I, after 95, wrote the code and wanted to change the world.
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Find the word “Python” in Baidu. The first keyword is “Why is Python so hot?” As a programming language, Python is indeed a hot topic in the past two years.
In today ’s GGV investment note, Feng Kecheng founder Liu Keliang shared the story of the Fengbian team. What are the secrets behind a popular Python course in the circle of friends?
The following is the thirty-second article of GGV Investment Notes Series .
“We never actually thought that wind-change programming would become an explosive product. Python was first The idea put forward by our CTO. He believes that all colleagues in the company should learn to learn programming, and also tried to open a lot of learning classes internally. It can be said that the Fengbian team believes in this matter: everyone must learn Python in the future, we I did not expect that the “future” would be 2019 years. “
After Python became popular, many people called it one of the “unsolved mysteries of the venture capital circle in 2019.” Until today, we still have a kind of “delusion”: it is not that Python has done things by storm. It was Fengbian who did a Python lesson like “Python lesson” before Python became popular.
This statement may be a bit exaggerated, but when I first started to do wind-programmed this product, I heard almost no approval. From development to go-live, few people believe that Python can catch fire. When we did the initial research, some friends from the same industry did an analysis of thousands of words for us. The general idea is that this is an extremely niche category: if you are a programmer, you do n’t need to learn Python. Can’t learn Python at all.
However, Python is a difficult subject that is not suitable for self-study. The requirements for teaching and self-study are very high. It should also be emphasized here that there is a myth in the industry. Because programmers say that Python is easy to learn, everyone thinks that Python is simple to learn, but Python is still a computer language. The so-called simplicity is only relative to other languages. Say. For the computer Xiaobai, the difficulty of self-learning Python is still very great.
(Picture: Learning page for wind programming)
Before our products come out, there is no very mature Python learning supply chain on the market. People who want to learn will usually choose to spend 20,000 yuan to go offline. If they buy books for self-study or take online courses, the learning success rate Actually very low. Others joked: This is a course that takes only 10 seconds from entry to giving up.
Our idea is actually quite simple: many people should learn Python, but because of some restricted conditions, the person who learned it did not learn it. During this process, there must be something restricted, then we should Take these things out and make them into supply chains, such as: user learning willingness supply chain, user learning ability supply chain, content supply chain … We understand teaching as a supply chain, and then turn each supply chain into several links, When facing each user, the change of knowledge perspective, the generation of learning expectations, and the determination of learning gains are all different links, and each link corresponds to a different system. This is our structure.
Why do you want to make friends circle ads?
“Python lesson” is a course made by wind-blown programming. At the beginning, a large number of users of “Python lesson” grew based on user communication, and no market fees were invested. Two or three months after going online, we started thinking about how to promote it efficiently.
In our view, promotion channels are “tools that deliver the actual value of products into user value.” We believe that everything that can be transferred to the user ’s attention is called a channel. Even today I have a logo on my clothes. Today I am the channel of our company because I have become an intermediary of information.
So a company should focus on two things: one is to do something useful to users, and the other is to deliver this thing to users through “channels”.
We divide the “channels available for delivery” into three levels: large nodes, medium nodes, and small nodes.
The big node is a single channel, similar to WeChat, Douyin, elevator advertising, etc. It has unity, high efficiency, and oligarch game effect;
The middle node is an influential person, such as our common big V, KOL;
There are also small nodes, everyone and every user are channels.
We used to be very good at small node propagation of to c. Because the propagation logic of small nodes is highly related to the user experience logic that wind is good at, that is, your product user experience is good, and naturally many people will become part of your external marketing team. Our early product “Panda Academy” is a reading product. A total of more than 200,000 students introduced “Panda Academy” to their friends, so we have a marketing team of 200,000. This is the logic of small nodes.
But why do we have to do big nodes again? If the future truly turns the wind into a “university”, then the biggest disadvantage we have compared to a real physical university is how to “shake hands with the world”, that is, how to contact the public. Like Tsinghua University ’s more than 100 years of history, its reputation is loud, but the number of students enrolled each year is limited. The demand is always greater than the supply, and there is no need to consider expansion.
