1. There is no strategy in the beginning
In the big wave of all people going to sea, Kuaishou once again announced a major adjustment to its overseas business.
This is the third time that Kuaishou has sounded the horn of overseas business. Do it all at once, second time tired, third time exhausted.
There was a period in 2019 when Liu Xinhua left due to illness, and the Kuaishou overseas business had already given up once and a half. At that time, there was not even a front-line commander, and all business lines were reported to the highest level.
Later, in the first year of Kuaishou’s listing, the K3 campaign was launched. Kuaishou once again made up his mind and vowed to “reject the Buddhist system” and went to sea again for the second time.
Within a year, the number of Kuaishou employees exceeded 10,000, and he opened his eyes again, and went to the world with a progressive attitude. He convened a lot of money to compete in horse racing in many markets in North America, Latin America, India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
But in just two years, Kuaishou has fallen into the current situation. What is the reason for this?
A person close to the senior management of Kuaishou directly pointed out the core reason for us: “Kuishou is a company without strategic capabilities. It is lazy in strategy, loses tactical rationality, and has no strategic capabilities.”
In fact, in various overseas markets around the world in the past two years, Kuaishou has staged a fierce market battle against TikTok.
It can even be said that Kuaishou’s talents and tactical execution in various specific battlefields are not weaker than tiktok, but in the end, we still get today’s ending – Zack, Shao Kai, Qiu Guangyu and other commanders are all out of the game, and most of the core team going overseas They have all left Kuaishou, and Kuaishou has entered a point where almost no one is available, which can only prove one reason:
Kuaishou loses to strategic swings and laziness.
The following content of this article mainly describes the attacks and pulls of various battlefields since Kuaishou went to sea for the second time at the end of 2019, as well as the struggles and sorrows of individuals under the constraints of strategic laziness.
2. North America gave up when the strategy was the most insistent
As the North American market in the highland of the sea, it is naturally in the preferred list of Kuaishou.
The person in charge of Kuaishou’s dispatch to the North American market at that time was Shao Kai.
Shao Kai was born in Jinsha River Ventures and founded the well-known shared kitchen app “Home to Eat”. He later served as the general manager of Didi’s carpooling business department. He joined Kuaishou in June 2019.
Shortly after joining the company, Shao Kai fought a battle of fame and achieved nearly 70 million MAU in the Kuaishou Express Edition in half a year, which is also a rare successful battle in the Kuaishou K3 campaign.
This achievement allowed Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao to see his abilities. At this time, Kuaishou’s internationalization was under the full pressure of TikTok. In January 2020, TikTok ranked first in the global social media application list in terms of total downloads. Kwai only ranked eighth.
The intense pressure TikTok creates requires one to bite the bullet and rush in.
Kuaishou decided to take it hard at a strategic high point, and Shao Kai was pushed to the United States to be responsible for a new product.
During the epidemic in 2020, Kuaishou launched a short video product Zynn in North America that is very similar to Douyin, and invested heavily in red envelope subsidies.
Zynn users can earn up to $20 for each new user they invite, and up to $110 for five new users. Some overseas netizens posted on social media that many users made thousands of dollars in one day using this invitation mechanism.
Such an attractive subsidy has made Zynn users skyrocket, and it has reached the top of the App Store download list in the United States less than a month after its launch.
If it is said that Kuaishou was too conservative to go overseas before – Su Hua once felt that the time was not ripe, and wanted to wait until the domestic short video was divided into two parts before attacking overseas, so the first time to go overseas was to simply copy the product, and almost did not do landing operations;
This time, Kuaishou went to sea again, but in the North American market, it was too hard.
As soon as Kuaishou entered North America, they threw money wildly, and directly used simple and crude red envelope subsidies to fission and promote new growth, which greatly damaged the market atmosphere.
At that time, many foreign media defined Zynn as a pyramid scheme. According to statistics, the only reason for 90% of users to download Zynn is to make money.
A person close to TikTok told Leifeng.com that Kuaishou’s behavior was very disdainful within TikTok at the time.
For example: a TikTok market leader was fired because he learned Kuaishou to do a free new rebate campaign, which embarrassed TikTok’s user perception and was discredited by other competitors.
It is said that Zhang Yiming directly scolded “dirty” in the internal group, saying that he “relyed on dirty methods to grow, I look down on you”.
However, Kuaishou’s money-burning activity did not last long.
Soon, it was revealed that Zynn was suspected of infringing the content copyright of TikTok and other platforms. Goolge Play and App Store in the United States successively removed it from the shelves. When the subsequent products were re-launched, the cash incentive model was forced to cancel.
After going online again, user enthusiasm subsided.
Of course, Kuaishou internal members will also think that Zynn’s difficulties are related to TikTok’s stumbling block.
