Savage times, Where are the opportunities in the field of enterprise storage and collaboration in China?

abstract: Today, the Internet in China has been separated from the wilderness, Being good in silicon valley no longer means being good in China, But in Silicon Valley, there may be opportunities in China. China's Internet innovation has gradually passed the era of blindly following the trend, Different market environments, Different demand stages, Different development backgrounds.

On trend and opportunity judgment, We should see more thoroughly what happened in Silicon Valley, Believe it all and you may lose. The value provided by Internet products is the essence of its competitiveness, Everything else is nonsense.

Past 12 Within months, Several unicorns in the field of cloud storage and collaboration in the United States staged the song of ice and fire.

Dropbox Stagnation of growth rate, The valuation of US $10 billion fell rapidly; The world's largest cloud notebook application Evernote CEO quit, Then he fell out of the unicorn row. Enterprise level communication and collaborative application Slack It took less than two years to jump to 28 US $100 million valuation, It can be said that the sun is at its zenith.

Suddenly, all kinds of experts' bad and popular comments came out, Even the direction of domestic entrepreneurs has been confused. But what is the reason for the ice and fire of these unicorns? What are the experiences that domestic followers should really learn from these declines and rises? Where are the real opportunities in the field of enterprise storage and collaboration in China? We should disassemble more rationally.

Let's first look at the real reasons for the decline and rise of these three unicorns

Dropbox

Dropbox It's a good time to be born. With the prosperity of the Internet, Accessing and sharing files anytime, anywhere has gradually become the rigid need of many users and enterprises. and Dropbox With a very simple file synchronization terminal, Beat other complex and cumbersome cloud storage products, With its excellent viral marketing, It has won the hearts of hundreds of millions of users.

Peak stage Dropbox The proportion of paying users is as high as 3. 5%, Bring huge income growth to it, Thus, the valuation reached astonishing 100 Billion.

Dropbox Our prosperity is PC Dividend products brought by the transition from the era to the Internet Era. With the gradual disappearance of dividends and the mushrooming of similar products, Dropbox Our products no longer have so much differentiated value, On the contrary, the previous high-speed growth masked the shortcomings of subsequent product innovation.

Dropbox Online editing products launched this year paper, and Google docs It was started several years ago. in addition Dropbox An important attempt of is to transform to the field of medium and large enterprise file management, In this field, Started at the same time Box Although not Dropbox It also has a huge user base, But with its years of deep cultivation in the enterprise market, High product and industry barriers have been formed.

It is reported that, Dropbox stay 2014 Since vigorously transforming the enterprise market in, Did not achieve the expected success, Almost no decent Fortune 500 contracts have been obtained, Enterprise level transformation has a long way to go.

There are pursuers behind, There is blockage in front, Too fast growth makes Dropbox Not aware of their crisis in time. And when you realize it, Personal cloud storage has become a red sea, The enterprise level market has high barriers, Dropbox Missed the best opportunity to enter. The decline of valuation is not difficult to understand.

Fading keywords: Gradual loss of product differentiation, Excessive growth masks the crisis of enterprises, Lack of innovation, Enterprise level transformation is not smooth

Evernote

Once the darling of capital circles, Evernote Even today, there are still tens of millions of users' emotional products, Including myself. Evernote Represents a future product form: Lighter document editing, , Content first, Full cloud.

Evernote At first, the positioning was extremely smart : User's second brain, Skilfully avoided and office word Competition as a document editor, Instead, it becomes people's understanding of fragmented information, A recording tool for ideas.

Users who have used notebook products will know that it is very sticky, Because it collects a lot of valuable notes from your past, idea, Extract, memory, It really is the existence of the user's second brain, Its value is conceivable.

But in Evernote 2012 After becoming a unicorn in, His ambition has grown, But it also seems to become less focused.

Evernote Food, Evernote market, Evernote Seems to have unlimited interest in peripheral products, Of course, the media will climax every time, participate in Evernote How creative the team is. And last year Evernote CEO Announce resignation, Let the situation fall from heaven to the bottom in an instant.

Novel products are not given Evernote Bring expected user growth, Instead, the pace of income realization has become slower, Just a few months, Evernote Has dropped out of the unicorn ranks.

Evernote It's a typical entrepreneurial team high, The story of slowly turning a good hand into a bad one. But it's not like what domestic experts say, Note taking products are only a flash in the pan, In my opinion, it represents the mainstream way for people to create content in the future, The content of notes may be the most important data for users, Cloud based, Anytime, anywhere is also a continuous trend in the future, If we look at Microsoft Yabao office365 I'll know.

Fading keywords: Insufficient product focus, The commercialization idea is not clear enough, Insufficient innovation of core values

Slack

Slack The outbreak of has refreshed many growth figures in Silicon Valley, An internal tool took a year to achieve 10 US $100 million valuation, Without sales, the monthly revenue of a single month quickly breaks through 100 Ten thousand dollars.

Domestic entrepreneurs can no longer sit still, Immediately, Various labels were pasted "The future of enterprise collaboration" , "subversion Dropbox" etc. Slack It is definitely the hot spicy chicken in the American enterprise field at present.

that Slack What is the background of the outbreak, What should be learned from his product form for Chinese entrepreneurs, What is not applicable.

Rise background:

• There is no monopoly enterprise level chat tool in the United States. Here it is Slack An opportunity, In addition Slack be based on Channel The chat design experience of is very good, Quickly received the favor of many small and medium-sized enterprises.

• American enterprises are adopting more and more IT service, But they can't be connected. Slack The most differentiated product value is to connect with third-party services and provide unified message search. Today, enterprise cloud services in the United States are highly developed, Most American enterprises are using more than a dozen different cloud services. But these cloud services don't work out, It is difficult for users to uniformly handle message notifications from multiple services. and Slack Help users do it, Instantly hit the core pain point of enterprise users.

