Driven by another wave in the capital market, both internet players and education giants have involuntarily accelerated their pace. Huanju Times and Tuhua Hongyang, which launched IPO last month, are typical representatives of two types of enterprises respectively. In the gathering era, we started with the game portal and the voice tool YY, and made use of the technical advantages and user scale formed in the field of game entertainment to continue cross-education. While opening up the curriculum market, we launched an education template, trying to respond to the query that "Internet companies can't play education" with actions. Tu Hua Hongyang started from book publishing and made great progress in public examination training. With the innovation of teaching methods and the accumulation of curriculum research and development, cutting into the depth of the Internet, there have been many fashion elements such as live broadcast, micro-class, online school App, and "Singles Day" e-commerce, which are becoming more and more "online". No one dares to deny that the combination of capital and technology can make any industry fly. But the question is: should every industry fly? The eyes of the world are always focused on frying new cool concepts, but they have no patience to explore the long and arduous accumulation process. For internet education startups that are exploring specific directions, I really don't know whether it is lucky or unfortunate to be born in a period when this industry is popular with venture capitalists. Fortunately, you have a greater hope of getting money from investors, maybe you can start from a higher level; Unfortunately, from the beginning, you have to keep thinking about how to make money in the future, how to make ten times or a hundred times, which is likely to force you to deviate from the essence of education and be dominated by capital, making you confused about what you are doing. A few days before the platform was confused, Chen wrote a profound sentence in the article "Why Khan Academy /Coursera can't get out of China": "The reform of online education needs real idealists, and these idealists don't necessarily play cards completely according to the market/demand, nor do they just play cards according to the market/demand. "However, a large part of these domestic Internet education startups (I dare not use the word" the same ") are going to carry out" revolution "on the premise that there is no content accumulation in the upstream and no users in the downstream. This can't be regarded as their fault, because internet entrepreneurship is such a logic: only the "platform" is the lever to incite the earth. When Baidu Library starts, it will not only bring B2C giants like New Oriental Online, but also C2C novices like Dobby. This is the power of the platform giant. But the question is, if everyone goes to the "platform", who will do the content in a down-to-earth manner? Last month, Cheng Xiaolong wrote at the end of his report "Digital Publishing: Profit-seeking or Justice-seeking": "From the noisy digital publishing market to the quality of content, it seems that from the colorful sky, it falls into a black-and-white silent world. In the process of the rapid development of the industry, do we pay too much attention to the business model, product form and user experience, but ignore or despise the quality of the content industry? "'The content is dead' has long been more than just the sorrow of the media industry. Giving up basic things will lead to buying gifts and returning pearls. In fact, a good product, a dynamic model, has its own requirements for content quality, otherwise it will not be colorful and wonderful, but empty and dazzling skills. For these warnings, the internet circle often says "the age of information overload", as if we have enough content, what we lack is more orderly and accurate push, which is the power of the internet. Sadly, in the field of education, which needs more in-depth and high-quality content, no, it should be said that qualified content is far from enough in many aspects. In the process of contacting entrepreneurs and investors, I deeply feel that no one wants to give you money when you say you want to do content. " Then I'd better be a' platform product' that doesn't need content and tries to avoid cost and copyright problems. "This is the voice of most entrepreneurs later. However, why do you let users with real content output and channels "strength" use your platform? In other words, you only have ideas, some technical background and product feelings. Why can you prove that you are irreplaceable? Using VC's classic line "We are investing in your team"? With your unproven "execution" Compared with these companies that stood at the forefront of the times from the beginning and pointed to "platform products", some people and teams didn't think too far at first and didn't have to face VC. They just did what they wanted to do. Although they are far away from the center of the stage, they have unconsciously accumulated the core competitiveness that latecomers can't surpass in a short time simply by relying on capital and technology. Because they are not "entrepreneurs" from the beginning, they don't have to think about "business model", so they can stick to their own path without hesitation. Later, when they made a choice in the face of the market, they already had something that others could not exchange with money. The combination of capital and technology can easily replicate a proven business model, but it cannot replicate many elements outside the business. This is the path of Khan, the founder