A long road.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Note Man” (ID :Notesman), author Tang Zinan | CEO of Cloud Particles and General Manager of the former Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Service Division.

Thinking is the same, To B is hard

Content Source: October 19-20, 2019, in the 2019 Product Manager Conference·Shanghai Station Conference hosted by Product Manager and Starter College, Yunjing Smart CEO and former Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Service Tang Zinan, the general manager of the business department, made a wonderful sharing entitled “Digital Transformation, Knowing the Difficulties”. As a partner, Note Man is reviewed and approved by the organizer and the speaker.

Before you invite me to read, think about it:

  • Why is the B market not being noticed early?

  • Why is it highly regarded now?

  • What state will be in the future

The topic I want to share today is “Digital Transformation, Knowing the Difficulties”.

I. Early, To B market has low attention

If you ask in recent years, which direction is the hottest in the capital circle and the entrepreneurial circle? That must be a digital transformation.

During this period, some of the earlier hot Internet finance, sharing economy, content upgrades, and consumer upgrades have encountered some difficulties, but corporate services are still favored in the entrepreneurial circle.

Speaking of corporate services, I feel that I can go back and watch it. I have been retiring to around 2013 and 2014, because at that time, the Chinese Internet entrepreneurial market just fired a commanding height, and the To C track dividend was exhausted, the next growth point. What is the key issue.

So, some investment institutions have begun to shift their vision from To C to To B.

Thinking is the same, To B is hard

In fact, the early Chinese investment market did not see To B. The data shows that in the United States during the same period of VC (notes: venture capital) and PE (notes: private equity investment) funds in the choice of To C and To B investment, about 6:4, To C accounted for 60%, To C accounts for 40%.

But after this number reached China, it was about 9:1, or even higher, because investors didn’t pay much attention to To B at the time.

In 2013 and 2014, To C has no more development opportunities. Some investment funds have begun to turn to corporate services, which is considered to be the next big enthusiasm.

Thinking is the same, To B is hard

As shown above, the total population of the United States plus Europe is almost equal to the population of China. Therefore, the user base of To C is similar.

Therefore, the Internet giants Google, Facebook, and Amazon in three To Cs in Europe are about one trillion dollars. (Note: The figure is probably 2012).

At the time, the Chinese Internet Big Three BAT added up to about $100 billion, so the Chinese and Western are probably at the same level in the To C field.

In contrast to the enterprise-level market, the total number of US and European companies combined is about 20 million, and the number of Chinese enterprises registered is more than 80 million. If there are no enterprises that have not continued to operate after the registration of self-employed households, there are probably two or three thousand. Wan, this is also on the same level as Europe and America.

The difference is that Europe and the United States have similar enterprise companies such as oracle, max IBM (notes: international business machine company), HP (notes: HP) and other billion-dollar enterprise-level service giants, while China is This market is a shady place.

As of today, the company that does enterprise information services in China means that hundreds of billions of yuan have not yet appeared.

Thinking is the same, To B is hard

So, such a huge depression, with the rise of China, will certainly be filled in the future, and this is also the business service investment logic.The origin of the series. From 2015 to the present, four years have passed, and Chinese corporate services are still very hot.

From the early CRM (notes: customer relationship management platform) to the subsequent cloud computing of Alibaba Cloud’s rise, to the data-related services of the rise of big data, to the “four little dragons” after the rise of artificial intelligence , constantly ran out of some companies that do enterprise-level services.

However, there is currently no rapid growth in this industry in the short term.

At the same time, in the To C consumer Internet market, which people think has no chance, there is a lot of work to be established in 2015. As of today, the market value is already around 40 billion. In 2016, the vibrating sound of the market has reached 320 million today.

The two companies, one targeting community e-commerce, switched from search to recommendation through a commodity distribution model, trying to subvert the matching relationship between people and things in the traditional e-commerce industry.

The other is to explore from the perspective of the production and distribution of entertainment content, and a large number of markets that belong to the circle of friends and the public.

The development of the enterprise service track is very good, such as Alibaba Cloud, which started to develop rapidly in 2014. In the past four or five years, it has probably increased by 20 times. It is now the first in China and the world. Three Internet enterprise cloud computing providers.

In the past, there were two main types of customers for Alibaba Cloud. One was a small and medium-sized webmaster, and the other was an Internet company. Since 2015, the eyes have been officially placed on the informationization of large traditional enterprises like the government.

Second, why is the attention low?

In the past few years, the question “What is To B?” has been asked many times.

Thinking is the same, To B is hard

In my opinion, we can’t try to look at To B from the perspective of To C. In the past decade, the Internet giants of To C like Ali, Tencent, and Baidu have been so successful. Therefore, people unconsciously use To C’s product logic to apply new things, but the logic of To C and To B. differ greatly.

1.Products

A good product person needs to solve two problems. First, find ways to find customer pain points and help customers design a solution. Second, build a sustainable health business model based on the products and services you provide to your customers, and earn enough revenue and profits for your products.

And in this case, To C and To B actually