I don't know what the reason is, Internet companies seem to be born with the gene of continuous expansion, and always want to expand their boundaries to all industries. This day is extremely prominent on Amazon, and the same is true for Alibaba. Not to mention Zhou Shi, who was involved in almost every industry he could think of.

Yahoo YELP's explosive product sales ended without a hitch, but after changing their thinking, they changed their e-commerce to crowdfunding.

"Our purpose is to raise funds for consumers across the network through crowdfunding of innovative and creative new products that have not yet been put on the market, or project plans that are being designed and have the ability and qualifications to take shape, complete the final implementation of the project plan, and give back to the fundraisers in the form of commodity returns. We are here to help more entrepreneurs realize their entrepreneurial dreams and give them a platform to show themselves. We will publish the crowdfunding information in a free format and generate revenue through sales shares. Marisa Mayer explains the launch of YELP's crowdfunding platform.

"Crowdfunding is just the first step, and it is the first step to create value by using YELP's huge traffic. After we crowdfund, where do we go with these successful products? Where do they go to sell? My idea is to find a way to get them to stay. Zhou Shi said earnestly that when he returned to China this time, he also met Sun Tonghe, one of Ali's 18 Arhats, the founder of Taobao.

"After crowdfunding, there is sales, which is C2C, and it can also evolve into B2C in the future, but this is a long-term process. We select products by time, and the current innovation will become ordinary products in the future, and then our current limit will not be a limit. To put it simply, we just added a bunch of restrictions and moved the Taobao model to the United States. Zhou Shi continued, Sun Tonghe has been away from Taobao for more than 3 years, and Sun Tonghe, who has been resting for so long, can't always retire, and a change of environment may create another miracle.

Developing a slow American version of Taobao through crowdfunding is an innovative development and a realistic choice. Zhou Shi has never been worried about the development of Yelp, which is the biggest help he has made in acquiring Yahoo, which has become a knot in his heart at this time.

"I'll try!" Sun Tonghe, he can come to the United States on behalf of him wants to do something, although there are differences in language, culture and legal system, Zhou Shi still chose Sun Tonghe as the person in charge of crowdfunding and then the e-commerce platform, he also knows that there will not be many such opportunities, under the premise of a clear goal, he has enough time to learn.

"Okay, let's let Silicon Valley see if Huaxia Innovation can conquer the world!" Zhou Shi said happily, he does not think that Amazon is invincible, and the development of science and technology will change a lot, especially the development of unmanned technology may subvert the entire logistics and distribution system. JD.com's vaunted self-operated system may be gone. If the design, production and sales system changes again, and people's demand for quality services also changes greatly, then how will e-commerce change? There is no perfect business model in this world, and only by keeping pace with the times can it survive for a long time.

It's unclear what will happen to Yelp's e-commerce platform, but this is just his first attempt. Zhou Shi's second foray was with YELP's membership and payment services. Group buying is difficult to last, but buying offline goods and services through the Internet can be long-lasting.

In the U.S., merchants accept card payments with a fee of about 2.5% or more, which is greatly reduced if you pay after topping up your YELP account. At the same time, it can also bring more traffic to merchants, and if you add YELP's subsidy in the initial stage, it is natural to have an online price and an offline price. If only YELP members can enjoy the preferential prices of partner merchants, then YELP's revenue growth will be even more. However, with such a change, payment has become very important. It has been cooperating with Time Pay (Square) before, but the interests of both parties are not the same. One is to expand rapidly, and the other is to serve customers and achieve profitability.

Zhou Shi intends to acquire an online payment business to support more financial services for YELP now and in the future.

"I don't think it's necessary, it's been a pleasure to work with Square, and if we buy a business ourselves, we might have to incur more expenses. "Morse

"As long as our efforts are worthwhile, even if we take on more debt, there is nothing, and the popularity of mobile Internet will inevitably lead to the rapid development of online payments. If we can let our members enjoy our services anytime and anywhere in their later lives, all the efforts now are worth it. "Zhou Shi, think about the domestic WeChat payment and Alipay's mobile payment, which have turned these two APPs into national-level applications.

"Our future payment may involve multiple parties, such as consumers, merchants, yelp and payment service providers, Square is mainly aimed at merchants and consumers, rather than waiting until he can't meet our needs in the future, why not our own plan?" Zhou Shi

"So what we need is actually a paid middleman?" said Bright Taylor

"If we carry out membership services, there will be many differences between the settlement and the merchant, if we need Square to customize it, the cost of issuing fees in the future can only be higher, and besides, yelp's various services are inseparable from payment" Shen Haoyu

Zhou Shi did not say the idea of establishing a C2C e-commerce in the future at this time, now is not the time, Yahoo is still burning money, how can there be so many resources to open up another highly competitive market.

"I know of a payments startup called Stripe, and they seem to be doing something very similar to the business we're talking about. "Ebelson

"Then ask them to talk!" Zhou Shi quickly made a decision

In fact, these reasons he said are a bit far-fetched, and Square, a subsidiary of Time Pay, can also respond well to these needs he said. However, from the history of previous lives, we can know that any larger Internet company has financial payment data in its own hands, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, PayPal in the United States, and two rising stars Jack Dorsey's Square and the two brothers in Ireland's Stripe, as well as the traditional bank Xiaomo have launched their own payment products, the importance of payment can be seen. Although O2O in the United States may not be able to develop greatly, what better way to connect online and offline is in addition to payment methods?

Zhou Shi wants to have his own payment tools, and another important role is to limit the development of time payment. There are many affiliated companies and financial support, coupled with the binding of Time Android and Shell Nuts, plus the offline promotion of YELP. In the United States, it has become the second payment method after PayPal and Amazon, and second only to Alipay in China, serving many well-known e-commerce and Internet companies, including JD.com. Although it is not yet possible to start making money, the pace of development is amazing. Now is not the time for it to emerge, Zhou Shi, who attaches great importance to Internet finance, does not want Time Pay to be targeted by too many people and then be hit. By entering the payment market, Yahoo can take the pressure off of it and make people think it's just an ordinary business practice.

Focusing on Stripe, which has not yet grown and has just begun to develop, Yahoo quickly won the company, with an acquisition price of less than $100 million, which is not worth mentioning in terms of price or influence, but there is also another acquisition that is also not high, but influential

(End of chapter)