With Tencent's investment, they still screwed up the project.

Recently, Tencent has two things worthy of attention.

First, Tencent Holdings released the unaudited financial report for the third quarter, and the data in all aspects were as bright as ever: Financially, the total revenue was RMB 654.38+0254 billion, up 29% year-on-year, among which online games and value-added services grew strongly; Second, Tencent and other institutions jointly invested in the D round of financing of a Chinese fast food brand "He Fu Mian", with an amount of 450 million yuan, which is also a huge investment in the catering industry. Tencent's investment tentacles have always been in the pocket, regardless of national boundaries and industries, from hard technology to new consumption, from finance to education.

In Q3 financial report, Tencent's investment income is also very bright. After adjustment according to non-international financial reporting standards, as of September 30, 2020, Tencent's "other net income" was 1, 654,38+0,565,438+0,000,000,000,000 yuan. We don't know which company stock Tencent holds has made money.

According to the data of IT Orange, as of June 5, 2020, Tencent has invested in more than 790 companies, among which many listed companies may bring direct benefits to Tencent, such as Bi Li Bi Li (bilibili), Betta Fish, JD.COM, Pinduoduo, Meituan and 58 (being privatized). The unicorn companies that will benefit Tencent in the future include Didi Chuxing, Cheduoduo Group, Aauto Quicker, Zhihu, Himalaya, Ape Tutor, Daily Youxian and Hi Tea.

However, as the saying goes, "You can't walk by the river without wet shoes." Tencent, which has invested in nearly 800 companies, has also lost its sight.

According to the statistics of IT Orange, there are currently 24 entrepreneurial projects that have been invested and closed by Tencent (note: all the above situations, such as the project being closed, the project being unattended for more than one year, the product going offline, the project having completely abandoned its original main business, transformed into a new business or new project, the project being absorbed and merged by other entities, and the brand no longer operating independently, are regarded as the project failure and closure). Most of these projects listed by us were invested by Tencent in or before the A round, mainly leading the investment, but the single investment amount was small, and the total financial amount was less than 5 billion yuan. For Tencent's huge investment, it really rained in Mao Mao.

Lost Gao Peng: Tencent abandoned it, and American "dad" Groupon has declined.

Gao Peng's background is very noble. He has two dads. The "dad" in the United States is Groupon, the originator of group buying, and the "dad" in China is Tencent-201/kloc-0. On February 28th, the China version of Groupon's website in Gao Peng was officially announced, with Tencent and Groupon contributing 50 million US dollars (about 325 million RMB) respectively. According to the media reports at that time, "each party holds 50% of the shares", but in fact, Yunfeng Fund also announced that it would invest in shares when it was established in Gaopeng.com, and all three parties remained silent about the investment shares. But in any case, this luxurious background created the birth of Gao Peng. Com was considered as the terminator of the group buying track at that time.

Back to the group buying market in China at that time-after three rounds, there were huge Handan.com, Wo Wo and F groups, followed by "little brother" Meituan.com, who had just been online for one year, and the best rival CP "Full House Network" (wedding), and the battle of Gao Peng could not be ignored.

In the initial design, the CEO of Gaopeng.com was Tencent, and the Groupon team was responsible for the operation. Both "dads" are very strong, with relatively equal shares and unclear priorities. Historically, this cooperation was rarely successful, which also left a hidden danger for the later development of Gao Peng.

At that time, the whole group buying industry was in the barbaric growth period, and its operation mode was very extensive. Due to the long validity period of group purchase coupons, most users will not consume them in time after purchasing them online, so there is a large amount of "prepayment" cash on the platform, which is actually a debt. However, many group buying platforms use this unconsumed fund for other purposes. The most common thing is to invest in new cities for operation and subsidies, so as to obtain a steady stream of orders, thus forming a cycle and supporting the rapid expansion of the group buying industry.

At that time, Meituan.com insisted on not "burning money" and blindly pursuing the expansion speed, and took the lead in introducing the policy of "returning at any time and returning after expiration", which made users feel more at ease to buy coupons, which was also an important reason why Meituan.com survived in the "Thousand Regiments War" and rose suddenly.

2011165438+1On October 4th, 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 listing, Gao Peng. Com was a little frustrated and didn't look around and realize his situation; Nor did it "put down its posture" like the local group buying website, and used the "carpet" sweeping promotion method, but hoped for Tencent's traffic transmission and resource integration.

Unfortunately, Groupon's share price dropped from a high of $500 to below 100 one year after its listing, which declared the end of the group buying story in overseas capital markets. In the competition of domestic group buying websites, Gaopeng.com's performance is also lackluster.

2065438+August, 2002 1 day, Tencent integrated its own QQ group buying business with F Group and Gao Peng. Com to establish a "networking world group". After the merger, Tencent holds 30% of the shares, Groupon holds more than 10%, and Lin Ning, the former CEO of Group F, is the CEO of the new company. 201212 On February 26th, the merged new company received additional investment of $40 million from Groupon and Tencent.

