The underlying logic and required abilities of product managers in different fields are similar, which is to have a keen insight into user needs and meet user needs through your products.
When Zhou Xin started his own business in the semiconductor field, he was a very good product manager.
He can keenly discern the unreasonable aspects of product design and find the right direction from the fog.
Zhou Xinlai has been planning since he arrived in 1998, which industry to start with can transcend time and space, and can be regarded as a twenty-year enterprise.
From 1998 to 2020, more than twenty years is too long. The models of most Internet companies had extremely brilliant moments and then gradually declined.
Even Taobao accounted for more than 95% of the e-commerce market share at its peak, which was even more exaggerated than Microsoft's monopoly. But later, under the siege of new e-commerce models such as JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Douyin, the market share continued to decline.
Internet companies that can endure across time must have certain monopoly qualities and cannot be replaced.
Zhou Xin’s last chosen track was electronic payment. In the era of mobile Internet, electronic payment can evolve into financial technology.
Even if after 2016, Amerikan will try every means to take NewPay away from him, Zhou Xin will still have enough chips.
Including the name of the software NewPay, it is highly bound to Zhou Xin himself.
Those who do not plan for the eternity cannot plan for a moment.
Therefore, all his industries are built around the core of electronic payment. From the earliest days, "Angry Birds" gave players a preliminary concept of electronic payment.
Later, Riot Games deepened the concept of electronic payment, and then the official launch of NewPay, as well as the paid Q&A session, all centered on the core of electronic payment.
“Boss, after Quora’s paid Q&A session went online, NewPay’s payment behavior increased by more than 1,000%, and we currently have more than 5 million registered users.
In the initial stage, the retention rate of these five million users was only about 30%. After the Quora paid question and answer function was launched, more than 40% of users returned. Currently, the number of users with a non-zero NewPay account balance exceeds 7%. ten. "
Warren Jensen was very excited. Originally, many of NewPay’s users were “dead” users, that is, users who only had accounts and no transaction records.
The user retention here means that many users come specifically for the incentive plan. After getting $10 in their account balance, they either transfer the $10 to their bank card or pay for their credit card bills.
All of these users are now active.
Of course, except for the fixed $10 incentive at the beginning, after the number of users exceeded 1 million, the incentive plan became a random $1 to $10. Most new users can only get $1 after registration.
Just look at the two answers and you’ll get back to zero.
This was due to the fear of regulation, and they did not take out the hack-and-slash gameplay that Pinduoduo later adopted. If it were to be taken out, it would not shock the Chinese Internet at the turn of the century.
After Warren Johnson finished speaking, Peter Thiel continued:
“With the new data, we can better negotiate with Ebay. Compared with NewPay, Ebay’s payment software is not used by anyone at all. Ebay users need NewPay!
I have researched Ebay. Compared with Amazon, Ebay users cannot use credit cards to make purchases. Most of Ebay's sellers are part-time and occasionally sell items.
Their transaction amount is too small to meet the requirements for commercial credit card application, which results in the buyer needing to mail a check or money order to the seller based on the bidding amount.
In addition to the time it takes for the buyer to withdraw the check, this requires a very lengthy process. The buyer generally needs to wait a week to receive the purchased goods.
The payment software Billpoint acquired by Ebay itself is very imperfect. Ebay users need NewPay very much. I often see posts about how to use NewPay in Ebay seller forums. "
After the paid Q&A function came out, Peter Thiel had a deeper understanding of Zhou Xin. As a former professor in the philosophy department, Peter Thiel thought that his evaluation of Zhou Xin was high enough, but the paid Q&A subverted his opinion again. know.
I don’t know why, but Peter Thiel had an intuition that paid Q&A is entirely for NewPay.
Without NewPay, even if Yahoo launched its own trivia community, Zhou Xin would not have brought the paid Q&A function to the market.
After listening to the speeches of the NewPay executive team one by one, Zhou Xin concluded:
“Everyone’s comments are very good, and many of them are similar to mine. I will make some supplementary suggestions.
Whether it is Ebay or Amazon, there are situations where the seller does not deliver the goods after the user purchases, or there is a problem with the delivery.
In other words, the risk of electronic shopping is entirely borne by the buyer, which is very unreasonable.
A purchases certain goods from B and then pays for them. B only ships the goods after receiving the payment. If he sends defective goods, A will bear all the risks.
Ebay's guaranteed transaction mechanism can solve the problem, but it cannot solve all problems.
Once a problem occurs, the process of applying for litigation is too lengthy, which will seriously affect the user experience. "
In the early days, when users sold items on Ebay, they were required to pay a deposit to Ebay. This deposit was used to ensure that the seller would not sell items with questionable quality.
Later, a credit rating mechanism and a complaint mechanism for sellers were gradually introduced.
However, in Zhou Xin's view, these mechanisms are still too complicated and not friendly to Ebay, which is dominated by individual sellers.
“NewPay acts as an intermediary, and the money paid by the buyer is deposited into NewPay’s virtual account. When the buyer confirms receipt of the goods, the money is automatically transferred to the seller.
If the buyer does not confirm receipt of the goods for more than 7 days, the system will automatically default to receiving the goods and transfer the money to the seller's card.
This lowers the threshold for users and is conducive to the promotion of Ebay. At the same time, we can obtain a sufficient amount of liquidity.
Both buyers and sellers can perfectly avoid transaction risks. "
Zhou Xin paused for a moment, seeing that all the executives were thoughtful, and continued after ten seconds:
"This is actually a type of secured transaction, but we have transformed Ebay's current long-term secured transaction into a real-time secured transaction. Sellers originally needed to pledge US$300 on Ebay, but now they only need to pledge the corresponding amount of goods for each transaction. The deposit is with us.
The time was shortened from permanent to a maximum of seven days.
If you have any questions, you can ask them. "
Max Levchin asked: "For Ebay, their liquidity is reduced, will they agree?"
Zhou Xin explained: “For Ebay, they have passed on the intermediate risks to us. At the same time, with the help of the NewPay model, Ebay can increase users more quickly.
It's a win-win-win. "
Ebay's method of sellers paying deposits worked well in America, but it has become acclimated to China.
Sellers in China don’t want to pay a deposit at all, so they have jumped into the arms of Taobao.
I just didn’t expect that Taobao does not require your deposit, but it requires you to buy traffic, which is much more expensive than the deposit.
Of course, if Ebay wins in the end, it will also charge traffic fees.
“This is my idea, whether it can be promoted depends on everyone.
In addition, Quora currently has more than 500,000 users from Europe. Due to the regulatory requirements of the European region, NewPay's business cannot be launched in the European region for these users.
But the Europa region needs real-time attention. After they open up restrictions on electronic payments, NewPay will become the first electronic payment company to enter the Europa region. "
As a veteran in the financial field, Warren Jensen has been paying attention to developments in this area: "I have talked about this topic with my colleagues at the European Central Bank. They will recently use England and France as pilots to open electronic payments. permissions.
We can prepare first, including discussing cooperation with banks in these two countries, and system docking can begin. "
(The European Central Bank was established in June 1998. If it had been earlier, so many countries in the Europa region would have to negotiate with the central banks one by one.)
The last chapter today. I originally wanted to write five chapters. I'm a little unwell and feel like I'm catching the flu. I'll see if I can add another chapter tomorrow morning.
(End of chapter)