Xue Huai was a member of the Kuaishou North American team at the time. According to his recollection, Zynn faced various pressures as soon as it entered the US market.
The first is the competition from TikTok; the second is that Kuaishou’s organizational capabilities in the United States are not strong, and there is no one available in terms of GR (government relations), PR (public relations) and operations, and cannot respond to attacks.
“Bytes saw that Zynn was running very fast, and it helped the media and gave the media a lot of words to attack Zynn.”
According to Xue Huai’s recollection, TikTok’s attacks were hard to guard against, such as asking the media to ask tricky questions and making the person in charge, Shao Kai, very passive.
Kuaishou once invited Luo Qimei, an international brand management expert, to help Shao Kai put out the fire in the form of a consultant and balance the pressure of public opinion in the US market about “pyramid selling”.
In addition, Kuaishou also attracted the attention of the US government, including several hawkish figures in the White House, who commented that Zynn is a product that China officially supports entering the United States.
“At that time, there was a lot of pressure from public opinion from all sides. The most important thing was that in terms of GR, there was no one in Kuaishou who could solve these problems.”
Xue Huai and others also reviewed the lessons of Zynn – before the environment on the product site was built, they started large-scale spending money to pull new fission, and acting in such a high-profile manner not only failed to retain users, but also made Zynn become TikTok and the United States. target of the government.
However, TikTok has also had a tough time during this time.
On July 7, 2020, Trump announced that the US government was considering banning TikTok.
Since then, TikTok has been suppressed by the U.S. government, and even announced that it would allow U.S. companies to acquire TikTok, with the intention of kicking TikTok out of the U.S. market. Zhang Yiming also received public criticism in China.
To a certain extent, the opponent suffers, which is also an opportunity for Kuaishou.
Shao Kai could have seized the gap in TikTok’s suffering and seized the market in one go. But this crisis of TikTok turned out to be the “last straw” for Kuaishou to abandon the US market.
A person close to the executives of Kuaishou told Leifeng.com that at that time, decision-makers such as Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao once again swayed their strategies. They hesitated whether to continue the US market. After all, the fate of TikTok is unknown.
They also realized that if they want to continue to be in the US market, they must build a content ecosystem from scratch, and accumulate users over time, because the path of burning money to buy volume is basically blocked.
On the one hand, they can no longer do fission; on the other hand, the objects they burn money to buy, such as Facebook and other traffic platforms, will no longer be sold to them. Because American companies such as Facebook will never follow the old path again, and they will not cultivate a “TikTok” from China as they underestimated their enemies.
In the end, Kuaishou decided to give up the North American market and shift its strategic focus to Latin America, and Shao Kai was therefore transferred to Latin America to continue fighting.
The fact was that tiktok survived all kinds of stubborn resistance, but the Kuaishou decision-making level really gave up, and Zynn has disappeared.
3. Three rounds of battles in Latin America
When Shao Kai was still struggling in North America, Zack had already led Kuaishou to open up the situation in Latin America.
Zack is a very young person with rich business experience. He experienced the 3Q war when 360 was in charge of the product business. When APUS was the co-founder, he was responsible for the overseas business.
The outside world’s evaluation of him is that he rushes hard and does not stick to the small details.
When Zack joined Kuaishou as the general manager of the overseas business in August 2019 after 9 rounds of interviews, Shao Kai was still in charge of the Express Edition.
The two had a good relationship with Xu Zhiwei, who was still doing strategy in the business analysis department at the time, and the three of them would occasionally drink together.
Zack did two things first after he was in charge of going overseas: 1. Fired more than half of the people in the department and rebuilt the team; 2. Closed the existing business countries and re-selected only one region in Latin America.
A person from the Zacks team described the situation to Leifeng.com:
At that time, their resources were very limited, and they could only focus on one national market.
Zack chose Brazil, and instead of the Buddhist strategy of only releasing one product locally, he established a local office in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and recruited local people for operations and business.
In order to deepen the life of the local people, Zack even found many local pastor churches, popularized Kwai singing in the choir, and made a lot of momentum in some local Catholic villages.
In this way, in about four or five months, Kwai Brazil DAU reached 6 million.
Kwai’s performance in Brazil alarmed Byte’s headquarters. Zhang Nan, the current CEO of Douyin Group, flew to Brazil to investigate and found that there are many “Kaishou Villages” in Brazil.
With the rise of Kwai in Brazil, TikTok felt the crisis and went head-to-head.
But at this moment, Kuaishou suddenly changed coaches.
In early 2020, Yang Yuanxi suddenly took over Zack’s work in the Latin American market.
Yang Yuanxi is one of the co-founders of Kuaishou. He once followed Cheng Yixiao to start his own business and made the earliest gif Kuaishou. He is regarded as Cheng Yixiao’s direct descendant. At that time, he was working on some innovative projects going overseas.
