In 2014, in front of thousands of employees, founder Xu Shaochun smashed the customers server by himself and officially announced the establishment of the "ERP Cloud Service Division".
The amazing move of Xu Shaochun conforms to the trend of the times: at that time, the mobile Internet had been popularized, a large number of SaaS companies were established, and the market was quickly opened through the capacity of mobile.
Many of our familiar SaaS products today have started a huge financing journey around 2014.
For example, in March 2013, Beisen received the B -round B -round of financing of Jingwei and Sequoia in March 2013.In July 2014, the salesperson received a round of $ 10 million in Series B in Series B.
Not only the financing is good, because the pain points of customers have solved the pain points of customers, many SaaS products are very profitable. As long as they reduce the growth rate (because it involves a large amount of investment), profitability can be achieved at any time.Essence
Therefore, it can be said that 2014 is the real first year of China SaaS.
Not only is SaaS emerging, but the profit prospects of traditional software companies are also very bright.
For example, 2014 revenue was about 4.3 billion yuan, profit of about 500 million yuan, market value exceeded 33 billion yuan, and broke through in 2015 to break through in 201590 billion yuan.
Kingdees revenue in 2014 was approximately 1.5 billion yuan, the profit was about 200 million yuan, the market value exceeded 7 billion yuan, and it exceeded 15 billion yuan in 2015.
The Chinese software industry can be said to be prosperous.
But this year, ten years have passed, how did the Chinese software industry develop?
First of all, the entire Chinese software industry has fallen into the quagmire of losing money.
Take the use of friends as an example. Following a huge loss of 960 million yuan in 2023, the losing money was 790 million yuan in the first half of 2024.
Kingdee is not much better. In 2023, it lost 210 million yuan, and in the first half of 2024, it lost nearly 220 million yuan.
The following figure is the data data of the Chinese head enterprise software company compiled in the first half of 2024. Except that Ding Jie relied on overseas performance to achieve profitability, the profitability of other companies was not optimistic.
Data Source: Listed Company 2024 H1 Financial Report
It is showed that the overall profit of Chinas listed software companies has declined for three consecutive years, and it has fallen by 91.62%year -on -year in the first half of 2024, which is quite tragic.
Data Source: Sidi Think Tank
As for the once-scenes SaaS company, many have already already beenGive up the SaaS model and return to the traditional software mode.
Although the rest can still survive, 99% do not make money.
Behind the loss of the industry is a fierce price war.
Ten years ago, even if it was the configuration of "graduate as the main force", the average unit price of people can reach 2,500 yuan.To 3,000 yuan.
But now, the bottom line of the unit price of people is constantly breaking through, 1500 yuan, 1100 yuan, and even 800 yuan.
The "domestic alternative" pushed by the state was once regarded as "savior".
On the surface, we did drive out foreign companies and successfully recaptured the high -end market, but we also "successfully" hit the price of the high -end market.
The service provider of foreign companies in the past can also drink some soup.Now that he is the boss, the price civil war is intensified, and even the soup cant drink it.
Software practitioners are also miserable.
In addition to a large number of layoffs, the surviving employees also face salary reduction, and they have to bear heavier jobs.
So, where is the question?
First of all, the overcapacity of the entire society.
The Chinese are too hard work, but the current innovation is serious. As a result, any profit and low -threshold industry will be quickly squeezed by hard -working Chinese. In the end, everyone will eventually everyone.Do not make money.
Fortunately, some industries have successfully completed the internationalization and can output production capacity to the world, thereby avoiding the profit crisis.
But unfortunately, the internationalization of Chinese software starts too late, or in other wordsDigestion.
In addition to the overall domestic economy decline in the past two years, IT demand is sluggish. Under the attack on both sides, the loss of the entire Chinese software industry can be said to be "water to the canal."
In fact, the history of the development of Chinas software industry is not short.
UFIDA was founded in 1988, and Kingdee was established in 1993. It has a history of more than 30 years.