of Khan Academy. At home, there are also some people at different stages of this road-ELF ELF is a China student born in 1987, and will soon graduate from Gyeongbuk National University. She has lived in Korea for four years, is familiar with Korean society and culture, and has rich experience in language teaching. The LF Free Foreign Language Institute, which he founded, is not a company or a real organization, but a "guild". Many enthusiasts get together and use YY pronunciation to teach in their spare time. It is such a voluntary "guild" that has a fairly complete management system and strong teaching and research strength in the long-term tempering, which is almost incredible to outsiders. When YY opened the course market, it packaged the local "guild" LF Foreign Languages Institute on its own platform according to its own commercialization concept, and publicized its "secret" of "making money every day". In fact, this is just an eye-catching selling point. If you weren't born to make money. Its full name is clearly displayed on the Logo-"LF Free Foreign Languages Institute". Free? Yes, this free form has occupied the absolute mainstream in YY foreign language channel. The actual development history of LF is much earlier than that of YY education. Its predecessor is a long ID channel, and the name LF comes from its school motto "Last friend, last family". This habit of naming after two initials had a far-reaching influence on YY, and was later imitated by a large number of private foreign language teaching associations closely related to LF. As the earliest representative of YY channel with the nature of foreign language teaching, LF, together with Xing Shuai Internet College Software, Li Weihui SEO and Shang Mo Radio and Drama Institute CV, became the pioneers of YY client online teaching practice, but there are qualitative differences between them. It can be said that some channels did regard teaching as a business from the beginning, and they also achieved certain "success". But the mother tongue foreign language channel represented by LF is by no means. I don't know how many organizations that come directly for profit have suffered heavy losses in this position. Therefore, some institutions can only choose to use YY guild members, establish channels according to YY guild rules, or directly cooperate with the original guild. Big ears, Pute, Aisi, Coco and other major English portals are stationed. Later, even the traditional big-name study abroad institutions like Jin Gillette, which are neither "Internet" nor "education", joined the ranks of "United Guild". Those who only know the business rules and think that these non-profit channels will not become a climate after all may find it hard to imagine how strict selection and test it takes to become a qualified teacher or even a qualified "handyman" to join a free guild like LF. On the other hand, on this YY platform, which is called diaosi gathering place by the outside world, there are really many excellent teachers who are proud to teach here. As far as the language courses I am most familiar with are concerned, the teaching level of many teachers here is no less than that of the most expensive offline training institutions. There is nothing to advocate YY here. On the contrary, I really feel sorry for the gathering times. In the process of promoting the marketization of curriculum, it has been shown that YY education has not fully realized where the most precious resources are. The whole ecological chain of YY is based on the user's feeling of "love". In essence, it is a community that brings people virtual satisfaction rather than material benefits. Although its previous business model was controversial, it was successful at least in the field of game voice and entertainment voice. However, on the other hand, YY education now focuses on genes similar to Tencent, but it is determined to emulate Ali. What really deserves to be "advocated" is the active teaching force represented by Elf and its lf Free Foreign Languages Institute. I have never put it on any moral high ground. To make an inappropriate analogy, for those die-hard players who are immersed in the teaching association, starting a class is to form a group to play tricks, that is, to open a hall to dazzle songs, and that sense of accomplishment makes no difference. It's certainly good to get some extra material benefits, but if they spoil their accustomed atmosphere, they will feel uncomfortable. Wizards who are still busy with their studies are not internet education entrepreneurs, but only those who have both enthusiasm and perseverance for online teaching and have experienced repeated tempering will have more potential for successful entrepreneurs. The professional level of teaching is often questioned by the amateur "irregular army" in the Phoenix of War. The Phoenix of War, which focuses on foreign trade, may be born to completely crush this doubt. Most students, like the author, once naively thought that teachers in training institutions always had some basic guarantees in professional quality. I don't know that the teaching directors of many institutions shoulder the heavy responsibility of "pre-job training for new teachers, especially the words and deeds of teachers, and clarifying what they must never say." What words must not be said? Don't disclose unprofessional information, such as you are a part-time job, you are young, you have your own job, you haven't taken this course, you just graduated from college and you just came to work, which will make students feel that the school or teachers are unprofessional. If the tuition fee