Yema Finance Li Xiaoye: The unknown behind the post-80s content entrepreneurs | gbo slot login, bri slot 4d 24jam online

In this era, everyone is a self-media. Come here to share knowledge, collide ideas, and discuss life...

[Second Issue] Ifeng.com Finance interviews Li Xiaoye, founder of Yema Finance

In the third year of starting a self-media business, Li Xiaoye, the founder of Yema Finance, never imagined that his biggest pressure would come from them...

Three years ago, 2015 was known as the first year of self-media investment. Many senior media people began to switch to new media to start their own businesses, and Li Xiaoye, who was born in the 1980s, was one of them. Yema Finance was officially founded in January 2015. The founder, Li Xiaoye, has served as deputy editor-in-chief of Unbounded Media, editorial board member of "Bloomberg Business Weekly/Chinese Edition", and mainland reporting director. He has more than ten years of reporter experience in the financial field. Recalling his original intention to start a business three years ago, Li Xiaoye said: "I just wanted to express financial news in an easy-to-understand way, but it was too difficult to promote content reform in traditional media."

“Survival of the fittest, the media that survives are the ones that readers like.”

The development of science and technology is subtly changing people's reading habits. After the WeChat public account was launched in 2012, self-media people suddenly emerged. Their easy-to-understand, humorous self-media articles quickly attracted the attention of readers. Li Xiaoye saw that in the new communication era, the expression methods of traditional financial media need to change. The obscure and difficult-to-understand expressions with high professional requirements have widened the distance between the media and readers. The general public also needs financial information, so how to lower the reading threshold and make it easier for everyone to understand financial news, while maintaining the professionalism of the news itself? This became the new goal pursued by Li Xiaoye. In her opinion, media need to adapt to the tastes of readers. "The fittest will survive, and the media that survives will be the type that readers like." "Reform in traditional media is too difficult. If you want to promote a thing, it cannot be done by just a few people." So Li Xiaoye made up his mind to start a self-media business, and flexibly tried new content production methods through several public account platforms such as Yema Finance.

“The pressure mainly comes from pressure from big companies”

In three years, Yema Finance has grown from less than 10 people to more than 50 people now and has received two rounds of financing. In July 2016, Yema Finance conducted an angel round of financing at a valuation of 68 million. Completed Series A financing in 2018 with a valuation of 120 million. AlthoughYema Finance has surpassed many self-media financial institutions on the same starting line, but the pressure on Li Xiaoye has not eased.

"My biggest pressure now mainly comes from the pressure from big companies." Li Xiaoye said frankly that when he was working in traditional media, he used to supervise and report on companies and said harsh words, but the companies being reported would not put too much pressure on them. Because there is a relatively large organization behind traditional media. When the same situation applies to emerging self-media, the attitude of companies is not so good. “After working as a reporter for more than ten years, companies have come directly to me and asked me to delete articles more often than I have in the past few years of starting a business!” Li Xiaoye, who became a self-media person, never expected that litigation with companies would become a common occurrence.

The fierce battle between Alibaba and Yema Finance in 2017 once set off a wave of heated discussions in the Internet media circle. The cause was an article by Financial Street Detective, a public account of Yema Finance, titled "Alibaba-style Investment: Hammer survives by chance, but has no solution to escape death. How many other startup companies have fallen into this trap?" "The article criticized Alibaba-style investment. Alibaba believes that the entire article is full of conjecture and fiction, and filed a complaint to take the "Financial Street Detective" to court. It has been more than a year since the trial began. After experiencing the episode of "being absent from the trial" and the fierce debate after the trial resumed, Li Xiaoye is still waiting for the court's final judgment.

"When you truly become a self-media person, you will find that companies will use various means to delete articles." Recently, Li Xiaoye personally experienced an incredible thing. The cause of the incident also stemmed from Yema Finance’s negative reports on listed companies. Since last year, Yema Finance has conducted a series of reports on the "Fangda Clan" listed companies, and published articles such as "The Fangda Clan's Rout: People with backgrounds in the "Fangda Clan" Cleared Out Directors and Senior Supervisors", "The Fangda Clan's Hidden Path to Obtain Tens of Billions of Pingang Steel" and other articles. This year Yema Finance received letters from lawyers for Fangda Carbon and Fangda Special Steel. Different from previous lawsuits, this time Yema Finance received a "warm reminder" from someone from "Fangda" in advance, saying that "some courts will let you lose the case." The day after receiving the call, the president and clerk of the Honggu District People's Court of Lanzhou City, Gansu Province came to the company's office to deliver a summons for the reputation infringement lawsuit. "We have received a new court summons from them. I will go to the Lanzhou Intermediate Court in person on January 11. If we lose the case, we will continue to appeal."

