critical point of change. This critical point is reflected in several aspects:

1. The transitional products that emerged from the development of PC Internet to mobile Internet;

Looking at the entire Internet industry, group buying was the last batch of companies that originated from PC Internet startups. Mobile Internet was the era of opportunity for them to thrive and grow. After that, Changba and Toutiao emerged and have become mobile Internet companies based on mobile phones.

2. The foreshadowing and beginning of the in-depth development of mobile Internet into industrial Internet;

Group buying is also the first time in the history of the Internet that such a large-scale and deep integration with the traditional service industry has begun. It is the explosion of group buying that has unveiled the curtain of O2O and industrial Internet. If Alibaba's listing not long ago interpreted the last glory of the PC Internet and consumer Internet era, then the development of group buying is the foreshadowing of the huge future market of mobile Internet and industrial Internet.

Data shows that this year's online shopping transaction volume is 2.42 trillion yuan; in the local life service industry, the transaction volume of the catering service industry alone has reached 2.7672 trillion yuan. The broad prospects of the catering market have surpassed the total amount of online shopping, but the online catering through the Internet is less than 62.3 billion, and the new market is about to explode.

In less than five years, group buying has completed the fission and aggregation process from free competition among thousands of groups to a relatively stable market structure of three oligopolies. The form has also evolved from the initial daily order to today's local life services. The power of capital, the evolution of the model, and the struggles and decisions of startups in rapid development have staged a perfect drama.

3. Before and after capital pushers launched a full-scale attack on the Internet.

Any round of commercial madness in human history is inseparable from the push of capital, and group buying is no exception.

Ma Zheng has witnessed the complete changes in the relationship between group buying and capital.

The concept of group buying first emerged in 2009, when Groupon was developing rapidly in the United States. Ma Zheng, who was studying in the United States, felt it deeply. In 2010, Ma Zheng returned to China after completing his studies and became an investor of KPCB. His investment focus was group buying. That was the craziest period for group buying websites. All kinds of entrepreneurs emerged crazily. Some wanted to make quick money, while others shouted the slogan of listing within less than a year of their establishment. The rhythm of sales expansion was quite similar to the Great Leap Forward in the 1970s.

After Ma Zheng had looked at more than 30 group buying websites, two months had passed without him noticing. Group buying websites were flourishing all over the country, and many group buying websites with good founding backgrounds had already received financing. He began to rush to grab projects. "Many investors who came in later didn't even look at them. Basically, once they heard about group buying, they saw that you were a decent person and put their money in. Then we realized that we couldn't wait any longer." Ma Zheng recalled.

Living in that crazy era, he would dream every day about what the group buying market would look like in three to five years. He finally concluded that group buying would be a "multiple winners" market in the future: the huge difference between group buying and the Internet is that the Internet is a winner-takes-all market, while group buying requires strong offline expansion capabilities, so it is very likely to form a regional market; in addition to group buying for food and drink, there are also group buying for multiple categories such as Jumei, Vipshop, and home furnishings, and group buying in subdivided industries also have opportunities. In the worst case, if group buying is acquired by BAT, at least three companies can survive.

At that time, the projects he was most involved in were Ftuan and Manzuo.com, the founders of which were a top student who had just returned from Stanford and a serial entrepreneur. More and more group-buying websites received funding, and it was difficult to tell the difference between them for those that had just started.

In the first two years of group buying, it was difficult to see obvious differences, and the investment speed was almost measured in days. Although the overall investment environment is emotional, in order to distinguish the differences between various websites, Ma Zheng and the company's investors set some rational reference standards: such as the team's "Internet sales experience, management experience, and team technical level"; because they believe that group buying is an extension of the advertising industry, the standard setting also includes "advertising industry experience." After these factors, which may or may not be related, are ranked in order of importance, start looking for group buying websites in order. The rest is to see whether the group buying website is willing to take your money.

Finally, Ma Zheng invested in Manzuo.com, founded by Feng Xiaohai. He summarized the reasons for the investment as follows: "This team has a deep understanding of the Internet, is more service-minded, and most importantly, wants to do one thing well for a long time."

Rather than saying that KPCB invested in Manzuo.com, it is better to say that this is a cooperation due to various coincidences. The specific website to invest in is more of a bargaining on details such as valuation and shareholding. When group buying just emerged, the valuation calculation method was the FCF (Free Cash Flow) formula, which predicted the development speed in three to five years based on the current development; by 2011, the popular valuation method was to refer to the scale of Groupon, and the development volume of group buying websites was how big Groupon was, in order to determine the overall market value of major group buying websites.

Based on these basic valuation methods, the investment valuation of each group purchase company already has a market value. "For example, if someone takes 30% of the 3 million US dollars, you can only continue the negotiation if you take 4 million US dollars, which is 30%. Later, the valuation is more affected by the market," said Ma Zheng.

