On October 23, the former star company in the enterprise service field and collaborative office service provider "Today's Target" issued a statement saying that at 10 a.m. on October 20, 2021, due to failure to fully pay the IDC service fee, the IDC service provider disconnected

Category：hotcomm

2025-05-16

Author | Deng Yongyi

Editor | Su Jianxun

On October 23, the former star company and collaborative office service provider in the field of enterprise services issued a statement saying that at 10 a.m. on October 20, 2021, due to the failure to fully pay the IDCh service fee, the IDC service provider disconnected the network and service service for today's target, resulting in more than 80 hours of interruption of platform services.

Today's target announcement on October 23, several points in the company's current embarrassment - IDC requires a significant increase in repayment amount, far exceeding the current target's near-term payment ability; various domestic and foreign factors have prevented investors from providing financial support to today's target; Today's target team has been insisting on half or even zero salary for four years, trying to maintain platform operations...

On the evening of October 28, Today's target released an open letter on the homepage again, saying that due to debt disputes, the equity of the affiliated company was frozen and could not resume services at the time previously agreed upon, and is discussing the possibility of being taken over as a whole. At the same time, the company emphasized that the platform is operating normally and all data is intact. We will strive to communicate with IDC in the future to allow users to retrieve the data.

Today's latest announcement

Today's current target was established in 2005. Along the way, it has witnessed the exploration and struggle of Chinese SaaS manufacturers in the past 20 years. From the former leading collaborative office manufacturer to the current situation, the journey we have taken today is a pity.

Former pioneer

Today's goal was once a group of explorers in the field of collaborative office .

In 2004, the big brother of enterprise service Salesforce was launched in the United States and launched the SaaS transformation, which deeply affected the payment methods of software. In China, across the ocean, the software industry has also begun to enter the online era this year. Many PC-based companies have begun to explore SaaS, such as XTools, 80k , today's goal, etc.

In 2000, domestic software companies in the office field did not even have the concept of SaaS. In the track where we are today, for example, OA already has companies such as Lanling , Fanwei , etc. of the same period. These companies serve more traditional large customers and are expensive; small and medium-sized customers in the past were difficult to find suitable office collaboration software, and today's goal is to start from this part of the demand.

In 2005, we aim to build a team of 10 people, positioning it on the Internet to "provide simple and effective business tools for enterprises." The first generation of products was launched two years after research and development, mainly including instant messaging, tasks, planning, logs and other information, and task management functions. After that, the goal has gradually formed a "big and complete" route, and entered the IM (instant messaging), and integrates more than dozens of applications in the product .

Today's target early product

has been ahead of the industry. An early practitioner in the field of collaborative office told 36Kr that when a new batch of collaborative office companies emerged in 2014, the goal has been to cultivate for ten years, and the OA functions are perfect and easy to use. "There are not many companies that integrate attendance, check-in, business approval, and collaborative offices in the industry. Today's goal is to lead the product," he said.

By 2010, we aim to launch the core product "main line", announcing that there will be "no limit on functions, no limit on time, ready to use, and permanently free of charge". This was quite radical in the past, especially for the large and full product route, with R&D and operational expenses being quite large.

Today's goal is almost one of the first startups to explore free strategies. Before, traditional enterprise service software basically never talked about free. Software such as Kingdee UFIDA, at most, it can be used to conduct activities for enterprises or channel dealers at ultra-low prices.

日本文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文文� In order to quickly expand the market, I chose this strategy today, hoping to quickly expand the user scale.

free strategy has been effective. Since 2014, the number of registered companies today has grown rapidly, with more than one million registered companies in 2016.Between 2014 and 2015, the target also received two rounds of US$70 million in financial funds from Tiger Fund , which was considered a huge sum of money in the corporate service field that year.

holds sufficient ammunition. During this period, the team has tried multiple commercialization paths, including third-party cooperative commission sharing, advertising, etc., and it was even close to profitability in 2016. Around 2017, the target number of users has reached 3 million.

