The dream woke up, and the people were scattered. Awake at night The LeEco headquarters in San Jose, 1st Avenue in Silicon Valley, has now gone empty; once the huge LeEco logo has disappeared. The entire 7,500-square-meter building has been completely closed and people are no longer allowed to enter; the stylish glass doors are tight. Locked up, no closing notices were posted; the huge parking lot that could have stopped more than 300 vehicles in the past was now empty and couldn't be seen in one car.  Ever enjoys the U.S. headquarters building  LeEco's logo is no longer there  Parking lot is empty LeTV has completely evacuated the United States. The Faraday Future Silicon Valley department, which once worked briefly here, has also rented another office. This building will no longer see Lexus-related traces. Once it was vociferous, and once it was busy. , It seems that everything has not happened. After the layoff last May, the building was already empty and it was only a matter of time to move away under high rental pressure.  No trace of LeTV USA can be found here After several rounds of layoffs, LeTV, which once had more than 800 employees, now has only three or four people. It is only responsible for the settlement of some of the remaining funds. Yang Lejie, the former financial director of LeTV, is responsible. LeTV's official website has long been inaccessible. Although the United States still has the remaining LeTV and mobile phone sales, sales and after-sales services for these inventory products have all been fully delivered to intermediate distributors.  Once LeTV U.S. headquarters Compared with the current depression and depression, just two years ago, it was a completely lively scene. In April 2016, Letv U.S. rented the two-story office building and invited the mayor of San José and the Chinese in San Francisco. Consul-General of the Consul General, high-profile to announce the 'North (Beijing) - Silicon (Valley) - Luo (Sungai)' strategic landing. Not far from this imposing headquarters, is Cisco's headquarters campus and Samsung Semiconductor's US headquarters.  Foreign Ministry official website screenshot No one would have imagined that since the official establishment of the Silicon Valley office in early 2015, LeStreet's American ecological dream has completely disappeared in less than three years and it has been completely disillusioned. The ambition of once “all-eco-American landed” has long since been distorted; Super-Apple Samsung's rhetoric, but also to become a joke. The price paid behind this is Jia Yueting burned hundreds of millions of dollars, is his cash from the Chinese stock market high cash. This American dream was done by Jia Yueting and also by him. LeTV is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jia Yueting. All the funds come from him. When he has a steady stream of funds, Letv USA digs its talents in the market. , Buying the land, advertising, product, momentary scenery; and when his funding chain breaks, LeTV is like a balloon leaking, rapidly shrinking business cutting personnel, until the end of a comprehensive contraction. LeTV’s dream originated in 2014. Jia Yueting once spent more than half a year overseas on the reason of “examination”. This led to speculations about the outside world. This scene was re-released three years later. However, Jia Yueting did come to Silicon Valley and Los Angeles that year. He also carefully examined the U.S. technology industry and tested the Tesla electric car. This gave birth to his dream of viewing the U.S. ecological dream; Inspired by the success of Serra and Musk. At the end of that year, Jia Yueting returned safely to China, and since then has opened an extremely high-profile 'ecological dream.' Since 2015, he and his public relations team have created too many marketing terms that are plausible. , 'Eco-reverse, open and closed loop, breaking the border, subverting the industry, blinding, eco-building, dream suffocating'. But even more dazzling is that LeTV almost subverted the traditional commercial laws, almost crazy into a Another industry, the introduction of another new product, the formation of one after another sub-economy, announced an investment again and again, and created a music ecosystem that includes seven sub-ecosystems.
