"Stay open and solve problems." This is the WeChat signature that Zhou Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zhihu, has used for many years, and it is also his product philosophy. He believes that whether it is developing products or starting a business, the most important thing is to solve one difficult problem after another.
Since the first day of Zhihu's launch, Zhou Yuan has received many suggestions and opinions from users every day for over 10 years. "I am very grateful for the group of users in the community who are willing to provide feedback, which requires us to always maintain an open attitude and actively solve problems," Zhou Yuan said.
In his view, life is a process of constant search and discovery. In this process, the problem is often easily solved.
Continuously exploring unknown fields
In addition to product challenges, Zhou Yuan will also encounter some business management difficulties.
In April 2023, Zhihu officially released the "Zhihai Chart AI" Chinese big model, becoming one of the first Internet companies to launch domestic big models after the explosion of ChatGPT. In November 2023, products and services based on this large model were opened to the public.
Before deciding to invest large-scale funds in the development of artificial intelligence models, Zhou Yuan heard some opposing voices: "Zhihu is not a super large factory, why must we invest in artificial intelligence models at this time? It's better to use some resources to maintain stock prices and profits."
In Zhou Yuan's view, the more critical the moment, the more rational one should think.
He believes that the core support for Zhihu's success today is value creation. "If we cannot create value, we cannot continue to prove our existence in the market," he said.
The big model is restructuring Zhihu's business. After widely applying large models in business scenarios such as layering, classification, interest understanding, and search, Zhihu has reduced manual annotation by more than 90% and generally improved business quality and efficiency by more than 15%.
In fact, as early as 2018, Zhihu proposed the concept of intelligent communities, researching how to apply artificial intelligence technology to the content production, circulation, and consumption of communities.
When technology undergoes a transition and upgrade, founders need to make clear and accurate judgments. "Although there is a lot of business pressure, we still need to increase investment in technological innovation and find new development opportunities," he said.
Zhou Yuan once mentioned in a speech that Zhihu is constantly finding development opportunities in the tide of the times. Nowadays, artificial intelligence big model technology is creating new technological dividends, and Zhihu is also exploring new unknown fields.
Searching for the second growth curve
In addition to focusing on the field of artificial intelligence, Zhihu is also constantly seeking new growth engines.
According to Zhihu's financial report for the third quarter of 2023, Zhihu's total revenue during that quarter was 1.022 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.1%. Among them, the revenue from marketing services was 383 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 17.1%; The operating revenue of paid members was 467 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.2%; Vocational training revenue was 145 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 85.6%; Other operating income was 27.622 million yuan, a decrease of 24% year-on-year.
Vocational education is becoming the second growth curve of Zhihu, and currently has achieved a single quarter revenue of over 100 million yuan. Since 2023, Zhihu has established the "Zhihu Zhixue" education brand and gradually expanded its influence by relying on a business model of "self operation+investment". Currently, it covers many courses such as postgraduate entrance examination and public service examination.
In Zhou Yuan's view, vocational education is a field with a very large market volume, but there are some information asymmetry issues that urgently need to achieve full process digitization. In response to these industry pain points, Zhihu has taken various measures to innovate and break through from reality, combined with years of operational experience.
"Zhihu has established a digital process for vocational education through artificial intelligence technology. On the one hand, it can solve the problem of information asymmetry among students; on the other hand, it can improve the efficiency of service providers," Zhou Yuan said.
In fact, over the past year, Zhihu Education has also carried out product innovation based on big models, launching products such as artificial intelligence educational leaders, greatly improving teaching efficiency and quality.
Zhou Yuan summarized the current mainstream user group of Zhihu as "new job seekers" - a group of professionals who believe in their profession, have expertise, consumer influence, pursue quality of life, and have a willingness to learn for life.
Based on the needs of this group, Zhou Yuan regards vocational education as the second growth curve of the company, providing them with rich and diverse course content.
"What Zhihu needs to do is to grow and discover together with 'new employees'," Zhou Yuan said. Many people are experts in a certain field, and Zhihu needs to do is to showcase everyone's excellent side through the product form of the community.
Since the establishment of Zhihu, Zhou Yuan has experienced many storms. "In the past decade of entrepreneurship, my biggest experience has been that exciting new technologies and models always emerge in the industry. Opportunities and challenges are in front of me, and iteration and exploration are eternal themes," Zhou Yuan said.
Maintain a strong curiosity
Last year, while reading an interview with picture book painter Cai Gao, Zhou Yuan saw 77 year old Cai Gao in the camera, sharing her observations of life like a child.
This reminds Zhou Yuan of his own son. He found that children always concentrate on doing something. If they receive positive feedback, they will be happy; Even if it's not done well, I'll forget it the next day.
He believes that curiosity is the driving force that drives a person to constantly explore the world. Although everyone has curiosity, people often overlook its power.
Zhou Yuan always has a stronger curiosity for things that lurk beneath the surface and change slowly, but may continue to have an impact on the world.
The most impressive thing for Zhou Yuan in the summer of 2023 was that on July 3rd, the "average temperature of the Earth" broke through 17 degrees Celsius for the first time in history, reaching 17.01 degrees Celsius; On July 4th and 5th, this record was once again broken, reaching a new record of 17.18 degrees Celsius.
"Although it may only increase by 0.1 degrees Celsius, if we follow this upward trend, it will have a significant impact on our social life," Zhou Yuan told reporters.
Zhou Yuan believes that some content that can provide a strong on-site experience often leaves a deep impression on the public, but will soon be forgotten afterwards. Some things are progressing slowly at the moment and will have a profound impact on the long run. The inspiration for enterprises is that they should not only focus on short-term benefits, but also persist in creating long-term value in order to achieve sustainable development.
When it comes to the future, Zhou Yuan values two opportunities: one is the talent dividend brought by "new employees", and the other is the technological dividend brought by new technologies, which are intertwined. "New technologies and opportunities are like tides. When they emerge, they have an impact on everyone, whether you are born in the 1970s or 2000s," Zhou Yuan said.