Zhan Kuliang's entrepreneurial story

The founder of Station Cool, an advertising designer, once worked for Shanda Network and Maopu, and was proficient in design and Internet. 2065438+In July 2007, Zhanku received a series A investment of $3.2 million from IDG Capital and Fashion Group.

Recently, the entrepreneurial state learned about the designer interactive platform? Stand cold? Ten million dollars in Series B investment was obtained, led by Evolution Media China (EMC Fund), an investment company established by TPG in China, focusing on high technology, internet, media and entertainment, and followed by Hearst Capital.

Zhanku.com is the most active interactive platform for designers in China. It has gathered 4.3 million outstanding designers, photographers, illustrators, artists and creative people, and is committed to providing professional vertical services for design creative practitioners in learning, exhibition, communication, employment, trading and entrepreneurship.

Liang, founder of Station Cool, told Entrepreneurship that this round of funds will be used for polishing and team building of the main station and surrounding businesses.

Solve the designer? Learn and grow+show yourself+economic benefits? Three aspects of pain points

In fact, Station Cool was established as early as 2006. In the past ten years, many designers and illustrators like White Tea (the masterpiece is Long Live My Emperor) have been born on the platform.

Long live the image of my emperor shaped by white tea.

So far, Station Cool mainly consists of Station Cool main station and genuine material trading platform. Station Cool ● Luohai Creative? There is also an art education platform? Stand cool ● Master Gao? Three aspects.

Liang told the entrepreneurial state that the reason why Station Cool can persist for ten years and maintain a high user stickiness is because the platform solves the pain points of the designer group well, thus making users feel dependent on the platform.

Before that, there were few communication channels between designers and a platform for self-expression. In addition to providing design practitioners with exchanges, interactions and industry information between friends inside and outside the industry, it is cool to show off. With its own traffic advantage, com has also set up a vertical recruitment business for designers and B-end enterprises on the platform, and at the same time, it has developed a cool platform for users with learning needs in art design? Master Gao? You can also provide art education services.

In addition, based on a deep insight into the design and creative industry, Station Cool launched a genuine material trading platform on 20 17? Helo creative? In addition to selling the genuine materials of Shutterstock as the sole agent, Station Cool also encourages local designers, photographers and illustrators to upload their works to Heluo Creative Material Library, constantly enriching the local material library and helping designers realize the realization of their works through the power of the platform.

Copyright trading platform? Helev

Up to now, Zhanku Heluo Creative has reached genuine photo cooperation with companies such as Zhihu and Luo Ji Thinking. Luohai creative material library has more than 97 million genuine pictures and 565,438+10,000 videos.

The biggest pit of starting a business is that you can't recognize yourself.

For designers, there are actually products like Petals and vision china on the market, but Liang thinks that the logic behind the development of each company is different, and it also has certain advantages in traffic.

/kloc-started his business in 0/0. From the initial blog era to today's UGC community, in fact, Liang is constantly adjusting his product direction according to the background of the times. Even tried other directions such as e-commerce in a certain period of time, and also developed and operated its brand? Main creation network? But in the end, they all adopted strategic contraction in view of the market development stage, and only three major businesses are left at present.

"Entrepreneurship" told by Liang. Many start-ups died not because they developed slowly, but because they developed too fast. ? Therefore, the biggest pit of starting a business is that sometimes when you achieve certain results, you can't clearly recognize yourself and do subtraction for yourself.

Liang has always stressed that he is very lucky, but Bongo thinks that in view of the changes in the market environment, it is more important to step on some points, such as the changes in the website from blog to BBS to UGC; In the context of the gradual improvement of copyright environment, Station Cool actively participates in copyright trading and content realization; 20 17 online education was in full swing at the beginning of the year, and education and training in the field of art and design were carried out.

? Brand marketing+copyright trading+education and training? Three aspects of profit

First, the main station community provides integrated marketing services for B-end enterprises, allowing brands and designers to play together, such as providing brand design creative competitions and marketing planning activities services for companies such as Inter, Vans, Haier, Huawei, Durex and Meizu;

Second, stand cool ● Luohai creative genuine material library copyright transaction;

Third, the exhibition art design vertical training business ● covers six professional directions: photography, design, painting and film and television. At present, 500+ hours of courses have been produced, with 500 million+students.

In terms of genuine material library, Station Cool has also reached a five-year strategic cooperation with Shutterstock, the world's largest material library. Shutterstock has more than 6.5438+0.4 million original content contributors around the world, and updates hundreds of thousands of new material content every week. At present, the total number of online pictures exceeds 97 million, and the number of videos exceeds 5 1 10,000. In addition, Station Cool will gradually expand from pictures and videos to audio and fonts in terms of materials.

The founder of Station Cool, an advertising designer, once worked for Shanda Network and Maopu, and was proficient in design and Internet. 2065438+In July 2007, Zhanku received a series A investment of $3.2 million from IDG Capital and Fashion Group.

;