Author Zhao Xiaoxiao
Editor Kong Lujiao
Eupolyphaga com
Tang Zhen (IKEA designer) can't remember clearly. This is the first scheme he designed on cool music.
The cool music in her mouth is an online home design platform. The three co-founders, Huang and Chen Hanghe, are alumni, graduated from UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and worked in top Internet companies such as NVIDIA, Google and Amazon. They all have strong technical genes.
20 1 1 Huang and Chen Hang founded Kujiale and invited them to join. At first, the platform only made online design tools. Later, it continuously expanded its product and service system and began to provide solutions for marketing, production, management, supply chain and other scenarios. As a leader in the home design software industry, Kujiale is favored by capital, with an average annual financing, and its 20 19 year valuation exceeds 10 billion US dollars, making it a unicorn in the industry.
In 2020, Kujiale completed a new round of financing, led by Gaochun Capital and Coatue, with a post-investment valuation of more than 2 billion US dollars.
Recently, Kujiale's plan to go public in the United States was revealed. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have been selected as joint lead underwriters, and the estimated fundraising scale is 500 million US dollars. The entrepreneurial stories of these three alumni and the luxurious investment lineup behind them gradually surfaced.
Kujiale founding team
From left to right are CTO, Chairman Huang and CEO Chen Hang.
Returning to China from Silicon Valley to start a business
Behind the cool music is the story of three alumni starting a business together.
In 2008, two computer graduates from Zhejiang University, Huang and Chen Hang, chose to go to UIUC for further study. On the plane to the United States, they met Zhu Hao, a computer graduate from Tsinghua University who is also studying in UIUC.
At that time, China's home software industry was just budding, and Dr. Chen Weichang of Columbia University founded ——MyHome3D Company, which was the predecessor of the American Ivovo (home improvement Internet O2O service provider). In China, founded in 1994, Fiona Fang Software (IT technology solution provider in home industry) has been dancing solo.
After graduation, both Huang He stayed in the United States as engineers, while Chen Hang chose to return to China. At this time, China's online home improvement industry has developed by leaps and bounds, and VC has begun to notice and is willing to make tentative investments. This year, Huang, a software engineer in NVIDIA, decided to return to China to start a business, and invited his alumnus Chen Hang to join him. They scraped together 0.2 million/200 thousand, and in a small house, they built the prototype of Kule with a few second-hand equipment.
Starting a business is not easy. Although Huang and Chen Hang have studied graphics and image rendering technology in UIUC, they are still unable to reach the technical level. At the beginning of 20 12, they called Zhu Hao and invited him to join. At that time, Zhu Hao was in the low tide of his work in Silicon Valley, so he soon returned to China to join. In the same year, Cai Zhisen, vice president of Fiona Fang Software, left his job to start a business and founded Sanweijia with three partners.
Huang saw the broad prospects behind home software technology and wanted to use technology to solve the pain points in the home industry. After market tests in interior design, architecture, film and other industries, they found that the feedback of fast rendering renderings technology in the home industry is the best, and some home business enterprises have begun to seek cooperation one after another. So, they naturally determined this direction.
2011At the end of 2003, Kujiale was officially launched, and the platform provided massive materials for home improvement designers, including three-dimensional models of houses and furniture rendered at the speed of 10 second and SaaS design tools. Less than three months after it was launched, there were various posts on Weibo to discuss this new platform enthusiastically, and the popularity of cool music soon spread. 20 14 April, Kujiale became the most active home improvement community in China.
Cool music can achieve rapid development, and the number of users has increased rapidly, which has caught up with the dividend of the Internet to some extent. Starting from 20 14, the internet home improvement industry is on fire. Zhou Jianzhong founded China, and Cui Jian opened a clothing store in Beijing. Prior to this, Chen Weichang returned from the United States and established Aifuwo.
For a time, the track in the home software industry became extremely crowded. However, with the fast rendering technology of 10 second, Kujiale gained a share in the fierce competition.
Kujiale Office Environment (Source: Network)
What supports the IPO?
"Technology changes the world" is a phrase that Huang often talks about.
From the beginning, Kujiale did not position itself as a home improvement company, but a technology company. Both the founder of the company and the products of the company reveal a strong technical atmosphere.
At the beginning of the business, Kujiale won the customer base through word of mouth, chose crowdsourcing and built a floor plan gallery. After opening the market, Kujiale made another key decision, choosing universal rather than personalized SaaS service.
"As a newly established SaaS company, we need a solid data foundation and a standardized product architecture, and hope that common functions can serve a wider range of SMEs." Chen Hang once said to Entrepreneurship.