• Slack Hit the two core office needs : Communications and documentation. These two requirements constitute the enterprise users 80%The above working scenarios, So that enterprises can use one platform to solve all the things previously completed through multiple platforms.

In contrast, at home, Is the same rise background established?

• China already has two of the most powerful communication tools in the world: qq And wechat, Almost monopolized PC Communication scenarios with mobile terminals, They are also the most frequently used by Chinese enterprise employees at work. As a startup company, It's too difficult to rebuild a communication platform, Only giants like Alibaba Dingding can spend tens of millions a month to break a corner in this market, Moreover, many enterprises began to use nails because of their free approval and mobile phones, Instead of corporate chat.

• Of most Chinese Enterprises IT The level is still in the primary stage, Can be used in 1-2 IT system/The service was pretty good, There is no strong demand for unified message integration. And these IT The system has no statistical standard for a long time, It's very difficult to be integrated, At present, what can be integrated are some relatively lightweight cloud service products.

• Compared to slack This way of integrating third-party services, Ali nailing this platform+Strong binding ISV The way of may be promoted faster in China. (PS: But please note that this routine is only BAT Can afford to play)

Fully understand the differences between Chinese and American markets, To provide differentiated value of products as the core is what Chinese entrepreneurs should do. For enterprise cloud storage and collaboration, Finish reading Dropbox, Evernote, Slack Three cases, Where are the possible opportunities for China:

Real opportunities in the Chinese market

• Minimize changes in user habits

Compared with the high acceptance of American enterprises and employees for information systems, The informatization level of the vast majority of enterprise employees in China is at a very early stage. QQ, office It may be their only information tool. The premise that online collaboration tools can help enterprises improve their catalytic efficiency is that employees are willing to use it. But changing the working habits of Chinese users is the most difficult thing, Therefore, the collaborative products that can really be popularized first in China must be products that minimize the change of users' working habits, Not those Internet products that promote new ways of working.

At this point, Dropbox The file synchronization end of is a good example, Because it helps users improve efficiency at the same time, Users are completely unaware of its existence.

• Chinese enterprise file storage and collaboration are still in a wild era

Although this field has become a red sea in the United States, Become a must for giants and start-ups (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Box, Dropbox ) . And the closest category in ChinaEnterprise network diskStill in the early stages of the market, domestic 95%The most important part of the enterprise is not effectively managed "Digital assets" , On the contrary, we see many employees using BaiduNetdiskSuch an individualCloud diskProcess work tasks. This approach will obviously bring immeasurable data security risks to enterprises.

• Online content generation will become the mainstream in the future

From the earliest Google Docs, To the rise of cloud notes in recent years, Then go to Microsoft to vigorously promote offce365 It can be seen that, In the future, people's work will slowly migrate to the cloud, Local documents will gradually be replaced by cloud documents. This is lighter, Collaborative document work, which can be accessed anytime and anywhere, will gradually become a basic tool for people.

Although it will take a long time to realize this trend, But entrepreneurs should pay enough attention to it.

• Enterprise level market is easy to achieve high barrier differentiation value

Cloud services, SAAS In the past two years, it has often been accompanied by another noun "Small and medium enterprise customers" , The number of small and medium-sized enterprises is very large, And it will not be as cautious as medium and large enterprises, It is very suitable for Internet promotion, such as free.

But from Dropbox As can be seen from the example of, At first, because of a killer application product, Dropbox Indeed, it has achieved brilliance, But because it has always focused on individuals and small and medium-sized enterprise users, The needs of these groups are relatively simple, Once there are competitors competing on these few rigid demand points, This market will soon fall into the Red Sea.

Look back at China, Can really make something like that Dropbox How many such products can be created.

On the contrary, although it is difficult for medium and large enterprises to enter, But once inside, a strong enough threshold will be established. And the needs of large and medium-sized enterprises are often diverse, such as at the security level, At the level of system integration. After the products are developed according to the needs of these enterprises, Often difficult to replicate.

have a look Box, Salesforce How to build the moat will be clearer. imageFangcloudI am a clear supporter of this idea.

• Learn to dance with Wolves

All Internet startups in China may not avoid a topic called BAT. Last two years BAT All enter the enterprise market in the overall situation, Like Ali's nail, Tencent's wechat enterprise number. But in the enterprise market, I think this may be an opportunity for entrepreneurs.

What giants want to do is often ecosystem or platform, It's hard for them to be single SAAS Too much energy is invested in the application field, Because this is for their ROI It's not worth it. and BAT The sudden advance of the enterprise market has brought several benefits to entrepreneurs:

1 The recognition and acceptance of cloud services by Chinese enterprises have been greatly accelerated;

2 Help different SAAS Better connection between applications and a large number of enterprises with demand;

3 Both Dingding and wechat enterprise account are based on communication, What they want to seize is the entrance of the highest frequency, Those who can complement each other in product form should be connected at the first time, Will get huge user dividends.

image Slack Basic requirements for enterprises "communication+file" Satisfaction of, What is more likely to succeed in China is "Nail nail" + similar "Fangcloud" Enterprise document management platform Seamless integration mode.

epilogue:

Today, the Internet in China has been separated from the wilderness, Being good in silicon valley no longer means being good in China, But in Silicon Valley, there may be opportunities in China.

China's Internet innovation has gradually passed the era of blindly following the trend, Different market environments, Different demand stages, Different development backgrounds.

On trend and opportunity judgment, We should see more thoroughly what happened in Silicon Valley, Believe it all and you may lose.

The value provided by Internet products is the essence of its competitiveness, Everything else is nonsense.