The storm in the education and training industry has had a chain reaction. The former capital stars are valued at billions or tens of billions, and the founders even laugh and talk about it while changing glasses. But the butterfly flapped its wings slightly, and the stock price suddenly broke in half and plummeted three thousand feet. The founder began to sell his feelings, talk about his duty, and talk about his responsibility.
Shutong and Elite Education, these education and training institutions have blossomed everywhere and made a lot of money through "model innovation". If we dig into their profit models carefully, they are cutting leeks accurately.
Long before they started to storm, in the cold winter of 2020, Zhang Kailei, the founder of Xuebajun, who had been on the front line of education and training, sent a letter officially announcing the collapse of Xuebajun.
Although Xuebajun has not conducted any financing in the three years from 2018 to 2020, their funding sources have been placed on tens of thousands of parents, and the course fees have reached 10,000 , 20,000, which is a sky-high price when accumulated.
On Double Eleven and Double Twelve in 2020, Xuebajun is still vigorously promoting the "one-on-one online service". 30,000 parents have renewed their subscriptions, and the registration fee is 17,600, which according to statistics is about 500 million. . Soon after, Xuebajun collapsed, but where did the "tuition money" go?
1.
Let’s start with Zhang Kailei, the founder of Xuebajun. He was a top student during his studies and was also a college student who came into contact with capital relatively early.
He was admitted to Nankai University with perfect scores in physics and mathematics. With these results as an endorsement, he taught mathematics and physics to a group of high school seniors during the summer vacation of his freshman year.
Facing hundreds of students, 20-year-old Zhang Kailei is both a "famous teacher" and a "successful person". He earned almost 1 million in one summer vacation.
After he returned to school for a semester, he felt that his good years should not be wasted here, so he decided to drop out of school and start a business, and went all the way north to Beijing.
At first, Zhang Kailei's entrepreneurial direction was in the IT industry, and he wanted to make a phenomenal communication product. However, the amount of investment in this area was huge, and he could not come up with the principal, so he went to attend the investment summit. In the eyes of investors, this is indeed a good project. Young Zhang Kailei is also creative, but if he wants to make it successful, he must invest at least 10 million. Investors dare not take this risk.
So the investors changed their direction and invested in Zhang Kailei. They said: "We are willing to provide you with funds, but you must change your project."
Zhang Kailei thought about it and decided to change it. Starting from the education and training industry that he was familiar with, he successfully obtained an investment of 5 million, and used the money to acquire the equity of Wenba Education 51 in one fell swoop, becoming the youngest CEO among Tianjin college students.
It has only been a year or two since Zhang Kailei finished the college entrance examination. He is quite familiar with tutoring and has won the trust of most parents. Under his leadership, Wenba Education has taken over the tutoring field in a short period of time. With a large number of "one-on-one" orders, the company's annual turnover exceeded 100 million, and Zhang Kailei could be considered an initial success in starting a business.
Competition in any industry is fierce. Soon, Zhang Kailei, who could not bear the pressure, chose to sell Wenba to Anbo. He cashed out and returned to school to continue studying, holding a huge amount of cash in his hands. He became an investor.
If the story ends here, Zhang Kailei can be regarded as a "successful person", but at about the same time, colleagues in the education and training industry have listed their companies separately, which makes people who have been working in finance for several years Zhang Kailei is ready to make a move, hoping to get a chance to enter the teaching and training track again.
2.
In 2012, Zhang Kailei led Xuebajun to "debut" again. At this time, the offline track of the education and training industry was already jammed, and Xuebajun operated in reverse. Focus on online.
Xuebajun, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang were the first to develop "question search" products. These three companies also came out at about the same time, and the three tools they came up with were exactly the same: question bank , search questions, and answer questions online.
When Zhang Kailei chose online education, he could not use his previous successful experience to operate, because online basically requires the so-called "Internet thinking" and he also has to accept "traffic monetization". set.
In 2012, the year just after the "Internet" took off, Xuebajun was launched, focusing on free search questions. Many student users downloaded and used it, but they invested in research and development and saved teachers. All that is spent is real money.
So in 2013, Xuebajun received its first financing, and Zhang Kailei could continue to burn money in exchange for traffic and expand the scale of Xuebajun.
Capital will not be invested in vain, it needs to see returns. Soon after, Zhang Kailei tried "traffic monetization". Some functions required money to use. The result of this move for Xuebajun was that users began to decline. This time the monetization attempt ended in failure.
