Chen Hua's founding sing bar

According to the data provided by the singing bar, there are currently 65.438+400 million users and more than 30 million monthly active users. This interesting social App based on K-song segmentation comes from Chen Hua who sings out of tune. Singing is Chen Hua's second venture.

Wu Shichun is now the founding partner of Meihua Angel Venture Capital. Sing Angel Investor. Chen Hua is also the LP of Meihua. Their offices are in two adjacent buildings, and they often meet, eat and chat. I asked Wu Shichun, why are you willing to cooperate with Chen Hua? He replied: "We have always maintained a private friendship, and we think that each other is worth doing things together and being friends."

He thinks the singing team has strong execution. Sing it. The first edition took only two months, and the iteration speed was very fast, with a version every two weeks and a version every week. "Lei Jun said that he was focused, extreme and had a good reputation. Singing is basically done. " By August of 20 12, the number of users of singing bar had exceeded100000. Chen Hua decided that the company would give everyone a fixed reimbursement amount, allowing employees to freely organize trips to Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea. He wants the team to share happiness. Products that have become popular quickly like this can be described as "phenomenal" products of the Internet, which have been circulating among users for a period of time and quickly accumulated tens of millions of users. However, many phenomenal products are weak and difficult to last. Chen Hua and other entrepreneurs have discussed this issue: "Products attract users with innovative product forms and gameplay that users have never seen before. Some new products are new products that have never been seen before and were created by the product manager. Play and play, but if you don't solve any practical problems, users will get bored gradually. Singing is to move traditional KTV things to mobile phones, which is very fresh in the ecological circle of mobile phones, but it has real value in the real life of users. Why can singing continue, or all products that can survive, the most important thing is to solve real and objective needs. " In his formula, real demand+cool function = feasible product. He believes that the vitality of singing comes from three points: the first is KTV tools, which move traditional KTV functions to mobile phones, or even better, so that users can keep coming in; The second is to provide incentive rules to guide users to try to do things according to the rules, so that products have inherent communication concepts and can spread without spending money; The third factor is social factors. In the song bar, people can establish contact because of their interests and find friends who like a certain star. He also realized that the chat function of the music bar was weak, and fans contacted each other through other instant messaging tools. Chen Hua told me that singing will soon lead to online group chat and bring users back. After singing, Renren.com introduced everyone loves to sing, Xiaomi's dinner bar was changed to singing bar, YY also produced a singing bar product, and Sina launched Sina's good voice and loved to sing. Previous karaoke tools, such as karaoke artists and Scorpio karaoke, are also undergoing transformation, adding social functions. Chen Hua must run faster, don't be caught up and kill yourself. This is the first proposition faced by entrepreneurs: survive, don't be killed. The strategy he adopted was: "Do only what competitors may kill singing, and don't do what users want." What competitors may kill and sing is a new way of playing; What users want is a better registration process, private message function and so on. At that time, there were also many places where singing was inconvenient to use, which made users unhappy. From the competitor's point of view, Chen Hua imagined that if you want to sing, it is definitely not to make a new software to complete the missing function of singing, but to innovate and make a new way of singing. At that time, there was always flashback in singing. I used 10, 20 times, and the flashback was very severe, and the user scolded me, but no one solved the problem of flashback at all, and the team's energy was spent on doing new functions. In Chen Hua's view, this is an impossible thing. First of all, we must ensure survival. Everyone is competing for innovative speed, singing and launching chorus function. Some competitors also launched similar functions three days later. Development is cyclical, and it takes one or two months. This shows that the thinking is similar, depending on who is fast. I thought of this problem two months in advance and worked it out ahead of my competitors. In this competition, everyone on Renren died of singing, YY died, and Sina Good Voice died. The bigger the company, the faster it will die, because he found that the business could not be taken away, so forget it and slowly stop investing resources. The startup company may be unable to transform temporarily because the whole team and all resources are in this business, so it can only be supported first. By the end of 20 12, there were 40 million users-Chen Hua thinks this number can bring people a sense of psychological security. Chen Hua said: "Our efforts can account for 60%, and 40% is due to luck. This product was not saved one year ahead of schedule, and it was not saved one year later. 