First, Tencent Holdings released its unaudited third-quarter financial report, and as always, the numbers are very bright in all areas: financially, total revenue was RMB125.4 billion, an increase of 29% year-on-year, with strong growth in online games and value-added businesses; second, Tencent and other institutions jointly led a Chinese fast-food brand, "Wofu Lao Noodle," with a round of financing for the D round of 450 million yuan, which is also a huge investment in the food and beverage industry. This is a huge investment in the catering industry. Tencent's investment tentacles have always been regardless of national boundaries and industries, from hard science and technology to new consumer, from finance to education, are all in its pocket.
In the Q3 report, Tencent's investment income is also very bright, according to non-IFRS adjustments, as of September 30, 2020, Tencent's "other income, net" was 11.551 billion yuan, which Tencent's holdings of the company shares "make money", we do not know.
According to IT Orange data, as of November 5, 2020, Tencent's main body*** invested in more than 790 companies, which may bring direct benefits to Tencent, including a large number of listed companies, such as Beili Beili (Station B), Douyu, Jingdong, Pinduoduo, the United States Tuan, 58 (is being privatized), etc.; the future will benefit Tencent, including the drip travel, car much! The future will bring benefits to Tencent, including the drop trip, car good group, fast hand, know, Himalaya, ape tutoring, daily fresh, tea and other unicorn companies.
But as the saying goes, "there is no such thing as a wet shoe when you're walking along the river", and Tencent, which has invested in nearly 800 companies, has had its moments.
According to IT Orange statistics, Tencent has invested in 24 startup projects that have been closed (note: the project was declared closed, the project has been unmanned for more than a year, the product has been taken offline, the project has completely given up its original main business to transform into a new business or a new project, and the project has been absorbed by other main bodies and the brand is no longer independently operated, and other circumstances are considered to be a failure of the project and closed). We listed these projects, Tencent is mostly in the A round and before the investment, to lead the main investment, but the amount of single investment is small, the total financial less than 5 billion yuan, for the huge Tencent investment, it is really also rain.
Lost HighPoint: Tencent abandons it, US 'dad' Groupon has fallen
HighPoint's origins are very noble, he has two 'dads', the US 'dad' is the originator of group-buying, Groupon, and China's 'dad' is the social ancestor, Tencent - February 28, 2011 On February 28, 2011, the Chinese version of Groupon's group-buying site "GaoPeng.com" was officially announced, with Tencent and Groupon each contributing US$50 million (about RMB 325 million), and according to media reports at the time, "each side accounted for 50% of the shares," but in fact, Yunfeng Fund had also declared that it had invested in GaoPeng.com when it was formed, and the three sides were silent on the amount of their investment shares. But in any case, this luxurious background makes the birth of GaoPeng network is considered to be the end of the group-buying track at that time.
Returning to China's group-buying market at the time - before the powerful WoWoTuan, LaShou.com, and the F Group, which had three rounds of financing, and after the "little brother" Meituan.com, which had just been on line for a year, and the best competitor of the CP "Manzan.com" (GaoPengManZhou), GaoPeng could not afford to be negligent in this battle.
In the original design, the CEO of Gopeng was in charge of Tencent, and the operation was in charge of the Groupon team. The two "dads" are very strong, the equity is relatively equal, and the priority is not clear. Historically, this kind of cooperation is rarely successful, and it also leaves a hidden danger for the later development of GaoPeng.
At that time, the entire group-buying industry was in a period of barbaric growth, and the operating model was very sloppy. As a result of the long validity period set by the group-buying coupon, most users will not consume the coupon in time after purchasing the group-buying coupon online, so there is a large amount of cash in advance on the platform, which is actually a liability. However, many group-buying platforms divert this unconsumed money to other uses, the most common is to invest in new cities for operation and subsidies, in order to obtain a constant flow of orders, thus forming a cycle of support for the group-buying industry's rapid expansion.
At that time, Meituan.com insisted on not burning money, not blindly pursuing the speed of expansion, and took the lead in launching the policy of "anytime refund, expiration date refund", so that users can be more assured of the group purchase of consumer vouchers, which is an important reason why Meituan.com later survived and rose to prominence in the "thousands of tours war".
On November 4, 2011, Groupon went public on NASDAQ, raising $700 million, making it the largest technology IPO since Google went public in 2004.
In the cheers and applause of the IPO, Groupon got a little lost, and didn't look around to realize its own situation; and it didn't put itself down to be "down to earth" like local group-buying sites.
Unfortunately, Groupon's share price fell from a high of $500 to below $100 in the year after its IPO, bringing the group-buying story to a close in overseas capital markets.
Groupon's stock price fell from a high of $500 to less than $100 a year after its IPO, bringing an end to its overseas capital markets story.
On August 1, 2012, Tencent integrated its self-owned QQ group-buying business with F Group and Gopeng.com to create the NetroWorld Group. After the merger, Tencent held 30% of the shares, Groupon held more than 10%, and Lin Ning, the former CEO of F Group, was appointed as the CEO of the new company.
