CEO Gong Haiyan: Will Jiayuan Be A "Positive Fruit"?

Even back to five or six years ago, when the dating website was still VC's pursuit of "fragrant pastry",

"It's a blessing to be seen by Miss Xu."

She said after thinking for a long time.

This is not only because the angel is rich.

Is the motive force for starting a business cheated?

In 2003, Gong Haiyan was also a master of two in Chinese Department of Fudan University.

With the urge of family members, she resorted to the Internet to become an early adopters of dating sites, but "this is not a pleasant experience".

She registered on the two dating websites and became a member, but she didn't receive a pile of spam messages from her penfriend to a one night stand, that is, "there are 12 replies but no reply."

What makes her angry is that when she complains to the website customer service, some members' personal information is false, but she is regarded as a "person who makes no use of reason because of being refused."

If it was someone else, it might have gone back to find other ways, but Gong Haiyan has been more enthusiastic with these websites. "I must lay down a harsh word and make a better website."

In October 2003, she spent 1000 yuan to register a website, raided herself for more than 20 days, and produced the first edition of Jiayuan's first edition.

After the hanging of a female friend's information, the network "marriage agency" also officially opened.

But what Gong Haiyan did not expect was that such a seemingly simple website would be really "burning money".

A month after the operation of the website, Gong Haiyan had spent nearly twenty thousand yuan on the purchase of an independent server, because some members complained too slowly.

When Jiayuan did not have time to advertise and market promotion, it almost got the first 1000 users by word of mouth.

Compared with other dating sites at that time, the biggest feature of Jiayuan is Gong Haiyan's "seriousness" which has been repeatedly emphasized.

In order not to let the members of the web site be deceived as they used to be, Gong Haiyan set up four "firewalls" for false information: customer service manual audit, technical shielding, internet police 24 hours online patrol and member complaint mechanism.

This feature also makes the operation cost of the website relatively high, so Gong Haiyan has to go out to find the money.

Recalling the initial experience of finding money, Gong Haiyan sighed with emotion: "I do not have a very bright overseas study background. At that time, the interface of the website was also very crude. The VC I met did not believe that I could make it happen."

Three angels of love in New Oriental

In 2005, Gong Haiyan received an appointment with Qian Yongqiang, one of the "three carriages" of the New Oriental.

After several interviews, Qian Yongqiang decided to invest in Jiayuan and introduced Gong Haiyan to Xu Xiaoping.

That year, Xu Xiaoping was just a "angel" who had just entered. According to his own theory, "I was following Qian Yongqiang's good luck in history. Before I saw Xiao Long nu (Gong's net name), I decided to vote."

So, together with Wang Qiang, the three new Oriental "angels" invested 40 million yuan to Jiayuan.

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Compared to Qian Yongqiang's concern for Jiayuan, Xu Xiaoping has not only questioned the financial and operational situation of the website, but also comforted Gong Haiyan. "It doesn't matter if you can't make money, the social value of what you do is big enough."

In 2007, Jiayuan introduced the venture capital of the first institutional investor to invest $10 million, and began to look for and focus on a clearer profit model.

In 2010, Gong Haiyan cancelled all advertisements on the website, aiming at the main source of his income to individual users.

In her understanding, although it is almost an industry taboo for a portal or community web site to collect personal fees, there are obvious differences between the marriage and dating website due to the obvious difference between the membership demand and the former.

On the one hand, unlike the online games and SNS, the user experience scattered in different cities can not be standardized only by a single network cable. Instead, a large number of members must be gathered in the same city to ensure the success of making friends on the bottom line.

This means that the marriage and love website industry will form a unique pattern in every city, which provides a possibility for individual users to charge.

On the other hand, Gong Haiyan does not adopt the traditional mode of one-time payment of membership fees, but is free to register and pay the fee according to the effect. That is to pay only when checking the first "love letter" sent by others or participating in the activities under the Jiayuan line.

"For young people living in this age of Internet, it is not an unbearable or thoughtful expense to spend a dollar to see what is written in love letters sent by others.

If there are too many love letters, we still have a monthly package.

Gong Haiyan said.

For those who are unwilling to pay, Gong Haiyan also left a way, that is, they can voluntarily send a letter and wait for their reply to view it free of charge.

Because the website only charges the first letter between the two sides, which ensures the revenue and does not affect the activity of the members.

If you can't go out, just integrate vertically.

In July 2010, shijiayuan firmly occupied the first place in the industry with 54.41% market share. It was about 46 percentage points different from the lily market ranked second and the market share of 8.15% (refer to the internet lab data). The number of independent visitors per day reached 300 million (refer to Ai Ruizi for monitoring data).

Gong Haiyan also told reporters in the southern metropolis that the current total membership was around 30 million, which basically achieved a balance of payments and a slight surplus.

When people speculate whether Jiayuan will become the first listed marriage and dating website, Gong Haiyan is thinking about another problem.

She understands that despite the growing number of young people accepted by the Internet dating, the overall size of the user continues to expand, but there is always a predictable growth limit. At the same time, the website itself does not form a long-term sticky member for these users, although they will log in frequently, but as long as the success of friends will quickly leave.

How can we find more business value from a single user?

In October 2010, seven years after the establishment of Jiayuan, Gong Haiyan made an angel investment, invested 20 million, and reorganized a new team. He founded the marriage portal website, which was wholly owned by Jiayuan.

In Gong's plan, the magpie net is located in a vertical portal about marriage information. Users who succeed in making friends on the century's Jiayuan and then generate marriage needs will be directed to Magpie online for the first time to get preferential information about products and services.

Although there was a VC question at the beginning of the motion that "the battle line was too long, it would increase the risk of failure", but Gong Haiyan thought that for Jiayuan, it is much less difficult and dangerous to face vertical integration in the industry chain than to go abroad to open up overseas markets, and it is not pursuing the latest concept of B2C e-commerce or group buying.

This decision was supported by "angels".

"Next week, I will invite Mr. Xu to come and interact with members.

Answer one or two emotional questions per week and do seven consecutive times.

You see he's so busy, but he agreed. "

Speaking of this, Gong Haiyan was particularly excited, and seemed to be in a much more heated view of the market than her eyes.