Sniping on the apple causes revolt Letv USA is also part of this ecological dream. In March 2015, Letv USA quietly rented a 500-square-meter office in Redwood City, Silicon Valley, and began building a US headquarters. This office was subleased by Jia Yueting and invested 200 million U.S. dollars. Another electric vehicle company, Lucid (also called Actieva at the time), nowadays Jia Yueting still holds a large number of shares of Lucid, hoping to cash out from this one hundred million US dollars. As far as I know, this proposed nearly one year equity transfer transaction has not yet been completely completed. In the past three years, the person in charge of temporary or officially taking over LeTV has changed the position of eight. The former vice president of Jingdong, the former executive of the overseas association of Lenovo, former executives of Palm and Nokia, former vice president of Meizu, former vice president of Amazon China, former Huawei's two Western European leaders, to the current financial director of the original LeTV network Yang Lijie. Management come and go, continue to change, the longest but also only 9 months. The first public appearance of LeTV USA was the U.S. conference of LeTV. On April 13, 2015, LeTV released the first generation of super mobile phones in Beijing and San Francisco. It invited many political figures and dozens of Americans from the San Francisco Bay Area. The media participated in this glamorous press conference held at the site of the original Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. At the time, Le Li, the US preparation manager for LeTV, told me that super mobile phones and super TVs will be listed in the United States in 2015.  "Wall Street Journal" full-page music as advertising From the outset, LeTV in the United States has attracted a great deal of attention from the mainstream media in the United States with an amazingly generous investment. Compared with other domestic companies, they bought large-screen advertisements in Times Square in New York for dozens of seconds or even more than ten seconds and returned home. , LeTV's promotion in the United States can be described as a waste of money. Before this press conference, LeTV was incredibly at the same time in the three mainstream US media - New York's "Wall Street Journal", San Francisco's "San Francisco Chronicle", Los Angeles. The "Los Angeles Times" has published a full-page commercial "Letv is coming, Amazing awaits" (LTV is coming, wonderful), to warm up the upcoming super mobile phone.  US media report Jia Yueting compared apples to Nazis However, in the process of the release of the mobile phone, Jia Yueting directed the giant apple of the smart phone industry, but it brought a lot of controversy to him. He published an open letter attacking Apple in both Chinese and English, accusing Apple of 'closed mode'. Increasingly overbearing dictatorship, stifling innovation, and LeTV's model represents the future'; a big controversy is a music propaganda poster that LeTV regards Apple as a Nazi. This hyper-exaggerated self-promotion may have been tried in the country, but in fact it is LeTV has caused a very poor first impression among American media and netizens, and also laid sighs on the financial crisis of Lexon which was reported by many US technology blogs with a gloating tone. LeTV did not show its open and closed-loop model to American users that year. Perhaps it was LeTV’s overestimation of its R&D capabilities and patent licensing capabilities. A LeTV product manager told me at the end of 2015 that LeTV was not doing well. There are too many problems in the preparation for listing in the United States, especially in the UI. They do not want the first product to be branded in the United States. Compared with exaggerated marketing, LeTV took a more cautious and conservative approach in 2015. Super mobile phones were not listed in the US until the third generation in October 2016. However, at the end of 2015, the Chinese version of LeTV was The United States is first listed, targeting the more realistic Chinese market from the UI to the content. At least in this segment, LeTV's Chinese content + smart hardware model is indeed very attractive. Loss of control and expansion buried the bane If LeTV in 2015 continues to pave the way for the United States, then in 2016 LeTV will start a crazy leap forward. That year is the blind year of Jia Yueting's blind self-confidence, and it is also the beginning of the collapse omen. From 2016 to 2017, LeTV changed from a sharp expansion to a full-scale contraction like a roller coaster. It can be said that LeTV in 2017 is working hard to fill up pits for 2016. Like many sub-ecosystems of LeTV, LeTV is only a microcosm of that year. Whether it is China, India or the United States, whether it is a mobile phone, a TV or a car, Jia Yueting has expanded unrestrainedly in every business segment. With ecological anti-theory, it seems that with crazy input, users can be exchanged, and they can push up stock prices and win the future. In general, Chinese companies expanding in the United States will first consider input-return ratios, and will not invest in local expansion investment at an early stage, but will gradually increase in size as their business grows. However, LeTV’s expansion in 2016 is entirely a Derailed trains. Personnel recruitment, acquisition of land, product launches, advertising