Last weekend, a startup story was suddenly hot in Moments of WeChat and the related app rose to the top of the “Free” ranking in App Store. The story, written and drawn by a female cartoonist called Annie, is about hardships she encountered in the process of starting a business.
By drawing cartoons on campus lives, Annie is popular among many university students, especially female students, and became much more famous during last weekend because of her touching biography.
Such stories, or may I call it a marketing method, is not rare in China’s Internet cycle. For example, several app developers also wrote about their arduousexperiences during the last two years, and successfully drew attention from bosses of large game companies or investors.
But the problem is, will their “success” continue?
Luo Yonghao, once an English teacher and now founder of Smartisan Digital, saw his weibo followers increasing to over ten million in the past two years, along with his stories on his Android-based ROM and upcoming T1 phone, but ten days ago, he confessed that only 120,000 phones were sold in the past half year.
Things always become complicated when it comes to money. An entrepreneur in my Moments of WeChat said he was touched by the story, but download the cartoon app? No way! It has been extremely hard to make people download or keep a new app now.
Another famous tech writer – Lan Xi is also pessimistic on Annie’s cartoon app, due to potential copyright disputes and fast food type content with poor continuity. “I wish one day there will be no turgid personal show or elaborate moral bundling, be unalloyed in starting a business,” said Lan Xi.