is refunded because the teacher leaked the above information, the teacher will bear 50% of the tuition fee loss. "The circle of language training is not big anywhere. This statement may not be universally applicable, but it basically means the same thing. The offline small language training market is still in the wild era of relying on individual heroes. The presence or absence of a group of "famous teachers" in a city can reverse the strength of various competitive institutions in an instant. Unlike English, small languages have a certain foundation for everyone. Offline training is mostly a novice with zero starting point, and it is easy to be fooled. But online courses, especially large-scale open online courses, are completely different. Internet is the best touchstone to verify the authenticity, not only Crouching Tiger, but also overseas. In reality, few people come all the way to kick the pavilion, but online, as long as someone is willing, this kind of behavior does not need to pay much. War Phoenix is not a museum football player. All talk and no practice. It's easy to overthrow others, but it's hard to convince others if you make it yourself. So, after learning English, German, Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Greek and Latin, this language enthusiast broke into a multilingual community where experts gathered, such as foreign language salon, snowman forum, Fubu small language, Baidu Post Bar and so on, and created two auxiliary original textbooks, Xun Mei Walking in the Snow and Notes of Parallel World, behind closed doors. What's more, Zhan Fenghuang is not only a language madman, but also an expert in network information reconnaissance technology. At the same time, a complete set of auxiliary materials with the most practical effect was "presented". On the topic of "parallel world", he once told his fans: "In 2003, there was a parallel world that directly interfered with our traditional real world, that is, the rapidly developing information technology and resources. This is a large piece of combat readiness materials that many amateur students have failed to discover and use, and it is also a sensitive part that many training institutions, foreign language colleges and people with vested interests in small languages are unwilling to talk about. Why? Because only by conniving at the laziness and fear of loneliness of amateur learners can training institutions and related industries benefit! Your self-study and self-reliance are not what everyone wants to see. "To some extent, it can be said that the reason why domestic minority language education institutions can survive as they are now is because the Internet and foreign languages are two' impassability', which makes most people unable to acquire and understand really good things, otherwise they will almost be killed by a little comparison. Not to mention a large number of classic works in Europe and America (after all, we are in a different cultural system, so we need to make some flexible changes when using them), but only the broadcasting courses that are completely open to the public in the "educational radio station" on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, such as Arabic in the air, standard Thai, learning Russian to speak Russian, learning German happily, long live Spanish, Hi! Italy "... how many minor language courses are there in mainland China that can reach the corresponding level whether online or offline? I have seen young Italian teachers talk about "New Horizon" and listen to "Hi! Italy "prepares lessons, but does everything possible to prevent students from discovering that there is such a foreign teacher broadcasting course. The supporting teaching material is the mainland translation of Nuovo Progetto italiano published in the northern language. Zhan Feng finally deviated from the traditional small language training industry like me, not because of moral cleanliness, not because of a lofty sense of mission, but because I believe that this distorted training model will eventually come to a dead end. I have always believed that the more reliable way to educate e-commerce in the future is not to sell courses, but to build a free community platform that gathers more high-quality courses, and on this basis, provide optional personalized value-added services for audiences with weak self-control and self-learning ability. As long as you really have enough strength, as long as what you share for free is really top grade, you don't have to worry that no one will buy paid courses for personalized counseling services in the future, let alone worry that offline business will be cut off. Radio lectures and TV lectures on standard Japanese for communication between China and Japan have already spread all over the country. Aren't those institutions that teach standard day still alive and well? Judging from the current user stickiness and intelligent development level of language teaching products, we have to admit that there are still a large number of people. Even if you give him all the free courses, he still needs the environment to study. Even if the class is not good at all, even if the teacher is not easy to teach at all, even if it is just a room where a bunch of people who work hard for the same goal get together to study like a study room for postgraduate entrance examination. But so what? Even knowing that it is just a spiritual function, many people in reality want to sign up for a class because they really need such a house. This is not a question of learning a language. This situation exists in learning everything, but it is usually more obvious