[Repost] What we have lost is not just Zhihu, but the spiritual high ground of the Chinese internet

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Notes

About a year ago, I deleted my Zhihu account that I had registered for many years. In my eyes, it had already become a noisy and boring social media platform.

Original Text

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Today, while scrolling through Twitter, I saw a user mention that Zhihu’s financial report looks pitiful. In the app, apart from soft ads, there’s just nonsense; AI and short videos dealt the final blow.

I just looked at Zhihu’s financial report; it’s a bit pitiful for an early user. The company recorded revenue of 659 million yuan (RMB, same below), down 22.0% year on year. In addition, Zhihu had a Q3 net loss of 46.743 million yuan, compared to a net loss of 8.977 million yuan in the same period last year; the adjusted net loss was 21 million yuan. Does anyone still use this thing now?

I feel quite uneasy because Zhihu was once a spiritual highland of the Chinese internet.

I was also a heavy user of Zhihu and once served as a technical director there.

Tonight, I decided to organize my memories and materials, write them down, which also counts as a retrospective on the past fourteen years (I joined the Zhihu community in 2011).

On the first Saturday noon in August 2010, Zhang Liang (reporter for “Global Entrepreneur” magazine, founder of Apple4us) and Zhou Yuan (reporter for “IT Manager World,” responsible for tech reporting) were drinking and chatting under the Tsinghua Science Park building. Zhou Yuan said he might be going to a company as a product manager. They talked about Quora—a then-popular Q&A SNS website—and got more and more excited. After the meal, Zhang Liang decided: “Don’t become a product manager; the three of us (along with Huang Jixin, Sohu Finance chief editor) might as well create a Chinese version of Quora.”

The three were columnists at Apple4us, now co-founders of Zhihu. Their team was completely different from “Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurship.” They were not programmers or serial entrepreneurs but:

• A media person
• A product manager
• A content operator

Their commonality was only one: a perfectionism about “expression,” firmly believing that the Chinese internet should be better and unwilling to sacrifice quality for growth.

Soon, Huang Jixin used connections to reach Shao Zhong, chairman of Modern Media, securing 1.5 million yuan angel investment for 40% equity. This money kick-started Zhihu.

On January 26, 2011, Zhihu officially launched with an invitation-only system, with few users, but the community atmosphere had begun to take shape.

In March of the same year, Innovation Works invested with a post-money valuation of 8 million USD, acquiring more than 20% shares. Lee Kai-Fu’s entry not only brought funds but also Silicon Valley-style management concepts and engineer resources, providing strong endorsement for Zhihu.

In January 2012, Zhihu received Series A funding from Qiming Venture Partners with a valuation of 20 million USD. At that time, Zhihu had about 100,000 users, but community retention was extremely high: monthly retention exceeded 80%, quarterly retention surpassed 70%.

In the following years, Tencent continuously participated in Zhihu’s Series C, D, and E financings. When Zhihu went public, Tencent’s total holdings exceeded 11.6%, making it the largest external institutional shareholder, but Tencent never joined the board or dispatched senior executives.

After the 2011 Spring Festival, I interned at a company in Zhongguancun Third Pole Building; Zhihu’s office was upstairs. There was a Beta Coffee in the basement level one, where we had lunch daily. I often heard Innovation Works and Zhihu teams discussing products, community, and Quora. They also held small sharing sessions there, which I frequently attended.

That was my first true feeling: the Chinese internet could be so idealistic.

I then thought that one day I must join them. But Zhihu’s team was almost entirely from Tsinghua, Peking University, or had studied abroad, making the threshold extremely high; I could only wait.

Speaking of Beta Coffee, I must mention Zhongguancun Startup Street. From 2011 to 2015, it was its golden age.

During those years, 3W Coffee, Garage Coffee, and Beta Coffee all set up at Zhongguancun, but they were more than cafes—they were like “startup cathedrals.” Young people came in with PPTs and dreams, possibly leaving with financing.

In 2011, these cafes were opened as small circles for geeks and angel investors.

In 2013, the mobile internet explosion and app startup wave changed the atmosphere from “geek labs” to “entrepreneurship for all.”