At that time, the investment circle was basically forming a market rule. For example, the A round generally accounted for 20% to 25% of the shares. Feng Xiaohai, founder and CEO of Manzuo.com, said: "For investors, what you need is how much money you have, and then you can reversely calculate how much you are worth now. If an investor puts in 5 million, you have to tell him what scale you want to achieve with 5 million, and whether the investor agrees with this scale."

This means that at the beginning of financing, there will be a general valuation based on the market price, and the specific price depends on the ambition and expansion speed of the founder. If an investor invests 10 million in a group buying website and holds 20% of the shares, the founder needs to give the investor a development scale of 50 million market value; if the investor invests 20 million and still holds 20% of the shares, the founder needs to achieve a performance scale of 100 million market value.

"At that time, these valuation methods were based on the assumption that the group buying websites would maintain the same growth in business after three to five years. Thinking about it now, this approach was very aggressive," said Ma Zheng.

The failure of Lashou's IPO marked a turning point for the entire group-buying market

In the first round of group buying websites, whoever got the financing could recruit people, expand and occupy the market share the fastest. Lashou became the group buying company with the best potential to win the championship. Buses and subway stations were covered with Lashou advertisements endorsed by Ge You. At that time, Lashou CEO Wu Bo frequently talked about "speed is everything" in industry interviews, and he also claimed to be the person who was most willing to use "equity" in exchange for financing.

Lashou's listing was a key turning point in the sudden change of the capital market. In October 2011, Lashou CEO Wu Bo submitted a prospectus to the SEC, planning to raise $100 million. One month later, the IPO was suspended due to accounting issues.

From an external perspective, Lashou hoped to go public under the concept of China's Groupon, but Groupon was no longer favored in the United States at that time. Lashou found that its group buying business, which it excelled in, was also affected. The capital market's focus shifted to profitability. In order to cater to the capital market, Lashou began to transform into a physical group buying e-commerce company, increasing its sales gross profit margin through clothing, home textiles, household items and other products, and even established logistics and warehousing.

The failure of Lashou to go public triggered a tsunami in the group-buying market. "Investors have two mindsets, one is greed and the other is fear. If Lashou really goes public, investors will continue to be greedy for a while, because everyone thinks that at least they can sell it to Lashou, but when it fails to go public, everyone thinks that this thing cannot be withdrawn, and investment slows down." Ma Zheng told Business Value.

In fact, the sudden change in the capital market triggered the first wave of group buying websites going bankrupt. Websites that received the second round of financing before the financing window closed were in a relatively relaxed position, such as Meituan and Dianping, while Manzuo.com was the laggard in that round of financing.

In June of that year, Wu Bo was reported to have a conflict with investors and resigned as CEO. You will find that the invisible hand of capital has always been the direction indicator for the development of group buying - Wu Bo sold shares in exchange for speed in the early stage in order to get Lashou listed as soon as possible, and the direction of adjustment in the later stage was also due to the change in the wind direction of the capital market.

The conflict between 24quan and investors became public, pushing this round of group buying bankruptcies to a peak

From the Spring Festival to August 2011, 24quan received two rounds of financing and began to expand rapidly. In half a year, 24quan's business expanded from 20 cities to 102 cities, and the number of employees increased from 300 to 4,500. In October 2011, due to the sudden cooling of the capital market and the shortage of funds, the number of employees was drastically reduced from 4,500 to 600.

In October 2012, Du Yinan announced that 24quan would suspend operations, threatening investors and making the conflict between the two parties public. The reason behind the suspension of operations was that 24quan and its investors were in a state of confrontation, and it was claimed that the investors had arbitrarily transferred 2.4 million US dollars from the company's account, causing difficulties in the company's operations. The young and energetic Du Yinan chose to suspend the operation of the website to negotiate with investors.

One detail was repeatedly criticized by insiders in the group buying industry: 24quan sold phone cards on the group buying website at that time, and sold 100 yuan recharge cards for 90 yuan. Insiders commented: "This is purely for the purpose of making the turnover and transaction volume look good, to embellish the financial statements, so that they can continue to raise funds. How is this different from directly selling RMB?"

The main reason for the conflict in 24quan is that the current valuation is lower than the previous valuation. The professional term in the investment circle is "bleeding valuation", which means that early investors will lose all their money. The capital market is naturally profit-seeking. Only when the later valuation is higher than the previous valuation can early investors exit step by step. Therefore, the investors hope to use equity incentives to boost the morale of the team, but the website eventually closed down due to the interest dispute between the two parties. Since then, the internal operational problems of 24quan have also surfaced.

Du Yinan's "suspension of operations" caused 24quan to take a sharp turn for the worse and eventually cease operations permanently. The impact of this incident on investors was more far-reaching than the failure of Lashou and Wowotuan to go public, because it made investors realize the bloody fact that even if entrepreneurs took $50 million, they could still fail at any time. Since then, the investment circle has begun to re-examine group buying. By May 2012, the number of group buying websites nationwide had dropped from 5,058 to 2,200. Under a round of capital cold wave, the number of group buying websites dropped sharply to 213 until December 2013.

