I’d Rather Cry in a BMW Than Smile on the Back of a Bicycle With You…

Stanford Speaks: Dr. Li Song, Founder & Chairman, Zhenai.com

Breakfast, Thursday 16 June 2016, 07:45-9:45 am, The Hong Kong Club
Hosted by HK Club Member, Mr. Peter Amour

How Zhenai Injected Traditional Chinese Marriage Culture into e-Dating:
And Became China’s Largest Dating Service Despite Industry Struggles with Fraud, “Hormone-Filled Apps” and Achieving Long-Term Monetization When Your Happiest Customers Always Leave You (When They Marry!)

Event Details:
The Stanford GSB Chapter of Hong Kong is pleased to invite you for breakfast and conversation with Dr. Li Song, founder and Chairman of privately-held Zhenai, China’s largest e-dating service (100 million registered users, growing by 40,000 users a day/40% CAGR), in an industry projected to grow to USD 1.6 billion in revenues by year-end 2016. Dr. Li’s own career path prior to running China’s leading e-dating service is highly unusual, having begun his career in genetic engineering before switching to finance and then internet entrepreneurship.

In a low-barrier to entry, crowded market, Zhenai (founded in 2005, in which Match.com took at 20% stake in 2011), has successfully focused on the relatively more price-indifferent marriage oriented customer, taking traditional Chinese courtship traditions and modernizing them online. In parallel, Zhenai relies heavily on off-line advertising, using such high profile endorsers as Le Jia, host of the “If You Are the One” television dating show to reinforce its market positioning. Separate from its on-line services, however, Zhenai has over 1,000 hong niang “red ladies” to help single men and women build an appealing profile, give tips on dressing, locations for first dates, and ask the often difficult questions other embarrassing to directly pose to their potential matches. Such services come at a premium, with Zhenai charging some of the highest rates in the industry: USD 800 for 6 months of matchmaking services; USD 64 for 12 months of online dating and USD 1500 for a face to face meeting with your matchmaker.

Despite its significant potential, however, the Chinese market faces significantly different risks and challenges from its Western counterparts.

Tinder, for example, is able to leverage Facebook to import a user’s profile and real world friends. But in China, where Facebook is banned, trying to “leverage” multiple social platforms featuring user names and various kitten and cat pictures is hardly a credible “Facebook alternative” for such an app. In the West, the typical dating profile of “height, weight, marital status, job” looks almost superficial versus the level of specificity required by potential matches in China. Exact weight, exact height, proof of car/property ownership (65% of Tier One City Chinese women will not marry a man until he owns a home), exact monthly salary, hukou, ethnicity, local dialect, and, in the case of sites such as Zhenai, explicit confirmation that potential matches are looking for a spouse on the site and not randomly dating. Not to mention blood type, where a type A (believed to be perfectionists) might recoil at the idea of dating an AB type (arty, mysterious and unpredictable).

All this in a society where the past Single Child Policy has made it more difficult to find a spouse and raised the stakes of doing so; where 27% of urban women in their late 20s are not married (compared to only 7% in 1982); where 15% of the population is single (200 MM young adults); where it is estimated that 15% to 20% of young men may never find brides; yet where 90% of Chinese still feel women should be married by age 27 or risk becoming “leftover ladies”; and where customers can remain as fickle as anywhere in the world, as contestant Ms. Ma Nuo’s famous response (“I would rather cry in a BMW….”) to her unemployed suitor on TV’s If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), revealed.

In parallel to these cultural challenges, the PRC e-dating sector also faces significant business upheaval.

Consolidation has changed the players (for example, the recent announced merger of Baihe/LoveWorld Inc. and the former #1 site, Jiayun.com Int’l). At the same time, well-funded, well-connected new entrants continue to appear, ever more sub-segmenting an already complex market. Such players include Momo, which leverages location based services and is backed by Alibaba; Tantan, a Tinder knock-off backed by Bertelsmann; Qinghifan, modelled on one lunch/one dinner invitations backed by Sequoia and Vertex/Temasek; or even WeChat Shake, Tencent’s feature that allows automatic connection with everyone within a given radius that shake their phone at the same time. Government pressure and oversight on the industry is also increasing. In Feb 2015, the Cyberspace Administration of China accused the industry of promoting fraud and the encouragement of prostitution, forcing more than 65 sites to shut down and remaining sites to enforce real name registration by their customers. Xinhua, in April 2014 accused Zhenai competitor Momo of being a “hormone-filled app providing a new mobile base for sexual trades and other illegal activities.”

How does Zhenai plan to meet these new competitors and their challenges? How does Zhenai think about long-term monetization in an industry where “your happiest customers (because they get married) are always leaving you”? And, what wisdom can Dr. Li share, personally, given his own career trajectory from scholar to banker to internet entrepreneur, on how to “optimize” one’s career in a world where black swan events can upset the best of laid plans, prestigious degrees and brilliant business insights?

The Stanford GSB Chapter of HK could not be more pleased to have Dr. Li share his insights on this often misunderstood industry, its future in China and his own career path. We hope you can join us.

Speaker’s Bio: DR. LI SONG

Regina Ip is a member of the Hong Kong Government Executive Counsel, Chairman of the New People’s Party, a Legco Member (for Hong Kong Island) and founder of the Savantas Policy Institute.  Often cited as a future Chief Executive of Hong Kong, her path has been one of deep roots both in Hong Kong and with Stanford.

Educated first in Hong Kong (St. Stephen’s Girls and then HKU with First Clas Honors), she began her career as an English teacher at New Method College which she quickly followed with a Masters degree from the University of Glasgow.  Her Government career began in 1975, eventually leading to head of the Industry Department, conducting trade negotiations on behalf of Hong Kong with the EU, the WTO and APEC and was followed initially by her 1996 appointment as Director of Immigration and appointment in 1996 as HK’s first ever female Secretary for Security. In these roles, she led the HKSAR passport’s visa-free acceptance across the globe, as well as taking the lead, in HK’s reunification with China, on such critical issues as the right of abode, the public order ordinance and the Cheung Chi Keung kidnapping cases. Regina was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star in 2002

In 2006 she left Government Service to return to Stanford, initially as a visiting scholar and then, as a successful candidate for the Master’s Programme in East Asian Studies (complementing her earlier Sloan Program Master’s from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business), prior to returning to Hong Kong and re-entering political life, founding the Savantas Policy Institute in 2006 and the New People’s Party in 2011.