Zhang Yang, a member of the Kuaishou Latin American team, recalled to Leifeng.com that one day the Latin American team suddenly received a notice-Yang Yuanxi succeeded Zack as the head of the Latin American market, and Zack was responsible for developing the Asian market.
According to a person close to Kuaishou, it was Yang Yuanxi who wanted to try the U.S. market at the time, and Latin America was close to the U.S. and could cut in from there, so he took over Latin America.
Zack fought hard for a long time, because people wanted to do it, and he said “want to do it”, and then he was forced to give up the business.
In this way, Yang Yuanxi became the second head of Latin America, and it happened to hit the muzzle of TikTok’s attack in this round.
A few months later, Kuaishou Latin America changed coaches again.
Leifeng.com said, “Yang Yuanxi didn’t want to do it, so he handed it over to Shao Kai.”
This is just in line with the above. At that time, Shao Kai had just retired from North America and he became the third person in charge of Latin America.
In Latin America, the sky is high and the emperor is far away, and Shao Kai is finally no longer tied. He has the power to fight TikTok in both money burning and tactics.
Shao Kai has a good relationship with Zack and has the same views. He also agrees that Brazil in the Latin American market is the key.
This is to mention 2 words – “content-producing state” and “content-accepting state”.
The United States is a global cultural highland, and many countries are influenced by American culture, especially Western countries, so the content produced by platforms such as YouTube will be distributed globally.
After all, English is spoken all over the world, and Hollywood movies are watched all over the world.
Even in Latin America, if Kuaishou were to market in Mexico, it would be at a natural disadvantage.
Because Mexico is a cultural import destination of the United States, some data show that 50% of Mexico’s cultural content is imported from the United States.
Kuaishou did not succeed in the US, and it will be difficult in Mexico.
However, Brazil is the absolute highland of the global Portuguese culture. Like China, it is a country that produces and sells its own content.
Brazilian culture is relatively independent. Portuguese is spoken by 240 million people worldwide, of which 220 million are in Brazil.
Netflix, the world’s largest streaming company, even produces Portuguese-language content exclusively for Brazil. Because in addition to English-speaking countries, the largest paying users in the world come from Brazil.
Zhang Yang told Leifeng.com: “Brazil locals are very culturally confident. After all, Brazil is the largest and most populous country in Latin America. Brazilians have a somewhat big country mentality.”
This cultural independence gives Kuaishou a lot of time and space.
When Yang Yuanxi left, TikTok was already No. 1 in Brazil, with about 20 million DAUs.
After Shao Kai took over, Kwai’s DAU increased from a few million to 26 million within half a year.
According to SensorTower data, until March 2021, Kwai remains the top short video app in Brazil, surpassing TikTok.
Soon, Kuaishou ushered in a vigorous counterattack from TikTok.
From April 2021, TikTok’s counterattack has gradually become fierce, and the two sides have begun a fierce battle for several months.
Prior to this, TikTok underwent a round of coaching changes. After TikTok’s global CEO Kevin Mayer resigned, TikTok’s US general manager Vanessa Pappas temporarily took over as TikTok’s global head , and continued to lead the TikTok US team until Zhou Shouzi took over as the official post.
At that time, Zhou Shouzi had just taken over the position of CEO of TikTok and could not be the specific leader.
The fierce battle with Kuaishou was actually directed by Zhu Wenjia, a young general of Bytes.
Zhu Wenjia transferred the domestic byte growth team to Shanghai for closed operations.
Someone close to Byte said that at that time, Zhang Yiming felt that foreigners were not very capable of fighting, and he personally transferred Zhu Wenjia to deal with the impact of the Brazilian Kuaishou.
In the Brazil showdown, both sides invested a lot of money. It is reported that Kuaishou prepared US$2 billion for overseas expansion in 2021.
Zhang Yang told Leifeng.com that at that time, Kuaishou burned about 60 million to 70 million US dollars a month in Brazil, and ByteDance burned at least 120-150 million US dollars. Byte basically burns money twice as fast as Kuaishou.
Zhang Yiming and Zhou Shouzi have a firm attitude towards this.
At that time, Zhou Shouzi even said internally, “Anyway, how much money Kuaishou burns, TikTok burns exponentially, and whoever has deeper pockets must burn Kuaishou.”
How to burn money?
Zhang Yang recalled to Leifeng.com that the two sides mainly competed in four aspects: buying volume, fission, marketing activities, and content.
For example, if you introduce a new user to register early, you can get a $6 reward in Kwai, but as TikTok joins the bidding in the same way, the tide is rising, and a new user can be rewarded up to $20.
For another example, if Kuaishou has any fission activities, marketing activities, and what kind of content category, the local TikTok team will follow up. For example, sports news, TikTok will send local teams to grab resources in this area.
