Talking about the opening, centralization and centralization of the Internet by crowdfunding Cafe

A few days ago, Chu Diansong, a good friend who had a small job (job hunting App), talked about the crowdfunding cafe, and he told me about a very unique case of crowdfunding cafes. And this case also caused me to think about the current openness, centralization and centralization of the Internet. I will simply write it down and share it with you today.

A case of a crowdfunding cafe with no purpose to make money

In fact, the crowdfunding cafe does not sound new, but there is a sponsor, find a group of people to buy shares, and then make a profit through the cafe, and then the crowdfunders participate in the share. The sponsor of the crowdfunding project is the largest shareholder of the cafe and has ownership and management rights to the cafe.

But the crowdfunding cafe case I'm going to talk about today is completely different from an ordinary crowdfunding case. This characteristic crowdfunding cafe project was launched among graduates of Peking University, mainly post-70s, who are in a good period of career development, a group of people with money, resources and want to continue to scale the heights of their careers.

For the first batch of participants, the amount of participation was 30000 yuan each, and a total of 100 people were found to participate, raising a total of 3 million yuan; then the second batch of fund-raisers were recruited, each of which was 50000 yuan, and a total of 5 million yuan was raised. A total of 8 million yuan was raised.

Each of the 200 participants has a share in the cafe, and the ownership of the cafe does not belong to anyone. Then give coffee coupons of 30000 yuan and 50000 yuan each to each of the 200 fund-raisers to spend in the cafe. At the same time, the operation of the cafe all employs a professional external team to operate, and 200 public funders are not involved in the specific operation.

In addition, 200 participants in small groups of 10, as the rotating management of the crowdfunding cafe, supervise and report on the management, financial and operational problems of the cafe. Many people may wonder, isn't this cafe ready to make a profit? how could 200 public funders be so stupid?

In fact, this is the characteristic of the crowdfunding cafe. The 200 fund-raisers are all alumni of the prestigious universities of Peking University. They are all post-70s with small careers. Even if they give out 30,000 and 50,000 yuan, they do not feel unbearable. More importantly, through the platform of the coffee shop, gather these 200 people with money, resources and dreams together, so that they can share resources, and then work together to realize their dreams.

The cafe also has an unwritten rule that fund-raisers use the resources of the platform to make projects, and after making money, they can donate some of the money to the cafe, which is a return for the platform, but this is not a mandatory rule.

Openness, centralization and centralization behind the crowdfunding Cafe case

From the above crowdfunding case, we can see that this is an open cafe with 200 people holding shares equally, which is very equal and democratic. This is like the United States, where everyone has the right to vote, and it is a spirit of openness and freedom. Opening up is also limited. Not everyone is qualified to participate in crowdfunding. They must be Peking University alumni, post-70s generation, not short of money, resources and dreams, but still need to struggle. This openness is actually a screening of the capabilities of partners, which is the basis for the healthy development of the platform.

There are no major shareholders in the cafe, and all shareholders are not involved in the operation. Instead, a professional team is invited to run the cafe, with 10-person rotating management, transparent and simple rules and finance. This is actually a decentralized way of thinking, because the owner of the cafe does not belong to any shareholder.

But we can also feel that these 200 participants are supporting the coffee shop, while the coffee shop itself is very centralized and centralized. With the participation of 200 shareholders, we hope that the coffee shop will always be crowded. There are more projects born on this platform, and more funds can be donated to the coffee shop to keep it alive. Thus, it can provide these 200 shareholders with more resources, a better place for communication and a wider range of relationships to expand and maintain, so that the whole platform has been prosperous.

The inspiration of crowdfunding Cafe to the Open platform of Internet

The case of this crowdfunding cafe also brings a lot of inspiration to the Internet open platform. First of all, openness is necessary, but it is not open without a threshold. At present, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and other Internet companies are doing open platforms. Openness is a good thing, but openness must be limited and threshold, so as to ensure the continued excellence of the platform. Therefore, I see that some people criticize open platforms such as Tencent and Baidu for having too many restrictions, and even encourage comprehensive and unrestricted opening up, which is obviously unreasonable.

Secondly, decentralization is not an end, but a means. We can see that crowdfunding cafes are built on decentralization, but from the point of view of the coffee shop itself, decentralization is only to make the management mode, mode of operation, financial system and other aspects of the coffee shop more transparent and advanced. In fact, it is a kind of commercial civilization, but the result is that the main body of the coffee shop is permanent, growing, and more and more powerful, which in itself is a kind of centralization.

Decentralization is always for the purpose of more centralization. The same is true of the current open platforms, whether Baidu or Tencent's Wechat, the main purpose of opening up is to attract more partners to provide services to users on their own platforms and form competitive barriers with their competitors. thus more centralization, or monopoly.