In 2014, capital poured in crazily; a single PPT could secure millions in funding.

By 2015, “Zhongguancun Startup Street” had become an official brand, personally inspected by the Premier, reaching its peak fever.

That was a unique time. Everyone believed that with a good idea, enthusiasm, and execution ability, the world could be changed.

A slight detour: the owners and shareholders of these cafes might be familiar:

Beta Coffee: Youzan’s Bai Ya, Feng Dahui, Donews editor-in-chief Keso

3W Coffee: Internet analyst Xu Dandan, Sequoia China’s Shen Nanpeng, Tencent early veteran Zeng Liqing, ZhenFund’s Xu Xiaoping, Qunar’s Zhuang Chenchao, Xueqiu’s Fang Sanwen

I often went to these cafes to listen to entrepreneurs present their PPTs—a suffocating dream.

A company-wide letter dated October 15, 2010, recorded Zhihu’s initial ideas:

We believe one thing: in the sea of trash information on the internet, truly valuable information is absolutely scarce, and knowledge—systematized, organized high-quality information—still resides in individual brains, far from effective mining and utilization. Zhihu provides a tool to generate, share, and disseminate knowledge. We encourage everyone to share knowledge, gather everyone’s knowledge, and make it usable for all.

Everyone is an expert in some field; Zhihu can help everyone showcase their shining side.

Zhihu will become a P2P network composed of people’s knowledge, experience, and insights.

Zhihu helps bridge the distance between people.

Zhihu will continuously produce high-quality, storable information and connect valuable information with people.

Zhihu’s community basic principles are the core of community norms, with two key points:

1. Create valuable content: Zhihu’s intention is to help people better share knowledge, experience, and insights; publish “useful,” “helpful,” and “high-quality” content, which helps others and benefits oneself.

2. Maintain friendliness and respect: Avoid attacking or deliberately belittling users or their content; respect different opinions and refrain from maliciously speculating motives.

The existence of these basic principles ensures people can continuously publish and access high-quality information on Zhihu, and maintains consistency and consensus in defining, modifying, and enforcing community norms.

I greatly appreciate Zhihu’s original intention and sincerely agree with these two community principles. In fact, any community can learn from Zhihu’s core philosophy: high-quality content + friendly atmosphere is the premise for a community to operate sustainably.

03｜Zhihu’s Golden Era: How a Company Gains Respect Through “Restraint”

Zhihu’s early product design was very “restrained”: no recommendation algorithms, no hot lists, no like inducements. This minimalist, decentralized design was completely different from the popular “portal + advertising” model in China at the time.

Behind this design was the philosophy of “first serve a small group of users well, then gradually expand.” The “invitation-only registration” on Zhihu was aimed at protecting community atmosphere rather than creating scarcity. Zhihu was more like a “salon of ideas” than a “content platform.”

Lee Kai-Fu was one of Zhihu’s early users. He answered seriously, participated in discussions, and personally recommended Zhihu to his students and entrepreneurs. This kind of “venture capitalist personally involved” attitude was rare at the time.

He set the tone for Zhihu: this is a place for serious speech. Early users were mostly programmers, media personnel, scholars, and overseas students. They weren’t there to “show off,” but to express views and share experiences.

Before founding Innovation Works, Lee Kai-Fu worked as a senior executive at Apple and Microsoft, and as global vice president and Greater China president at Google, bringing Silicon Valley corporate culture to many Chinese internet companies.

Inside Zhihu, there was no attendance system or strict KPIs. They used the Silicon Valley popular OKR system: top-down goal setting (Objectives), with subordinate teams setting their own Objectives based on higher-level Objectives. The teams were generally self-driven, motivated by passion and recognition. Working hours were free, with no mandatory overtime, only the requirement to get things done well.

Management were not “bosses” but more like “collaborators”; the organization structure was flat.

Internal documents used Google Workspace, calendars were visible to all, and everyone could see others’ schedules, facilitating collaboration and reducing unnecessary meetings and disruptions. Meetings were open and transparent, with all employees able to participate.