"No one is richer than the capital market, and all capital must be rewarded." Wang Xing, founder of Meituan.com, said: "The financing was closed because the capital did not think these group-buying websites could help them increase their value, but simply because they were short of money. I will never think that rich people are dumber than me."

In the fierce competition among thousands of group buying websites, in order to expand rapidly and scale up, group buying websites do need to obtain large amounts of financing; but after each company has obtained tens of millions of dollars in capital, how to manage sales and the operational management ideas behind it are what really determine the core of this war.

When the battle between thousands of groups was at its fiercest, on the day when Quan Jincheng reached an agreement with Manzuo.com, Wu Di went home and cried bitterly. This was the longest order he had followed since he joined Meituan, but he lost to his competitor because of company policy.

Wu Di was an early salesperson at Meituan. When he joined Meituan, the company had less than ten people. At that time, the concept of group buying had just emerged, and the merchants participating in group buying were basically small and medium-sized merchants with an order price of less than 100 yuan. When talking about Wu Di, the first thing that Meituan employees think of is "He is very different. He rarely talks about those small restaurants. The orders he brings are all large orders with taste."

When Wu Di joined Meituan, there were only three positions: R&D, quality control and sales. He was not suited to sales, so he had no choice but to choose sales. He was born in the 1980s and used products created by Wang Xing, such as Renren and Fanfou, on campus. He also joined the company out of admiration for Wang Xing.

Unlike most sales people, Wu Di worked at Meituan with the mentality of an entrepreneur. At that time, he rented a house next to the company. If he took half a day off, he could make 30 to 40 calls in the morning. Basically, he started working as soon as he opened his eyes, and slept in the office when he was tired late at night.

Choosing to do a large order with good taste often means more hardship, but also better commissions. But Wu Di believes from the bottom of his heart that group buying is to select those merchants with delicious food and good service and recommend them to consumers, and it is also to help distinctive merchants with marketing.

Born in Beijing, he has a better understanding of Beijing merchants. Quan Jincheng was a big deal that Wu Di started to negotiate when he joined Meituan. At that time, Quan Jincheng, from the store clerk to the marketing director, did not know what group buying was. He started calling over and over again, and every holiday he would write a new merchant promotion plan and send it to Quan Jincheng's marketing manager.

At that time, Quan Jincheng lived in Changping, a suburb of Beijing. There was no direct bus, so he had to drive there, which took a whole half day. From the clerk to the marketing manager, to the deputy general manager, he got the same answer every time - no group buying.

During the time when Wu Di and Quan Jincheng were in contact, the concept of group buying had gradually taken root in China. The senior executives of Quan Jincheng gradually realized the marketing effect of group buying websites on traditional merchants, and the sales staff of group buying websites such as Manzuo.com and Dianping.com also began to compete for Quan Jincheng's orders.

Wu Di has almost become a good friend of Quan Jincheng's marketing manager. He invites customers to dinner, takes them out to play, and is the first to show up when they have something going on at home or at work. He feels that talking to customers is like chasing a girl, and you really have to be open-hearted. The restaurant's executives even think that Wu Di's sincerity is better than "our own mother treats us well."

When the marketing manager finally agreed to help Wu Di push the matter to the senior executives, it was a big step for Meituan, and only needed the confirmation of the top decision-makers. For relatively high-end restaurant chains like Quan Jincheng, whether to join group buying has a long decision-making chain. For merchants, group buying can import traffic through the Internet and bring in new customers; at the same time, it is also a double-edged sword, which also means that merchants need to sacrifice part of their profits to gain customers.

When Quan Jincheng agreed to conduct group buying, many group buying websites had already approached him. After careful consideration, they proposed to "limit the number of copies to 5,000 and sell them to group buying websites at the original price" to see if it would work. Usually, the price that group buying websites take is lower than the price they sell to consumers, in order to earn the difference or directly collect rebates.

For these group buying websites, Quan Jincheng's request means: selling at the original price means no gross profit on this order; according to the sales' common experience, this is an order that can buy 20,000 copies, and the limit of 5,000 copies also means no sales. However, this merchant is joining for the first time and can bring in new registered users.

More merchants like Quan Jincheng also proposed that group-buying websites need to promise to underwrite, and even need to give a 1 million yuan advance payment. This means that if consumers request a refund, no matter what the reason, it will be difficult for group-buying websites to recover the advance payment from the merchant, and the refund will become a bad debt of the company.

A large number of follow-ups means a large amount of losses and bad debts on the company's account, and a large number of lost orders also means a large number of merchants are missing and losing users. In the era when the group buying market was advancing rapidly, such choices were often intertwined with a series of complex chains such as speed, scale and capital. It was the different ideas behind the evaluation of each order that determined the outcome of this bloody business war.

When group-buying websites were booming, Meituan was the first to establish an internal system. The first thing Wang Xing did every day when he went to work was to call a meeting of company executives to look at the data of each department. For orders like Quan Jincheng's, Meituan has a complete evaluation system that will comprehensively evaluate whether to agree to the merchant's conditions in terms of attracting new customers and profits.