But we do not have a foundation of more than one hundred years, and it is impossible to become an organization like Tsinghua University for a while. So when we want to expand in the future and want to increase the supply of products, we must shake hands with each “The pipeline is well mastered. Then, for a strategic goal like ours, it is very necessary to build a brand and study large and medium nodes.
Moreover, the large node and the middle node have a stronger meaning than the small node.Products, but also to enlighten knowledge.
In fact, looking back at today ’s friends circle ad placement, the efficiency is not high from the point of view of advertising revenue, because there are many users who have swiped many times but never clicked in.
But for us, the advertisements that are not clicked in but displayed to users have become knowledge promotion for Python. Knowledge promotion is a unique value of big nodes. On the surface, it is inefficient in conversion rate, but in fact it can spread knowledge and has great spillover value.
In this process, how to measure the efficiency of advertising in the circle of friends, and how to decide whether to do the next wave of advertising? This is actually a very critical issue, which is probably a problem that every to C startup company is studying.
In our opinion, after placing a circle of friends ads, we found that the process of efficiency measurement is relatively simple. In theory, If we pass enough user value, we will definitely get user benefits. These two things are completely related. That is to say, the user experience of some products continues to improve in the short term, but the user benefits have not improved in the short term, and if you do not look at the short term, in the long run, as the products are continuously optimized and improved, the user benefits will gradually increase , The two things will become more and more relevant.
Management is an arrogant word
I was born in 1995. When I first started a business, I often listened to some seniors sharing years of management experience. Later, I found that young CEOs also have some relatively unique advantages.
Although Fengchang now has more than 600 members, we still use the initial “studio” mechanism.
The “studio” has a weaker sense of hierarchy. Our studio will introduce new ideas, some will die, some will be new, and there is a very important link: everyone names the studio together, because the name of a studio contains many meanings, everyone together Participating in this matter means that everyone will work together to define a goal-of course, the studio also has sub-groups and corresponding responsible persons, but the emphasis is not on the content of the work, but on the collective goal. We believe that the smallest unit of an organization should be divided by objectives, not by job content.
Wind-changing friends are more aggressive and want to realize some of their ideas. I think there are two reasons: One is that many members of the wind are themselves idealists, and want to take responsibility for society and history. The details of the goals may be slightly different, but the directions are the same; the second is ” “Studio” and organizational culture will bring a sense of equality.
I chatted with a technical colleague one night, and he talked to me about his views on an operational issue for three hours. His position is an engineer, but he feels that he has many ideas about the development of the entire company. He thinks that if he can put a little effort into the operation, he can do better, so he really came over and asked me to mention some work with him. The content is irrelevant, but there are in-depth suggestions. At present, we all enjoy this studio culture, which contains a bigger goal and a respect for freedom.
I remember when there were about 100 people in the wind, there was a “slogan” inside: to ask for efficiency from the market, not from the organization. My father is also an entrepreneur. When I was a kid, I talked to my father about related topics: Some managers have no sense of security. When they encounter business problems, they always try to change the structural problems through changes in the organizational structure. Often, they are emotional. They are not out of a strategic and balanced consideration. So in the early days of the storm, I do n’t even think too much about the synergies within the organization. Every time I walk into the office, I see everyone having a little confusion about various issues. It’s good to pay attention to some things. Because the efficiency improvement brought about by management cannot be 100% or 1000%, it is often within a limited range of efficiency improvement. I think that for the current stage of wind change, innovation and growth are more important.
Now there are more than 600 people changing. When the number of teams increases, we need to “manage”, but In my opinion, management itself is a word of arrogance. Management is not a power or goal, but only promotion A means of large-scale personnel collaboration efficiency.
The main way we solve the problem of “collaborative efficiency” is to rely on the same concept of everyone. In my opinion, everyone has two kinds of power, one is called the power system, and the other is called the ability system. System collaboration is more recessive than capability system collaboration, but it is often more important.