20 14 to 20 16 is the craziest three years of internet home improvement. With the advent of the industrial Internet era, the cool music that initially gained the reputation of new users through the Internet has become more and more profound, and the understanding of home industrialization has become more and more profound, trying to provide ecological solution services for the home industry under the influence of the industrial Internet.
From 20 17, Kujiale shifted its development focus to B-end users, and cooperated with home brands such as wood industry and Meikemeijia by using scientific and technological means such as AR shopping and VR scenes. On 20 18, Kujiale launched BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology, trying to bridge the gap between design and construction. Subsequently, a one-stop digital solution was released to help the digital upgrade of the home industry from channel, marketing and design to production and construction.
From providing designers with rendering tools, to providing marketing tools for home building materials dealers, and then empowering home, home improvement, building materials and other links with data and scene depth, Kulejia has always taken technology as a sharp knife and cut into the market step by step to build its own moat.
Today, Kujiale has three research centers in China, namely, Hangzhou R&D Center, Shanghai Huangpu Research Institute and Chengdu Tianfu Engineering Institute. There is also a team behind it, Koolab, which focuses on exploring the world's leading scientific research achievements such as computer graphics and ai artificial intelligence, and promoting the reform of the big home industry.
The rendering of cool music by IKEA designers (source: interviewee)
First-line VC competition
Technology is the strongest initial advantage of Kujiale, and it is also the key card to attract investors.
Along the way, Kujiale has completed at least eight rounds of financing, and the investment lineup behind it is also growing, including more than ten domestic and foreign first-line funds such as IDG Capital, GGV ggv Capital, Jingwei China, Shi Ming Capital, Hearst Capital, Yun Qi Capital, Shunwei Capital, Temasek, Gaoyou Capital, Coatue and Linear Capital.
Kulejia's financing story began with several founders and early Facebook employee Wang Huai.
Before 20 1 1 decided to return to China, Huang sought investment in Silicon Valley and talked about 50 or 60 funds that were unwilling to invest in him. I thought it would be smoother to go back to China for financing. I didn't expect to wait in line at the investor's door for a day and get a 5-minute introduction opportunity, but the investor refused it after only 1 minute.
After the storm, I finally saw the rainbow, and Huang and Chen Hang ushered in a turning point. Wang Huai, an early employee of Facebook and an alumnus of Zhejiang University, has always wanted to capture technology-driven startups. He soon became an angel investor of Kujiale and helped Kujiale meet Mao Chengyu, then a partner of IDG Capital (now a founding partner of Yun Qi Capital). On 20 13, Kujiale received tens of millions of rounds of investment from IDG capital.
The real turning point of Kulejia was after IDG capital entered. At that time, they had two choices, one was 2B and the other was 2C. Cool music is essentially a tool, which is very suitable for making 2B, but Mao Chengyu's suggestion is to make 2C. Subsequently, Coolpad Le Jia began to provide SaaS services for B-end designers and decoration companies based on the traffic accumulated at C-end, so as to realize the seamless connection between home improvement design tools and enterprise service software.
After the model is clear, Kujiale's financing road is getting smoother and smoother. In addition to the above-mentioned angel round and the A round investment of IDG Capital, Kujiale * * * completed five rounds of financing from 20 14 to 20 19. In 20 19, Kujiale completed the D+ round of financing led by Gao Yan Capital, followed by Shunwei Capital and GGV ggv Capital, with a valuation of over US$ 6,543.84 billion, making it an industry unicorn in one fell swoop.
Kujiale's latest round of financing was led by Gaochun Capital and Coatue in 2020, with a post-investment valuation of more than 2 billion US dollars. This new round of investment, Coatue entered the market for the first time. Compared with the valuation of $65.438 billion after the D+ round of investment in 2065.438+09, the valuation of Kujiale doubled again in just one year.
In the process of trial and error, Kujiale found its own profit model, and SaaS software sales became its main source of income. In 2020, its revenue exceeded several hundred million dollars.
At present, there are over 25 million registered users, over 40 million product model materials, over 5 million daily renderings, over 20,000 cooperative brand enterprises and designers in more than 80 countries and regions around the world, and the overall coverage rate of China home market exceeds 70%.
Now, this 10-year-old home software unicorn is about to go public in the United States. Obviously, Cool Music is ready.
"The key to listing is whether the strategy, business and products of Kujiale can be better. It is necessary to expand new business to a certain proportion in order to hold up the next wave of highs after listing. " Huang said in an interview with the media.