This is also closely related to Wang Xing's attitude towards capital. Wang Xing, who has started several businesses, believes that there are two types of business failures: one is losing money, and the other is losing confidence. In the bloody war of group buying, unlike most founders, Wang Xing believes that "Meituan should be a self-financing business, not just burning investors' money."

Therefore, Wang Xing calculated every deal carefully. It was also because of this that Meituan was relatively cautious in its early expansion. When Lashou and Wowotuan, the first-tier group buying platforms, expanded to more than 300 cities, Meituan expanded to more than 100 cities; when group buying website advertisements were everywhere on buses, subways and Focus Media, Meituan.com only placed online advertisements. Insufficient advertising meant that many merchants did not know about Meituan.com, which also increased the difficulty of sales work. "We just want to know when you will advertise?" Wang Huiwen, who was in charge of the market at Meituan.com, was interrupted by sales during a meeting.

"If the merchant is expected to sell for 2 million yuan for a certain order, the group buying website will pay 1 million yuan to the merchant first. This is very common in the industry, but Meituan doesn't do that."

"We had a hard time signing some orders, and we negotiated with the merchants for a discount of at least 40%, but the company said it couldn't offer a discount higher than 40% because the sales volume might be small. Other companies were able to offer the discount, and after that, the sales were very good. This was when Meituan made a misjudgment."

Quan Jincheng's order was cancelled. Similar complaints to the above situation appeared in Meituan. Meituan's sales staff did not understand the company's policy. With the influx of hot money, group buying websites after the injection of funds frantically poached people. Some competitors even offered three times the salary to poach Meituan's sales staff. Meituan's sales staff left in large numbers. Meituan has grown to a scale of 7,000 to 8,000 people, but the number of employees has reached more than 30,000.

The flow of people in a cinema is basically fixed. If the price is low, more people will buy it. For many merchants and experienced sales, the demand for a cinema is easy to estimate. If the cinema signs with three or five companies, and the major group buying websites are only one of the demands, sales will definitely decline. At this time, merchants often ask for more favorable conditions, such as exclusive underwriting, or even paying merchants money to let them have exclusive rights. Often after the exclusivity, sales and new users will increase significantly. But if all merchants do this, the money will be burned sooner or later.

This kind of balance is the most difficult to grasp, and each trade-off is intertwined with the founder's philosophy, market environment and changes in company strategy. In the era of thriving group buying, a large number of entrepreneurs chose to exchange losses for market share; in the cold winter era of capital tightening, entrepreneurs can choose to abandon orders to protect profits. This is the principle that many entrepreneurs said in interviews at the time: "If you want to make a profit, it is not difficult to do it."

Wang Xing’s approach at the time was to calculate the accounts clearly and then make decisions. At different stages of group buying development, Meituan’s sales commission indicators have been constantly changing. Every adjustment to the commission means a change in Meituan’s sales assessment and the entire company’s strategy. At the beginning, the sales commission was 8% of the gross profit. Later, Meituan gradually added various indicators such as sales volume, first-time purchasing users, and payment methods to the commission. Only normal payment can be 100% of the gross profit. If it is an advance payment, only half of the sales commission will be paid. If the underwriting order is not sold out, the commission will not be paid.

Every time a policy is released, salespeople will complain. Later, the complexity of the algorithm overwhelmed the engineers, and salespeople were no longer able to calculate their own commissions manually.

Although Wu Di cried bitterly after losing the Quan Jincheng order, he still believed that the company was right. "Most people just can't understand. Even if they do, being a salesperson at Meituan is a very hard job compared to other group buying companies." Wu Di told Business Value, "Wang Xing himself is a very sadistic person. He thinks about the company all the time. He works 16 hours a day for 7 days. You should dream about the company even in your dreams. This is his definition of this career." Many people left because they didn't agree with him. Wu Di agreed with this from the bottom of his heart, so he kept insisting.

Wang Xing's cruelty

What is more difficult than judging whether an order is worth doing is managing people. Sales management is the most troublesome thing for almost all group buying websites. The sales of group buying websites is a frequently changing position, and there are many old hands in the industry. These people may be in line with the interests of the company today, but may go to another company tomorrow. In that era of group buying chaos, it was very common for founders and management teams to be coerced by sales.

When negotiating a big order, the salesperson will usually complain: "I am under great pressure here, and I must give special approval and continue to reduce the profit, otherwise the big merchant will not sign." How could the bosses have thought that this salesperson might just be colluding with the merchant to embezzle the company's money, and the merchant asked for a kickback of 200,000 yuan, and the order would be accepted. In the development of group buying websites, many salespeople secretly took kickbacks offline, and even secretly opened branches to defraud the company's money in collaboration with merchants.

