快手：为所有人打造的生活分享平台1（中译英）

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快手：为所有人打造的生活分享平台
Kuaishou: A Life Sharing Platform Built for Everyone

快手是一个记录和分享生活的平台，公司自2011年创立，在过去6年时间里，稳步成长为中国最大的生活分享平台。在快手上，用户可以用照片和短视频记录自己的生活点滴，也可以通过直播与粉丝实时互动。快手的内容覆盖生活的方方面面，用户遍布全国各地。
Kuaishou is a platform built to record and share daily life. Established in 2011, it has grown steadily over the last 6 years into the largest life sharing platform in China. On this platform, users can record their daily life with photos and short videos, or interact with their fans through live video. The content of Kuaishou covers all aspects of daily life, and users of the platform are found across the country.
快手是用户导向、技术驱动的公司。目前，快手累计注册用户超过5亿，月活跃用户超过1.5亿，日活跃用户超过6500万，每日UGC视频上传量数百万条。从2011年至今，快手累积近6年的UGC短视频资源，库存量已超过21亿条。2017年3月，完成新一轮3.5亿美元的融资。此次融资由腾讯领投，这也是继上轮百度领投之后，快手再次获得互联网巨头的肯定。然而快手在高速成长期却没花一分钱推广，也从来不依赖大V来获取流量与关注，与绝大多数互联网产品走一线城市向二三四线与农村渗透的模式不同，快手走的是接地气的路线，用户自然增长，与中国移动互联网用户分布高度一致。这款“逆向生长”的本土互联网产品是如何火起来的，要从公司的两位创始人宿华和程一笑的故事讲起。
Kuaishou Company is a user-oriented, technology-driven company. Total registered users of Kuaishou now exceed 500 million, with monthly active users exceeding 150 million and daily active users exceeding 65 million, and daily UGC video uploaded quantity has reached millions of units. From 2011 to present, the UGC short video resources accumulated by Kuaishou in the 6 years have exceeded 2.1 billion units. In March 2017, Kuaishou completed a new round of financing of USD 350 million, in which Tencent was the leading investor. This shows further recognition of Kuaishou by Internet giants, following the last round of financing in which Baidu was the leading investor. However, Kuaishou spent nothing for marketing even during its quick growth period, and never relied on Big Vs to get flow or attention. Different from most Internet products which expand from first-tier cities to second-tier, third-tier and fourth-tier cities, Kuaishou followed a “grounded” path, with naturally growing users and highly consistent user distribution as the mobile Internet in China. How did this “inversely growing” local Internet product become popular? We have to begin with the stories of the two founders, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao.

最佳搭档—众里寻他千百度
Best partners – searching constantly
宿华，清华理工男，按他的话说，“数学公式怎么推导，技术问题怎么解决，这些能力在清华训练得非常充分。”虽然，清华博士是无数学子的向往，但是，骨子里遗传着父亲创业基因的宿华，在博士二年级时决定退学，去清华科技园内的谷歌中国工作。在谷歌工作时，宿华去美国工作生活了大半年，回来后，宿华开始了他的第一次创业，做“视频广告网络”，但项目仅一年就因融不到钱而告终。在百度蛰伏近两年后，他再次创业，做移动搜索和推荐的引擎，最后以被阿里巴巴收购为结尾，这两次创业给宿华积累了宝贵的经验和第一桶金。第三次创业，宿华将目光从2B移到了2C 产品上，尝试做社交软件“圈圈”，随着“圈圈”的发展，宿华觉得方向不对，计划要改变产品方向，但又有点迷茫。
Su Hua is a “science geek” who graduated from Tsinghua University. In his own words, he has been “well trained in Tsinghua University to perform mathematical calculations and solve technical problems”. Although to be a PhD graduate of Tsinghua University is a dream of numerous students, Su Hua, has the genes of entrepreneurship inherited from his father, and decided to withdraw from the university in the second year of his doctoral study, and joined Google China in TusPark. During his work with Google, he lived in the US for several months, and after coming back he started up his first business, which was a “video advertisement network” project. However, that project ended within a year due to a lack of funding support. After working in Baidu for nearly two years, he started up a business again, which was a project related to mobile search and recommended search engine. This project was finally acquired by Alibaba. These two projects helped Su Hua to accumulate valuable experience and make the first “pot of gold”. In the third project of Su Hua, he turned his focus from B2B products to B2C products, and tried making a social networking software called “Quanquan”. Along with the development of “Quanquan”, he felt that there was something wrong in the development direction and planned to make a change, but he was unsure about where to go from there.
程一笑，低调优秀的产品工程师，2008年iPhone3G推出后，程一笑就托人代购，开始开发iOS。后来，程一笑加入人人网，一直在钻研iOS。2010年，程一笑带领4个人开始创业。最开始，他想做视频社交，但是当时网络条件、技术、市场环境都不成熟，视频社交的尝试失败。于是，程一笑开始做“GIF快手”。GIF快手是一款将视频转化为GIF格式图片的工具，很快受到了大众的欢迎，鼎盛时拥有几千万用户，日活跃用户上百万，但同时也有工具型产品的弱点：留存率偏低。程一笑开始考虑转型，要从工具转到社区，但是，后端压力突然增大，带宽问题增多。“我发现这些事情是我们搞不定的，希望有人能做这件事。”程一笑说。
Cheng Yixiao is an excellent but low-profile product engineer. After the launch of iPhone3G in 2008, he asked someone to buy the phone for him, and started to develop iOS. Later, he joined Renren.com, and continued to study iOS. In 2010, Cheng Yixiao started up a business with a four-member team organized by him. At first, he focused on video social networking, but the network conditions, technologies and market environment were not mature at that time, and his attempt failed. He then developed “GIF Kuaishou”, which was a tool that could convert videos to GIF pictures. It was very popular in users, with scores of millions of users at the height of prosperity and with millions of daily active users. It had the common disadvantage of tool products: a low retention rate. Then Cheng Yixiao considered a transition from tool to community, but faced the problems of suddenly increased background pressure and insufficient bandwidth. “I found we could not solve these problems, and really needed someone to do it for us,” said Cheng Yixiao.

众里寻他千百度，终于在投资人的引荐下，宿华和程一笑相遇了。两个人均为技术出身，有共同的产品愿景，都希望做能够记录和分享人生回忆的社交产品，“我们从晚饭后一直聊到凌晨两点，彼此价值观相似，易于相互理解；技能经历又很不同，亦很互补。”宿华回忆道。于是，宿华的7人团队和程一笑的4人团队开始尝试一起工作，互相磨合，共同创业。很快，双方团队就正式合并，共同运营快手。

After searching continuously, Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao finally met at the recommendation of investors. Both of them have a technical background, have a common product vision, and wish to develop social networking products that can record and share life memories. “We talked from supper until two o’clock in the morning. We could understand each other well due to having similar values, and having different but mutually complementary skills and experiences,” Su Hua recalled. Then, the 7-member team of Su Hua and the 4-member team tried working together. Soon, the two teams were formally merged with each other and began to operate Kuaishou together.