After Xuebajun finished swinging these three axes, the capital hole was dug deeper and deeper. Zhang Kailei had to think about the next move. When the thinking was fruitless, he could only copy it from his peers. At that time, the "business model" explored by Zuoyebang and Yuanfudao was online tutoring, so Xuebajun also followed suit and created a monetization product "Junjun Tutoring".
However, the difference between Xuebajun and his peers is that their peers do "large class tutoring" or "small class tutoring", while Xuebajun does "one-to-one tutoring" because The academic masters in the first two subdivisions entered the market relatively late. At this time, they are uncompetitive. It is better to take a gamble and enter the "one-on-one" game that requires heavy resources and high costs.
Xuebajun has this confidence, because it has previously obtained US$100 million in financing, which not only filled the "difficult to realize" capital hole, but also launched a smart phone in June 2017 Educational robots carry the slogan of “Globally subdividable and vertically trainable”.
This year, through multiple operations, Zhang Kailei directly increased the number of Xuebajun users from 25 million to 80 million, successfully joining the frontline of education and training, with a valuation of 6.5 billion, but using " The number of people in "Junjun Tutoring" was only around 50,000 at its peak, because the registration cost was so expensive, often tens of thousands, that no family could easily afford it.
3.
Xuebajun has no financing channels since its C round of financing. The only source of cash is Junjun’s tutoring. However, after the last three years of With the development, Xuebajun's physique split into a "Big Mac" with more than 3,000 employees and more than 10,000 teachers under his name.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of a company’s survival, especially for “Internet-style companies” like Xuebajun. In the cold winter of 2020, Xuebajun was already shaky. Starting from November, it was a bit stretched to pay employees' salaries. In order to delay the payment, Xuebajun made an application for cash withdrawal.
In other words, employees, you can apply for wages, but it is still me who has the final say whether wages will be paid or not when the date comes.
This may indirectly relieve Zhang Kailei's pressure, but if you say that he has no money to pay his salary, it is a bit unbelievable, because in the "online shopping boom" of 2020, there are about 30,000 top students. My family renewed Junjun Tutoring. Although it was discounted, the price was still 17,600. After adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, it came to about 500 million.
In the face of iron-clad data, Zhang Kailei cannot deny it. Therefore, the salary in November 2020 finally fell into the pockets of employees, but in December, it is hard to say.
As the founder of the company, Zhang Kailei is obviously aware of the current situation of Xuebajun. Has he taken any self-rescue measures? There must be some. In 2019, he also spent 100 million to build a new teaching training base, which has not yet been officially put into use. At the end of 2020, Zhang Kailei completely gave up on being a top student.
Presumably, the escape route has been found. Therefore, in the wave of "questions" from employees, teachers, and parents, Zhang Kailei took the lead in surrendering and sent an "internal letter" officially announcing the end of Xuebajun. Zhang Kailei also called on his peers to take over the role of Xuebajun. Teachers, back pay.
In short, there is only one sentence, the academic master is finished, but his body is still big, you can still come and share the "remains".
Even if Zhang Kailei has taken care of the internal situation, the external criticism will continue unabated, and the main force in this regard is the parents who renew the subscription.
Some of them pay their tuition through loans, and then repay the money month by month. Now that Xuebajun’s courses cannot be continued, it is equivalent to taking one or two classes. The course cost 10,000 to 20,000 yuan.
Moreover, Xuebajun’s sales method has also been criticized. On the complaint platform, there are more than 1,000 complaints about Xuebajun. In summary, it is difficult to refund fees and bundled sales. There are many parents who want to understand, but somehow they have to pay back the money every month.
Where did the accumulated 500 million go? Zhang Kailei did not mention a word, and the next day he became the legal person of two other companies. The cold winter of 2020 is a cold winter for academic leaders, but it is also a cold winter for many parents and families. It seems that only Zhang Kailei is setting up a bonfire to keep warm in the cold winter. Those educational and training institutions that are still having a great time don’t know whether they will be the ones to fall next.
Let’s look back at Zhang Kailei, a boy with double perfect scores. He earned his first million in his life at a young age. From then on, he cheated and ran wildly in the business and capital fields, going smoothly. , with no intention of stopping at all. Now, the top student has fallen, but Zhang Kailei and the 500 million tuition fees seem to have disappeared together.