Hu Chen, founder of Tuan800, analyzed: "If it is not a strict team, but the headquarters is watching the email approval, many times the management will be helpless. Sales will find that they can get money by crying, pretending and shouting slogans, and it is easy to fool inexperienced young entrepreneurs." These problems have become difficult problems for major group buying websites.

At the same time, an early salesperson of 24quan revealed that during the most difficult period of the company's development, many salespeople could not get the money for the expansion of local stations, but the administrative department took the high renovation fees to build luxurious offices in the local areas. So all the salespeople wrote a joint letter to Du Yinan to protest this matter. Even Du Yinan knew about it, but still did not see any action in personnel appointments and dismissals. "Many things cannot be changed just because he wants to, which may cause a major personnel turmoil at the top level." An insider revealed.

For Shen Boyang, who has a technical background, the same management challenge he faces is sales.

Renren employees often saw Shen Boyang coming back from drinking with salespeople. One Renren employee said that the question he wanted to ask Shen Boyang the most was: "How did an engineer like him drink with those gangster salespeople?"

Shen Boyang concluded that he was a boss who had a good reputation for management, but the results were not good. "This was my mistake. If I had spent more time on recruiting people earlier, it would have been better." Shen Boyang invited Gu Guodong, who had rich experience in traditional sales management. "He only joined in 2013. If he had joined a year earlier, we would have been better."

After Gu Guodong came, he began to build a complete sales system, from management to training, from the job grade system to the elimination system. Baidu acquired Nuomi just four months after Gu Guodong left Nuomi, and Nuomi's traffic has increased significantly. In the past, salesmen did not write visit records when visiting customers during the day, which would most likely lead to dismissal in a team with excellent management. After Gu Guodong took over, Nuomi has greatly improved in terms of management efficiency and standardization.

In fact, the management of group buying sales has many similarities with the traditional sales system. Traditional companies like Coca-Cola established a complete sales system many years ago, but the group buying industry, which had just started at that time, was very backward in the management of these issues compared with traditional industries. Moreover, even if you understand a complete set of theories, in sales management, you need to establish a brotherly relationship with them and be willing to help you charge forward at critical moments; you also need to have the ability to fire or demote people at critical moments. It is difficult to grasp the degree.

Another person Shen Boyang has his eyes on is Alibaba's Gan Jiawei (also known as Agan). He commented on Gan Jiawei as follows: "He is one of the few people who can skillfully integrate Alibaba's 'chicken blood' religious culture with rationality. He understands both the front and backstage, can fight and has wisdom. He was demoted from M4 to M0 because of a disagreement with Lu Zhaoxi on the West Lake, but soon he worked hard and returned from M0 to M4. He is a legendary figure."

When Shen Boyang found Gan Jiawei, Wang Xing had already visited Agan six times (see the cover of the February issue of Business Value, "Wang Xing's Decade"). A staff member who left Meituan once commented on Agan: "Agan speaks very easily. His meeting PPT is only two pages long, with only a formula for how the company's profits are made up, telling everyone how the company's profits are made up and that the main task for this quarter is to increase profits."

Finally, Agan joined Meituan. After exploring for a while, Meituan started the strategy of "crazy visits and crazy orders", and ushered in counter-trend growth.

In the minds of salespeople, Agan can put some management theories into practice, such as the PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Action, i.e., plan, act, check, and solidify) proposed by American quality management expert Deming, to standardize sales behavior; he can also accurately grasp human nature. Agan once used a line from the movie "Iron Fist Man" to explain why Meituan's salespeople work so hard - I am just doing it for the milk powder money for this child. A Meituan salesperson said: "Many people have children, and it makes sense when you think about it."

When Zhang Tao, founder and CEO of Dianping.com, discussed with Business Value what could be done better, he also said something meaningful: "All decisions are related to the use of people." Feng Xiaohai, CEO of Manzuo.com, also gave the same answer.

In the early days of Manzuo.com, Feng Xiaohai preferred to ask investors to help him find talents from all sides, or just post job notices on national recruitment websites. But this method was difficult to attract high-end people to join. At that time, Feng Xiaohai also contacted some key people, such as Guan Mingsheng of Alibaba, who was recommended to him by investors.

Guan Mingsheng once worked for General Electric and was Gan Jiawei's mentor at Alibaba. Later, Taobao went through a painful transformation period. With only a few million dollars in hand and only burning 1 million per week, the cash was not enough. Jack Ma invited Guan Mingsheng to make business adjustments. Guan Mingsheng spent two years re-adjusting the Taobao system and cutting off businesses that should not be done, such as Taobao's business in the United States, Taiwan, China, and South Korea. At the same time, Guan Mingsheng also led a large number of sales, which was very suitable for group buying sales.

Guan Mingsheng used to be a consultant for Manzuo. He would provide training to Manzuo executives and teach them some management methods. At that time, due to the cold winter of the capital market, Manzuo.com did not get the latest financing in time, so Feng Xiaohai was very busy every day due to financing and business integration. Feng Xiaohai recalled: "Looking back, no matter how urgent something is, as the CEO of the company, you have to focus on the team. At that time, we invited such a good person, but we did not move forward in time."

