(Chinese Version)

China's capital industry and entrepreneur ecosystem is gradually going away from the brutal growth stage, and undergoing rapid transition into the digitalization and specialization stage. Whether it’s for investors or entrepreneurs, it has been increasingly important to be able to effectively acquire high-quality information and content in order to improve business and capital efficiency.

In an age of information fragmentation and redundancy, knowledge and data of real and practical value, however, are often buried in a large amount of shallow and ineffective information. Users often waste a great deal of time, effort and money to select, identify and apply the most important information and data. Still, compared to the huge cost, their input-output ratio is quite low.

When we look abroad, professional users often have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to enjoy high-quality professional content and data service from American well-known venture capital data service providers such as Bloomsburg, Crunchbase and Angelist, etc.

Chinese internet users, however, are generally accustomed to free data and information service and haven’t built the awareness or formed the habit to pay for internet content. Yet, with the rising impact of professionalism, high-quality information, content and data are also increasingly recognized by ordinary users.

At the same time, users are also gradually evolving. The majority of internet users are young people who are more willing to pay for content they are interested in. Besides, professional users in some fields have strong demand for professional and valuable content.

As a matter of fact, there has already been some changes. For example, Guokr’s professional Q&A platform ZaiHang and Fenda have already been making some attempts. It seems that the time is ripe for media organizations that are capable of providing professional and valuable information to start providing paid content. The time of paid content might have already come, but there’s still one prerequisite: only content that’s of high quality and valuable for users can be called paid content.

Last week, TMTpost launched its Pro Information Service Blind Plan, announcing that it would provide content, data and information of higher quality for its paid users. The Pro service drew much attention from the public, and as far as I know, over 800 professional investors, entrepreneurs, senior enterprise executives and TMT insiders have already signed up for the Pro plan within three days after the plant was launched.

This also proves that other professional media organizations who can provide high-quality content can also try providing paid content, since the market is certainly to grow and expand in the near future.

Still, there are some questions and doubts towards TMTpost’s bold move, such as: What specific plan does TMTpost have towards the Pro plan? How will TMTpost judge and provide high-quality and valuable content? What’s TMTpost’s prediction over the future of paid content? To answer these questions, I had a thorough interview with Hejuan Zhao, founder of TMTpost.

Question 1: In your speech, you revealed that it took three years for TMTpost to prepare for the Pro service. Why that long?

Hejuan Zhao (hereafter referred to as "Zhao"): The hardest part is to settle on the product form and find the appropriate timing. Generally speaking, Chinese internet users are not accustomed to paying for virtual service. Except for games, no other attempts were successful. Without these boundaries, we certainly could have launched the service long before. However, it is only till now that the timing seems to be appropriate and the public is gradually getting accustomed to paid content. Besides, we are also better prepared now.

Question 2: For the past four years, I’ve witnessed many of TMTpost’s attempts to commoditize content service and have ordinary users pay for content and content service. My question is (I believe many people would also have the same question): What kind of information, content or data will TMTpost present in the Pro plan? Why are they worthwhile for users to pay for?

Zhao: I have always believed that media will become increasingly important, just like air. However, the more important it is, the more worthless it might become. However, just like people will pay for air purifiers and masks when air pollution is so serious, there will also be people who’d like to pay in order to enjoy better information and data service. This group of people is exactly our Pro service’s target users.

While we provide free tech information service to the general public, our Pro service target mainly professional investors and entrepreneurs in TMT. We are dedicated to providing knowledge, data and community service for this group of people in more efficiently, professional and with global vision. Our goal is to develop systemic service ability to enable data query, analysis, professional content and knowledge-based social networking.

To really add value to professional users to the greatest extent, we shall be able to provide high-quality data, exclusive analysis, professional report and global platform, etc. At the same time, only when such service isn’t free can we ensure that the information and data we provide are of high quality, durable, reliable and can create business value.

TMTpost is known for providing exclusive report and commentary on the Chinese TMT industry through various types of products, and our annual T-EDGE Conference has always drawn much attention from the industry. At the same time, our database of the global primary market has been growing steadily, and our CheckZeit report has continued to develop along with global projects. Moreover, we’ve invited lots of leading entrepreneurs in the industry to share their experience through our TMTpost WeChat Roundtable. Today, TMTpost has already become an international platform attached top priority by entrepreneurs, investors as well as tech insiders, which lays a solid foundation for the launch of our Pro service.

Question 3: How did the blind plan work out? Can you complete the goal and attract over 1,000 paid users within a month?

Zhao: I am confident that we shall be able to complete the goal. In fact, over 800 users have already signed up within three days, but we temporarily closed the signup platform due to product experience issues. So there’s large number of users who failed to sign up due to such temporary adjustment. Today, we’ve opened the platform again and many well-known investors, enterprise senior executives and entrepreneurs have already signed up for our Pro service.

