Since the first half of 2020, Anchang Networks, which has undergone five years of transformation, has entered a harvest period: In January 2020, in the first batch of cloud MSP management service provider capability assessments hosted by the China Communications Standards Association Cloud Computing Standards and Open Source Promotion Committee, Anchang Chang was awarded the "excellent" cloud MSP with the highest score; in April's Love Analysis "2020 China Cloud Computing Vendors List", An Chang was the only cloud MSP selected; August became the Gartner 2020 China ICT Technology Maturity Curve Report The “benchmark provider” of multi-cloud services officially joined the International CNCF Cloud Native Computing Foundation in the same month.
At the end of 2014, Anchang was still a managed data center service provider (Managed Hosting), mainly engaged in server hosting and leasing business, combined with the differentiated advantages of operation and maintenance management services to compete for customers, and the staff size was only more than 160.
Anchang began to explore managed cloud service providers (Managed Cloud) in 2015, launching its own small-scale public cloud IaaS services, and further expanding its operation and maintenance management service capabilities in the cloud environment, emphasizing from cloud infrastructure to operation and maintenance The point of differentiation of managed one-stop I/O services.
In 2017, after three years of exploration, Anchang formally determined its position on the cloud computing runway, taking cloud MSP as its strategic direction for the next ten years, and successively reaching strategic partnerships with several public cloud giants to further develop peace Extend its own genes and advantages of management service capabilities for many years. After obtaining Tencent's C round of investment in 2018, it began to deploy to the high-value PaaS software and service field. In October 2019, it passed the highest level of CMMI5 evaluation in the global software field, marking the world's top software maturity and project management capabilities. By mid-2020, the company has grown to more than 800 employees and is expected to reach more than 1,000 by the end of 2020.
Behind An Chang's five-year seemingly "thought-out" transformation, in the words of CEO Cheng Xiaozhong, "every day is a life and death process." Behind this seemingly easy but difficult transformation and upgrading is also a promoter and helper, a financial advisory and management consulting composite service organization that focuses on technology and corporate services-Titanium Capital. As a professional service organization rooted in the industry, Titanium Capital has been deeply involved in every step of Anchang's five-year strategic transformation and organizational iterative upgrade.
To serve and accompany the growth of a new generation of technology startups as its mission
Titanium Capital: In the 10-15 year window of traditional IT moving towards the cloud era, a number of new IT listed companies that can directly compete with international manufacturers will definitely appear in the Chinese market. Titanium Capital is firmly optimistic about the opportunities in this era and patiently accompanies potential players from The founder grows into an entrepreneur.
In November 2014, Anchang had been in operation for 7 years when it landed on the NEEQ. Becoming a public company is only the beginning of Anchang's new round of growth challenges. What is the beginning of the cloud computing boom? How to transform a developing technology concept into an effective company business model and form scale revenue and profits? This is the opportunity and challenge Anchang faces. By coincidence, the founder team of Anchang started a dialogue with Titanium Capital founder Zhou Heming.
The outcome of the dialogue between Anchang and Titanium Capital is that the two parties have implemented an open cooperation agreement, which is simply the "FA financial consultant + management consulting" model. With the help of Anchang as a seed client, Titanium Capital will implement the concept of reforming the organizational model of traditional investment banks and consulting institutions, and use a service platform model to help high-growth SMEs develop faster and more stable. The so-called service platform, that is, the organizational model of Titanium Capital is an open partner system, which is open to experts in various fields of technology and corporate services and veterans with industry resources. These experts and veterans do not have to leave their original jobs and at the same time You can release your knowledge and resources to support growing SMEs.
Innovate the traditional operating model of investment banks and consulting institutions with digital organization
Titanium Capital: The organizational philosophy of traditional professional service organizations is "internal circulation", and the internal and external boundaries are very clear. In the era of digital Internet, Titanium Capital will go one step further and be reclassified as the “exporter” and “receiver” of capabilities and resources, combining the “inner loop” and “outer loop” to form a “dual loop”, using fully digital Tools and platforms to connect and organize customers, partners and operations.
