The three essential trends behind the phenomenon: tide, IP, and digital.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Inspur new consumption” (ID: Lcxinxiaofei), the author of the original.
In recent years, from the upgrade of consumption upgrades, new retail, to social e-commerce, private domain traffic, each round of vents is accompanied by a number of noun concepts. These nouns once became the vane of entrepreneurship and investment, but will soon be overshadowed by the heat of new concepts.
Are there any cycles behind these noun phenomena that can cross the cycle, the real trend? What is the driving force behind the phenomenon?
On August 2nd, Su Kai, a partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund Investment, shared his observations and thoughts on the Chinese consumer market in recent years at the “2019 Intelligent Decision Summit” of Guanyuan Data. And the three essential trends behind the “noun” phenomenon.
Su Kai believes that the creation of nouns represents the innovation of the Chinese market to a certain extent, but innovation should not be magnified and promoted as a successful experience. “Whether these terms are trends in themselves, can they last for a long time? We should look at the essence through phenomena and grasp the real trend instead of chasing fashionable terms.”
The following is a record of Sukai’s speech, which is organized by Inspur New Consumers:
All friends, peers, good morning everyone. I am honored to be the first to speak. My name is Su Kai. I am from the Sequoia Capital China Fund, focusing on investment and post-investment management in the consumer industry. Today, I mainly want to share it. Recently, I have some observations and thoughts on the consumer market. I am not talking about theory or facts. It is just my point of view. I welcome everyone to make bricks and open discussions.
01 from“Consumer upgrade” to “private domain traffic”, the “noun” phenomenon in the Chinese market
The Chinese market now has a very interesting feature, that is, various “noun” phenomena will alternate very frequently. Many years ago, when we were working in European and American companies, we also worshiped many Western concepts. From the first day, everyone learned Western management methods, including those from the MBA, and also all the world’s top 500 companies. The company’s management model.
But one day we found out that some of the words we talked about were not understandable. For example, O2O, one day I talked to foreigners about O2O, almost ten years ago, and found that they looked stunned and couldn’t understand, but all know that this is a Chinese-made noun. I think the Chinese era is coming.
I strongly agree with the idea that innovation is encouraged and respected in China. Entrepreneurs are no longer called self-employed people. They have become the driving force for innovation. This should be encouraged and supported. But I am also very opposed to the phenomenon of innovation as a successful experience, excessive amplification and publicity.
Because innovation is a very extravagant behavior and a small probability of success, it is just a subjective attempt based on our judgment of the future. When trying to make a result, it is terrible to use it as a successful experience to over-promote. So sometimes there are too many theories, but it will be misleading.
There was a very interesting thing in the last two days. Everyone discussed what the next wave of 5G investment would be. Many experts are analyzing the social changes, investment directions and investment opportunities that 5G may bring, and various media such as WeChat and Weibo are overwhelming.
But you can do a small test. When 4G came out a few years ago, many experts analyzed the investment direction of 4G, and which industries will be pushed up. Going to these analyses today, is there anything that has been fulfilled? Nothing at all. This is an expert. The expert has never been right, but he always exists. This is also a very strange phenomenon.
We don’t know what will happen in the future, but we can’t stop and wait. We still have to do something. This is innovation. Can we take our today’s attempt as a successful experience to enlarge and promote it? Of course not.
It’s like a friend said: I said how good I have been for three years, but this year I sit down and say, how much I ate last year, and everyone learned it in three years. Innovation and successful experience must be separated, especially in markets with a large number of nouns.
We will review some of the nouns and phenomena that have been seen in the past few years.
(1) “Consumption Upgrade”
First of all, the word “consumption upgrade”. A few years ago, everyone suddenly felt that the Chinese economy had risen. Everyone felt that I had to buy something, and even the toilet had to buy water. The term “consumption upgrade” appeared.
Everyone started talking about consumption upgrades. The direction of investment, the direction of development, and the direction of entrepreneurship have all become consumption.