when learning a language. War Phoenix, which is now preparing to start its own business, still regards language teaching as a religious belief as it was then. For a while, I didn't fully understand his good intentions. I didn't realize how valuable that spirit was until I came into contact with many cases and almost fell into despair. Arnold from Hujiang. To prepare the most adequate resources for people with strong self-study ability and more leisure time, and to build the most active community. For students who want to attend classes and need to interact with the class, make the most loving courseware for them and provide the most thoughtful service; For those who really want to enroll in classes and are particularly dependent on the environment, help them recommend the most suitable tutorials and choose the most reliable institutions. This is the ideal model I hope to achieve at this stage. In English, Japanese and other major language fields, Arnold and his Hujiang. Com is doing this. But if time can go back, back to eleven years ago, when Arnold founded Hujiang Yulin Net, the predecessor of Hujiang Net, in his school dormitory, he probably never thought that this website would eventually become his own career, and he never planned such a magnificent picture. He's just happy to make this website. Arnold dislikes teaching. If you describe him at that time, the most suitable positioning is probably the product person. Although there was almost no "Internet product manager" position in domestic companies at that time, neither Joe, who made a comeback and started iTunes, nor Pony, who tasted the sweetness of profit for the first time in Shenzhen, made the most shocking interpretation of this force that changed the world. Arnold was the "prime minister" of the TV station from the beginning and still is. In that year, most people only knew that content was king, and perhaps he could not describe the weight of "user experience", but the sensitive control of details and the natural rejection of "ugliness" and "inconvenience" really became another important decisive factor for Hujiang to stand out from other similar stations besides massive content. When Arnold graduated, Hujiang, which had been growing for five years, became an inseparable part of his life. At that time, Hujiang had rich original resources and a user base of 200,000. Websites, forums, blogs and the newly established Web2.0 tribe * * * form a considerable architecture system, which cannot be supported by spare time and energy. This means that Arnold and his team have to choose between work and Hujiang. At first, no investors burned money at all, so they had to borrow money to piece it together; I don't have any experience in operating Internet companies, so I have to explore for myself. This is a choice that really needs courage. Resolutely doing it in this case undoubtedly shows the courage of a team to cross the rubicon. In the year when the capital chased huge profits from online games and danced wildly in the video bubble, Arnold himself probably didn't expect that his original ecological website, which started with hobbies, was not a team created for profit, and even achieved the scale of annual revenue 1 100 million yuan in a few years. In the development of Hujiang, millions of dollars of angel investment, tens of millions of dollars of venture capital and hundreds of millions of dollars of credit are only accelerated on the basis of the continuous maturity of the business model, rather than the bright figures obtained from a painting cake. "Use the power of learning to realize every dream." There is no insurmountable gap between dream and reality. Not long ago, Pudong Youth magazine published a legend of BBS grassroots webmaster, which wrote: "Hujiang. Com, the largest online foreign language education website in China, was slowly developed by founder Arnold from a school foreign language learning BBS webmaster ten years ago. This kind of unhurried, so that a' typical business model can't be seen' enterprise has been taking users' demands as the direction, and has accumulated a good user reputation and a user viscosity that investors are optimistic about in ten years. "Without the guidance of the mentor and the incubation of the Pioneer Park, it means that Hujiang will face the fierce struggle of the network rivers and lakes alone from the first day of entering the market, which means that this slightly childish grassroots team must forge stronger innovation and execution. As long as we carefully think about the various "concepts" that are being heated up in the field of Internet education, it is not difficult to find that most of Hujiang's product forms have been quietly tried and even made a certain appearance. " Small Q "question answering system launched in 2006, small D" online dictionary launched in 2007, Twitter similar to Weibo launched in 2008, super online testing system launched in 2009, open class launched in 2009, Hujiang Online School and Coinology System, SNS community, brand catalogue launched on 20 10, 20655. CCTalk voice client and celebrity club launched on 20 12 take the social learning platform "Hujiang tribe" as the core, expand the entrance, include the classroom, and extend a series of tool product lines that are closely integrated with the learning around them. * * * Isomorphism has become a unique "Hujiang Department" layout in the Internet education circle. The complexity of the product line does not mean that it is powerful, but compared with many other products that "meet the same needs", it hardly lags behind, and even has advantages in user scale and