In this way of burning money to acquire customers, TikTok’s monthly active users in Brazil increased to 40 million within a month, surpassing Kwai’s local monthly active users of about 10 million.
May, June, and July were the most intense battles between the two sides, but the fierce battle lasted for more than three months, so that the two companies couldn’t stand the burning of money.
In general, in the Latin American market, Kuaishou has temporarily withstood TikTok’s money bombardment. Although the money is not as much as bytes, some of Kuaishou’s tactics have played a big role.
So what did the Kuaishou Latin American team do right?
In terms of crowd and content selection, Kwai differentiates itself from TikTok. Tiktok focuses on class A/B (teenagers and more women), while Kuaishou focuses on class C/D, mainly focusing on middle-aged people around the age of 30, and users are also sinking.
In terms of content category selection, it avoided the commonly used TikTok content such as solo dancing and lip-synching, and finally chose the heavier PGC content categories such as short dramas, news, and sports events.
The Kuaishou Latin American team cooperates with some heavy-duty channels for professional content, such as TV stations, radio stations, theaters, etc., so that they can actively put news content on the Kwai platform.
However, Facebook and YouTube have both released their own independent short video products Lasso and YouTube Shorts in Latin America, which cannot compete with Chinese companies. In Zhang Yang’s view, the reason for these American companies’ failure is that they are all learning from TikTok, including cutting into the crowd and copying content categories, and they must not be able to compete with TikTok.
“One of the reasons for Kwai’s success in Latin America is the perception that technology companies in Western countries have on Chinese short video products. They are limited and wrong.”
Moreover, in terms of purchasing channels, American giants such as Facebook have lost their veto power over the domineering Chinese companies in the Latin American market.
At that time, Facebook and Apple refused to buy TikTok and Kwai in many markets due to their privacy policies, but they had no impact on the Latin American market.
The reason is that smart devices in Latin America are mainly covered by the Android ecosystem, and the IOS ecosystem only accounts for 10%, so the IOS privacy policy has little impact on Latin America.
Unlike Southeast Asia and India, Latin America is basically dominated by Samsung and Motorola mobile phones, and Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Huawei, and OV have a larger market share than Apple.
Looking at the world, as far as short video products are concerned, Kuaishou and Byte have only each other’s opponents, and other foreign products can only be watched.
As long as there are no moths on it, the combat effectiveness of the Kuaishou landing team is really not weak.
Today, although Shao Kai has left (the reasons will be explained below), the most stable market for Kuaishou’s overseas business is still Brazil.
4. India’s Great Retreat
When Shao Kai was killing the Quartet in the Latin American market, Zack had already made 150 million monthly activities in India.
Actually it was a surprise.
According to Zhu Qiming, an employee of the Kuaishou India team, when Zack was transferred from Latin America, Kuaishou wanted him to exchange his original business with Yang Yuanxi and let him take over Yang Yuanxi’s original innovative products; but Zack strongly refused.
The so-called innovative products, where innovation is in the end, are all thousand-year-old demons, and there is no need to continue to play Liaozhai.
Kuaishou decision-makers asked Zack what he wanted to do? Zack’s reply is, want to do SnackVideo in India.
SnackVideo is almost an accident, it can be said that Zack kept his hand. Why do you say that?
Just a month after joining Kuaishou in 2019, Zack and Cheng Yixiao reached an agreement to fully convert overseas products from dual-column to single-column mode.
After really controlling the Kuaishou overseas business, Zack tried to make a single-line product SnackVideo at the end of 2019 and put it in the Indian and Southeast Asian markets.
This attempt also saved his life after the Latin American market was “snatched”.
At the beginning of 2020, after handing over the Latin American market to Yang Yuanxi, Zack turned himself into the Indian market.
In the Indian market, Zack led Kuaishou to almost equal TikTok. When it was later blocked due to the international situation, SnackVideo had nearly 150 million monthly active users, maintaining the number one position in short videos in India for a long time.
This is also the first time that Kuaishou has broken through the 100 million level in a single overseas market. Zack’s success in India has greatly increased the confidence of decision-makers such as Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao. They believe that Kuaishou has a battle with TikTok in overseas markets, so they decided In 2021, Kuaishou has a budget of US$2 billion overseas.
This echoes the Latin American part. It is precisely because of the success of India that the Latin American market will have a budget of 700 million US dollars to burn.
Later, due to geopolitical reasons, the Indian market situation became increasingly tense.
After TikTok was banned in India as the first batch, Kuaishou did not choose to give up, but seized the opportunity to grow crazily.
In order not to be banned, the Kuaishou Indian team has done a lot of things, such as working hard on product names, communicating with Indian government authorities to establish GR relations, and trying to cooperate with local companies to introduce local capital. It was reported by Indian colleagues because of its size, and no coat could cover SnackVideo’s “Chinese origin”.
