How can the mobile technology companies in the cafe achieve a market capitalization of nearly 100 million yuan?

A cafe does not sell coffee drinks, but does Internet mobile medicine. Less than a year after its establishment, its market capitalization has reached nearly 100 million yuan, and several industry giants have invested in it. What kind of cafe is it?

[business Merchants Network article | Zhang Luji]

Old wooden doors, several slightly dim chandeliers, retro nostalgic small table lamps, different postcards and movie posters on the wall, forget-me-not wine bottles on the log table, guitar and electronic organ in the corner, the whole room was filled with a strong smell of coffee, and from time to time the wind blew up the broken flower curtains, revealing half the sunrise, which was extremely dazzling.

When you walk into the door, the "customer" inside will politely tell you: sorry, we are not open to the public.

What kind of cafe is this?

A cafe that is never open to the public.

No one would have thought that this cafe, located on the 14th floor of Lihai Building in the central business district of Shapingba, a famous university district in Chongqing, is a technology company that has just registered for a year. What is more surprising is that in less than a year, it has received 6 million yuan of angel investment from Chairman of advantage Capital Wu Kezhong, CEO of Business Media Zhou Zhonghua, and listed company Digital Zhengtong, with a market capitalization of nearly 100 million yuan.

The company, which looks like a cafe, is called Xiaoai Technology.

The neat rows of computers in the room, dozens of staff wearing white T-shirts printed with "XIAOAI", posted the LOGO walls of Internet companies such as QQ, Weibo, Sing Bar, 360and so on. These are different from the cafes we see on weekdays.

The cafe exists only to serve the employees of the company and is not open to the public. It is understood that employees have a free drink every day, and the price of the drink is also 30% off the original price.

In fact, the real body of Xiaoai Technology is a start-up company specializing in the development of mobile Internet medical APP. Since its establishment in 2014, it has developed and operated two products: "ask the doctor" and "mommy artifact". The total number of users of the APP has reached 15 million.

Less than a year after its establishment, such a company in a cafe has a market capitalization of nearly 100 million yuan. not long ago, it received a joint angel investment of 6 million yuan provided by the chairman of Superior Capital, the chief executive of business media, and the listed company Digital Zhengtong.

It is said that investment is a discipline, while angel investment is the deepest philosophy, which requires unswerving judgment of people and mode of judgment.

So, what on earth attracts them to love technology?

Repeated failures and repeated entrepreneurship

The cafe-style office was inspired by Xiaoai Technology CEO long Ruqian, who was born into a medical family but did not follow the path of a doctor.

In 1999, long Ruqian, who was originally studying at Xiangya Medical College, made a life-changing decision to drop out of school and start a business and give up medicine to sell computer hardware.

In early 2000, long Ruqian changed from selling computer hardware to building a station and set up the first company to build a website for others in Changsha.

Perhaps it is because the Internet is developing too fast that there are too many similar companies in the industry, or because it is too young and inexperienced. By the end of 2001, long Ruqian's company was closed.

However, long Ruqian was born with a wild energy of not admitting defeat and unremitting efforts. After the company closed, he went to Shenzhen, a city with rapid economic development, to seek a chance of survival.

"after sleeping in someone else's living room for a few months, I only ate one steamed bread every day, and I had to study while I went to work." Long Ruqian recalled the miserable days. From the bottom of the technical staff to the department manager, and then to the company sent him to the Chongqing branch to become a professional manager, long Ruqian spent a full 5 years.

And time is a dose of slow-acting health medicine, which can make a person settle down and study carefully. These five years not only make long Ruqian an excellent technician, but also let him learn a lot of management knowledge.

In 2007, long Ruqian started another business, setting up a YYmal company to sell all kinds of foreign trade clothing.

At that time, the word O2O did not appear, but now it seems that what he wanted to do at that time was to start with O2O:2000 yuan, buy goods online and sell goods online.