expansion speed. Few players can do this. Arnold, who is often referred to as a "young man" by the media, still thinks that he is an out-and-out entrepreneur, and the company that has been in business for eight years still maintains a strong entrepreneurial momentum. This state may only be deeply understood by teams fighting for their dreams. There was a strange phenomenon that puzzled me. Most websites will have countless similar ones, but why do some websites have always been independent and have few direct competitors? Whether it's Wikipedia, Khan Academy, Douban, Lilac Garden, Hujiang, Guoke ... even if there are sites that look "similar" to them, they are not a feeling in temperament at all. When Ji talked about his shell net, he once said: "products are the easiest to imitate, but culture is not easy to copy." "Maybe I can understand a little loss: this kind of website that needs deep investment and continuous accumulation, but can't see the money is basically uninterested, impatient, unmotivated and incapable of copying. However, I am afraid that only such a site can carry science, culture and education, which seems too "virtual" to say. Ji, the founder of the public welfare organization "Science Squirrel Club", should be the farthest person from starting a business. Before the establishment of Guoshuwang, he was obsessed with the cause of scientific communication, and his life trajectory had nothing to do with business. Until the end of 2009, VC kept coming to you, and he kept declining. In this dramatic world, countless people are carefully designing "business plans" every day. These "business plans" are not made for themselves, but for VC, just like students do homework for teachers and employees make reports for bosses. What they care more about is not the value of the thing itself, but whether it can pass the inspector. At the same time, other people who focus on a specific cause have never thought about financing at all, so "angels" knocked on the door, and some of them showed great sincerity. The "angels" may not have fully figured out how to "commercialize" the shell media after being separated from the scientific squirrel society, but at least they clearly saw the unusual value and difficult-to-replicate characteristics of this team. If the content produced by the fruit shell net is compared to the fruit, then the "stone" wrapped in fresh and interesting "pulp" will inevitably represent absolute objectivity and authority. The interesting content is the sharp expression to help readers peel off the hard shell, and the "authority" of the public trust is the fundamental support point of the unique value of the fruit shell network. The development of fruit shell net is still in the process of exploration. Although there is still a huge room for improvement in domestic scientific communication, the traditional media (including traditional Internet media pushed in one direction) industry itself is declining. Fortunately, the decline of some things is always accompanied by the rise of other new things. From the demand point of view, the user groups faced by the shell network have great overlap with the growing large-scale open online courses (MOOCs), which are composed of a group of learners who are willing to share and deepen their self-awareness. Under the leadership of experts, they learn specific topics through different online media and interactive tools. If this premise holds, then the professional and affinity shell network is suitable for one or more of the five interactive tools (wiki site represented by Wikispaces, forum represented by Google group, Weibo represented by Twitter and Plurk, social bookmark represented by Delicious, and virtual classroom represented by Homemeeting and Elluminate) used together with large-scale open online courses. The problem is, even if you are suitable for this market, if the market itself is too small, it is still a big risk to cut in. When I wrote "On Internet Educational Products" before, I always felt that we don't have to worry about how to promote teaching products that meet the test-oriented needs, but we really don't have any confidence in how to promote the development of open education. Because no matter in the circle of Internet or in the circle of education, whether it is a typical entrepreneur struggling to survive between capital and market, or a large company with a lot of resources but encountering more obstacles at the same time, when it comes to people, almost no one has enough motivation to be a pioneer who may become a martyr. Everyone seems to have become "smart". Perhaps, those who can finally undertake the mission of change should really be those who did not set out for "starting a business" at the beginning. " It seems that I never thought about starting a business, even two or three years ago. For me, I may have made many choices and changes when others looked at me along the way, but I am doing one thing. For me, these things are the same, except that one moment this thing is called scientific research and the other is called entrepreneurship. "Ji Xianlin described himself and his era in this year's first APEC Young Entrepreneurs Summit." It is increasingly difficult for us to achieve great success in the secular sense, and the risks are getting bigger and bigger, because there are more and more uncertainties. But I think this era also gives us such a possibility because of its diversity. As long as you make this skill perfect, mature and thorough in an industry you like and are good at, and have good observation, wait slowly and study hard, you will succeed. "This is our common wish.