Unique observation of mobike-style innovation
When Wang Xiaofeng was asked about his whereabouts before, he vaguely said, "I hope to provide services to thousands of people in Qian Qian at a price that everyone can afford." . In hindsight, this particular colloquial vision was to set the tone for mobike, and it was also because he observed that the space for short trips in the city was increasingly compressed.
But the decision-making cost of this innovation is actually very low:
First of all, tourism O2O has proved to be a big business. Behind the high-frequency demand is sufficient cash flow to nourish the business model. Uber, which is valued at $50 billion, and Didi, which is valued at $34 billion, are talking to themselves.
Secondly, in today's increasingly cautious capital, investors are only particularly tolerant of this line, which is the driving force for Uber and Didi not to make profits and burn money.
At the same time, there is still room for Internet for short-distance travel in cities, and the operation of public rental bicycles still depends on the old system that lacks vitality, so mobike people have the opportunity to subvert with efficiency and experience.
Finally, the market is relatively lack of competition. Unlike the semi-public Citibike in the United States, Ford and Nike have entered in a big way, and China is still an orange-yellow dispute between mobike and OFO.
Obviously, mobike's entrepreneurial concept is not a drop of water in the Red Sea, but a gentle blow on the soft underbelly of travel innovation. The business connecting tens of millions of demands could not be done before, and it was only because of the offline bottleneck. Mobike and OFO think they have found a way to break the situation, that is, through a series of excessive innovations to balance risks and seek a compromise between experience and safety.
This is actually a bicycle version of timeshare. Car time-sharing was established by Zipcar in 2000. For example, vehicle distribution can be returned with the rent, which is flexible and convenient. 20 1 1, when the company went public, the premium was 3 1%, and the market value soared to 1 1 billion dollars. However, after the unconstrained innovation turned into a clever business model, the problem came.
First of all, Zipcar originated in Boston, known as Athens in the United States, where there are famous schools such as Harvard and Massachusetts. User quality ensures operational efficiency, but the company failed to prove its ability to move from campus to the general public in time.
Second, competitors have followed suit. The WeCar cloned by enterprises is aimed at large enterprise parks, and the Connect of Hertz is specifically aimed at communities, which quickly eliminates the incremental space of Zipcar. By the time it was acquired by AVIS for $500 million in cash in 20 10, Zipcar had lost $50 million.
The development of other C2C car rentals is not good either. For example, RelayRides, renamed Turo, started its business almost at the same time as Uber, and now it is unknown. Green lingers; Flightcar suddenly closed down in July this year; What really survives are those projects that rely on large car companies or government funds, such as Mercedes-Benz Car2go, Volkswagen Quicar, BMW DriveNow and France Autolib.
Theoretically, * * * has a lower threshold to enjoy cycling and a higher frequency demand, but after many years, mobike still has no technical means to surpass Zipcar. What it has is the enthusiasm and tolerance of China society for innovation and the spirit of early adopters. Entrepreneurs still have to prove themselves through online and offline control ability, and there are still a series of business logics that need to be verified by themselves. Mobike's current strategy can only be summarized as covering the breakpoints of services and operations with excessive innovation.
1 man-made restrictions, how to serve the last mile?
On the surface, mobike has cancelled parking piles and allowed cars to be locked and returned at any legal place, which seems to make up for the shortage of public bicycles. However, as a short-distance travel tool, mobike still does not allow vehicles to enter closed urban spaces such as residential areas, office buildings and large enterprise parks, and tends to be conservative in the key trade-off between efficiency and convenience.
This is not fatal when the model is popular, but the innovation that claims to serve the last mile is lost in the last 500 meters blocked by people, which is a bit boring.
2 uncontrollable factors, credit pricing is unreliable
Linking the price lever with the credit point is an invention of mobike, which is intended to control risks, but its effect is limited, because:
(1) Short-distance travel in big cities in China has always been a pain point. Last year, the "Free Cycling Map" campaign initiated by the public welfare organization "Urban Public Evaluation" showed that there was a breakpoint for bicycle travel every 2 kilometers on average in the Third Ring Road of Beijing. In such a bad traffic environment, mobike's illegal fee deduction and fare increase mechanism may not be convincing enough.
(2) mobike system still has some problems, such as inaccurate map positioning, network delay, low code scanning recognition rate, long unlocking time and so on. The so-called seamless connection is only an ideal state, and it is impossible for mobike to pass on the risks to consumers through unilaterally formulated rules.
The cooperation between mobike and Qianhai Credit Information or Sesame Credit can only lead to more disputes in this low-threshold and high-frequency business, especially under the premise that the responsible subject is not clear.
What should I do if I leave the basic audience?
The reason why the earliest travel innovation chose the campus in unison was nothing more than relying on the contractual spirit and self-discipline of users, but leaving the campus was far less popular than Uber. Turo later simply launched the "face-to-face car pick-up" service, which was euphemistically called creating social scenes, but it was actually a helpless move to avoid risks.
* * * Enjoy the threshold for users to explore by bicycle. However, with the expansion of the user base, no one participates offline, and the whole process is hidden behind the scenes. Only by constantly throwing out various rules of play, it is bound to be strongly impacted.