marketing, internal administration, music as the United States this degree of excess is almost reflected in all aspects. At the beginning of 2016, LeTV’s office in Redwood City had only 30 employees. When the new office building was relocated in April, the total number of employees had reached more than 200. When the Big Bang conference was held in October, LeSco’s Silicon Valley employees The total number has exceeded 500. In addition, LeTV has offices in Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego. They are responsible for music content, LeTV Cloud and smart phone related businesses. At the peak of expansion, LeTV will recruit more than 20 people almost every week. Supervisors in various departments are rushing to ask for the demand. According to the expected business scale in the next few years, employees will be hired from various technology companies in Silicon Valley. If not, 11 The monthly music crisis broke out, LeTV will continue to recruit. Throughout the expansion process, LeS has seen an obvious overstaffed problem in the United States. The internal design team of the marketing department alone has recruited more than 20 people. The various teams only managed to expand significantly, but did not provide sufficient working arrangements for new employees. After joining LeTV in the United States, many employees fell into a state of idleness. Some Chinese managers were not prepared for internationalization and it was difficult to effectively coordinate the work of foreign employees. At the time, there was a lot of people at Glassdoor, the US employee comment platform. About LeTV's working atmosphere, Tucao. In terms of team internationalization, Letv North America also made a lot of moves and successively dug three senior American executives: Shawn Williams, former senior vice president of human resources at Samsung USA, served as chief administrative officer of LeTV. Danny Bowman, former Samsung US sales and operations manager, served as chief revenue officer of LeTV America, and Rob Chandhok, former president of Qualcomm Interactive Platform, became LeTV’s head of research and development in North America. LeTV’s extravagance in North America is particularly evident in employee salaries. In the period of rapid expansion, the human resources department also appeared to be particularly generous in terms of salary. According to several employees who had now quit to LeTV in the United States, employees who have now resigned disclosed that LeTV’s Pay Tisla and Apple are all more generous. Many positions have higher pay standards than Google. Even new non-technical positions with no working experience receive a starting salary of US$70,000. In high-level positions, Jia Yueting is more talented. It is a huge amount of money. A person with a wealth of overseas experience who Jia Yueting personally dug, including a signature fee of more than two million US dollars The salary costs brought by these high-paid employees became a huge burden for Lexus in 2017. An executive who was responsible for layoffs revealed that he first saw the detailed salary of LeTV's American team surprised. High-level and mid-level employees, who earn more than 100,000 U.S. dollars a year, abound, which is almost unthinkable for a Chinese company that has just come to the United States to expand. Let's view whether the United States can maintain such a large team size? Xu Changhong, who was responsible for music in the United States in early 2016, once told Sina Technology that 'at the beginning, it definitely depends on capital. Without capital investment, it is impossible to build such a large platform; but on the other hand, we There are also very aggressive revenue indicators. If it meets established revenue targets, then it can support existing fitness. ' Like other LeTV executives, Xu Changhong was equally confident in LeTV's 'ecological anti-' model. .
Both transactions become laughter  Jia Yueting announces $2 billion acquisition of Vizio In the summer of 2016, Jia Yueting was the most feverish, and LeTV was also in the United States. On July 26th that year, LeTV held a press conference in Los Angeles. Jia Yueting announced that he spent US$2 billion to wholly acquire the US native TV maker Vizio. This is also China. The company's largest purchase in the United States. Vizio, founded in China by Taiwanese immigrant Wang Wei, is the largest TV brand in the United States. It is also the second largest TV manufacturer in the United States after Samsung. The main entity in acquiring Vizio is LeEco Global, the parent company of LeTV North America, and Jia Yueting hopes to pass LeEco. Global's financing raises funds for the acquisition. Subsequently, LeTV announced that it had spent 250 million U.S. dollars to acquire Yahoo’s 200,000 square meters of office space in Silicon Valley. Jia