To put it simply, Titanium Capital is to gather elite resources in the technology and corporate service industries, and then import them to some small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs that have real technical strength and business potential, work hard, and develop in line with the general trend of the industry. Companies, thereby solving the growth problems of such SMEs and startups. At the time of the establishment of Titanium Capital, there were more than 40 partners, covering experts in technology, industry, finance, finance, law, media, strategic management, human resources, etc. The main bodies were experts in the IBM Global Financing Department and IBM Business Consulting Department. The purpose of these experts participating in Titanium Capital is more to help China's own information technology industry.
Titanium Capital has built a set of internal and external digital collaborative work platforms. Partners share data and information according to authorization, and collaborate and carry out work more flatly in accordance with business specifications and processes. Many investment institutions have come here to exchange ideas and expressed their amazement at the digital level of an FA financial advisory institution and hope to introduce it. This also confirms that Titanium Capital is not a small team seeking to "do some business", but an aspiring innovator in the field of professional services.
In the past five years, Titanium Capital has been deeply involved in Anchang’s transformation and upgrading, and has fulfilled its original intention: providing capital services and coaching consulting services to assist operations, and through the two-wheel drive of industrial operation and capital operation, allowing finance and capital to serve the industry Development, thereby promoting technology and business service startups from small to large, from large to strong. Facing an uncertain future with "partnership thinking", Titanium Capital joins hands with Anchang to embark on a new development model with the concept of "co-creation".
Thinking and organizing financing from the perspective of enterprise development
Titanium Capital: In the era of consumer Internet, capital is actually a very important player in competition. To a certain extent, "more money" can defeat "less money". In the age of the industrial Internet, capital is not omnipotent. It may not be easy for a company to grow bigger, but the ability to live is very strong. "Being yourself" rather than "beating opponents" is the correct strategy for competitive development. Therefore, attempts to rely on large amounts of financing to enhance competitiveness may be the beginning of the "pit".
In 2015, Anchang plans to launch A round of financing due to the investment needs of transformation and development. What can be presented to investors at this time is only a rough basic disk and future development ideas. Titanium Capital assisted the founding team of Anchang to face investors together, from the deconstruction of the traditional IT architecture era to the analysis of the evolution of the cloud era, summarizing the differences between the characteristics of the Chinese and American markets, and proposing an enterprise development path suitable for the Chinese market, and finally won A well-known investment institution that has a consensus on the trend of the information technology industry was recognized and obtained investment by Cybernaut, and Anchang officially embarked on the road of transformation and development.
In 2017, after Titanium Capital assisted Anchang to complete the B round of financing, and the founding team carefully deduced the increasingly clear pattern and trend of cloud computing in China, and jointly determined the financing and corporate development ideas of "preemptive card position" with the founding team. The local and Tencent Cloud exchanges and consultations, and finally successfully obtained Tencent’s C round of investment in mid-2018. At the same time, they also found a suitable position in the Tencent Cloud ecosystem and industry, and showed their peers a new “bright eye”. feel.
In mid-2019, Anchang is preparing to launch the D1 round of financing. When discussing with the management team, Zhou Heming believes that cloud computing is currently in the Warring States period, and Anchang needs to continue to increase investment in technology and business in the future, and it will be the first card in the C round. On the basis of position”, further striving for “industry blessing” will be more beneficial for enterprises to lay a large-scale foundation in the industry. The short-term desire of conventional financial investment institutions to release profits may affect the company’s operation and development thinking in the next 2-3 years, which is likely "The enterprise is smaller." After forming a consistent idea, Titanium Capital listed a list of potential industry investors, and organized exchanges and communication in a targeted manner, and finally completed the investment jointly led by Tencent and Lenovo Enterprise Technology Group, SAIF Investment Fund and listed company Donghua Software D1 round of financing jointly invested by the actual controller.
SAIF Investment Fund completed its investment decision in half a month and became the only financial investment institution in this round. Chief partner Yan Yan told Cheng Xiaozhong and Zhou Heming that SAIF participated in the distribution of Digital China from Lenovo Group as a cornerstone investor in 2000. Although SAIF is a financial investment institution, it has a deep insight into the changes in the industry. What Anchang wants to do, needless to say, we understand! A strategic investor portfolio that is highly in line with the company's vision, with the joint injection of customer, channel and partner resources behind it and a wider range of business collaboration, to build a win-win and multi-win disk structure for Anchang and all parties.