However, the direction of the situation is often not within the scope of human control, or perhaps the network environment of O2O at that time is not mature, online can not make money at all, but a lot of money offline.

With more and more retailers, wholesalers and franchisees, YYmal has inexplicably changed from an online store to an offline chain store, with stores in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, with annual sales reaching 10 million.

In early 2011, due to the lack of agency, there was an intellectual property dispute with the brand, which made long Ruqian realize that it was difficult for the industry to become bigger and stronger, and because he gave up online, he had already missed the market outlet of e-commerce.

As an entrepreneur on the road to success, there must be a certain degree of advance and retreat. After the end of the property rights dispute, long Ruqian began to substantially reduce the number of stores, and divided the equity into the hands of the team, himself out.

For the fourth time, he focused on mobile medicine.

In the days after that, long Ruqian played in a band, opened an inn in Dali, and worked as a professional manager for a college student entrepreneurial team.

He is looking for an opportunity, a chance to start anew.

In October 2013, an acquaintance came to long Ruqian to support his start-up and offered three directions: online education, online vacation and mobile health care.

For the long-awaited long Ruqian, this is undoubtedly the pie that fell from the world, and he immediately set up three companies to do the three projects at the same time.

At that time, all three companies were doing very well, with monthly revenue of 2 million from online education, high-quality merchants from online vacations and 300000 from mobile healthcare.

It seems that everything went too smoothly, just like the clothing business in 2007, which made long Ruqian recall the lesson of that failure-not focused enough. But today's three projects: not focused, resources scattered, team energy can not keep up, this is not the same mistake as then?

If you realize that mistakes are the qualities that a thinker and strategist should have, then correcting and knowing how to choose is the executive power that an entrepreneur should have.

In October last year, long Ruqian began to cut two projects, online education and online vacation, to focus on the small love technology company and the research and development of mobile health care.

According to long Ruqian, the final choice of mobile medical program is based on two considerations:

First, although the other two projects have begun to make money, it is difficult to become an industry leader, while mobile health care in China is still in its infancy and needs rapid scale, and China is now carrying out medical policy reform.

Second, the vertical depth of the other two industries is deeper than that of mobile medicine, and they have less resources to control in these two industries.

Pay close attention to the pain points of users and subvert the traditional mode of seeing a doctor

Long Ruqian, who has been crawling and rolling in the entrepreneurial quagmire for many years, is worthy of the attention of investors, no matter his own unremitting spirit, or in terms of technology, management and vision.

However, investment is risky, can not rely solely on the trust of one person, if the project has no prospects, then everything can only be a bubble.

In China's medical market, it has always been difficult and expensive to see a doctor, and the crux of the problem is mainly two points:

1. Information asymmetry between doctors and patients. Most patients lack medical common sense, lack of effective communication between doctors and patients, resulting in hidden costs.

two。 The primary health care resources are scarce and the needs of patients are scattered. China's medical resources are mainly concentrated in the eastern first-tier cities, while the geographical distribution of patients is scattered, especially in some remote areas, the medical needs are difficult to be met.

While Xiaoai Technology pays close attention to the pain points of users, focuses on mobile medical services, aims at the crux of the problem, and subverts the traditional mode of seeing a doctor.

Through the APP, users can carry out self-diagnosis, triage, consultation, medicine, doctor, hospital and other information free of charge anytime and anywhere, which not only improves the medical knowledge, but also reduces the cost of going to the physical hospital. At the same time, on APP, patients can maintain efficient one-to-one communication with doctors and effectively solve the contradiction between doctors and patients caused by information asymmetry.

The APP also provides online and offline doctor-patient interaction, sitting and industry data services to enhance the brand influence of individual doctors and hospitals.

It is understood that in addition to "360 ask the doctor", Xiaoai Technology has also developed a "mommy artifact" for mommy users, and will develop targeted products and wearable smart devices in more niche areas in the future to meet the diverse needs of users.