For a startup company, there is a difference in hiring people when it is on the rise and when it is on the decline. When the general trend of business adjustment and development of Manzuo.com is no longer there, it becomes difficult to hire more high-end people.

While many people lamented that they did not put more energy into recruiting people, Xu Maodong, the founder of 55tuan, put a lot of thought into this. Before the creation of 55tuan, Xu Maodong had been running a supermarket for ten years and had also worked in mobile advertising for many years. Judging from his wealth alone, he could be ranked among the top few in Shandong Province. Compared with other group buying entrepreneurs, Xu Maodong seemed much more mature.

In order to recruit a sales graduate from Shanghai, Xu Maodong bought him a house in Shanghai. When a mother who worked at Meituan injured her foot, Xu Maodong sent a doctor to take care of her. When talking about his management style, Xu Maodong summarized it in six words: "trust, empowerment, and motivation." In terms of management, Xu Maodong said that his VP rating system for each line is very clear, and options are issued twice a year.

Someone once described 55tuan's financing conference as "33 vice presidents sat on the stage, which looked like an MBA reunion." A former executive revealed that among all the current and former 55tuan employees, only CDH's people helped him when 55tuan was in crisis, and Xu Maodong had difficulty retaining people's hearts.

Feng Xiaohai reflected on the talents he had missed, saying: "Looking back, it was actually because we entrepreneurs did not have enough business experience, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Through the group buying, we can still look back and summarize some things."

“Meituan has changed!”

Wu Di, who has been following Wang Xing since Meituan was founded, lamented that in his opinion, the principles that Meituan had never given up during the most difficult times were gradually being compromised. That day, Agan was holding a sales meeting in the conference room, and Wang Xing rushed in and blurted out, "Did you know that Wu Di resigned?"

"Because any kind of merchants can come on the platform, there are countless merchants on this planet. In the past, Meituan hoped that the sellers on our platform were the best, and we personally screened them one by one. We hope that merchants with poor reviews will not appear on the page, but this means that your performance will definitely be affected." Wu Di said. Wang Xing often told everyone in internal meetings that Meituan is such a company that would rather go slowly than fail to improve quality and provide the best user experience. "You can feel that Wang Xing was very excited when he said this, and he was not fooling you."

Meituan is getting faster. Wu Di knows that after the group buying industry survived the capital winter, speed is the most important thing. These changes mean that Meituan is moving in a good direction. Both speed and slowness will lead to a lot of missing things. There is no absolute right or wrong. The key is to find a balance. It is precisely because this is a company that he has invested too much emotion in that he would rather leave than watch Meituan become vulgar.

"Xingge is still a relatively idealistic person. Such people are more likely to fail miserably when running a company. Agan just made up for his shortcomings. Many things are no longer so exciting, and the company has become no different from other large companies." Wu Di said: "Other companies are fine, but if Meituan is like this, I will be very sad."

Wang Xing once reposted a Weibo post: "Should we make a product that is respected by industry insiders or a product that is loved by the public?" Perhaps this is exactly the change he made when he collided with business.

In the development of group buying, in addition to strategy and tactics, the choice of the founder has become the most important link that can change the situation, and the answer has long been in the personality of the founders of various group buying websites.

At this time, the overall pattern of group buying has changed. Ma Zheng once made a vivid metaphor: group buying is like a marathon, with hundreds of companies running in the front and only 10 companies left after the first round; when only 5 of these 10 companies enter the finals, you will find that your opponents have changed, and they are competing with you instead of the remaining few. The powerful rivals BAT have entered the finals.

After BAT entered

Nuomi's acquisition by Baidu was doomed from the beginning. It was precisely because of the stricter supervision and limited costs of listed companies that Nuomi could not get close to the throne, and it was also orderly in the era of collective craze of group buying websites.

Starting from the internal entrepreneurship of Renren.com, Nuomi was destined to have difficulty in giving it a try. In May 2011, Renren.com went public in the United States. After the listing, financial reports were required every quarter, and group buying at that time was in a collective loss stage. Therefore, Nuomi could not make the losses even bigger. In the early stage, if it wanted to gain market share and continue to expand cities and build branches, the losses would increase; if it wanted financial reports, Nuomi would find it difficult to break through. Because group buying sites and city expansion are very costly, at the end of 2012, when Meituan, Lashou and others had expanded to thousands of people, Nuomi.com had only 699 people.

In an era when group buying websites are voluntarily burning money to report numbers, Nuomi.com has grown up under strict listing supervision. Among the group buying websites, there are few companies with transparent business numbers, which are a good choice for acquisition. More importantly, there are few founders willing to sell their own children, and Nuomi’s decision-making power is largely in Chen Yizhou, Chairman of Renren Group.