"I want you to know that I am not a person who gives up easily, and it is also difficult to deal with a self-media person"

What makes Li Xiaoye tired is that as an entrepreneur, every minute is precious. He has to formulate company plans and move forward, adapt to the changing market environment and constantly look for financing. It is not easy to lead the team to stay on track. Now a lot of my time and energy are taken up by litigation.

Li Xiaoye is not particularly concerned about the outcome of the reputation dispute between Ali and "Fangda". "Companies use local public prosecutors and law. Under local protection, it is difficult for a small self-media to compete with it, but I want these companies to know that self-media is not good either."It is also difficult to deal with a self-media bully. "Many people don't understand why Li Xiaoye is so "shaky". In this regard, Li Xiaoye said that if the self-media succumbs easily to the pressure of listed companies, more listed companies will follow suit, making the already harsh public opinion supervision environment even worse. "Many of the Yema Finance team are senior media people from traditional media. Everyone starts a business because they want to really do a career. Readers who have been paying attention to us will know what kind of people we are. Time will tell everything. ”

In recent years, companies have increasingly sued self-media. “A lawyer’s letter has been sent” and “See you in court” have even become template responses for companies to respond to negative reports. Public discussions often result in a fifty-fifty vote. The phenomenon of "black public relations" in self-media needs to be severely rectified. At the same time, the legitimate rights and interests of self-media should also be protected. Li Xiaoye suggested that lawsuits between listed companies and self-media should be uniformly handled by the Shanghai Financial Court, allowing professional people to do professional things, and not allowing companies to sue in local courts. This is to avoid a situation in which a listed company makes unreasonable demands in court to shut up self-media forever, but the judge does not stop them.

In Li Xiaoye's view, the business behavior of listed companies should be exposed to the sun. What companies should focus on is improving company quality and transparency, rather than thinking about correcting problems only after negative news is revealed about the company, or even just busy deleting negative news without making any corrections. Compared with foreign countries, the quality of information disclosure by domestic listed companies is not high, and the information disclosure of some listed companies is very opaque. After the arrival of the new media era, whether it is traditional media, self-media or individuals, their channels for speaking out have become more open. It is a good thing to use multiple forces to jointly supervise companies and promote a more transparent domestic information environment. In addition, the Shanghai Stock Exchange is accelerating the promotion of the Science and Technology Innovation Board and piloting the registration system, which requires that future information disclosures need to be more sufficient to make information symmetrical, and the quality of information disclosures also needs to be improved.

“The self-media industry will be even colder in 2019”

At present, the total number of WeChat public accounts has exceeded 40 million, and the self-media industry is relatively saturated. For most self-media, monetization has become very difficult. Since this year, the self-media environment has undergone great changes. A large number of eye-catching marketing accounts have been banned. After several years of development, institutional self-media has accumulated fans and reputation. The advantages of leading self-media have become more obvious. The entire self-media industry bids farewell to barbaric growth and returns to rationality, and gradually moves towards healthy and orderly development.

In this year, self-media people also felt the chill. There have been a lot of cases involving the acquisition of self-media at sky-high prices this year. There are not as many institutions to choose from in self-media financing as before, and institutions are becoming more and more cautious. Li Xiaoye believes that the self-media industry will be even colder in 2019, which is a challenge for the entire self-media industry. When the market environment is not good, the struggle is whether there is enough food and long-term planning.

Li Xiaoye’s work plan for 2019 is very simple, which is to provide good content services. She believes that high-quality self-media content is still scarce at present, and a large number of self-media are doing repetitive work. Everyone is in a low-level competition, and no one is willing to waste time and effort to produce high-quality content. The reason for this situation has a lot to do with the way content is produced. A very good original author may spend a month to polish a good in-depth financial analysis.Check the report. The author needs to conduct long-term research and undercover visits, understand information from all parties, and study a large amount of written evidence. And such an extremely expensive article may be copied by others in just one minute.

Li Xiaoye revealed that Yema Finance will expand the reporting areas of free content in the future, not only limited to A-share capital markets, financial markets, blockchain, and the New OTC Market, but will also add reports on horizontal industries such as real estate and automobiles. While making good free content, Li Xiaoye plans to explore high-quality paid content. Because as mobile payments become more and more convenient, the era of content payment has arrived. This change will take time, but the trend is already very clear.

Read more in impetuous times:

Three years after starting a self-media business, Li Xiaoye realized how difficult it is to run a company. When you prepare to start a business, you must be fully mentally prepared. Li Xiaoye recommends to entrepreneurs the book "36 Catchments for Entrepreneurship" by Sun Taoran, founder of Lakala. "If you haven't started a business yet, read this book first to see if you can endure the hardships; if you have already started a business, read this book again to understand more about the difficulties and coping methods on the road to entrepreneurship, and you will also get some inspiration.

“Entrepreneurship is a process of learning and practice. ”