Really bad luck, SnackVideo persisted in India until the fourth batch and was still banned, Zack’s death to the Indian market was wrong after all.
In November 2020, after SnackVideo was banned in the Indian market, there was a rumor in Kuaishou that Zack would get out of the way.
Since no one has a way to predict that the United States will let tiktok go, how can Zack predict India’s determination. This may be about doing less and making fewer mistakes, and doing more with more mistakes.
Because someone has to be responsible for this matter, after all, the cost of a year’s expenditure is all wasted. A person close to Kuaishou Going Overseas said that Kuaishou invested nearly US$160 million in the Indian market.
Zhu Qiming told Leifeng.com that Zack had been attacked a lot, and finally Su Hua stood up and took the responsibility. It is said that Su Hua told Kuaishou decision-makers, “Although the Indian market has failed, it has proved for the first time that we can do it overseas and become bigger.”
After India fell into the sand, Zack quickly moved to Southeast Asia as the head of Southeast Asia after leaving more than 20 Indian employees to remotely support operations in Pakistan.
5. The network cable was unplugged after the victory in Southeast Asia
Kuaishou Southeast Asia and the Indian market are actually a game of chess.
When Zack made SnackVideo, it was launched in Southeast Asia, but it only released a product, and only after India failed, did it really focus on Southeast Asia.
According to a member of the Kuaishou Southeast Asia team, in December 2020 after India was banned, Kuaishou struggled for a month. After trying to revive hopeless, it quickly turned to Southeast Asia. Because such a large market was lost at that time, it was very ugly for both the company and the capital market, and a new market had to be opened as soon as possible to remedy the loss.
Southeast Asia and India have always been the core positions for Chinese companies to go overseas. The vast land, young population structure, relatively close cultural customs, and the mobile Internet in the early stage of popularization have attracted Chinese companies to rush to enter.
The focus of Southeast Asia is mainly Indonesia. As the largest country in Southeast Asia, it has a population of about 260 million. A single government is in power. There are 230 million Muslims, accounting for nearly 90% of its total population. The culture is relatively unified.
As soon as Zack came to the Southeast Asian market, he launched a sneak attack on TikTok.
The “sneak attack” incident occurred during the Spring Festival in 2021.
In the 30th year, when the TikTok team members were on vacation, Zack released an incentive system-using coins for growth, similar to the domestic Kuaishou version of the model, you can make money by watching videos.
Local users are crazy about SnackVideo during Chinese New Year.
In fact, Zack had already started preparations two months before the Spring Festival, and waited for the launch of this model on the 30th day of the new year. At the same time, he came up with a large budget of tens of millions, which was bound to surprise TikTok.
The sneak attack effect is remarkable.
Before the 15th day of the first month, Kuaishou had directly increased from almost 0 DAUs to tens of millions of DAUs, almost equal to TikTok.
This is the first time that Zack has used the coin-spending logic for growth overseas. The growth efficiency is indeed four or five times higher than the normal purchase volume, and the user retention is extremely high.
But the surprise didn’t last long. The recovered TikTok urgently used the power of GR and PR to unplug Zack’s network cable.
A member of the Kuaishou Indonesia team told Leifeng.com:
At that time, there were many negative articles about SnackVideo in the Indonesian media, such as “the patient went to see the doctor, and the doctor told the other party to ‘install SnackVideo first and click it for me’;
At the parent-teacher meeting, the teacher said to the parents, ‘You install Snack Video first, and click on it for me’. “
The image of Kuaishou in Indonesia was quickly demonized, and the incentive model of “spending coins” also attracted the attention of the Indonesian Monetary Authority. SnackVideo was considered to be a fraud and pyramid scheme software, which led to the ban of SnackVideo.
Zack didn’t expect the other party to come to this trick at all, because the “sneak attack” was too hasty and insufficient preparation, and there was no one in Kuaishou in terms of GR and PR after the problem occurred.
Remember Luo Qimei, the international brand expert mentioned above? She was again called to Southeast Asia to fight the fire.
At the same time, Zack also transformed himself into GR, took the initiative to contact Indonesian executives, and tried his best to explain that Kuaishou was really giving money, not pyramid schemes, and finally got the understanding of Indonesian executives and solved the crisis of public opinion.
A month later, SnackVideo was resurrected in situ, but the window period was gone, and Kuaishou was once again passive in the Indonesian market.
A former employee of Kuaishou’s public relations department analyzed the incident. The root cause of this incident was that SnackVideo entered Indonesia as a new brand. The local people did not understand it at all, but the behavior was too high-profile, which gave TikTok this loophole;
Although TikTok is also throwing money around, it does not have this problem because it has the same name all over the world. Everyone knows that big brands have deep GR capabilities in various regions.
In this critical month, TikTok completely copied Kuaishou’s incentive model, and by the time SnackVideo came back, TikTok had grown to 25 million DAUs.