In August 2013, Baidu announced a strategic investment of US$160 million in Nuomi.com, and acquired 59% of the shares, becoming Nuomi's largest shareholder. In January this year, Baidu continued to invest additionally, announcing its acquisition of all Nuomi shares held by Renren in the first quarter, becoming the single wholly-owned major shareholder of Nuomi.com.

What Shen Boyang regrets most is: "I haven't gambled once from beginning to end, Nuomi has developed too smoothly." Even after being acquired by Baidu, he still held a glimmer of hope - with the support of strong traffic and funds, he followed Qunar to go public independently.

Baidu's earliest group shopping navigation was in a column of Hao123. Later, Baidu established the LBS business unit and divested Baidu group shopping navigation from Hao123 to the LBS business unit in October 2012. At that time, the business of the LBS business unit was mainly engaged in maps, and could rely on the map for local life services and group shopping navigation. The person in charge at that time was Shen Li.

After acquiring Nuomi, Baidu experienced a period of volatile adjustment. At that time, Baidu airborne Liu Jun, the former head of Yunyun Search, was responsible for the LBS business unit. But Baidu faces a realistic problem - whether it should be done by Baidu or the original Nuomi team, and who is mainly responsible for this matter?

This involves countless details. The core question is: Is Baidu going to build a brand of Nuomi, or is it hoped to use Nuomi's team to strengthen Baidu's platform.

"I want to become Qunar to be able to go public independently. After I entered, Baidu has a map, and the entire LBS and group purchases are mixed together. And Baidu Map was swaying at that time. He wanted to build a platform, and building a platform means bringing all competitors in." During Baidu's swaying left and right period, Shen Boyang talked with Baidu founder and chairman of the board of directors, and Chief Strategy Officer Jin Yushen, repeatedly persuading the platform is not a good way out: first, there may be only two to three companies left in group purchases, and the platform is worthless; second, if you come from Baidu's perspective, since Nuomi's SKU is much less than Meituan and Dianping, the platform is directing traffic to competitors. Third, the platform's idea seems fair, but the way of playing the mobile Internet has changed. Everyone spends money to buy PC traffic. The traffic that buys PC is to hope that users can download mobile clients. Once there is a mobile client, it becomes a platform, and the traffic will remain here, which has nothing to do with Baidu.

When Shen Boyang discovered that the acquired Nuomi was completely helping Baidu build a brand and took a route that was the opposite of Qunar, he had decided to go.

On the issue of integrating glutinous rice, Baidu has experienced a period of strategic swing and testing. Rumors are everywhere who want to leave, who wants to lead the team to leave, and who will turn against each other. In May this year, Shen Li, who is mainly responsible for the map business and insists on the platform, has switched to Meituan for the product. It is not difficult to see that Li Yanhong's final decision is what Shen Boyang hopes to make glutinous rice bigger. At the end of last year, Li Yanhong personally attended the agency conference, watched the promotional poster himself, and attached great importance to the group buying business.

On March 7 this year, after Baidu acquired Nuomi, LBS joined forces with Nuomi to conduct marketing. On that day, Nuomi traffic suddenly increased and crashed. Baidu accused Nuomi team of poor technology, while Nuomi said that this was because Baidu only told them that it would grow by 200%, but it increased by 7 times. Although both sides accused each other, the happy trouble of downtime also means that the strong shock and sway ended, and a new stage of cooperation began. Baidu Nuomi is restarting a new battle for a group buying website.

After several rounds of adjustments, Baidu began to use the dealer team to make glutinous rice bigger, which caused dissatisfaction between the glutinous rice teams and the original agent teams in some regions. In the past, Baidu's agency team operated Baidu's keyword bidding ranking business. They called the merchant to open an account and received a commission after collecting money. However, the sales of group purchases were very different. They needed to settle with the merchant and post the account; more importantly, once consumers were involved, all gameplay and sales rules were different. Whether in salary system and KPI assessment, the integration of these two teams would face many problems.

Baidu's acquisition has allowed Nuomi to enter the top three group purchases, and Nuomi, which has proliferated in large companies, may also stop there.

Hu Chen, founder of Group 800, believes: "The market structure of group buying is being formed, and Baidu's idea of ​​making glutinous rice is correct. Once Baidu becomes serious, a large amount of advertising and traffic support will at least be very good at creating momentum. Meituan's safe port started to make mobile versions three years ago, and the mobile transaction volume accounts for the vast majority."

It is not difficult to see that the traffic of giants has put a lot of pressure on websites that are still competing for group buying market share. But it is also because of the mobile Internet safe haven and strong ground combat capabilities that entrepreneurs have begun to have the weight to resist giants.

In response to the new challenges of mobile Internet, Dianping has chosen a safer way.

In mid-February this year, Tencent became a shareholder of Dianping.com that holds about 20% of the shares by subscribing to new shares, and retains the right to subscribe to additional shares of Dianping.com in the future. Soon, WeChat began to import traffic to Dianping. Although the effect is not obvious at present, Zhang Tao's condition is much calmer than before Tencent's before investing in shares.