In the process of adjusting the company’s organizational structure and operating model, the transformation of financial accounting and statement subjects is a very critical part. It will also affect internal and affect the judgment of investors in the secondary market. Titanium Capital exerts its professional capabilities and influences the industry. Industry insights, timely suggestions on how to adjust the financial report structure, statement subjects, income distribution and business interpretation data and content in the interim report and annual report, to help the company’s internal management team understand the effectiveness of business operations, and to communicate with the capital market about the transformation of the company Phased results.
After the completion of the D1 round of financing, many financial funds will "register" with Titanium Capital. Zhou Heming will actually communicate Anchang's strategic path and stage with investors, and put forward suggestions on what stage is suitable for entry according to the respective characteristics of the funds. , It is reported that many funds have "queued for entry signals." Zhou Heming said that all arrangements must be judged and decided in favor of Anchang's development.
Deeply help enterprises to carry out strategic transformation
Titanium Capital: The explosive growth curve in the consumer Internet era may not be directly applicable in the industrial Internet era, because the complexity of strategy and organization is an order of magnitude higher than that of providing products and services to the enterprise market. "Thinking" needs to transition to "think well before doing it", strategy and organization go first, and business can effectively keep up.
Including cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, semiconductor, Internet of Things, blockchain and other technology startups that have emerged since 2012, they often put most of their energy into technology and product research and development, neglecting or lacking in market adaptation and corporate strategy And organizational leadership development. In other words: being a home company is not a single thing like developing a product.
After the start of cooperation between Anchang and Titanium Capital, the internal and external boundaries were also broken. Zhou Heming was appointed as the vice president of Anchang's strategy and capital, leading the team to go deep into the company's daily operations, especially participating in routine executive meetings to fully understand the company's operations. After Tencent's Series C investment in Anchang in 2018, Zhou Heming was further invited to join Anchang's board of directors. In the process of promoting Anchang's business and organizational transformation and upgrading, the executive team of Titanium Capital played a more comprehensive role as a booster.
Since 2015, Anchang’s strategic planning has been basically completed at mid-to-high-level annual meetings, and the Titanium Capital team has been deeply involved throughout the process.
At the 2016 Hangzhou Conference, Titanium Capital led the organization of benchmarking analysis of domestic and foreign companies;
The 2017 Sanya Conference organized industry experts to discuss Anchang’s strategic positioning in the next ten years;
In the Qingdao meeting in 2018, business objectives and organizational upgrades were formulated;
The Shanghai meeting in early 2019 (the first board of directors after Tencent invested in Anchang), adjusted the business unit and decomposed business indicators;
In the 2019 Tonglu Conference, the introduction of titanium capital coaching workshops for middle and senior management teams;
At the 2020 Xi'an Conference, the system will implement a coaching workshop for operation and management.
These six mid-level and high-level annual meetings have promoted the overall business strategy transformation and organizational structure upgrade of Anchang Networks from 2015 to 2020. According to Cheng Xiaozhong, CEO of Anchang, the company's transformation from 2015 to 2017 was basically in a state of oscillating left and right, and the inside was always full of different voices. At the high-level meeting of Anchang Networks in 2016, Titanium Capital led the selection of several cloud computing business models and benchmarking companies at home and abroad, and led Anchang's executive team to conduct in-depth research on relevant financial reports and market analysis; Sanya in 2017 At the conference, Titanium Capital once again went deep into the strategic discussions of Anchang Networks executives, and finally determined the strategic direction of Cloud MSP.
After the direction was clear, Anchang began to implement it firmly. In June 2017, Anchang and Tencent Cloud formally reached a strategic cooperation and became Tencent Cloud’s first MSP partner, hybrid cloud partner and authorized technical service center. At the same time, it cooperated with Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. The cooperation between the two countries has also made breakthrough progress.
At the beginning of 2019, Anchang held the first board of directors after Tencent's investment, and re-adjusted and divided each business unit based on the established strategy, and divided the original IDC business into an independently accounted business unit, which is a new cloud MSP business. Development frees up space. Titanium Capital is also deeply involved in the adjustment of the organizational structure, especially due to the large changes in the organization and involving multiple internal personnel. As a new director of the board of directors of Anchang, Zhou Heming has conducted a lot of communication and guidance with core members, and Anchang has been relatively smooth After passing the turbulent period caused by organizational changes, the development plan and business goals for 2019-2020 were jointly finalized.