Among them are investors such as Shen Nanpeng, global partner of Sequoia Capital, Xu Xiaoping, founder of ZhenFund, Zhou Hongyi, board chairman of Qihoo 360, Mao Daqing, founder of UR Work, Wu Xiaobo, Luo Zhenyu; senior executives from PNP, Wanda, Baidu, Tencent, Haier, etc. We are so excited to see so many investors, executives and entrepreneurs sign up for our Pro service, so we've already been working overtime to fix the bugs and cram for the official launch next month.

Question 4: How will you avoid losing potential paid content users who give up due to poor user experience in the signup and verifying procedure?

Zhao: There’s no other approach: what we can only do is polish our product as best as we could and regain users’ confidence.

Question 5: Many professionals have already signed up for the Pro service after the blind plan was released. Have you expected that they would sign up? What do they think of your Pro service? What’s your understanding and attitude towards professional paid content?

Zhao: I’ve renewed my understanding towards the paid content market and gained more confidence after conversations with many professional users. Some of them would even ask me what’s the difference between TMTpost’s Pro service with Dedao’s and The Information’s. They are all eager “consumers” of professional information and are willing to pay for high-quality content. The key is giving them the feeling that they can save lots of time selecting information by themselves through our Pro service.

As to unexpected result, it did come as a surprise that many tech tycoons signed up for our Pro service and even gave us many suggestions on our products, which meant a great deal for us.

Among them, Zhou Hongyi’s comments gave me the deepest impression. He tried to sign up for the Pro service a couple times with his smartphone, but all failed. So he kind of “scolded” me for the“poor” signup experience. His comments stroke me a lot since he is known as an expert in product’s user experience.

So I mustered our tech team and went through the entire signup procedure based on their suggestions. That’s why we temporarily closed the platform for a day also and reopened the platform today. Sometimes, when we think too much, we might, on the contrary, make the procedure too complicated.

Our backend data suggested that there are more users who failed to sign up than who succeeded. Had our signup procedure been more smooth, we would have more signed users up till now.

This is also a costly lesson for us. In the future, we shall have high standard on the user experience of our service and product, and increase our investment in product development and technology.

Question 6: Do you think the momentum for paid content is gathering in China? If so, how will the role and service of media organizations change in the future? What will be the core competence of paid content?

Zhao: To become a world-class finance and tech information service provider, our core business is still media. Based on TMTpost APP, our public media service is becoming more interesting and insightful and users’ participation is also growing. Through our platform, users can not only get to have a broader view about the global as well as domestic market, but also get to read lots of in-depth articles and reports and engage in further discussions.

Still, we have our special focus compared to counterparts. We are much ahead of our rivals as to the professionalism and impact of our tech and finance reports. This doesn’t come from merely a couple of articles with over sensational titles and 100,000 view times, but from years of experience and accumulation. We are also leading the industry in topic selection and impact of our T-EDGE Conference.

These all serve as the foundation for our Pro service. The other days, I said in my speech that “influence means not only huge traffic, but instead your ability to dig facts, form opinions, make predictions and impact the industry, while others don’t have such ability.”

Users won't pay for junk mails and ordinary news, no matter how much traffic it could bring, which is also proved by my years of experience as a financial journalist. Instead, users, especially ones, are willing to pay for professional content. I believe we have already come to the point, though it will still take time for the public to form such habit.

There is a fundamental difference between paid content and free news. To satisfy professional users, we have to be able to do the following three things at least:

1. Improving their learning efficiency, or knowledge acquisition efficiency, that is, reducing the time to acquire the same amount of information;

2. Improving their work efficiency, or helping them make more money or save money. In other words, we have to improve their efficiency on the basis that their work goal is achieved;

3. Building up their reputation and creating a social circle for professionals where people of the same flock could communicate with each other and exchange ideas.

TMTpost’s Pro service is designed and constructed totally based on the above guiding principles. We are confident to say that we’ve spend huge amount of time and effort to develop the service, and it will certainly pay off.

Besides, we launch the paid Pro service because we are well aware that we cannot compete with giant information distribution platform such as TouTiao, Baidu and Tencent. Now that our target readers are already very focused, we will certainly decline without the support from our paid users.

Question 7: Why is it that we’ve never heard any official news about TMTpost’s financing, while various other new media organizations have competing to announce their progress in financing? Have you ever raised any financing?

Zhao: Maybe it has to do with my own character. Sometimes, I might seem to be very “impulsive”, but deep down, I don’t like high profile. When there’s little audience, I seldom talk much. In fact, I prefer to be quite in my own corner even when there’s much audience.

Although I might seem to be very “flaunty” just as many people born in the 80s would be, I am, deep down, very practical and modest, just like traditional entrepreneurs. For example, I preferred to talk about the meaning of something I made happen or our works than success related to fortune. This is also why I often tell journalists: prove your ability with your works.