Only half a year later-July, 2065438+03, Sohu IT revealed that Gao Peng's nine vice presidents. Com resigned within a year, the company wavered and its business was in chaos. Withdraw from the group buying industry after netting Tianxia Group.

After four years' silence, Wangsu Group reorganized its assets on 20 17, and Tencent, Yunfeng Fund and a technology company in Shenzhen injected capital again, and Tencent remained the largest shareholder. The official announcement has set up new business lines such as project incubation, investment and vertical e-commerce around the world, but there is little movement in the market.

Today, Groupon is also old, and it is gone forever on the road of decline. At present, its share price is less than $25 and its market value is only $700 million.

At that time, it was not easy for Tencent to help the small.

Lonely Happy Network: Remember the food you stole?

From the perspective of investors, Kaixin.com may not be a case of judging Tencent's investment failure; However, judging from the project itself, Xin Kai really declined after being invested by Tencent, and finally gave up social business completely and was sold.

Kaixin.com, a white-collar social networking site, was founded in 2008. After 18 months, the number of users increased from 3 million to 60 million, which once led the national "stealing vegetables" craze. Today, Kaixin.com is a stranger to the post-00 generation, and these past events seem to have passed for centuries.

The year of 20 10 was the heyday of Kaixin.com, and it was also a year when Tencent was attacked from both sides in the social field. Kaixin.com (white-collar socializing), Renren.com (campus socializing), Sina Weibo (celebrity celebrity, fan economy) and QQ space (acquaintance socializing) form the four-legged structure of SNS. Among them, Sina Weibo has both social and media attributes, which is far from the positioning of other projects.

Xin Kai. From the second quarter of 20 10, com realized scale profit, with monthly profit exceeding 10 million yuan and annual income of 300 million yuan, of which advertising accounted for the largest proportion. In order to get rid of the dependence on the advertising business model, Kaixin.com also tried to launch the group purchase service at the beginning of 20 1 1, but it was outsourced to Group F after only nine months of operation.

2011/kloc-0 June, Tencent invested strategically in Xin Kai. The investment amount is not disclosed, and it is reported to be about 1 100 million US dollars. According to the analysis, the main reason for Tencent's massive investment in Kaixin.com is to weaken its competitors, seize the white-collar high-end user market, and make up for the aging QQ population, which is not enough to consolidate Tencent's absolute position in the social field.

After Tencent's investment, third-party applications and game developers can simultaneously access and operate their own applications on the open platforms of Tencent and Xin Kai. However, Xin Kai, which relies too much on stealing vegetables, will inevitably decline after users are diverted.

Since then, Kaixin.com has completely transformed into a mobile game research and development company, and its founder Cheng Binghao left his post in July 20 16. 20 17, A-share listed company "Saiwei Intelligent" acquired Xin Kai Information, a major operator in Kaixin.com, for108.5 billion yuan.

"Crazy teacher" is no longer crazy: cannon fodder under the O2O carnival of tutoring

20 14 years, online to offline is very popular, and there is a hot wind blowing in the field of tutoring O2O. Before and after this, a number of online tutoring O2O platforms were established. When a teacher came, who to learn from, a good teacher, a crazy teacher, gently tutor and ask him to teach.

This kind of project mode is very close, and both of them have obtained good investment. After all, the need for primary and secondary school students to find tutors has long existed, but the Internet platform hopes to solve this demand through more efficient resource matching.

Among them, Tencent invested in Crazy Teacher for two consecutive rounds-2065438+June 2005, and Tencent exclusively invested in Crazy Teacher B with an amount of 20 million US dollars; One year later, Tencent once again invested 65.438+0.2 billion yuan in series C financing of Crazy Teacher. So, why did Tencent choose a crazy teacher?

There is a key figure here-Wu, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent. Twilight Venture Capital, which he founded, led the crazy teacher's10000000 yuan Pre-A round of financing in June of 20 15, and made a good investment endorsement for the project. In the business model, crazy teachers pay more attention to the creation of teachers' personal IP, do not directly cooperate with training institutions, and do not completely let teachers settle in;

As for the team, Zhang Hao, the founder of Crazy Teacher, started from scratch with the traditional K 12 extracurricular training. Crazy teacher is his second pioneering project in the field of education. In order to make up for his shortcomings in Internet products, he also invited Yao Xin, founder of PPTV, to take charge of products and technology.

When Tencent put forward the idea of investment, Zhang Hao's team was already in contact with several well-known investment institutions, so Zhang Hao also asked to complete the financing in the shortest time. Finally, the project reached an agreement on the $ Termsheet in 36 hours, completed the due diligence, signed the agreement, and closed the delivery in 20 days, which was crazy.

