For the Century Commune, "Idealism" Needs Rethinking

When KangAi Commune launched in 2011, essentially no one was optimistic about it. We were successively blocked by Alipay, blocked by Baidu, given a hard time by WeChat, mocked by venture capitalists, and hit by funding shortfalls—yet we overcame every difficulty and held on, and went on to spark a trend across the industry. So one can say KangAi Commune (online mutual aid) began with idealism.

Yet that idealism also held the Commune back from growing, because of it I made several erroneous decisions and arrangements:

1. Optimizing our systems for risk-control purposes too early, forcibly and abruptly slowing our growth rate.

2. Refusing venture capital. To protect a so-called original purpose, I turned away investors who came to us on their own initiative. We failed to bring in more venture capital, and for nearly two years had almost no contact with VCs.

3. Believing it immoral to acquire customers by drawing traffic through charity, we never engaged in critical-illness donation campaigns that later proved effective, and so the Commune lost a source of traffic.

4. Communicating with users too much and spending too much time explaining, instead of making development and growth the top priority. In fact, when members leave, none of this matters.

5. Not thinking about commercialization early on.

All of this made KangAi Commune appear neither thriving nor dying, and cost it the support of more social capital and social resources. What we were proud of, users and society did not value. So if KangAi Commune is to fail, these irrational efforts to cling to idealism are one of the root causes. I need to reflect anew and earnestly correct course, and to re-understand human nature and society. I also need to consider whether the idealism I hold is too shallow. Fortunately, I believe everything has two sides; guided by the ultimate ideal of the "Century Commune" and by an understanding of the essence of mutual aid, these things may not necessarily be bad in the long run. Either way, KangAi Commune has already succeeded because of idealism in the past, and must never fail because of idealism in the future.