Investment Nets Need To Be Cautious. Lady Gaga Companies Are Bankrupt.

If it weren't for the media

The social networking product has gone bankrupt, and many Chinese Internet users haven't heard of this Internet product. The actress set up a social App. Compared with the typical Chinese Internet users, Taobao stores and independent fashion brands seem to be more popular.

Representative

Also got financing.

Then, is net red venture worth investing?

The US head card star Lady Gaga is now about the first ten, because the media reported that her company is bankrupt.

This Lady is one of the largest Internet red in the United States. 5 years ago, Lady Gaga invested in a brand called Backplane and a star fan community, so that "like-minded people can join together through common interests" and finally declared bankruptcy this year.

According to TechCrunch's report, Lady Gaga's start-up company has burned down its $19 million raised at the beginning of its founding and has sold its assets.

China's net red economy has been booming recently. Net red people are also seeking a realizable mode. Look at the stars who are fans of the economy in the US.

However, the good news about Gaga is that a group of new and old investors who buy Backplane will try to make Backplane comeback.

However, will fans pay the bill if they don't change their soup?

Born with a golden key

In 2010, Apple launched the music social networking Ping (though it was offline in less than two years). Jobs immediately contacted Lady Gaga and her agent Troy Carter to seek feedback and comments from users.

At the Apple Corp headquarters in California, Lady Gaga did not conceal its Tucao on Ping, questioning its design and openness to other social networks.

Gaga and Carter are especially worried about the lack of integration between Ping and Facebook. After leaving the Apple Corp, Carter came up with a new idea.

He called his friend, Matthew Michelsen, a technology investor and entrepreneur, hoping to find a platform that can span all social networks and manage large fans.

As a result, Michelsen said, "I said, why do we need to find a platform and build it ourselves?"

In 2011, Backplane attracted the attention of a group of investors, including Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Lady Gaga and her broker, VC Troy Carter, and Google Ventures, SV Angel, and other institutional investors, eventually raising a total of $12 million 100 thousand, with a valuation of US $40 million.

So far, one of Backplane's (and probably the only) big news is to create a LittleMonsters.com social networking community for Gaga fans.

Lady Gaga has a 20% stake in Backplane. The reason is that this vertical vermicelli web site LittleMonster.com is the first project of Backplane.

Fans gathered on the website are like the Gaga of the early days. They are attracted by Gaga's gimmick and grotesque music and share their weird views freely on the website.

LittleMonsters has attracted one million registered users in just a year, and Gaga's surrounding products are selling well.

Gaga will also do marketing on social media and interact with fans. The fans' cohesion is amazing.

Gary Briggs, former vice president of Google, once commented that Carter and Gaga did unprecedented work in public relations and management of fan relationships.

"Blackplane can provide platforms and tools for different groups to engage in social networking and communication more attentively."

The Carter that sounds like this sounds more like an entrepreneur than a star broker.

Most of the other stars' brokers focus on fans on the big platform, but Carter's ambition is to use various kinds of network tools to double the development of the Gaga banknote printing machine.

Fans are hard to replicate

Blackplane has tried to copy this successful case to other brand customers, but it is not satisfactory.

Carter and Gaga split up in 2013, and Carter, once full of confidence in Blackplane, was actually not interested in the company's business.

In March last year, TechCrunch analyzed the decline of Blackplane, and thought that it has been in the "free fall" for several years.

Judging from the conditions of its founding, Carter's initial confidence is not empty.

Also a star investor, Lady Gaga beat Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber, becoming the first star to get tens of millions of fans on Twitter and Facebook, and her video hits constantly refreshed the list of Youtube.

Amazon launched a new music service that year, at the expense of millions of options to cooperate with Lady Gaga to promote, it is precisely her high popularity and ability to absorb gold.

Backplane has also tried to pform, instead of developing and managing an independent social network for the brand. Instead, it has pformed into a new platform called Place.xyz, which can create communities with different themes on one application.

Later, Scott Harrison, who replaced Michelsen as CEO's post, described Place: "we try to create such a world. Your social life here does not need to cater to the public.

We have many "faces", hoping that everyone can express themselves in different places (Places).

For some people, Place can become a professional team collaboration tool like Slack.

For artists or businessmen, marketing and promotion can also be done here.

It sounds much smarter than Backplane, but it is learnt that many talented people have been forced to leave the company since last year, and Backplane seems to be powerless.

Pessimism has long been put forward, the best result may be acquired.

Big brands ruin everything.

The problem is that not many people want to join a brand exclusive fan network, which is the brand that destroys everything.

In fact, Backplane has been very cautious about the brand partners. The most ideal partners are the top brands with high customer loyalty, such as Coca-Cola.

In addition to business cooperation, Coca-Cola, sun circus and Nike have invested in Backplane.

In the subsequent financing, the entry of top tier venture capitalists such as Sequoia Capital, Peter Thiel's Founders Funds's FF Angel, Greylock and other strategic investments allowed Backplane's original vision to become blurred.

Harrison said: "I think we were a little bit lost at that time, because we began to think," I want to do this for the brand. "

Then you discover that big brands are a little too big.

They began to operate the social network for Coca-Cola's Coca-Cola bottle collectors, guns and roses, Guns N, American rock band and Kangtai Nash group, but these sites only attract a small number of crazy fans' attention.

Internal management is a mess.

Burning money too fast, bad management and internal disputes can only result in useless products.

Most people mentioned that two words of entrepreneurship are still very tolerant. Most people admit that entrepreneurship is a bit confusing at the beginning.

But sometimes we habitually assume that "once we get through the beginning, it will be smooth afterwards."

In fact, before the success of an entrepreneurial company, it is usually a mess. Sometimes it is a top track and it is still a mess.

Backplane is like this. "Stupid decisions waste a lot of money in the company."

After the bankruptcy news came out, some details about the company were made public.

For example, a co-founder, Alex Moore, would rather spend money on food in the company's kitchen than on the direction strategy. "Products and design do not match, design and engineering do not match."

For example, Carter, one of the founders of the founders, provided many support in the early days. He made Gaga the most popular fan, creating the most popular social media account, but managing the company day by day.

After Carter and Gaga split up at the end of 13, he began to focus on his own fund Atom Factory, and also from inside the Backplane.

Last year, another informant disclosed to the media that "the speed of burning money is really fast" and "tens of thousands of months".

One reason is that Backplane also operates two branches, one of which is set up in California's Palo Palo Artaud City, which has a high operating cost.

"With so much money, nothing has been made."

This is the evaluation of another informant.

The company can keep up until today, and is constantly raising funds by Michelsen, chairman of the board.

However, the fall of Backplane is still inevitable, because the speed of burning money is still out of control.

According to TechCrunch, investors are reluctant to inject capital when Backplane debt default is serious and funds are exhausted.

In order to reduce the speed of burning money, Backplane shut down the two branches of the original Parr and roomto city of Santiago and California, and the team merged to San Francisco.

Harrison now concludes that the decisive mistake Backplane has made is "we regard it as a SAAS model", while the actual business of the company is charging the brand to manage the fan network, which makes it difficult for the business to expand.

In order to change and solve problems, they launched Place in pformation.