At this time, SnackVideo has to start all over again.
Since then, Kuaishou has never caught up with TikTok in Indonesia, and the user volume of both parties has remained roughly 1:2 since then.
After this battle, all parties agreed that the gap between Kuaishou Overseas and Bytes lies in opportunity cost and first come first, and there is no big gap between the two sides in terms of business capabilities and algorithm capabilities. This has been verified many times – for example, with In contrast to Indonesia, after the Pakistani market TikTok was banned and returned, it also never surpassed Kuaishou.
Here we will explain the Middle East market.
The person in charge of the Kuaishou Middle East market is Xu Zhiwei.
Xu Zhiwei was born in Tsinghua University with a doctorate. His first job was participating in power and energy-related projects at Boston Consulting Group, and his second job was Kuaishou.
Although his work experience is not as rich as Shao Kai and Zack, he grew up in Kuaishou and is said to be very appreciated by Cheng Yixiao.
It took him 4 years from doing strategic analysis in the business analysis department, to being the head of the business analysis department, and then leading an important business line.
In 2021, Kuaishou began to deploy in the Middle East, starting from Egypt. When Xu Zhiwei was suddenly notified of a boss in the business analysis department, he felt uncomfortable and asked Ying overseas to become the person in charge of the Middle East.
The internal discussion of the overseas team suggested that Xu Zhiwei should start from Egypt, because Egypt has a large population, a more independent culture, and a preference for the Arab world. If he directly becomes the five Gulf countries, he has two major obstacles – TikTok has taken the lead, and the cost is relatively high.
In the Middle East, Kuaishou has never fought TikTok head-on, because TikTok does not pay attention to Egypt.
6. Three-in-one has never been successful
Time will soon come to August 2021. Kuaishou Overseas announced a “three-in-one” activity, combining the three major teams in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, and integrating products from different markets into Kwai.
The integrated business is generally in charge of Qiu Guangyu.
Shao Kai, the original heads of the three overseas teams, was appointed as the head of Kuaishou’s international operations, Xu Zhiwei became the head of Kuaishou’s international products, and Zack was transferred to Kuaishou’s domestic business.
The external statement of the integration is: the horse racing activities will end ahead of schedule, and each theater will no longer have to fight on their own.
But in fact, Qiu Guangyu replaced Zack’s position as the leader of the overseas business.
What’s more dramatic here is that Qiu Guangyu joined Kuaishou, and Zack also made great efforts, and he took the initiative to invite Qiu to join Kuaishou to try overseas.
A person close to Qiu Guangyu told Leifeng.com: In 2020, Qiu Guangyu went to Kuaishou to communicate. Cheng Yixiao thought that Qiu Guangyu had a good idea, so he introduced it to Zack.
Qiu Guangyu is the former COO of Didi’s International Business Department, and he directly participated in the taxi-hailing battle between Didi and Uber.
Zack went to Qiu Guangyu to eat hot pot, and also felt that the other party had a good strategic vision and strong resource integration ability. If he could come to Kuaishou to go overseas, it would be a great help.
The two sides chatted very happily. Qiu Guangyu expressed his interest in Kuaishou’s overseas business.
Soon, Zack, Shao Kai and other overseas leaders were notified that a leader was coming, and everyone was confused to find out that it was Qiu Guangyu.
It now appears that the Kuaishou decision-makers really like this kind of unconsulted “notice” decision.
For example, a previous article on Leifeng.com mentioned, “Kuishou Yan Qiang and Ma Hongbin suddenly received a notice from Su Hua, Cheng Yixiao and others, and the two immediately changed jobs. subordinate”;
For another example, Zack received a notice earlier in Latin America that he was going to switch with Yang Yuanxi, and he didn’t know about it before;
This time, Zack, Shao Kai and others still received this type of notice, and this kind of notice without discussion and solicitation has corresponding results.
Qiu Guangyu’s appointment was really sudden. It is true that the story of Qiu’s rise to fame in Didi’s international business, especially in Latin America, is widely circulated, but the business models of Didi and Kuaishou are different, and the front line is in full swing.
Interestingly, before Qiu completely left Didi to join Kuaishou, the Kuaishou Management Committee disagreed on whether Qiu should be hired by Kuaishou for overseas business, and the two sides even clapped the table for this.
In this way, he passively accepted a new leader. After that, Zack and Shao Kai, the heads of each region, reported to Qiu Guangyu and Su Hua on both lines.
When Qiu Guangyu entered Kuaishou, he was more responsible for overseas strategies, and the actual control of overseas business was still firmly in the hands of the original management team.
Slowly, Qiu Guangyu, a strategist, was not satisfied with the suspended command, he wanted to go deep into the business.
In this way, his friction with the original management team arose.
