Wen / Meng Qian

10 years ago, Luo Zhenyu became famous for his knowledge talk show “logic thinking”. At that time, the public was still very vague about the concept of “knowledge payment”.

After moving to the mobile terminal, with the momentum of the New Year speech of friends of time, Luo Zhenyu’s “get” app continued to cultivate the knowledge payment track. The talk show “logic thinking” of that year has grown into a company valued at 1 billion, and the company thinking creation, the main operator of its knowledge payment business, has also opened the road to listing, but it is not smooth.

Figure / visual China

In the middle of this month, the listing process of thinking creation was suspended again because the financial information recorded in the application documents exceeded the validity period. After three inquiries and six prospectus submissions, the door of IPO has not been opened yet. Why is its listing so tortuous? Is knowledge payment a good business? Why is this business controversial?

Failed to open the IPO door for 18 months

In 2019, as the main operator of “logic thinking” and “get” app, thinking creation has begun to prepare for listing. Since entering the inquiry stage in October 2020, it has experienced three rounds of inquiry for 18 months.

In mid April, the information disclosed by Shenzhen Stock Exchange showed that the IPO status of thinking creation was updated to “suspended”, and it is necessary to submit additional financial information related to IPO. Previously, on April 1 and September 30, 2021, thinking creation has experienced “suspension” twice.

A person close to thinking creation told China Newsweek that “suspension” is not “termination”, relevant materials need to be supplemented, and the listing process is still in progress.

In the latest inquiry letter of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the first question is about the positioning of thinking creation on the gem: “please explain the performance growth space and whether the core technology is innovative in combination with various business data indicators.”

Thinking creation provided evidence in its reply that in 2021, the average income of online business paying users increased significantly, reaching 400 yuan, the compound growth rate reached 30% during the reporting period, and the number of users in high consumption range increased, so there is more room for payment. Thinking creation updated the annual revenue in 2021, reaching 843 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25%.

Previously, according to the prospectus, from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the revenue of thinking creation was 738 million, 628 million, 675 million and 439 million respectively, with a negative three-year compound growth rate. The cumulative registered users were 15.4982 million, 19.4732 million, 24.0378 million and 25.7581 million respectively. The annual average monthly paid users, annual average monthly free users and average monthly live users showed a downward trend.

A capital market source revealed that the knowledge payment industry is similar to the game industry, with uncertain sustainability. The financial performance of logic thinking shows this feature, but it can not be equated with failure to list or operation problems. At present, enterprises listed on the gem will be more cautious if they have continuous operation, high customer concentration and large related party transactions.

In terms of business space development, thinking creation said that according to data statistics, the market scale of China’s lifelong education could reach 148.88 billion yuan in 2023. At present, it makes use of rich themes and product forms, and focuses more on meeting the heavy learning needs of users, focusing on delivery and service.

Thinking creation explains its own innovation, saying that compared with companies in the same industry, its business model and product form are characterized by rich categories, diversified themes and wide user use scenarios; In the description of the core technology, it is said that it has advantages in text learning function and intellectual property protection. It lists nearly 20 functions and provides evidence of many award-winning cases. At present, the company has obtained invention patents for three core technologies.

A capital market person pointed out that the gem is generally the Listing Way for start-ups. These enterprises may not have a particularly mature business model and stable profits, but their development prospects will be better. The person pointed out that the requirements of the gem have been improved in recent years and will be more strict and cautious. However, the listing process of each enterprise is hard to say, and the specific problems should be analyzed in detail.

Over reliance on Luo Zhenyu?

Luo Zhenyu can be called a benchmark in the field of knowledge payment. As early as 10 years ago, after becoming popular on the Internet with the knowledge talk show “logic thinking”, he launched “an experiment of the Internet” and launched a member recruitment activity. More than 5000 places were sold out within 6 hours and 1.6 million yuan was received.

With the popularity of knowledge sharing and the development of mobile Internet, the carrier of knowledge production and dissemination rises in the mobile terminal, and audio, live broadcast, short video and other forms are becoming more and more popular. Under the changing environment, Luo Zhenyu’s “knowledge handling” plan has been adjusted accordingly.

At that time, Luo Zhenyu’s popular courses covered more fields such as Internet, culture, entrepreneurship, business, psychology and workplace, and defined himself as a “knowledge service operator”. In the product service system it provides, online platforms such as “get” app and “logic thinking” wechat official account provide courses, books, e-books and other products, and offline platforms such as “get university” and “Friends of time” cross year lectures provide training services.

In 2017, “get” ushered in a high light moment. Once Xue Zhaofeng’s economics class was launched, the number of subscriptions exceeded 100000 in more than two months, and the subscription price was 199 yuan, bringing tens of millions of revenue to the whole platform. Xue Zhaofeng comes from a group of famous teachers originally created by Luo Zhenyu, including Wu Zhihong, wanweigang and Wu Jun.

Liu YuanJu, a researcher at Shanghai Institute of Finance and law, told China Newsweek that these courses were an initiative at that time. Following Luo Zhenyu’s own courses and using product thinking, they built the more professional courses of university teachers into content acceptable to users. At that time, from the perspective of the whole industry, it was relatively high-end, but it was not difficult to understand. Users bought it.

“The ability to turn university professors into talk show speakers is very important.” Hu Qimu, chief researcher of Sinosteel Research Institute, pointed out that luozhenyu was actually the first product to be created. He started with the in-depth sharing of knowledge, and then switched to official account, audio, video and other carriers on the mobile terminal to share. This process was transformed into methodology, and then copied to others to create a new popular IP. Look for “Luo Zhenyu” in every field