4 How to balance security and experience
The first task of mobike's business model is to build a super bike, which is difficult to be easily damaged even by users with deep malice.
Mobike reinforced the car body with aluminum alloy frame, and replaced the chain with shaft drive. In order to prevent tire puncture, solid tires are used. The whole vehicle weighs 25 kilograms, and many parts cannot be adjusted separately to reduce the possibility of man-made damage.
The result of such caution is a product with poor riding experience, low power transmission efficiency and poor comfort. Users can ride it to exercise or conquer bad roads, but it is not suitable for short-distance transportation.
Mobike discovered the key point of the public bicycle system, but the means it relied on had more sequelae. The users it quickly won through front-end innovation are being lost because of the bad experience.
5 How to optimize inventory scheduling
On September 1 day, mobike officially settled in Beijing, with more than 3,000 vehicles in operation, which is not much compared with Shanghai's 1 10,000 vehicles, but the urban area of Beijing is 2.5 times that of Shanghai. For example, the number of vehicles involved is astronomical.
Therefore, it is an inevitable requirement of business model to strengthen inventory scheduling system and optimize vehicle configuration.
Commuting in cities provides a huge fixed demand, but it is obviously not the best choice for mobike. The average commuting distance of bicycles in first-tier cities is at least 5- 10 km per day, which is close to self-abuse according to the riding experience in mobike. Therefore, it is the self-learning direction of mobike data system to realize the vehicle deployment in large residential areas, office buildings and transportation hubs and meet the dispersed demand.
6 vehicle maintenance
This is an unsolved bottleneck from P2P car rental to bicycle enjoyment. Machines made by human beings need regular maintenance. Aircraft have pre-flight and post-flight inspections, as well as short-term maintenance. Cars will enter the store for maintenance every 5000- 1 10,000 kilometers. Half of the high damage rate of public bicycles is due to irresponsible users, and the other half is due to imperfect offline maintenance.
We don't have the breakdown and damage data of mobike. It is reported that 10000 vehicles put into Shanghai have 150 vehicles damaged artificially, but the attributive modification has been added, for example, this does not include some minor damages and so on. In fact, anyone who pays a little attention to the public facilities around him will not have unrealistic confidence in those weather-beaten bicycles.
7 security risks
One of the challenges facing mobike is its compatibility with urban management. It often semi-forcibly pushes some user instructions to remind users what to do and what not to do, which shows their anxiety about the car condition. Some people have seen mobike parked in the street and dragged away by the urban management. This can't be entirely attributed to the customers, because most people simply don't know where the car is legally.
There are also some problems caused by excessive innovation, such as the safety of QR code to pick up the car. Forged QR codes can defraud users of important information, while small advertisements all over the car body are stubborn and difficult to treat, and sometimes users will lock their own cars. At present, mobike still lacks a complete and clear service system, a responsive customer service team and a process for dealing with intractable diseases.
All gameplay is a struggle against humanity?
If we don't criticize illegal parking, car locking and driving beyond the business scope, there are still some pain points behind it. For example, the user's troubles of getting off work, shopping and going to work without a car, plus the resistance of half an hour 1 yuan and the daily uncapped charges.
Mobike's response is to pretend to be a snake, and at the same time constantly introduce rules that compete with users' habits, such as Beijing charging an extra operating fee of 100 yuan. It has gone too far on the road of anti-humanity, but it has done less on product innovation.
Is the attribute of urban short-distance travel commercial or public welfare?
This unanswered question is a question that all business models, including mobike, OFO and 700bike, must answer.
According to the calculation of relevant departments, the life cycle of a bicycle is 5-6 years, and the vehicle cost is more than 900 yuan. Together with the system, car piles and later maintenance, the cost of a car is about 7000 yuan. Judging from the vehicle configuration in mobike, the founding team is betting on the mode of maintenance-free scrapping once every four years. Although the cost of a bicycle has dropped from the initial 6,000 yuan to about 3,000 yuan, it takes too long to recover the cost according to the pricing of half an hour/kloc-0 yuan, not to mention that the vehicle can not be fully rented for 24 hours. In mountainous cities such as the cold north and Chongqing, the vehicle utilization rate and riding experience will be greatly reduced.
Mobike's real innovation is to cancel the parking piles. Hangzhou, ranked first in the global urban bicycle system selected by USA-Today, relies on advertising auction subsidies for stalls (parking piles). After 39 rounds of bidding in February this year, the total advertising management right in the main city for five years was sold at a high price of 220 million yuan.
In a semi-public market (the free utilization rate of 82,000 public bicycles in Hangzhou is as high as 96%), mobike does provide more convenient services, but it has not proved that it has differentiated profit space. Therefore, it is doubtful whether mobike is a substitute or supplement for urban public bicycle system.
The feasible way is to follow the footsteps of Uber, use the scale of the platform to develop some derivative products and services, fill the redundancy of transportation capacity outside peak hours, and ensure the stickiness and activity of the platform. Mobike's experience also proves that in an industry full of uncertainties, trying to make all processes and unsolvable problems online and backstage, and avoiding all possible hardships, such excessive innovation is a disregard for the inherent laws of the industry.
Minefields still exist, but they are bypassed.