On December 26, 2012, the new merged company received an additional $40 million investment from Groupon and Tencent.
Just half a year later - in July 2013, Sohu IT broke the news that 9 vice presidents of HighPoint had left the company within a year, and that the company was in turmoil and business turmoil. After the Netroots World Group withdrew from the group-buying industry.
After four years of silence, the net Luo world group in 2017 carried out a reorganization of assets, Tencent, Yunfeng Fund and a technology company in Shenzhen *** with the injection of capital again, Tencent is still its largest shareholder. The official announcement of the net Luo world new business line for project incubation, investment and vertical e-commerce, but the market has rarely seen its movement again.
Today, Groupon is on its way out, with a stock price of less than $25 and a market cap of just $700 million.
Tencent wants to pull the then small high-priced, but it's not easy.
The company's investment in Tencent's social media business has been a major factor in the company's success.
The company's investment in Tencent's social media business has been a major factor in the company's success.
Kaixin, a white-collar social networking site, was founded in 2008 and experienced a miraculous growth in users from 300 to 60 million in 18 months, and once led the nation in the "stealing food" craze. Nowadays, Kaixin is unfamiliar to the post-00s, and it seems like a few centuries have passed since we started talking about it.
In 2010, when Kaixin was in its heyday, Tencent was under attack in the social networking space, with Kaixin (white-collar socializing), Renren (campus socializing), Sina Weibo (celebrity celebrities and fan economy), and Qzone (socializing with acquaintances) forming the four-legged dichotomy of SNSs. The first one is a social networking site, and the second one is a social networking site, and the third one is a social networking site, and the third one is a social networking site.
Kaixin, which broke out with its vegetable-stealing and planting game, has been profitable since the second quarter of 2010, earning more than 10 million yuan per month and generating 300 million yuan in annual revenue, with advertising accounting for the largest share of the revenue. In order to get rid of its dependence on advertising, Kaixin also tried to launch a group-buying service in early 2011, but outsourced its operation to F Group after only 9 months of operation.
In October 2011, Tencent made a strategic investment in Kaixin for an undisclosed amount, reportedly around $100 million. According to the analysis, the main reason for Tencent's investment in Kaixin is to weaken its competitors, capture the white-collar high-end user market, and make up for the insufficiency of QQ's underage population to consolidate Tencent's absolute position in the social field.
After Tencent's investment, third-party app and game developers can synchronize their apps on Tencent's and Kaixin's open platforms, and Kaixin, which is overly reliant on food-stealing games, has inevitably gone into decline after its users were diverted.
Since then, Kaixin has completely transformed into a mobile game development company, and its founder, Cheng Binghao, left the company in July 2016.
In 2017, Saiwei Intelligence, a listed company on the A-share market, purchased Kaixin.com's operating main body, Kaixin People Information, for RMB 1.085 billion.
"Crazy Teacher" is no longer crazy: the cannon fodder under the tutoring O2O revelry
In 2014, the O2O model was in full swing, and the tutoring O2O field also blew up a hot wind, and before and after this, there were a number of online booking teacher door-to-door tutoring O2O platforms were established one after another, including Teachers Are Coming, Who Learned, Good Teacher, Crazy Teacher, Light Tutoring, and Ask Him to Teach, etc.
This is the first time that a group of online booking teachers were established in this field.
This type of project model is very close, and have received a good investment, after all, the demand for primary and secondary school students to find a tutor teacher is a long-standing demand, but the Internet platform hopes to solve this demand through a more efficient way to match resources.
Among them, Tencent continuously invested in two rounds of crazy teachers - in June 2015, Tencent exclusively invested in the "crazy teacher" of the B round, the amount of twenty million dollars; a year later, Tencent again followed the investment of 120 million yuan of crazy teachers of the C round of financing. So why did Tencent choose Crazy Teacher?
Here is a key figure - Tencent Senior Executive Vice President Wu Xiaoguang, who founded Ember Venture Capital in January 2015 led the investment in Crazy Teacher's $10 million Pre-A round of financing for the project to do a good investment endorsement; in terms of the business model, Crazy Teacher focuses more on the creation of the teacher's personal IP, does not work directly with training institutions, and does not work with training institutions, and does not work with teachers.
In terms of the team, Zhang Hao, the founder of Crazy Teacher, started from scratch in traditional K12 extracurricular training, and Crazy Teacher is his second venture in the education field. In order to make up for his lack of Internet products, he also invited Yao Xin, the founder of PPTV, to join him and take charge of products and technology.
When Tencent put forward the intention to invest, Zhang Hao's team had already been in contact with several well-known investment institutions, for which Zhang Hao also asked to complete the financing in the shortest possible time. In the end, the project took 36 hours to agree on the Termsheet, and 20 days to complete due diligence, sign the agreement and close the deal, which is crazy.
