I asked you to save a bankrupt factory and you became the richest man in the world.

Chapter 453, 208-209: What? God-level product! (4000 words)
"If there is no major breakthrough in hardware, then we have to consider working on software."

“Just like the beauty tool we made before, although the hardware cannot be improved, we can completely reverse it with software!”

When Gao Huaijun said this, the other executives' eyes lit up.

Hillhouse’s resources are basically concentrated on hardware development.

This method was very cost-effective in the early stages of mobile phone development.

Most mobile phone manufacturers don’t understand or know whether there is a future for investing in smartphones.

Under this premise, it is a very promising thing to delve deeply into smartphones and lead customers to gradually iterate.

However, the competition is now becoming increasingly fierce, and the competition in the smartphone market has become a fierce red ocean!

Whether it is the Blue-Green Factory, the Coarse Grain Factory, Pingguo or Zhongwei, they all have their own territory now.

It is unrealistic for Hillhouse to gradually expand its leading edge in hardware.

"The software I want to make today is called Xiaoling! It is a short video playback platform!" Seeing that the groundwork was almost done, Gao Huaijun slowly said the answer.

Xiao Ling?

A short video playback platform?

All the executives present were surprised to hear this.

You know, to import powerful general traffic, the most important thing should be QQ, followed by Weixin which has become popular recently.

Only this kind of instant messaging software can support huge traffic!
As for this so-called short video playback platform...

Although these executives did not say anything, they actually had many questions in their hearts.

There are many video platforms on the market now.

There are so many websites like Tudou, Tingxun, etc., but I don’t see any chance to divert traffic and make money from them. You are a short video playing platform, but you just shorten the videos. Are you really useful?
Through Gao Huaijun's explanation, this group of executives learned that the Xiaoling APP allows users to quickly create a 15-second MV by combining their own videos with music from the music library, or choose their favorite popular songs and make music videos through lip syncing and body movements. The content includes talent shows and funny moments.

This APP needs to give people a complete beginning, end, and conclusion of a story in a very short time (less than a minute). Some short videos are even only 15 seconds long, allowing users to see funny, sensational, and passionate clips, which makes users enjoy immersing themselves in it.

At the same time, this APP must be topical. The short video platform can spread the topic in a shorter period of time, making the content easier to become popular.

To put it bluntly, young people today live too busy and too hard lives.

When an entire generation is so busy that they only have fragmented time to use, and are so miserable that they just want to enjoy comedy, then this society is sick.

Today's society needs a light entertainment platform that can be used in people's fragmented time!
But no one has raised this demand yet, so Gao Huaijun hopes to change this situation.

"From a software perspective, this so-called 'users can quickly create a 15-second MV by matching their own videos with music from the music library, or choose their favorite popular songs and make music videos through lip syncing and body movements, with both talent shows and funny content' APP, because we have experience in developing beauty artifact APPs, so it is not difficult for us to produce a finished product."

“But the key is content. Without content, customers simply won’t stay on this app!”

"This is something completely different from a beauty tool."

“The photos on the beauty tool are basically the owners’ own photos. We can use our advantages in artificial intelligence to upgrade their products!”

After thinking for a moment, Min Weiguo tactfully put forward his opinion.

“Content? The most important difference between short video apps and long video apps is the content!”

"Why do you think we have to fill it in?"

“We can allow every user to become part of our own media and let them fill in the content themselves!”

"The biggest problem for Tudou, iQiyi and Youku Video is that they need to buy the copyrights of film and television works, which is a huge cost! If users fill in the content themselves, the biggest advantage compared to film and television platforms is that they don't need to buy copyrights, so short videos can make money."

Gao Huaijun disagreed and roughly told us his ideas about the short video platform APP.

In fact, there is not much threshold to create this kind of software.

It is nothing more than a 15-second cutting mechanism that allows users to spread the content mindlessly.

But retaining customers requires a lot of effort!
Without content, customers simply won’t stay for long.

After a long time, the APP will become obsolete.

Such an APP not only fails to help Hillhouse sell mobile phones, but also hinders the development of Hillhouse Technology.

How can we do that?
“And how do we get our content?”

"The key lies in all of our existing customers and all of our new mobile phone customers at Hillhouse!"

As Gao Huaijun spoke, he clicked on the PPT in his hand, which showed the number of Hillhouse's current existing customers.

Nearly tens of millions of existing mobile phone customers!

If these existing customers are not activated, this group of people will settle in every corner of society.

At most, they can absorb some pitiful secondary profits through methods such as mobile games.

Although there is profit, it is not much!
But now, as the launch customer of this app, it is not a big problem.

Just send a collective notification text message. With this group of people's curiosity and trust in Hillhouse's products, it would be easy to convert 10% and have a population of millions of active fans.

Moreover, if this APP is pre-installed on subsequent mobile phones, there is a high probability of converting them into core customers!

After hearing this, Min Weiguo and the others' eyes lit up.

Mr. Gao is still so awesome!
For this APP, we had already thought about the source of customers from the very beginning.

Hillhouse now has a large number of clients, including Hillhouse Technology, Hillhouse Vehicles, Hillhouse Derivatives, etc.

If these customers identify with Hillhouse's products, the probability of them converting into core customers of the new APP is very high.

After solving the problem of customer sources, Gao Huaijun continued, "Content is the most important factor for the long-term development of an APP!"

“But you can’t ask customers to make some original products in advance.”

“Then, we need some big Vs to introduce content in the early stages.”

"And these videos that were imported in the early stages need to be discussed one by one by our operations department."

"The key to this negotiation is attraction!"

