Rebirth: War on the Honest

After Liu Xinhua left, the international business department was in disarray.

The products and operations were taken over by the corresponding person in charge of Doule at that time, and the algorithms and technology were reported back to their respective middle offices.

Later, Zhou Jingjin took over and fully accepted overseas business.

Doule's first international business unit came to an end, and the independent kingdom was declared disbanded.

No one has ever seen a sullen look creep onto Gu Yun's face. At work, he is like an emotional insulator.

But everyone present could clearly hear what he said.

"I don't feel angry now. The biggest negative emotion I have for a person is disappointment."

...

"If you pay enough attention to competing products, you should also notice a company named."

After a moment of silence at the meeting, Gu Yun spoke again, pointing out the direction for the entire team.

In its previous life, it provided a second product body and massive content fuel for Youyin. After being integrated with the algorithm, it exploded with tenacious vitality.

However, on the eve of the successful merger of the two companies, both companies fell into a period of struggle.

At this moment, Gu Yun doesn't need to wait to develop slowly, he plans to acquire it directly.

Music short video products were born in Shanghai.

The two founders are like the opposite of Su Hua: emotional, fluent in English, and rich in art.

Yang Luyu has permed curly hair, loves cycling, and wears an earring on one ear. Zhu Jun has long gray hair, like a Taoist priest.

The two are like artists in the Internet world, with sharp product insights but lack of algorithm and high-end technology research and development capabilities.

The birth story is a game of accidents.

It’s hard to imagine that these two “artists” once worked together at Yibao Software, a corporate services company that specializes in insurance.

This kind of track used to be at the bottom of the contempt chain in the Internet circle.

Of course, from the starting point, they had no idea of ​​entertainment in their minds. What they planned to start their business was education.

The founder and actual controller of the company is Yang Luyu.

He believes that there are opportunities in the short video field, and the way out is education.

Zhu Jun then went to the United States and switched jobs to the enterprise service provider SAP to study the future form of education.

Once when he went back to Shanghai to visit relatives, Yang Luyu lobbied him.

Not long after, Zhu Jun joined as a co-founder, and the two began to explore a video mutual teaching and learning community called "Cicada".

However, the threshold for making educational videos was too high, and there was already a giant company in the field of education, Leland Technology. The two stumbled, burned half of their financing, and had no hope.

Paradise Group’s moat in the field of education is too high and wide, and its products are more cutting-edge and more popular.

They were unable to break through and, forced by the situation, had no choice but to transform in other directions.

After a failed entrepreneurship, they have accumulated a certain understanding of what an excellent community product is. They believe that "an excellent community is a collection of life attitudes" and "a tool for self-expression."

So the two came up with a new idea to promote to young people: "Live like music."

In 2012, they launched this application and gave it a very blunt Chinese name: "Music Place".

The result was the beginning of the second failure.

The current situation of the Internet industry this year is that 4G has not yet been fully popularized.

Kuaishou, who started a business at the same time, accumulated users in China and endured a long waiting period, like a butterfly trying to escape from its thick cocoon.

Yang Luyu and Zhu Jun, who have international work experience, chose another path.

They plan to try their luck in countries with wide coverage and restart the short video industry.

Back at that time, only the United States and South Korea had wifi in public places in the world.

Finally, after two setbacks and two despairing moments in China, they decided to start their business in the United States.

This year, their decline suddenly reversed.

It caught the pulse of the times and was wildly sought after by American teenagers.

In just one year, the product has achieved 20 million monthly users and 5 million daily users in the US market, and is known as "white children's toy".

"After the meeting, I will contact the founding team of this software and ask what the price is for the package sale."

After the meeting, just two days later, I personally flew to Suhua in the United States and fed back the news to Gu Yunxin on the other side of the ocean.

Doule is not the first choice for sale.

The two founders made a special trip to Facebook's headquarters in California, USA, to meet with founder Mark Zuckerberg to discuss the matter.

Zuckerberg is a strong bidder. In 2012, he spent $1 billion to acquire Instagram with a team of 20 people.

Thanks to Facebook's huge traffic blessing, Instagram quickly attracted a huge number of users and grew into a photo community giant.

Zuckerberg is very interested in capturing the teenage market. In his view, it is the "video version of Instagram."

In the end, Facebook made a verbal acquisition offer of US$1.6 billion in pure cash.

However, in the later stages of the negotiations, Facebook became hesitant because it was not sure how high the ceiling for short videos would be, fearing that this was a gamble.

The second person to extend an olive branch was Kuaishou, the originator of short videos who also had the desire to go global.

Unlike the other two competitors, which suffer from insufficient cash flow, Kuaishou has come up with an investment plan that expresses its sincerity to the greatest extent.

It retains independent rights and becomes a subsidiary of Kuaishou, with the latter holding more than 40% of the shares.

And the last one to enter the game is Dou Le.

But what Su Hua didn't expect was that the founding team heard that it was from DouLe, a subsidiary of the Paradise Group. They didn't hesitate for too long, but after a period of discussion, they agreed to accept the acquisition on a conditional basis.

The founding team put forward three conditions:

In order to change the name, change the minds of users who are teenagers’ apps;

Access the core algorithm that DouLe relies on for its survival;

Invest huge sums of money in marketing.

Gu Yun agreed to them all. His offer was lower than Facebook's, only US$1 billion, but the acquisition could be made in cash and stock.

After several rounds of repeated negotiations, the two swords came together with Doule’s overseas version.

At this time, even the player in the game, Su Hua, never thought that this would be one of the most successful acquisitions in the history of the Internet. The combined power of the two was beyond everyone's imagination.

Doule recruited an overseas team of more than 400 people and integrated the algorithm into the algorithm. The sideways data restarted growth, but not that fast.

At the same time, Gu Yun started the name change plan as promised.

At this time, there was an alternative plan. The team suggested to Gu Yun that they should continue the "ly" tradition and change the name to "."

However, after the A/B test, the data was relatively average, and the name was eventually changed to TikTok.

Gu Yun, who values ​​return on investment and is pragmatic, will not worry too much about the meaning of a name, as long as the data increases well.

However, the reason why the overseas version of DouLe is called TikTok is because Gu Yun personally took the decision.

In order to meet the name change plan, the team chose many English names and also conducted A/B tests, but none were finalized.

TikTok is the title of a line of European and American pop songs in 2009. It is pronounced as "tick-tock" and describes the ultimate nightclub carnival.

At first, they almost kicked TikTok out of the list of cool English words.

What makes people hesitate is that although this song is very popular, it is very similar to a saliva song and seems vulgar in American culture.

One of its few advantages is that it is easy to pronounce.

Of course, the name was chosen by chance.

Doule changed its strategy at the beginning of the acquisition, focusing on Japan and South Korea. In these two countries, TikTok is not only catchy, but also a bit playful.

"The big boss decided on it right away. This is the name. It's easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and popular."

The early team thought that since there is no better one, let’s just use it for the time being. Anyway, it can be changed at any time.

No one expected that this onomatopoeic word without any meaning could spread so strongly.

"It can be pronounced in every language around the world, and it is pronounced the same."

Therefore, the unified name of the overseas version of DouLe is TikTok.

After the acquisition was completed, DouLe announced its full integration with TikTok with great fanfare.

Next, in order to conquer territory for Doule at home and abroad, and with the huge capital input from the Paradise Group, a gorgeous money carnival took place.

The overseas team is a group of young people who have just started to work. It is difficult to even recruit troops. They all rely on enthusiasm.

This time, DouLe took the flames of money-burning promotion overseas.