Before the formal establishment of Fengbian, it was a public welfare organization with hundreds of people and a screening system. The talents of the largest WeChat platform of various universities in the country are eligible to join this organization. Our group of people are doing well in their respective schools, but at the same time, they also have a deep sense of loneliness. Only when they really enter this group will they feel that what the other person says will make him feel stunned. How could it be the same as I thought? Since then, we have had the experience of doing things with completely like-minded people. This is a wonderful, addictive experience.
For wind change, whether it is business strategy or organizational strategy is actually subordinate to culture, because culture determines our goals, and also determines the way in which our group of people are better at cooperating and moving forward together.
In recruitment, I have never encountered a “talent” who is capable but has no long-term ambitions. I can only say that such a person is an “elite””Instead of” talent “. What attracts the change is the ability state, mental outlook and ambitious goal of the talent.
Recently, some “big brother” characters came to join the wind change. I asked them the logic of joining the wind change. They all gave a similar answer: The wind change is not like an ordinary business, but it is being completed. A historical project, which gave him a strong sense of stimulation and mission, just like the name of wind change, “Born for change.”
Even today the changing organizational structure is constantly being adjusted. Recently, I am still learning about matrix-style collaboration and military theater forms. There are some insights and new thinking. But the positive feedback we have experienced over the past few years has shaped our more unique view of talent and management today.
Of course, I also think that when a company develops to a certain stage, when your organizational collaboration model has become a core contradiction that restricts the development of the organization, you need some models, methods or systems that can be implemented to ensure later development The mode is not confusing, and gradually establish a refined organizational model and management method.
However, special strategic goals and strategic structures like wind change require some special organizational models. Although the departmental system has its unique advantages, such as high efficiency and strong standardization, we are looking forward to a longer-term model that can further exert human subjective initiative, short-term efficiency loss or temporary confusion It may be the price we pay, but this is the choice we should make.
“I want to go to all the great schools in the world”
There is a question in Zhihu. If you have a lot of money, what do you want to do most? One of the answers is: “I want to go to all the great schools in the world.” In fact, I am also very touched. In fact, everyone has such an urge to get more knowledge and make themselves more powerful. I think this matter will become a reality in the future, and it ’s not difficult, and it does n’t require a lot of money. As we truly open up educational resources, we can indeed allow more people to have more natural choices.
The starting point of learning should be a person ’s heart, temptation, he has an ideal state, knows what kind of person he wants to become, and knows what abilities need to be added to become such a person, So in fact, we can’t help them make choices, but set up a ladder and help him walk up a few steps. In my opinion, this is the meaning of education.
Someone asked me, what kind of problems does Fenghuan hope to solve in the end?
I think the education issue is a complicated one. If you have to summarize it, it should be like this:
The ideal education should serve everyone. Many people in this world have mastered some kind of true knowledge that others do not know. In reality, this cycle is very long from one person to everyone knows. When a person wants to turn the knowledge he knows into the wisdom of all mankind, until these wisdoms are really known to all mankind, the efficiency is very low. If we compare it to network downloading, then everyone is downloading information The problems I encountered were: very few channels and very slow download speeds.
So wind change is very obsessed with new technologies in various fields: cognitive direction, education direction, data direction, content direction, algorithm direction … What we have to do is to use these times to give us this The new variable of the generation, to expand speed, to expand capacity. You can understand this process as a process of education equality, which really allows education to serve everyone, but it is different from the narrow sense of education equality. The narrow sense of education equality emphasizes fairness, but we emphasize higher quality and fairEducation equality. This requires a large group of people, through a huge project to achieve a magnificent system, in order to truly change the state of education today, so as to really help everyone. It is the responsibility of today’s changing people to give the next generation of people a better education.
It sounds idealistic, but it is really a long process. We have been exploring for five years, and with some achievements, we have a new 10-year strategic plan, and we are still in the early stage of the 10-year plan. At this stage, our course content will be more focused on programming, and our battlefield will be more focused on the domestic. Now we must first serve China well, but in the long run, of course, this system will not only serve China.