In the past, I don't have any idea about financing or equity distribution, which is certainly my shortcomings. However, the entrepreneurial experience helps me gradually make up my shortages and run TMTpost in a well-organized manner. So we managed to grow and develop without great ups and downs. It’s a great honor to see that TMTpost is steadily growing and developing in the past few years.

In fact, we’ve just raised a modest sum of money this year, which could support our growth and expansion within the next few years, since our user growth and revenue status are both quite satisfactory. Some of my colleagues would also advise me to reveal to the public about our financing status, I still have some doubts. Maybe we shall adjust our strategy the next time, but I still don't think that should be highlighted too much in our company.

With several years of experience as a financial journalist, I witnessed so many companies’, unicorns’ or entrepreneurs’ demise and disappearance almost overnight, as well as companies who became giant after years of steady growth without financing.

Therefore, I attach high importance to cash flow control and corporate management. When making major decisions, I would try my best to do what Chinese ancient poet Fan Zhongyan said in his poem: “Never pleased by external gains, never saddened by personal losses”. In addition, I really appreciate what MeiTuan’s founder Wang Xing said once: “The more confident you are towards future, the more patient you become at present”.

Question 8: Many new media organizations have been exploring the opportunity to go listed or conduct various other businesses. What plan do you have as for TMTpost’s future in the capital market?

Zhao: I mentioned patience above, and I think patience also applies here as to public listing. I believe every Chinese company wish to list on the stock market some day. This is also true for TMTpost. However, public listing itself is not our goal, in the short term or long term. Instead, we’d like to let nature take its course. If I have to boost the morale of our team by promising them fortune overnight, I think I will be like a failure as a leader. That’s also not the kind of company I’d like to run. Instead, I value more our team’s own recognition of our work and our cause.

For the past years, we did have lots of opportunities for cooperation or expansion. For example, some investors advised us to establish our own equity exchange platform, innovation incubator, or become financial advisors and even establish a fund. Indeed, these ideas looked quite attractive, but they all didn’t fit our founding principle. We only strategically invested in several startups that are closely related in the industry chain.

I have a clear plan for our future, so I shall not easily change my plan due to the change of the times. I like to see others’ advantages as well as lessons. What I always do is learn from these lessons and try to avoid making the same mistakes. Sometimes, I’d think that I am more like a giant learning machine.

Every company has its own characteristics. I don't what to be a follower. Instead, I believe there are so many opportunities in this market, so why bother to compete to do the same thing. Variety might be a good thing as long as we are all creating values.

Founded on the positioning, that is, “leading the business, life and knowledge in the future”, we’ve already developed three sectors of business: media, data and lifestyle. It’s already a tough job to do a good job in these three closely related sectors based on content. After all, there are still huge potential in all these three sectors.

Personally, Huawei is a great example for me to learn. Up till now, Huawei has never raised financing externally or went on public listing. However, it has already become one of the most extraordinary private companies in China. As a journalist, I used to find it hard to identify with Huawei. However, after starting my own company, I am greatly affected by Ren Zhengfei’s managing philosophy.

As a journalist, I used to be very sarcastic when reporting Huawei’s “barbarous” marketing strategy in Africa for its mass strategy, low-price strategy and poor reputation. Ren even added me to his “blacklist” for a while after I revealed so many Huawei’s problems. However, after 2012, Huawei changed a great deal, because it had secure its status as a forerunner in the industry, which was the natural result of its years of efforts and endeavors.

Although I still can’t agree on Huawei as to issues such as “humanization”, I’ve begun to envy Huawei for its painful growth and business logic after I started my own company.

By accumulating core development and infrastructure construction ability and compete with rivals in a high profile at the same time, making a far-sighted plan and firmly restrict itself from entering areas such as real estate and finance, Huawei managed to stand out and leave all its rivals who used to be of the same scale behind.

To expand, a company needs years of accumulation and endeavor. It’s definitely going to be a long-fought war and core competence is the guiding factor. When you begin to look far ahead about things three, five or even ten years later, you wouldn’t might petty interests or failures right now.

Question 9: I guess the Pro paid content plan is still in the beta stage right not. What expectations do you have for the plan when it is officially launched a month later?

Zhao: Well aware that there might still be bugs and problems, our Pro service will still be at the beta stage for the first year. We are grateful for users’ trust and tolerance, and continue to improve, polish and perfect our service. Now that we’ve already decided to make a difference in this market, we will certainly endeavor to provide standardized and authoritative service. In the future, we shall provide more diversified information products in our Pro service, and I really wish that we could together witness the growth and development of TMTpost into a reliable, trustworthy, professional and authoritative TMT information service provider.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Chang Ning, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.