An overseas employee of Kuaishou recalled to Leifeng.com that at that time, as long as Qiu Guangyu and Zack had work cooperation, there was a strange situation. Zack wanted to do one thing, and he had to convince Su Hua that he could not, and he had to ask Qiu Guangyu to agree; and Qiu Guangyu wanted to touch Touch the business, but all the real power of the business is in the hands of Zack, and Zack can’t execute it.
There is constant tension between the two parties. By 2021, the friction will become serious, and the overseas business will gradually be separated into another situation.
The Kuaishou Going Team clearly saw that there was a thirty-eighth line in the middle.
Qiu Guangyu is solely responsible for the entire Latin American market, and Zack is solely responsible for the Pan-Asia-Pacific region. The two sides do not ask each other. The annual and semi-annual budgets approved that year will be split first.
After taking charge of Latin America, Qiu Guangyu also wants to restart the North American market. According to a member of the Kuaishou Going Overseas team, at that time, the top management felt that the Latin American market had come out and had a successful methodology, so they considered restarting the United States.
Qiu Guangyu plans to acquire companies in various regions and join other companies in the US market, just like TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly.
Unexpectedly, after returning from the United States, Kuaishou’s stock price collapsed, and there was not so much capital to make acquisitions. If it starts from scratch, it is very likely to repeat the mistakes of the first failure, so the plan to restart the US market was shelved.
After “three-in-one”, Qiu Guangyu took advantage of the situation to become the only person in charge of overseas business.
Someone told Leifeng.com: “Qiu Guangyu’s skills are still good, and he gradually separated Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other businesses from Zack. Zack, Shao Kai, and Xu Zhiwei were three people in parallel. He became the only person in charge of overseas business. The person who recruited himself from the outside will also split the recommendation from Zack, and Zack’s stay will be meaningless.”
7. Choices without Choices
From the perspective of the above-mentioned battlefields, there is no shortage of capable generals in Kuaishou’s overseas business. From Liu Xinhua, Zack, Shao Kai to Xu Zhiwei and Qiu Guangyu, all of them are generals who are used to fighting.
And the further back the competition enters the deep water area, there is not much difference in tactics between the two sides.
So why has Kuaishou’s overseas business developed to the current situation?
For the above doubts, many former Kuaishou overseas employees gave similar answers.
“Overseas has always been a strategic issue. Every time I am not firm enough, I don’t think clearly every time, and I shrink back after half a step.”
A former Kuaishou executive told Leifeng.com that, in his opinion, Kuaishou is actually a company created by the times and lacks strategic capabilities.
It is true that the opponents Kuaishou encounters are very strong, but
In 2021, Kuaishou internally approved US$2 billion (approximately RMB 12.7 billion) for overseas growth. This is actually not a small amount.
But the decision to invest 2 billion US dollars is said to be no more than 20 minutes, or the high-light performance of Kuaishou after the listing made Kuaishou executives so rash.
It is precisely because of the sloppy decision-making in major strategic decisions that it is impossible to grasp the opponent’s problems, and the opponents slow down to counterattack and hesitate, and the abrupt stop after entering the stalemate is also surprising.
When Qiu Guangyu spent the critical budget, Cheng Yixiao came out and called to stop, Cheng pulled back, and all the previous money was spent in vain. This is the sunk cost. In fact, Liu Xinhua also faced the problem of insufficient budget before, and it was already full of hardships.
Indeed, from the rash entry into North America, the second impact on India and Southeast Asia, and the sudden three-in-one, it can be seen that Kuaishou’s road to the sea has passed many countries, but in the end it only left records in one or two regions, and the overall There are no rules to see, and several times they have followed the footsteps of TikTok and are greatly influenced by competitors.
From the very beginning, Kuaishou has not thought about: which node should be vigorously attacked, how to do it, which region is the key point, who is the competitor, how much budget should be given, whether to fight to the end…
When the strategic ability of the decision-making level is low, the overseas opportunity cost of Kuaishou is lost again and again, competitors take the lead, and coupled with the lack of stamina, TikTok leads the short video overseas in many regions.
And behind this is that Kuaishou has never had a firm and strong leadership core.
The source is that Kuaishou has always had two bosses, and the management styles of the two bosses are different, which is also the source of strategic instability.
Before Su Hua’s retirement, the two had a division of labor. Cheng Yixiao was in charge of the main station production and transportation line, e-commerce business department, and game business department, while Su Hua was in charge of the commercialization business department and the international business department.
However, Su Hua, the first person in charge of overseas, pursues perfectionism, and always looks ahead and “thinks about it”, which leads to a phenomenon-although there are no lack of ability for Kuaishou to go overseas, but these overseas leaders are unable to convince the boss, A person close to Kuaishou told Leifeng.com.
