This article is from the public number:All Media (ID:quanmeipai), author: Tencent media, the title figure from: Netease number
After 10 years of golden age, content entrepreneurship has reached a new crossroads. The content industry itself has never faced such profound changes as it does today. From AITo 5G, from creation to distribution, technology gives the content a new look and potential all the time.
So, in the ConTech era of “human-machine collaboration and content symbiosis”, how do all aspects of the content industry chain capture the latest and most accurate practice methodology? This issue takes you to Zheng Qingsheng, a partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund. In him, we have seen the investors’ macro vision, cautiousness and optimism, and perhaps more inspiration about the future.
Image from public number: Sequoia Meeting
Discoverers of early entrepreneurs
Zheng Qingsheng, a partner at Sequoia Capital China Fund, specializes in Internet-related investments in consumer, content, media and technology. He graduated from Fudan University’s Department of International Finance and began investing in 2005, leading many investment projects that have grown into Internet-related industry leaders.
In 2018, Sequoia China announced a single-special seed fund to invest in heavy angels. After the seed fund was listed separately, Zheng Qingsheng and the other two partners actively participated in the work of the seed fund.
The seed fund focuses on early-stage investment projects. Finding projects that truly generate industry influence in the early stages of uncertainty is no easy task. Investors need to be more sensitive and sensitive to new areas of the Internet industry. Motivation, able to grasp the opportunities more quickly in the ever-changing format.
This is undoubtedly a challenge, but it is also a new stage for Zheng Qingsheng, who has been working in the consumer Internet and content platform for a long time.
Image from public number: Sequoia Meeting
An observer in the depths of history
Today, everyone is talking about slash youth, trying to pursue self-identity and cross-border imagination in a fast-paced work era.
In him, we also dig the slashtag of “Historical Enthusiasts”. Zheng Qingsheng believes that the existence of slash hobbies should be related to the individual’s main business, and some slash traits can even become individual’s differentiated competitiveness.
So, how does it become an observer in the depths of history that affects the vision of an experienced investor?
For a long time, collecting historical books related to social life and business is a great hobby of Zheng Qingsheng. He constantly uses curiosity to drive the expansion of cognitive boundaries, and thus constructs a set of historical investment methods. . He believes that the business model is answering two fundamental questions: one is “how demand is formed” and the other is “how to achieve a deal.” The former is essentially a traffic problem, and the latter is essentially a compliance issue.
A street walk inspired Zheng Qingsheng’s thinking about the history of urban development and offline traffic. He realized that the longest flow product in human history is the city, one city is a flow product platform, the street is a vertical product, the commercial street is the most concentrated place, before the Internet, retail Most of the theory is based on physical location. All human activities and all attention are concentrated in the city. The size of the city and the prosperity of the street are issues of physical and geographical layout.
Following this kind of thinking, Zheng Qingsheng slowly clarified the new ideas for the development of offline space in the context of the online dividends on the peak. He proposed: “Any new methodology is backward compatible with the old methodology, and eventually merges with the old methodology to complete a structural unity. Offline is a flow product without an account system. And online is a street with no cost of action. The Internet is not only a virtual economy, but also a real economy. The Internet has discovered a more universal methodology through which we can even re-understand business. History will profoundly change our perception of traffic, interaction interfaces, retail, spatial design, perception and behavioral patterns.”
There are many similar analysis summaries, which also reflect the style of Zheng Qingsheng – deep, targeted and sincere.
Indeed, looking back at a hundred years of business history, from industry to services, from transportation to information dissemination, the Internet still follows a similar pattern.
Today, when we talk about the future of the Internet, we may follow the path of Zheng Qingsheng to trace the past, first to understand the historical trend, and then embrace the future world.
rigorous optimists
Zheng Qingsheng is a graduate of economics. He has worked as a senior auditor and consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM and BearingPoint. His previous education and employment experience have strengthened his rigorous style.
As an investor, in the era of content entrepreneurship, he is reluctant to predict the so-called next enthusiasm for entrepreneurs and oppose superstitious “big success.” This is certainly not because he is sharing, but a prudent and pragmatic attitude that allows him to focus more on the nature of the problem.
“The interesting and stressful part of investing in this job is to face a highly uncertain environment. How to learn quickly and form judgments, you always need to find commonality in areas that seem irrelevant, because only commonality can be more Conducive to one’s thinking, in order to establish a framework for rapid learning, in order to mobilize experience in different fields to feel an unknown field.”
Image from public number: Sequoia Meeting
In the early stage of investment, the business model has not been verified, and the product market has yet to be opened. In the absence of sufficient data, Zheng Qingsheng often chooses to use the deductive method to observe and constantly ask himself:
In the long run, what kind of form will the business model evolve into?
The reference country of China’s consumption – what form has the United States and Japan experienced in history?
How does demographic structure and culture affect business?
Where are the innovations and innovations that early investors and founders should first feel?
He enjoys this process of cautiously pushing the proof of proof in investment, and loves the cycle of questioning and proof. At the same time, he also stressed that “no one can predict the future, so we must get the most first-hand information, to do the most front-line interviews, will make a better decision.”
But for the Chinese Internet industry, although full of unknowns, Zheng Qingsheng still maintains a positive and optimistic attitude. From a technology perspective, how do we evaluate the era we live in? Zheng Qingsheng’s answer is: “Today we are still in a historical period that is very conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship.”
It is conceivable that he does not recognize the word “second half” that people must talk about because it implies that the assumption that innovation is going to the end, and it is no doubt that today’s entrepreneurial innovation is still in the historical development. One link.
In fact, the process of phasing out old technologies by new technologies is more similar to the concept of “paradigm revolution” proposed by Thomas Kuhn in “The Structure of the Scientific Revolution.” From this point of view, innovation has not only not reduced, but has been in the paradigm again and again.Hits, showing a strong vitality and vitality, all the constant needs of eating, living, and living will recombine resources under new technological conditions, providing new opportunities for practitioners and promoting the overall efficiency of society.
In other words, although today’s content market is full of pessimistic arguments such as “Winter is coming” and “XX is dead”, in the eyes of investors represented by Zheng Qingsheng, the winter of the Internet world may not be far behind. arrival. Evolution continues to occur and innovation never ends. We may wish to work with him cautiously and optimisticly to look forward to the full implementation of new scenarios, new formats and new mechanisms.
This article is from the public number: full media School (ID: quanmeipai) , author: Tencent media