The core elements of a start-up enterprise's leap from opportunistic development to systemic development: strategy, organization, and leadership
Titanium Capital: To be a large startup enterprise, it needs to go through three "reproducible" stages in simple terms. The first stage is that technology or products can be copied; the second stage is that sales or customers can copy; the third stage is The organization can be copied. The closer to the stage of rapid growth, the more a company’s soft internal capabilities are needed to drive external performance. The company has gradually moved from opportunistic development to systemic development. Strategy, organization, and leadership are the three starting points. The intangible root: culture.
During the five-year transformation period from 2015 to 2020, at each stage, it is not only the upgrading of business strategy and structure, but also the adjustment of organizational structure and personnel, and the optimization of the division of labor and collaboration between the founding team of Anchang. In the process of grasping various complex disks, Titanium Capital has always upheld the business value of: looking at everything from the perspective of maximizing the company's value and making auxiliary decisions. As an external consultant, Titanium Capital must face the constant adjustment of the relationship between the founding team and the senior management team. Titanium Capital has taken on the lubrication and adhesion functions, as well as the guiding and supporting functions.
In mid-2019, with the development of Anchang’s strategy in place and entering the implementation stage, the scale of enterprise personnel has grown rapidly. Titanium Capital has introduced coaching workshops for Anchang’s middle and senior management. This is the Tonglu meeting in 2019 and the 2020 meeting. Xi'an Conference. Titanium Capital’s corporate coaches not only bring tools and methods such as business model canvas and strategy decoding, but more importantly, lead the core executive team to conduct in-depth discussions and co-creation, so that middle and senior management can think about business goals and business goals from a future and overall perspective. opportunity. For the first time, the team jumped out of its usual business perspective, discovered consensus growth opportunities together, and jointly formulated corporate development goals. Of course, such a conversion is a challenge to the team itself. In the past, I used to listen to the founder’s team. As long as the task was completed, it was good. Now we must think about the strategy together. By examining the gap in our own cognition and ability, we must quickly adjust the mentality and ability. And adapt to the organization.
After starting with the strategy, Titanium Capital’s corporate coaches will follow-up to review the executive team, including their experience, abilities, characteristics and motivation. They must cooperate with the implementation of the strategy, "set a set of standards, select a group of talents, and build a team. ", truly upgrade the team’s talents and leadership. Of course, the organizational system is also the homework that fast-growing companies must make up. In the past, it was "opportunity-oriented, only fast but not broken". In the future, it will be more "systemic growth". It will improve organizational support capabilities and shift from column operations to specialized military group operations to break organizational efficiency. Bottleneck.
In this process, Zhang Wei, who is in charge of cloud native and industry application business of Anchang, quickly grasped the relevant essentials, and led colleagues in this department to jointly apply the new tools to his own work, which opened the way for Anchang to launch the cloud MSP 2.0 stage. door.
Titanium Capital practices the road of co-creation with customers, it takes 10 years to deeply help 100 companies
The five-year road of "co-creation" between Anchang and Titanium Capital is not common in the impetuous technology venture capital circle. It requires both parties to have three elements at the same time: 1. Adhere to open and incremental thinking; 2. Treat each other as partners rather than a simple supply and demand relationship; 3. Adhere to long-term valueism not to be affected by short-term fluctuations.
Anchang CEO Cheng Xiaozhong said that there are many institutions in the market that provide financial advisory services and management consulting services. In the eyes of many Anchang employees, Titanium Capital is a "family" relationship. In some business scenarios, it is necessary to purchase professional services from other service organizations. More business cooperation belongs to the project level, and the "family" back-to-back trust entrustment stems from the idea and loyalty to time. In the future, both parties will increasingly show the long-term value of "compound interest" effect.
Zhou Heming, the founder of Titanium Capital, said that as an investment bank and management consulting composite service platform focusing on technology and corporate services, Titanium Capital completed the 0-1 starting stage in 3 years; it took 2 years to complete the 1-10 The reserve period is to consolidate internal organization and business norms; it has laid a solid foundation for the development of the 10-100 stage. The goal of Titanium Capital is to help 100 companies in depth in 10 years and accompany them to a broader future through "co-creation". Specifically, Titanium Capital hopes to help the company grow into Accenture in China in the cloud computing era.