Su Hua’s “not thinking about it” is reflected in many details. A Kuaishou employee said that when reporting to Su Hua, the people below had to think a lot about it, because Su Hua often replied with a “OK” and then asked a bunch of inexplicable questions.
In the opinion of this employee, Su Hua is not even as neat as his wife.
“快手内部称宿华老婆为大姐，大姐比较有想法，思路比较清晰，没想清楚也明说，觉得某些方面再看看，但宿华就是不表态，犹豫比较多。”
这可能跟宿华清华出身有关，很多清华背景的人都比较完美主义，什么事情都必须规划到95分才能做，以下就觉得哪哪都不对。
但程一笑不同，直接给出一个结论。同意就说“好，尊重业务意见”，要不然就说他再看看，基本就等同于他觉得不行。
一位宿华系的快手员工告诉雷峰网，从性格上来看程一笑更适合做CEO，宿华是一个好大哥。
“我很支持宿华，华哥很江湖气，做人也大气，不好的点就是他容易感情用事，做CEO就得像一个理智的机器。”
还在宿华下面做事的时候，他经常劝宿华做事不要太主观化，他觉得宿华经常错付，“付对了人就能出奇迹，付错了就万劫不复”。
同时，对于国际化，快手国内与国外团队分歧较大，大多数时候，高层都是以北京为本位。
一位前快手东南亚员工观察，快手对于国际化的态度很奇怪。
国内一帮元老看着，国外团队想要开展工作很难，当时他们在美国市场辛苦作战时，国内人的心态相当于——“老子打天下，凭什么你们来烧钱”，所以很多预算都得一点一点争取。
元老派太强势，比如杨远熙接手Zack干涉拉美市场，既定战略不断受到干扰。
但更重要的是决策层常常意气用事，经常不跟底下人讨论便做出决定，导致下面人不知如何自处，以至于团队分裂，比如此前严强对调，Zack和仇广宇争权。一旦上下级产生摩擦，组织协作能力不足，随之影响业务发展。
当核心领导层不够坚定强势，作用到海外一线团队身上，使得快手出海团队一直以来便人心不稳。
上述员工称，海外团队一直对公司缺乏信任，没有安全感。
而且，自2021年底，伴随着宿华交权和程一笑执掌快手，其中出海业务受影响最大。
上述快手高层告诉雷峰网，整个出海系其实都是宿华的人，他一变动，整个出海受到很大影响。
从印尼到越南、泰国东南亚五国的扩充计划也随之被搁置，当时泰国市场已经有约20万用户，越南本地化也在同步进行着。
对于此，上述人士解释，“内部所谓宿华系的人都得离开，至少不能在原业务上待着了，仇广宇自己没办法深入做业务，他只能走”。
王美宏的经历印证了上述“宿华系被清除”一点。
2022年初，王美宏加入快手，担任快手海外业务的技术负责人。王美宏是Facebook的华人员工中最年轻的e9级（大致相当于阿里P11）人才，在Facebook工作期间，他负责开发了多款在业内发挥着举足轻重作用的产品，如News Feed、Symphony，同时也有短视频产品经历。
王美宏与宿华是老乡，相识多年，和严强一起，曾是宿华的实习生，理所当然被认为是宿华的人。
为了请到这位技术大牛，快手是大费周折。据媒体报道，王美宏在2019年就拿到了快手offer，因为疫情等种种原因，快手招聘团队和高管跟进了两年才等到了这次入职，足见快手对其的重视程度。
但现在看来，宿华等人花费大力气招聘的人才，却被浪费了。
据多位接近王美宏的人士称，他们很好奇王美宏为什么能在快手待那么久，因为他在快手的角色很尴尬，早就该走了，毕竟他并不缺地方去，人口碑好，业内地位高，还很年轻。
王被调回北京后，有段时间其实想拥有更多权限，管更多事情，但宿华和程一笑对调之后，变化随之产生。
“可能他跟宿华和程一笑谈的不一样吧，两位领导人的风格迥异，宿华有海外视野，程一笑比较本土化。”
在上述人士看来，宿华对王美宏承诺过的事情，在程一笑那里，很多都说不准了。
最近，有消息称王美宏已离开国际化事业部，转任CEO助理。有接近王美宏的人士透露，他这次调整是因为与徐智威工作配合出现问题，而徐智威应该算程一笑系。
核心团队随着宿华隐退也都散了，团队再次分崩离析，宿华在海外布下的人——邵凯、Zack、仇广宇以及一些大区总监等等基本都离开了。
不过，快手出海业务始终缺乏的都不是执行的人才，而是坚定的战略。
快手在国际化方向，一直把握不准大方向，投入不坚决，不断放弃战略机遇期，用战术上的勤奋掩盖战略上的懒惰。
这才是当前局面的根本原因。
（文中薛怀、朱启明、张扬皆为化名。）
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