Monopoly is not a daunting word, which is the goal pursued by all businesses, and it is also the most efficient form of organization in the Internet industry. Kevin Kelly has also elaborated on this point of view and analyzed the difference between the Internet as a special industry and traditional commercial monopoly. I will not elaborate too much here, but I just want to correct the mistakes of some people who regard decentralization as their goal, because decentralization is the best way to achieve centralization.

Thirdly, the current several open platforms have their own advantages and problems. If we look at the current Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and even Xiaomi from the case of crowdfunding cafes, we may be able to see their advantages and problems.

First of all, from the perspective of centralization, if the purpose of any open platform is to centralize power, then Tencent undoubtedly has the most advantage. Wechat and QQ account for the vast majority of everyone's online time, and Tencent's inherent network ID advantage makes it easiest for Tencent to get sticky users and form user centralization.

But Baidu, Alibaba does not have this kind of condition, therefore cannot carry on the centralization at the user level. However, Baidu and Alibaba are superior to Tencent in the centralization of enterprises because of their advantages such as accurate connection and higher connection efficiency. At present, BAT are making up for their shortcomings.

But I don't think what they are doing is correct, because any practice of inserting "plug-in" on their own platform is not a decentralized way, but will inevitably lead to serious problems such as efficiency, experience, benefit distribution, and so on. Only in a "decentralized" way can products and services become more able to meet the needs and push the boat.

So in terms of decentralization, you should learn from the model of crowdfunding cafes, where you open up resources, technology, and capabilities to your partners, rather than full control of them or horse racing enclosures. Take Tencent as an example. Wechat always wants to be the center of everything. From Tencent's point of view, this idea is fine, because only centralization of power as much as possible will bring higher barriers and benefits.

But is Wechat really omnipotent? Can you really connect everything? At the Tencent Global Partnership Conference, they used the theme of "Open, connect everything" as the theme. I said in my moments, "it should be called, open, everything can be connected." It seems that it has only changed the order of the words, but it is actually a different attitude and path to achieve centralization. The theme of "connecting everything" means that Wechat is an omnipotent plug-in and the center of all partners.

Obviously, this idea is too idealistic, and if it does, the result may not be ideal, because it is faced with various problems such as efficiency, experience, scenario, and so on. But if you change to "everything can be connected", it means that Tencent exports resources and capabilities to help enterprises make connections. For example, open login is a good way, even open relationship chains in the future. Opening up to hardware manufacturers is also a way to centralize the area. Some traditional industries, with deep technology, industry barriers, the Internet as an advanced tool should be to enhance the core competitiveness of traditional industries as their own responsibility, and the core of this cooperation is still the traditional industry itself. This integration process is bound to avoid various problems such as efficiency, experience and scene.

This is like a crowdfunding cafe, which does not require the projects of 200 crowdfunding participants to be linked to cafes. The core of the project is themselves, not cafes. Cafes only provide resources and places, but this makes cafes play an important role. It will never disappear, and it is also the common "king" of 200 crowdfunding. In fact, this is to achieve the maximum centralization through decentralization, and all enterprises in the ecology are convinced and willing.

Let's take a look at Baidu. Because Baidu does not have a sticky network ID, and Baidu has been doing a centralization business-advertising alliance. So the weakness of Baidu's search product form on ID forces Baidu to consider the problem of decentralization, so Baidu first crazy layout App, in search, map, browser, input method, application distribution, video, Baidu cloud and other App search portal layout, through a decentralized strategy to seize users' Internet scene, so the total number of users under the Internet scene is also very large. And Tencent, almost all the treasure bet on Wechat and QQ.

So it seems right for Baidu to start with decentralization. Now the problem Baidu is facing is how to effectively manage these entrances to form a closed loop, so as to establish its own status as a "cafe." after all, the ultimate goal is still centralization. Therefore, the follow-up new advertising business, payment and finance must keep up, which is also the biggest problem it faces.

Alibaba's payment has been decentralized to make himself a king, at the same time, he can also receive very rich "offerings", which is a typical case of centralization of power. This terrible ability to pay everywhere is indeed the biggest headache for Tencent and Baidu. Copy Alipay's model, it is impossible to succeed, only to find a unique way, for example, based on social networking, search services and other scenarios to pay, slowly nibbling away at Alipay.

Although Alibaba has listed on the market by relying on e-commerce business, and it is a product with inherent centralization advantage, this is Alibaba's advantage in e-commerce. Tencent hopes to challenge Alibaba with decentralized e-commerce. Tencent's decentralized e-commerce is actually a new type of thinking. Now the main problem is how to create a new business rules, business atmosphere, and how to make WeChat business have a better shopping scene. Once Tencent finds the way, Alibaba will be severely challenged. If successful, it will also become a classic case of decentralization over centralization.

From this, we can draw a conclusion that the way of decentralization is more advanced than centralization, and the centralization achieved through decentralization is more stable and more in line with the trend, which is also worth thinking and studying by BAT bosses, which may represent the future.