Yueting pridefully built an open LeTV eco-city that can accommodate 12,000 people. However, this land has been abandoned for many years. Still need more funds for the construction of the park. However, these two acquisitions eventually became the laughing stock of LeTV in the United States. At the time of the announcement of the acquisition, LeTV did not actually have enough funds, and other parts of the deposit except for the deposits were subject to follow-up financing; then due to the break in the capital chain, LeTV could not It was not announced in April 2017 that it would forfeit the acquisition of Vizio and wasted a 100 million U.S. dollar in damages. Since it was unwilling to pay full damages, it hoped to offset 60 million U.S. dollars in cooperation. So far, LeTV still faces Vizio's lawsuit. In the $250 million acquisition of Yahoo! office space, Jia Yueting arranged for his investment in the Faraday Future (Jia Yue Ting had never announced an investment relationship with FF, the two companies declared to be strategic partners) to provide guarantees for LeTV. The United States received a loan of up to 140 million U.S. dollars. This security agreement was met with strong opposition from the FF executives, which eventually led to the resignation of several early senior executives. This Yahoo office site was held in LeTV for less than a year. In the first half of 2017, Jiayue Ting was forced to sell this office space for fast Yahoo! because the funding chain failed to continue to support LeTV. However, due to the soaring price of Silicon Valley The land has brought about a $10 million appreciation. According to a Reuters report, the sale price was 260 million U.S. dollars, and Jia Yueting withdrew more than 120 million U.S. dollars in funds. LeTV announced that it had laid off more than 400 people in May. From this land sale. Crazy burning money rushed for success Why does LeTV think that the United States will just enter the United States when it has not yet landed its products and it is so crazy that it has expanded its money? A former LeTV executive has once explained the strategic thinking of Jia Yueting, 'I hope to line up the fastest. With full speed landing in North America, this tactic can bring rapid results, but it also needs huge financial support. It needs not only to maintain a large business team, but also to maintain ample cash flow to respond to retailers and operators' business. This strategy can also be found in the development track of LeTV Mobile and LeTV Sports. Jia Yueting has strong self-confidence in his ecological anti-pattern. He believes that as long as a large amount of funds are invested in the short term and high-quality products and services are introduced at the same time, they can quickly gain market access. And users, consider profitability in the future through economies of scale. The main idea of not fearing burning money is almost reflected in every operating stage of LeTV. A former LeTV technician employee disclosed that, in fact, Jia Yueting is using funds according to the anticipated business scale in the next three years. The bandwidth is directly on the 10GB (providing LeSpot's domestic Chinese content to the Chinese market in the US); while LeSvie America's video service quality is guaranteed, it has caused a serious waste of resources. The actual peak bandwidth is even less than 1GB. , And the monthly optical bandwidth costs up to 100,000 US dollars. Under this blind confidence, LeTV seems to have not considered the word restraint when it comes to spending money. Whether it is a high-priced restaurant supply contract signed by the logistics administration (Lok as the United States provides free lunch and unlimited drinks in the company, in line with Google and Facebook. ), or the amount of internal procurement of products (from China to bring large quantities of inventory to the United States), or the scale of advertising in the marketing department, all departments are afraid they will not affect their performance. And wait until the music crisis in the United States , These wasted funds are particularly unfortunate.  This conference is the watershed of LeTV's destiny On October 19th, 2016, LeTV held a BigBang conference at the San Francisco Historical Architecture Art Palace, officially announcing that LeTV was officially launched in the United States. In addition to TV and cell phones, almost all of LeSport's executives appeared on the stage to interview the media. Levision’s new CEO, Liang Jun, made it clear that LeTV will replace Samsung in the US TV market. The US market is the most important stop for LeTV to enter the global market. This massive press conference invited almost all mainstream media in the United States, and brought in hundreds of mainstream media and self-media media from the country. According to an insider, LeJue regarded this conference as costing more than one million US dollars. At that time, LeTV had already discovered the capital chain issue. Jia Yueting still approved the budget. Ironically, this conference became a watershed for LeTV from prosperity to failure. Just half a month later on November 6, Jiayue Ting had to openly admit that LeTV had a problem with the capital chain and began to publicly reflect on his expansion strategy. And LeTV is just starting out on this side and it has fallen into shadow.