(There are four cats in Fengbian Technology Company, two of them are shown here)
Unlike the small circle of venture capital circles, the products made by wind change are directly directed to the general public, so we have accumulated millions of learners, and we have a micro-feeling from a person who is really in a state of chaos. To become a better person, this matter is actually not far away. Often what they lack is that someone stretches out to give him a hand and give him a choice. Many people actually have no choice.
I remember when we did the panda lesson before, a student left a particularly deep impression on me. He was very active in learning a lot of things, including writing, speaking, etc. Later, we learned that he It is actually a worker at the Foxconn assembly line. Later, he had his own sideline, began to write, and gradually became a novelist, delivering many true stories from his perspective.
Another grandma who has cancer has also started to learn Python. She feels that she has a chance to get in touch with education, and she has the opportunity to keep up with the development of the times. She has not been abandoned by the times, so she must grasp this Chances are that such simple ideas are driving her to learn.
Why Python?
The vision of wind change is “to become a social cognitive machine”, which is the name of the basic system of education in the future. It sounds very grand. As for what we are going to do, it will have an impact on the education and personal ability of the Chinese Then, in this goal, what kind of value will windstorm programming produce? In my opinion, there are two aspects of value. First, the value of the test field itself has accumulated a truly universal and complete method. Second, wind-driven programming itself allows Chinese to truly master programming.
Wind programming helps us accumulate user data, builds a complete platform, incubates a product, and lays the foundation for copying new products in the future. User data is an important part, but not only user data, but also the production of content and the process of the supply chain itself. Because in the long run, we hope that we can become an open system so that others can use our system for content development. This is our vision.
In fact, the program penetration rates in China and the United States are very different. Python itself is a tool that can turn everyone ’s creativity into value, so it is meaningful for the people to master such a discipline.
One of the data tracking is the gap between the junior talents in the artificial intelligence industry and the information technology industry. China currently has a gap of more than 7 million. Today ’s education resources in China, it is almost impossible to fill this gap within a specified time. Possibly, there must be a technological breakthrough or a new participant. We feel that this industry is currently in a cycle of national transformation. Programming this new capability model has a great complement and promotion effect.
If there is a new product in the future, we will make a product that is very different from Python. At present, Python belongs to the typical science and engineering, well-structured knowledge, we should do a relatively virtual knowledge,Then go to verify, such as how people should grow. The next thing we have to do is to determine where the boundaries of our automated teaching technology are. We need to find another direction to determine that our coverage is wide enough.
The “chemistry” of entrepreneurs and investors
The characteristic of GGV is that it has in-depth thinking about future education. Every time I go to other institutions, I need to introduce our philosophy, how we plan to do it, and I need to let them understand education and what we are doing. But GGV is different. When talking about these topics, it is obvious that they are not understanding, but recalling: is this not the future education we imagine?
I have known GGV for many years, and have contacted many times during the period. By the third round of contact, our products and technologies were relatively mature. At that time, I was particularly touched by something. We were offered a more expensive offer, but we ended up taking the GGV offer because of a sentence Jenny (Li Hongwei, managing partner of GGV Jiyuan Capital) told me. I remember at the time she said, “I value you because you have done this very well.”
When someone describes a thing to you, you might say that this thing is useful, or that this thinking has depth, but when will you say that this thing is “complete”? “Complete” shows that there is also a way in her mind, and what Fengbian thinks is closed to what she thinks. This is a contrasting feeling, and it also answers some of my difficulties at the timeConfused.
Another story also touched me very much. Jenny said at the time that the wind-change project was actually quite good, but it still had its shortcomings, whether commercialization was done too early. When I heard it, tears were going to shed because we ourselves are more perceptual, and in our strategic path, it should not be commercialized faster at this time. But at that time, some investors felt that our commercialization process was not fast enough. It was at this stage that GGV was able to maintain this style and expression, which shocked me a lot.
