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The past two weeks on Wall Street have been quite turbulent. With Robinhood, a free securities trading platform, and Gamestop, a "mystery stock", being shorted by Citron, many retail investors thought that they had been "cut off" and began to unite against the predators on Wall Street.
At this critical juncture, Tesla founder Musk took the time to stage a "war of words" with Vlad Tenev, the founder of Robinhood, on the new online celebrity social application Clubhouse.
For Kunihiko Naito, a 37-year-old Clubhouse user, this voice chat social media application is really a good channel to get information. He said: "On this platform, those influential people can express their views frankly, and I can understand what those executives, gold collars and top consultants are doing and how they start their own businesses. Clubhouse is a very good software. Although I listen to mostly Japanese content, I can also hear pure English conversations on this platform, thus improving my English. " There are many fans of Clubhouse like Kunihiko Naito. This software, which was born not long ago and can only be registered by invitation, now has more than 2 million active users every week.
however, little known is that there is a powerful "trader" behind Clubhouse-this is Agora, a sound network listed on Nasdaq, which is an audio-video interactive service provider behind Clubhouse and headquartered in Shanghai. Driven by the sudden popularity of Clubhouse and the good news that the company itself successfully raised 25 million US dollars, the share price of Sound Network soared by 3% in the first two days of February.
Low-key expansion
Sound Network is a company established seven years ago. In 213, Zhao Bin, the former chief technology officer of Huanju Group and the founding engineer of Cisco Video Conference, founded Sound Network. Since then, the company has been waiting for a blockbuster opportunity.
acoustic network provides a customizable application programming interface (API) for business developers, which can embed real-time video and voice functions into customers' applications without developing related technologies or building the underlying infrastructure.
Although the public doesn't know much about the business of Sound Network, China's capital is very optimistic about this hard-core enterprise. Sound Network has been invested by many well-known institutions such as GGV, Morningside Capital and Coatue Management, and its technology has also begun to serve major customers such as Xiaomi, ByteDance, New Oriental and Good Future. The massive demand for video conferencing and voice calls brought by the epidemic has boosted the business of Shengwang. It is reported that the revenue of Shengwang in the first quarter of 22 increased by 166% year-on-year.
the technical advantages of sound network also meet the requirements of technological transformation of domestic enterprises. In recent two years, more and more enterprises in China have begun to abandon the simple "price war" strategy and pay more attention to the technical content of their products. The technology of sound network coincides with the strategies of these enterprises. With the increase of social scenes, simple WeChat voice and telephone can no longer meet people's needs, and users and enterprises expect voice interaction with less delay and higher call quality.
the technology of acoustic network makes it very popular in the fields of telemedicine, education and games, which require very high timeliness of voice interaction. Just like the name Agora, it allows multiple users to participate in voice interaction at the same time, and can guarantee the call quality of this "network".
lay out the future
the sound network is not satisfied with the status quo. On January 28th, 221, it acquired Huanxin, an instant messaging and enterprise service cloud provider. After the acquisition is completed, the two parties will make use of their respective professional fields to develop a real-time communication+instant messaging product portfolio, and create a "video+audio+instant messaging solution to achieve the most complete real-time interactive application programming interface portfolio on the market" as described by Ma Xiaoyu, CEO and founder of Huanxin.
also in January, the company released the online learning participation platform, which is a Paas (platform and service) product to help educational institutions and developers quickly launch their own customized interactive teaching platform. It is said that using this product can save 9% of the development time, and it only takes 15 minutes to have a formed interactive platform. In addition, in order to maintain an absolute competitive advantage in this field and continue to grow, Sound Network also launched the Agora Partner Gallery platform in 219, which is similar to a "grocery store" developed by the system. After logging in to the platform, customers can use various plug-ins and additional functions provided by sound network partners on the platform as needed.
Although Sound Network has a good prospect, the company also faces some challenges: in the third quarter of 22, the company's free cash flow was negative 5.1 million US dollars (compared with positive 1.3 million US dollars in the same period of 219). In addition, despite the large number of customers, the sound network has not yet achieved profitability. By September 22, its total revenue has increased by 8.8%, but the loss has increased.
research and development expenses account for a large proportion of the expenditure of sound network. Compared with March 219, the research and development expenditure of Sound Network in March 22 increased by 178.3%. Therefore, in order to maintain its leading position, it is unlikely that the company will cut its expenses in the short term. Even if its sales continue to rise, its R&D expenditure will still account for more than 3% of its total revenue.
in the long run, this is not a bad thing, because innovation is often the lifeblood of technology companies that occupy high value, and these companies often spend 1% to 25% of their income on research and development. Huawei is a typical example. However, with the financial support of Blackrock and previous investors, Sound Network will find a clear development path through capital investment and patented technology. As a technology company that has a clear B2B positioning and can provide customized, commercialized and technical solutions, the prospect of sound network is still very broad.
For Sound Network, the unexpected popularity of Clubhouse is just the beginning.