Give up full contraction midway The constant funding of Jia Yueting indeed gave LeTV a sufficient expansion momentum in 2016. After Big Bang’s press conference, LeTV’s super mobile phone, super TV and TV box began to be officially launched in the US mainstream market, online and offline. Market synchronization sales, covering Best Buy, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Fry's and other major American online and offline retailers. In terms of operators, LeTV also actively approached AT&T, the second largest operator in the United States. In September 2016, LeTV announced that it had reached an exclusive sales agreement for smart bicycles with AT&T. However, this smart bicycle only appeared on LeTV's booth. Not really appearing in AT&T's store. In November of that year, LeEco North America announced a strategic cooperation with AT&T, pre-installed AT&T's streaming media TV application DirecTvNow and included a three-month membership on LeTV. In fact, this is LeTV's heavy purchase of AT&T's streaming media TV package for the promotion of its own products and cooperation with carriers. Since U.S. carriers occupy nearly 90% of the smartphone market share, LeTV will The scale of the shipment of super mobile phones rests on the cooperation with AT&T. Prior to the formal cooperation, U.S. operators usually test the capabilities of mobile phone manufacturers through some small cooperation projects. In order to cooperate with AT&T, LeTV’s investment in the United States is unprecedented. In February 2017, the Houston Super Bowl NFL Super Bowl final, AT&T became the main sponsor, but in order to share the huge sponsorship costs, AT&T let LeTV With a cost of nearly 10 million U.S. dollars, in return, LeTV’s products were used in the televisions in the Super Bowl Stadium that year. However, LeTV could not use Super Bowl to advertise itself. If Jia Yueting continues to provide a steady stream of funds, LeTV does not experience a serious financial crisis in the country, LeTV will continue to invest in AT&T channel sales in 2017. The issue of the capital chain has caused LeTV to begin to shift to full contraction. Prior to the operator's astronomical investment, all were lost. The problem of funds brought LeTV to the United States is not just a shrinking business, but also a serious loss of goodwill. In March 2017, LeEco America had already reached an agreement with Costco, the second largest retailer in the US, in the storage of the latter. Supermarkets sell their own super-television. However, problems with Le Sell’s funding chain and defaults on suppliers’ money have caused Costco to worry that whether or not the United States can continue to operate and perform contracts will unilaterally disrupt cooperation negotiations. LeTV has never disclosed its own sales figures. One LeTV executive, who did not wish to be named, unequivocally revealed to me that from the time she landed in the United States until her last exit, LeTV sold hundreds of thousands of TVs and mobile phones. In good times, it can sell 50,000 devices a month. LeTV's Chinese market content users reached 100,000 people at the highest time. After the outbreak of the financial crisis, in order to reduce its own costs, clean up its existing inventory and return valuable funds, LeTV will no longer be able to switch to middle distributors to sell television products in the United States. This can reduce LeTV’s own sales and operating costs. On the other hand, it also undermines the profitability of LeTV in the United States, because it takes away the cost of its products and transportation costs, and it also gives intermediate distributors and final retailers close to 30 points. In fact, the more LeTV sells in the United States, The more you lose, the more you lose. Land sales shrink gradually For LeTV, the memory of 2017 was a painful contraction, massive layoffs, encouragement, and reluctance to abandon. After March 2017, due to the break in the capital chain of Jia Yueting, almost all of the funds raised from the Cheung Kong Graduate School students were previously provided to With the need for greater financial needs, Le Tourmaline has also fallen into the embarrassing position of being out of reach and can barely maintain operating costs. LeTV is not without self-salvage. In addition to actively clearing inventory