The vision of Chinese software entrepreneurs is not narrow -except the United States, since 2013, China should be one of the most popular countries in SaaS.
But unfortunately, in the past two years, we have really begun to pay attention to internationalization. In the past decade, the best European and American SaaS companies have completed the international layout.
Now we go overseas again, and the competition we face is no longer the same.
That is to say, the best ten years of opportunities to go to sea, just lost in vain.
In addition to the regrets caused by the times, the immature software entrepreneurs are also an important reason for the industry crisis.
For example, in order to win the order, the bottom -without price fight.
Recently, some entrepreneurs sent a news in the software industry executive group: 3.3 million budget projects, and some companies directly quote 50,000!
Data source, public account: 5g focus
Obviously, 50,000 yuan is appropriateProper money, why are similar things common?
Because for many years, software companies have a thinking: first use low prices to make Party A hook, and then recover the cost through the second and third -phase projects.
In order to self -comfort, the software company will also reach a verbal "strategic agreement" with Party A, which seems to be without discarding in the future.
But Party A is not a fool!
In the second phase, Party A will say: The second phase will not be higher than the price of the first phase, otherwise we will change the supplier!
We think that Party A is so fooled, but the fool is actually ourselves!
However, Party A is not the final winner.
Because the software company can only reduce the quality of delivery in order to survive, there is a lot of software problems, so that Party A is more distrustful to domestic software companies, and it is reluctant to spend more moneyEssence
In addition to low -cost competition, there are many chaos in the software industry.
For example, in violation of basic business rules, dreams can be achieved through "fast listing-cashing" to achieve financial freedom.
In the hottest years of SaaS, many well -known SaaS companies have fake behaviors.
For example, signing the yin and yang contract with the customer, which received 100,000 yuan in name. In factmoney.
Everyone may have been accustomed to these chaos, but everyone has thought that these chaos is actually very harmful to the software industry!
Give you an example, a founder of SaaS told me that their company also made money at that time, and then the ambitions expanded, hoping to go public quickly, so I took a lot of financing and expanded it.Team and product line.
The key is that other competitors are also the same idea. As a result, it is a profitable industry. It was quickly made into an industry that does not make money.
So, in the past 10 years, in addition to losing profit, we also lost a healthy industry.
and now the entire industry has fallen into a downturn, but it is only for the past behavior.
Where is the future way out?
First of all, you still have to go to the sea. There is any difficulty, and it is necessary to go to the sea.
In fact, in the past two years, many entrepreneurs have realized the importance of going to sea, but there are not too many companies that have taken substantial action.
First of all, although the overseas markets are broad, the willingness to pay in Europe and the United States and Japanese companies is also very high, but there is already a large number of the worlds best SaaS companies, and Chinese software products are of the worlds software products.The international ability can still be weak, and it is not an opponent of others at all.
Second, Chinese software entrepreneurs have a universal characteristic, that is, there is no experience in overseas work.This has led to their lack of understanding of overseas markets, including customer pain points, local culture, etc., so it is difficult to reach and obtain the first batch of seed customers.
Third, internationalization means a major transformation of products.Including the most basic multi -language, multi -currency, security compliance, user experience, and so on.These transformations require a lot of resources and energy, but Chinese software companies generally face losses, and the pressure on the domestic market is also very high, and conducts international exploration based on the spare no effort.
However, this wave of AI wave is actually an opportunity. We have seen that many recent European and American AI SaaS startups have begun to obtain huge amounts of financing. This is for Chinese entrepreneurs.It is a new opportunity.
For domestic business, the most important thing is to return to the normal business track as soon as possible: for example, return to PMF (product market matching) thinking, shrink the product boundaryWithin the range; for example, reduce the low -efficiency sales institutions and focus on product and customer value.
For 10 years, we may need another 10 years to find it back.I
Source | TOB Elderly (ID: Toblaorenjia)
Author | Wang Deming; Edit | Litchi
Content only represents the independent point of view of the author, and does not mean the position of early reading lessons- Viewpoint->