20 12 is the fastest growing year for wechat, Xiaomi is the best seller in 20 12, and Momo is also the fastest growing year in 20 12. That year was the year when the mobile Internet really broke out. " "Sing at the right time and do the right thing. Many people buy a smart phone, and the first thing they look for is an entertainment application, and singing is a good entertainment application. 20 12 years, Sina Weibo is also a very convenient word-of-mouth communication platform. After that, Weibo's momentum is much smaller. " I asked Chen Hua, how do you judge what innovative features users need? Chen Hua replied: "This depends on the accumulated experience of our team and product technology. I can only say that the team is unrepeatable. " As a CEO, he has to make a lot of judgments every day, such as products, operations and recruitment ... Now, many people in the team are also sharing the pressure of decision-making. "Now I have relatively abundant time, and many responsibilities have been unloaded, so the following people are responsible. I can ignore the specific things, and I would rather take my time than give the team a chance to grow. This allows me to calm down and think about problems and make big strategic judgments. " Everyone is responsible. This is your job. Don't ask me what to do. You tell me what you want to do. In this case, my energy will be much better. Everyone has his own judgment. He will help me find a way. Come to me just to make a choice or a judgment, not to come to me to find a way, then it's over, right? "He has a lot of ideas, and one will come out soon. Everyone will tell him directly that he won't do it. Especially the people in the product group have the most direct PK with him. Chen Hua once said at the meeting that having such a product group to help him block a block is conducive to product development, because he wants to do too many things himself, but mobile Internet products are not easy to be too complicated, and the simpler the better. Zhang Yiming, founder and CEO of Today's Headline, was the first engineer recruited by Chen Hua in Kuxun, and later served as technical director of Kuxun. He said, "Chen Hua is five years older than me. At that time, he was more of a CEO of technology products, with strong technology and products, but there was no special method in management, focusing on technology and products and paying less attention to people. "Recently, Zhang Yiming and Chen meet several times a year. He realized the change of Chen Hua: "He can know himself better. In the past, he would immediately say that this line and that line would not work. Now he is more calm than before. "Wu Shichun remembers that when he was on the cool news, he was impatient. His questions angered him when the reporter interviewed him. He directly asked the reporter to go out and say, "I don't like you. "This kind of situation will not happen now. Chen Hua will remember the birthdays of employees. When employees encounter difficulties, they will also show concern, which he has never seen before. Now Chen Hua is more cautious about the control of the team. The original cool news suddenly expanded to 200 people, and the number of people grew too fast and out of control. Now it has been developed for two years, with over 100 million users and the team can be controlled at more than 60 people. " If you think things over and everyone is in place, you won't feel understaffed. "He encourages face-to-face communication, and is more willing to take two more steps, minimize routine meetings, reduce emails, reduce IM, and improve communication efficiency." I think to maintain efficient communication, it needs to be flat, with only two-tier structure, and VP and director are ordinary employees. This is something I'm still experimenting with, which may not be correct. The core is concentration. The whole company is very focused and the management is very clear. The more dispersed, the less clear. "He reflected on the management problems during the cool news period. At that time, it was more like blowing bubbles. The biggest problem was that he was not focused enough." Today's singing is a very pure small team. Management is very simple. Isn't it a product? Everyone feels more comfortable, the rhythm is better controlled, we should consider income earlier, control expenses, know when and how much money we can earn, and move forward step by step, which is more stable. "He feels that Cool News is too confident in the early stage and too insecure in the later stage." I don't know how to manage, so I should study instead of letting others manage this company. I must keep a balanced degree now. I must have enough confidence in myself and believe that I can do things well. No one can do it better than me. At the same time, I am doing very well in this company, but it may not be good to change to another company. Be confident, not too confident. "Gui-xin zhou agreed with Chen's efforts. Chen Hua began to write code with everyone, and when doing business promotion, he called every day to promote it. "I worked hard because Tony took the lead. He works hard, and we have no reason not to work hard. "He felt that" what the team should do has nothing to do with intrigue. Chen Hua is demanding, and the people he recruits are reliable. I think this team does everything well, and there is nothing uneven. "20 12 is a tight encirclement, and 20 13 is a function to solve the problem of server stability and fulfill the needs of users. 