and repatriating funds, Letv USA has also sought separate financing. In March 2017, the second largest shareholder of LeTV.com, Xingen Capital, once stated that they helped Letv North America achieve Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash financing, of which tens of millions of dollars have been paid, but from the view of Lexus’ subsequent layoffs and operations, this multi-billion-dollar financing has not been successfully completed. Either refusing to comment, or not knowing. The lack of funds and the loss of goodwill have prevented LeTV from moving smoothly to the United States. The original personnel of hundreds of people also lost their practical use and brought a heavy financial burden. Since April, LeTV has begun to consider layoffs. However, due to the high salary of the disorderly expansion, the huge layoffs will inevitably require huge severance payments. Therefore, LeTV has waited until the sale of Yahoo's office space before starting formal layoffs. In the spring of 2017, LeTV always shrouded in the negative shadow of layoffs and land sales. There were also two cases in which wages were delayed for two days. Although LeTV’s explanation was that domestic funds need to be remitted to the United States through Hong Kong, In the middle, due to the bank's handling of the relationship, it caused delays, but it also meant that LeTV's own funds could not support operations at all. Once Jia Yueting broke the supply, LeTV would certainly lay off or even shut down the company. On May 23, 2017, LeMay officially announced the layoffs of three-fourths after a few months of independent financing. The total number of layoffs reached 325. At the same time, the offices of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Seattle were closed. In addition to the Chinese language team, other businesses were almost cut out. This downsizing also means that LeTV basically gave up its plans for expansion in the US mainstream market, leaving only the niche Chinese market. In this layoff, LeTV provided two and a half months’ wages as compensation for layoffs. At that time, LeTV’s head of the United States, former head of Huawei’s terminal in France, Ye Qing, said in an interview with Sina Technology that LeTV will pay temporary attention to the Chinese market. , Efforts to feed the current dozens of people. However, after layoffs, LeSomer’s technicians in the United States are in serious shortage. It took nearly two months to re-deploy and transfer cloud services in the United States and re-provision of video content. This was aggravated by the delayed operation of LeSco in August 2017. Room costs, Le Shiyun suffered IDC power outages, once again dragged on LeTV as the United States can not provide LeTV's Chinese content. Several service interruptions directly affected LeTV's reputation in the Chinese market and follow-up sales. Perhaps in Jia Yueting's mind, the ecology of the car represented by Fule is the most important dream. LeTV and LeTV, like other sub-ecologies, are businesses that can be shelved or even abandoned. In July last year, Jia Yueting stayed again for a long time. The United States is responsible for the financing of Faraday. In addition to two brief trips to Hong Kong and Silicon Valley, he basically stays in the Los Angeles luxury homes and Faraday headquarters. Even the media, will also focus on the Faraday, and LeTV The United States has fallen into a silent state of no attention. In November last year, LeTV quietly completed its last layoff. The Chinese language marketing team that was retained by the large layoffs in May was also cut in this layoff. Jia Yueting tapped the original Huawei terminal west European team to expand into the US market. The person in charge of the business had already left before, and Yang Lijie, the former LeTV financial controller, took over the LeTV team with only a few people left. end From the steady landing to the crazy expansion to the full contraction and sudden end, Let’s go through a parabolic trajectory in the United States for three years. They used to be the most ambitious Chinese companies in the United States and announced that Chinese companies are The largest U.S. acquisition, the most widely sold Chinese company in the United States, has almost reached the channel of the second largest U.S. operator. However, when the tide of capital recedes, LeTV’s story of the Great Leap Forward will end and only one will remain on the beach. Burst of foam. In April 2016, the person in charge of LeEco USA once talked about the prospect of LeTV's ecological landing in the United States in an interview with Sina Technology. 'If we fail, we must be related to funds and execution is related to people; but if we succeed, then Must be related to layout and mode. ' A prophecy.
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