Gao Huaijun then explained the core influencers that this short video app needs to attract. This includes everything!

Political ones are men’s favorite and indispensable.

The contents that men like, such as sports, history, finance, games, etc., some big Vs who are active on long video platforms or even some BBS and Tieba can all become the targets of pursuit.

And women like it even more!
You can try to negotiate with relevant big Vs in the fields of comedy, emotion, food, culture and travel, beauty, parent-child, etc., and import them into this APP.

Gao Huaijun asked the core operations team not to be stingy with funds.

Try your best, spend 1 billion yuan first, and invite as many high-quality self-media people as possible!
The executives in the audience kept writing down what Gao Huaijun said with their pens.

In Gao Huaijun's previous life, Douyin and Kuaishou used this trick to attract more self-media people.

But this will have to wait until 18 years later.

What Douyin relies on more is the first batch of middle-class self-media users, who are formed by high-quality users of its own headlines.

That group of people created TikTok by accident.

In addition, Douyin's precise push notifications based on a large user base use portraits to analyze users' interests and hobbies, push content in a targeted manner, reduce interference to users, and help users find accurate content. This artificial intelligence-related algorithm that adapts to each user's needs is also gradually established in the later stages.

Now if they were to compete with Hillhouse in algorithms, they would be far behind!

In the field of short videos, other technologies are actually secondary, and algorithms have irreplaceable advantages.

In the future, when the United States wants to seize TIK-TOK, the key thing to grab is actually the algorithm and database.

Coincidentally, right now in China, Hillhouse's artificial intelligence team has an almost overwhelming advantage in the field of mathematical algorithms compared to all other competing teams!

The technical accumulation of more than 2000 PhDs in related fields is really not something that can be easily achieved.

As Gao Huaijun spoke, Min Weiguo took notes.

At first he was not optimistic about this product.

But now, after hearing how Gao Huaijun is unravelling the details of how he is organically combining Hillhouse Group’s existing customer resources, the existing operational team resources of Beautyface, and Hillhouse’s artificial intelligence algorithm team, I feel that this project does have a real chance of success!

Several unrelated idle resources may suddenly produce a chemical effect.

There is a play!

He really admires Gao Huaijun now.

This ability to use the cards in hand to magnify one's own advantages is the most important ability that managers should have.

In his opinion, there is no doubt that Gao Huaijun is really the god among them!

After such an APP is completed, Hillhouse can push its own products to customers without differentiation at all times.

This kind of push is very covert, and the effect is better than advertising!
This is actually a way to promote Hillhouse Technology's ecosystem to continue to reach out to unfamiliar consumers.

Besides, if it fails, it won’t be a big problem.

The initial investment for this APP was only a few hundred million.

Hillhouse is now developing a low-end mobile phone called Hillhouse Honor Magic, which requires hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development costs.

Even if the development of this APP fails, it will not have a serious impact on Hillhouse Technology.

Gao Huaijun gave another brief introduction and said that what he needed was not a fancy APP interface.

As soon as you turn on the computer, you will see a lot of advertisements and selection interfaces.

What he needs is a straight jumping theme!
The people were already very tired.

They open the APP for entertainment, fun, and relaxation.

You have a bunch of useless designs that don't get to the heart of the customer, and you stupidly have to log in to see the homepage.

Not only do you have to log in, registering is like checking your household registration, and you have to set a password that you may not even remember the next day.

Then this kind of software can’t be popular!
Therefore, they now remember what Gao Huaijun said if they can, and if they can’t, they will record it with a recorder first, and then find a way to repeatedly think about it later, and let the people below review it slowly together to come up with such a product as soon as possible.

"Boss Wu, you are the leader here!"

"Artificial intelligence technology, especially the personalized labeling positioning, you need to cooperate well with Mr. Min."

"For this project, I will specifically support the artificial intelligence team so that you can use the relevant funds more adequately."

Gao Huaijun said leisurely.

Andrew Ng was delighted when he heard this and nodded in agreement.

What Gao Huaijun called a tilt, based on his previous experience, was definitely in the hundreds of millions of yuan.

The artificial intelligence team has now expanded to a super large team of several thousand people.

Not to mention ordinary universities in China, even if all the experts in related fields of Huazhong University of Science and Technology were added together, they might not be able to compare with Hillhouse.

However, precisely because of this, to support such a large group of people, everything from food to groceries costs money.

If he can get more funding, his say will naturally be more important.

He no longer has any idea of ​​transitioning to Hillhouse and then spending time at the university as he did before.

Which university can provide such a large team?

"Recommendation is the core of Hillhouse's APP, which uses machines to learn and infer people's preferences for content based on their behavior. After you upload a video, the platform uses computer vision to analyze and identify elements in the video, and then uses keywords to tag these elements. The video will first be released to a small group of active users, numbering a few hundred people. Indicators such as the number of complete views, likes, comments, average playback length and shares are analyzed. Videos with good performance will enter the next stage and be shown to thousands of active users. In this cycle, videos with good performance will enter the next stage and can reach tens of thousands of users."

"Only in this way can beautifully produced videos with high completion rates receive positive feedback, stand out through round after round of breeding, and make them earn big money!"

“As long as some people make a lot of money, others will gradually follow suit and improve the video content ecosystem.”

"With this traffic magic tool, Hillhouse Technology no longer has to worry about your product ecosystem having no room for interaction!"

"If it succeeds, it will definitely be a 'national' product like Weixin, and Hillhouse Technology will make a lot of money."

At the end, Gao Huaijun came up with a groundbreaking conclusion.

(End of this chapter)