20 14 Chen Hua is considering jumping out of singing to see if he can do more. Users who are thinking about how to realize singing, in addition to the usual function of members paying for gifts, he also launched "Singing Peter Pan", which is considered as a game distribution channel. At Kuxun, the mistake he made was that the demand for profits was not so urgent. When the economic crisis came in 2008, the monthly income of Cool News was only a few million, which was not enough to cope with the strong financial pressure. " I was too young at that time, and an experienced CEO might make a lot of money. "In the game with capitalists, Chen quit. For him, starting a business for the first time is passive. He was very happy in Microsoft, and made a toy in his spare time. As a result, the toy was on fire. Everyone said it was time to start a business, and he came out. After leaving Kuxun to join Alibaba, he was thinking about a problem. Kuxun left a regret. If he stays in a big company, he may prove himself a failure completely. The singing company is in Sanyuan Bridge, which is a very common three places. In the meeting room where I interviewed the staff of the singing bar, the wall can even see the traces of the company moving away and tearing up the posters before, and the singing bar has not had time to decorate. John young, the operation director of Sing Bar, joked that a reporter had come to interview Sing Bar before, thinking that he had entered a courier company. When I got to the singing bar office, I just changed a batch of new chairs. They used to pick up the desks and chairs left by the previous company. Because of the loss of capital, Chen Hua pays great attention to the company's operating costs, and he also affects employees. Xu Wei, vice president of Singing Bar, will carefully calculate the cost and pursue a more cost-effective channel. If the cost exceeds the bottom line, he will give up the channel. She insists on survival of the fittest. "We didn't throw money hard, and we didn't spend money indiscriminately. Weibo marketing also depends on the download volume and conversion effect. If the quality is good, you will vote, and if the quality is not good, you will go offline the next day. "Xu Wei was originally an employee of Cool News. Chen Hua was discovered after he started his business again. When I first made Taobao the most, it was the most popular time for Mushroom Street and Beauty. In Wei Xu's eyes, Chen Hua is a typical technical man who loves to study products and technologies. His weakness is stubbornness. What he realizes is correct, and he must find a way to do it. If he doesn't approve, be sure to convince him and come up with something to prove that he will still listen. Chen Hua was not the only one who invited Wei Xu to join the entrepreneurial team. However, Wei Xu chose him: "He has control over technical products. In order to seize users, mobile Internet still gives priority to products. I keep an eye on him. "I have had cooperation experience before, and I don't need to run in again in communication, which is also an important reason why Xu Wei chose him. In her view, the development of singing bar is not as fast as that of Cool News, but has been developing steadily. Chen Hua also believes in the team and is willing to share the results. He carefully avoided the mistakes made in Cool News: don't let VC occupy too much proportion in the board of directors and occupy control; Also, look for capital that can support the company for a long time. " Lanchi Venture Capital (A round) and Sequoia (B round) who invested in him are also more patient. "Wu Shichun said. He realized the change of Chen Hua. He used to think that it was a boast to win the financing in two or three hours. Now he is more concerned about the terms of financing. Whether the other person is right for you, he should not only get the money, but also get the money that suits you. Chen Hua believes that product improvement is still the most important task today. This ecological environment is that products are king. It doesn't mean that you don't have to worry about this user volume today. Products are stagnant and users may be lost. Secondly, we should find more income to support the company's future development. If faced with competition from giants, Chen Hua said, "First of all, you must have money in your account. If there is no money in the account, there is a problem with survival. You have to fight big companies, that's all. "The goal of financing is to reassure me, not to burn it. Capital guarantees your safety, psychologically not afraid of competitors, and technically stronger than anyone else. "