But the good times didn't last long, and the free strategy was unsustainable. Today's goal was to announce the re-announcement of fees in 2017, which caused a considerable number of customers to leave and turn to other similar collaborative office software such as DingTalk and Teambition that were emerging that year.

Since then, as big companies gradually entered the market, emerging players have emerged, and the collaborative office field has gradually shown that big companies are making general platforms and startups are making deep applications. Today's goal is gradually lagging behind the track and there are few voices in the market.

SaaS business model struggled

This goal has been early, but it has not made its mark in the torrent of the times. This company's exploration path reflects several issues that have been discussed in the field of enterprise services for a long time: Is it true that

paid?
Is it a small customer or a big customer?
The big factory is here, what should I do with the startup company?

Around 2014, collaborative office was the first track to emerge in the To B field. In the early stages, whether it was Teambition, Tower or Worktile in the same period, they all started with small and medium-sized customers, but limited to the survival cycle of small and medium-sized customers, the market's payment habits have never been cultivated, and no one can understand this path.

free strategy gradually becomes ineffective as major manufacturers enter. DingTalk was launched in 2015, and it is difficult for startups to compete with it for a long time with the strong resources of Alibaba . Both Fenxiang Shengke and Mingdao had a free battle with DingTalk in 2016, but both ended in failure and eventually transformed and continued to develop from SaaS to PaaS, trying to deepen the product and bind it tighter with customers.

This is a landmark event for the entire SaaS circle, quickly allowing startups to face a reality: to be small and medium-sized customers, you must face large factories that already have a huge number of users, and large factories already have profound To C genes. Since 2016, domestic enterprise service companies have gradually shifted to payment, from comprehensive platforms to vertical applications, and many manufacturers have shifted from small and medium-sized customers to medium-sized customers.

. At several key nodes, today's goal is gradually lagging behind the industry, and every step of its transformation seems to be one step slower.

Starting from 2017, after DingTalk, Feishu , and Qiwei gradually entered the market, major manufacturers used IM as the entrance to establish a three-party ecosystem, which means that it is difficult for a large and comprehensive route to break through. In this year, although the goal of foreign capital withdrawal and transfer today had to shift from free to paid, the previous slogan of "permanent free" was deeply rooted in people's hearts. After charging, many small and medium-sized customers turned to DingTalk and Teambition, which grew rapidly at the time, and there was a certain loss at the customer level. At the financing level of

, there has been no financing news since 2014, which has made the operating conditions worse. From the overall environment, the field of enterprise services has developed rapidly since 2011, newly established enterprises reached their peak in 2015, and the capital winter began in 2016. Investors are returning to rational investment in the enterprise service field, and it is difficult for them to simply throw a lot of money into concepts or broad markets. Hard indicators such as growth, revenue, and profit have become the focus again.

Many manufacturers have made their choices later. Teambition was acquired by Alibaba in 2018, and Tower was acquired by ONES last year; earlier OA service providers, Lan Ling, etc., chose to cooperate in depth with DingTalk, and in 2018, it received strategic investment of DingTalk of hundreds of millions of yuan, forming a service network of small and medium-sized enterprises + large enterprises with DingTalk.

Now the goal has always insisted on independence and has tried to save himself many times. After turning to charging in 2017, the goal is to launch AI intelligent collaboration products. After experiencing layoffs and reducing the scale of free services in 2019, it will begin to provide multi-tenant PaaS services in 2020. But these efforts have little effect and the team has never found a suitable direction.

collaborative office track has been changing rapidly, and the wheels roll forward.At the end of 2019, WeChat and Qiwei were connected, and Feishu vigorously expanded the domestic market in 2020. During the epidemic last year, it further promoted the entire track. The number of users of DingTalk alone doubled, and Tencent Meeting also became the leading manufacturer of cloud video conferencing SaaS in China.

It is obvious that the infrastructure status of large factories has become more stable. This means that in various ecosystems, manufacturers need to find their own position. What route should we continue to follow today's goal? It is really a difficult question.

Former pioneer

SaaS business model struggled

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