Zhang Tao grew up in the influence of Shanghai's business culture. After returning from Wharton School in the United States, he served an IT consulting company to build an ERP system. He emphasized the taste of life and the mood of the people, and he hoped to put good restaurant reviews online, and Dianping was born.

Group buying has broken Dianping's peace of mind. After several rounds of business model evolution, Zhang Tao's idea of ​​Dianping's "trading platform + information platform" in the future has gradually become clear and clear, and Dianping's gorgeous business is enough to package it as the concept of "Groupon+Yelp+Opentable+Tripadvoser". But in terms of execution, Dianping, who lives in a corner, is not as good as Wang Xing, who has started a business many times. Tencent's placeholder in Dianping is Zhang Tao's heart.

Tencent President Liu Chi-ping once said at the scene of the cooperation between the two parties that Tencent had negotiated with Dianping about the acquisition or acquisition of shares in about 2009. Why is it now? "The Internet is an important reason. In the past, it was mainly PC, and the combination of life and services was not so high. Now with the popularity of smartphones, the trend of combining online and offline services is becoming more and more obvious."

Zhang Tao knew very well the difficulty of cooperating with large companies. In addition to talking to Ma Huateng, he also had a deep conversation with WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong, and hoped to introduce more substantial cooperation in QQ Space, the most active space, to confirm that this investment can complement each other's resources and execute without any compromise. However, within Meituan, which has been invested in for many years, it seems a bit unrealistic.

In May this year, Meituan announced that it had received a Series C financing amount of about US$300 million, which is equivalent to three times the financing scale of Lashou and Wowotuan's launch plan to launch the listing that year. The leading investment institution is Pan Atlantic Capital, followed by the B-round investors Sequoia Capital and Alibaba. The valuation of Meituan's Series C financing reached US$4 billion. Wang Xing revealed that Alibaba holds about 10% to 15% of Meituan's shares.

Alibaba is also planning to build Taodiandian, and even started its O2O journey with TongshouLaShou.com and WoWotuan. When asked what cooperation Meituan has with Alibaba, Wang Xing just replied: "We have a lot of cooperation with Alipay. Users use Alipay to complete the first payment on their mobile phones, and there will be discounts." In asking whether there are other cooperations, he continued to add: "If WeChat Pay is willing to do this, we are also willing to cooperate, because guiding users to mobile phones is good for everyone."

Wang Xing did not seek additional resources because of Alibaba's investment. Just like for all companies with Internet competition and cooperation, his criterion for judging a cooperation is: "There are several O2O within Alibaba. For any product form, Meituan will measure whether this product form is natural and whether the user's experience is a smooth experience."

After Nuomi and Dianping were backing the big tree, Meituan has always regarded Alibaba as the Alibaba group because of Alibaba's investment, while Wang Xing has always struggled to maintain independence and openness.

In June this year, UCWeb announced its merger with Alibaba. Alibaba used it to form a mobile business group. UC Chairman and CEO Yu Yongfu will serve as the president of the business group and join the Alibaba Group's strategic decision-making committee. Even people in Meituan have put forward assumptions to allud Meituan - Meituan.com and Alibaba's resources are very complementary, and it is also the offline part that Alibaba needs most now. Can Wang Xing follow UCWeb's Yu Yongfu come here to exchange shares similarly to "UC and Alibaba cooperation".

At this point, Feng Xiaohai believes that it doesn’t matter whether the founder has control. As long as the two parties exchange resources, they can become bigger, so he sold Manzuo.com to Suning. Feng Xiaohai said, “Is your goal to raise your career or sacrifice a certain scale to choose control? As long as the career is big, there are still many business opportunities.”

The choice of Wu Bo, the founder of Lashou.com, is also the key to Lashou's fate - he claims to be the most willing to trade equity for capital to seek rapid expansion. Once Lashou succeeds, there are few stories that will happen later. Success is Xiao He and failure are Xiao He. Also, because of his persistence in "fast" and his out-of-control voice, it finally makes Lashou become a profit-seeker controlled by investors at a critical period.

"Meituan's controller is always in the hands of the founders. In fact, this is also the correct truth that has been repeatedly confirmed by China's Internet. The companies controlled by the founders can develop the most stable and long-term." Wang Xing told Business Value: "Ali is a B-round investor and a relatively small shareholder. Alibaba's other O2O businesses have cooperation and competition with us, and Internet companies are like this."

When Wang Xing was doing ideological work for a subordinate, he drew a four-chamber table about "compromise and principles": if a person "has principles + cannot compromise" he will become a martyr, and "has principles + can compromise" is the real leader. Perhaps, independence is exactly what Wang Xing's inner principles lies, and the compromise Wu Di talked about is a more localized tactic.

He summarized his principles in this way: "When facing choices, always do the right thing, not the easy thing."

After leaving Meituan, Wu Di started his global travel plan and chose Baidu at the terminal. Now, he serves as a product manager in the Baidu Takeaway Group, and takeaway has officially become the next place for local life services.

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.