The "admiration" for Tencent's Internet genes and the persuasion of Tencent President Liu Chiping are the important reasons why Zhang Hao accepted Tencent's investment-"What can Tencent bring to crazy teachers? The first is brand endorsement. No teacher doesn't know who Tencent is. The second is technical support. If tutor O2O welcomes the explosion of user growth like taxi software, Tencent's powerful technical team can handle the problem of high concurrency; The third is that users * * * enjoy it. The user groups of QQ and crazy teachers are highly coincident. It is not ruled out that Tencent will open the port of 200 million user groups to crazy teachers in the future. "

At present, the first and second points have been partially realized. After being blessed by Tencent, Crazy Teacher once stepped onto the cusp of public opinion 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, reaching an exclusive strategic cooperation with Tencent and using Tencent's technical services to support the live broadcasting business. 20 17 crazy teacher transformed and launched the "Jingle Classroom" online live class.

However, with the tide of transformation and closure of the tutor O2O industry, after two years of silence, Crazy Teacher also announced that it would stop operating on April 30, 2009. The APP page shows: "The madness of the past is over, thank you for your company all the way. 」

"Father of Android" failed to start a business again: Jobs's success could not be replicated.

Except for technical professionals, probably no one knows the smartphone brand Essential Phone, but in fact, the founder of this project is Andy Rubin, the father of Android. Rubin worked for Google after Android was acquired by Google, and then resigned due to a sex scandal, and received a severance package of up to $9 million. After leaving his job, he founded the consumer electronics brand Essential.

The background of cattle people has attracted the attention of startups, and they have just received $30 million in Series A financing. 2065438+June 2007, Tencent and Amazon Alexa Fund participated in the $300 million round of financing of Essential, and the post-investment valuation exceeded $ 1 billion.

The first smartphone released by Essential is called PH 1. The borderless, large-size and multi-color design is aimed at high-end smartphone brands Apple and Samsung. However, the mobile phone shipped less than 90,000 units in 20 17 and stopped production one year later (20 18 12).

In 20 19, the team made Project Gem, an "extended version" smartphone similar to the TV remote control, which can be held with one hand and controlled by voice, but it has not yet reached the stage of mass production and delivery. In February 2020, Essential announced that it would stop operating and close down.

With the closure of e-mail management applications Essentia and Newton developed by CloudMagic. Inc, which was acquired by the company at the end of 20 18, will also be unusable. Newton is famous for its search and cross-platform functions, which can be applied to iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows and Chrome OS.

After combing, we divided Tencent's failed investment projects into four categories:

In the first category, Tencent tried to cut into the trading field that it was not good at-Gao Peng, a group buying website that Tencent cooperated with Groupon and invested $65.438+400 million; The smart learning YouA launched by Tomorrow Micro, a joint venture with New Oriental, an education and training institution, and the e-commerce websites that cooperated with Wanda, a real estate company (Tencent later withdrew its investment) all failed, among which Gao was the most invested by Tencent.

In the second category, Tencent has invested in many related projects at home and abroad as a lead investor or exclusively in the fields of games and social interaction that it is good at, but there are also some projects that are unfavorable because they missed the later mobile Internet dividend: for example, Kaixin.com, an SNS website that became popular because of "growing vegetables and stealing vegetables", and "Long-term Interactive Network" that focuses on SNS game development; Other projects are relatively small, and the scale of users has not yet been done. Typical projects include anonymous chat software "Gege APP" based on geographical location, social application "Who APP" on the street, and Korean pet online game developer "GoPets".

In the third category, Tencent followed up some investments during the hot period of O2O, and some projects developed rapidly in the early stage with the momentum of O2O. However, a few years later, the pattern of O2O has undergone great changes, and some projects have become "cannon fodder", which led to the failure of Tencent's investment. Typical projects include "Crazy Teacher", a tutor O2O project invested by Tencent twice, "DuDu Calling a Car" which won the second round of financing from Tencent on 20 15, but later disappeared in the battle for the take-away booking platform, "Aibang. com", a local information search service provider providing bus inquiry and business inquiry services, and "You can order first", a mobile ordering app.

The fourth category is scattered projects in other fields, such as Pacewear, a smart phone brand founded by andy rubin, the father of Android, and Essential Phone, a consumer electronics brand.

The above cases may prove that there is no such thing as "eating all over the world at once" in investing in emerging markets-cattle people will fail when they start their own businesses again, and once successful projects will also fail with the changes of the times, and projects that fly with the wind will also fall miserably-so, no matter how awesome investment institutions and companies are, sometimes they will make mistakes and miss.

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 criteria followed by institutions are more a summary of the past "empiricism", which may improve the probability of its investment success, but it is unpredictable and inevitable in the case of investment failure.