The "admiration" for Tencent's Internet genes and the persuasion of Tencent President Liu Kiping were the key reasons that prompted Zhang Hao to accept Tencent's investment - "What can Tencent bring to Crazy Teacher? The first is the brand endorsement, no teacher does not know who Tencent; the second is technical support, tutoring O2O like taxi software ushered in the user growth burst, Tencent's strong technical team can deal with the problem of high concurrency; the third is the user * * * * enjoyment, QQ and crazy teacher's user group is highly overlapping, do not rule out the possibility of Tencent in the future to open the port of the 200 million user group to the crazy teacher".
At present, the first and second points are partially realized. After getting Tencent's backing, Crazy Teacher was once on the public's eye and became a star project. At the same time in the second investment, the two sides have already had business cooperation. At that time, Crazy Teacher was incubating the live broadcasting division and reached an exclusive strategic cooperation with Tencent, using Tencent's technical services to support the live broadcasting business, and in 2017 Crazy Teacher transformed and launched the "Dingtang Classroom" online live broadcasting class.
However, with the wave of transformation and closure of the tutoring O2O industry, after two years of silence, on April 30, 2019, Crazy Teacher also announced the cessation of operations, the APP page shows: "Once the madness has come to an end, thanks to the past all the way to the company."
'Father of Android' fails to start up again: Steve Jobs' success can't be replicated
Except for tech professionals, no one knows about Essential Phone, but the founder of the project is the father of Android, Andy Rubin, who worked for Google after Android was acquired by the company and resigned due to a sex scandal. After Android was acquired by Google, Rubin worked for the company before resigning in the wake of a sex scandal and receiving a whopping $9 million in severance pay.
The startup received a lot of attention because of his background, and received $30 million in Series A funding right out of the gate. In June 2017, Tencent, Amazon Alexa Fund, and others participated in Essential's Series B funding round of $300 million, which resulted in a post-investment valuation of more than $1 billion.
The first smartphone released by Essential was called the PH1, and the bezel-less, large-sized design with multiple color options was aimed precisely at high-end smartphone brands Apple and Samsung, yet the phone shipped fewer than 90,000 units in 2017 and was discontinued a year later (December 2018).
In 2019, the team went on to make Project Gem, an 'extended version' of the smartphone like a TV remote control that can be held in one hand and controlled by voice, but it's not yet at the stage of mass production delivery. In February 2020, Essential Old announced it was ceasing operations and shutting down.
With Essentia's closure, Newton, the email management app developed by CloudMagic.Inc. that the company acquired at the end of 2018 and is known for its searchable, cross-platform functionality for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Chrome OS, will also be unavailable.
After combing through the list, we've categorized Tencent's failed investment projects into four main groups:
In the first group, Tencent is trying to break into a trading area it's not very good at -- Tencent's $140 million investment in group-buying site GaoPeng in partnership with Groupon, and its joint venture with education and training provider New Oriental. The smart learning APP "YouAnswer" launched by tomorrow's micro-learning company, and the e-commerce website "Feifan.com" cooperated by real estate enterprise Wanda (Tencent later withdrew from the investment) all failed, in which Tencent invested the most in GaoPeng.com.
In the second category, Tencent invested in many related projects at home and abroad as a lead investor or exclusive investor in the game and social networking fields that Tencent is good at, but some of the projects were not developed well due to the loss of the mobile Internet dividend at a later stage: for example, the SNS website Kaixin, which was popularized by the game of "planting and stealing vegetables", and the "Long-term Interactive Network", which was focused on the development of SNS games; and there were also some projects that were more niche, and the scale of their users did not reach a high level. Other projects are more niche, and the scale of users has not been built up. Typical projects include GeGe APP, a location-based anonymous chatting software, Who APP, a social networking application for street encounters, and GoPets, a South Korean developer of online pet games, etc.
The third category is "social networking".
In the third category, Tencent followed up with some investments during the O2O boom period, and some of the projects developed faster in the early stage with the momentum of O2O, but after a few years, the pattern of O2O changed drastically, and some of the projects were reduced to cannon fodder, resulting in Tencent's investment failures. Typical projects include "Crazy Teacher", a tutoring O2O project that Tencent invested in twice, "Nanjing Zero Line", which won Tencent's Series B round of financing in 2015 but later disappeared in the takeaway booking platform war, "Tuk Tuk Calling", a cell phone taxi software, and "AiHelp.com", a local information search service merchant that provides public transportation and merchant search services, as well as a cell phone food ordering APP, "Youshen Ordering", etc.
The fourth category is "O2O".
The fourth category is scattered projects in other fields, such as the smart hardware wearable brand "Pacewear", and the smartphone brand and consumer electronics brand "Essential Phone" founded by Andy Rubin, the father of Android.
The above cases may prove that there is no such thing as a "one-trick pony" when it comes to investing in emerging markets - bulls will fail when they start up again, once-successful projects will fail as the tide of the times changes, and projects that flew up on the wind will fall hard - so it's important to note that even the best of the best will fail when they start up again. -That's why it is said that even bullish investment organizations and companies have the time to look at the wrong and miss the mark.
Because the success of a project is the result of a combination of complex factors, and "time, events, and people" are always changing, the investment guidelines followed by the organization are more of a "empirical" review of the past, which may improve the probability of success of its investment, but the investment failure is unforeseeable and inevitable.