Slack was the main internal communication tool, emphasizing a flat, open, and informal communication atmosphere. People preferred using emoji reactions rather than WeChat-style full-screen “received” or “okay” messages; the Thread feature was frequently used to avoid conversation chaos. I plan to write a blog post about Slack later, as these cultural details show Zhihu’s early obsession with “serious discussions.”

1. Restraint: avoid chasing trends excessively, avoid gimmicks, avoid “short-term effective but long-term harmful” actions.

2. Sincerity: sincere to users, content, and products; FAQs, community norms, and copywriting were meaningful almost sentence by sentence.

3. Patience: no rush for expansion, monetization, or IPO. Zhihu took three years before opening registration. Who else does this?

In 2012, Zhihu launched “Zhihu Daily,” essentially a re-editing and redistribution of quality content. It was like an “artistic literary bulletin of the internet era,” sending a carefully selected piece each day, with a restrained writing style and simplified layout, like a long letter from a friend.

It was neither news nor fast food content but answers worth slow reading, for example:

• Why do humans dream?

• How to evaluate “Black Mirror”?

• Why do we always procrastinate?

• What’s the loneliest moment you’ve experienced?

The success of the Daily was not only a traffic product but a leap from community to content brand. Many people’s first exposure to Zhihu came through Daily’s WeChat push, Douban broadcasts, or even NetEase Cloud Reading.

During its golden years (2013–2016), Zhihu Daily was almost a benchmark for “content aesthetics” in the Chinese internet. I read almost every post without missing one. I even had several answers selected into Zhihu Daily.

Zhihu’s early users were a group of “internet idealists.” They had knowledge and wanted to express; had experience and wanted to share; had judgment and also wanted to listen.

If Zhihu were a city, its first residents could roughly be divided into five groups:

Zhihu’s earliest “natives," who migrated from Douban, V2EX, and mailing lists, thinking in words and solving problems with code. Zhihu allowed them to “write answers” that established reputations, found peers, and even secured offers. For example, Cao Zheng, Ruan Yifeng, Cat Chen, Gao Chunhui, Zuo Erduo Haozi, Wang Jian, Yu Cosine, Chi Jianqiang, Feng Dahui, He Shijun, Li Songfeng, others—Zhihu’s original technical beacons.

This group improved Zhihu’s overall expression level. They expressed structurally and simplified complex issues, acting as Zhihu’s earliest “content curators.” Ma Boyong, Li Ruyi, Huang Zhangjin, Zhang Jiawei, He Caitou, Keso, Cheng Lingfeng, and others frequently had their answers reposted on Weibo, Douban, and even print media.

Zhihu was once an “open class for the venture capital circle.” Lee Kai-Fu, Zhou Yuan, Xu Xiaoping, Wang Xing, Zhang Yiming, Lei Jun, and others answered personally. You could see CEOs, CTOs, investors, and users discussing “why products fail” under a single answer—something rarely seen today.

Influenced by Lee Kai-Fu, who was a very successful mentor in communicating with university students domestically, Zhihu gathered many students from North America, Europe, and East Asia. They brought global perspectives on education, society, and culture, filling gaps in the Chinese internet in these fields.

Zhihu was like a fusion of Douban + Tianya: inheriting Douban’s rationality and aesthetics and Tianya’s tradition of long articles. Many early users moved from these two communities.

This generation of Zhihu users is one of the rarest groups on the Chinese internet. They built a public space with “expression with texture,” making people believe Chinese content could exist without being hijacked by algorithms or trapped by traffic.

Early on, commercialization was never a priority for Zhihu. It wasn’t like Jinri Toutiao, which chased traffic monetization from the start, nor was it like Weibo, driven by stars and trending searches. Zhihu was more like a “slow company”—exchanging time for trust, and trust for content.

This “slowness” was extremely rare in the venture capital circle at that time. Most investors asked: “When will it turn profitable? When will it IPO?” But Innovation Works gave Zhihu enough space to refine the product, cultivate the community, and build a culture.

It’s not that Zhihu didn’t want to make money; from the start, it was a “non-standardized product”: long, slow, structured content; restrained, perfectionist, anti-advertising users. Its commercialization wasn’t from 0 to 1 but from “perfectionism” to “compromise.”

2016: Zhihu Live launched, the first knowledge paid attempt (mainly audio).

2017: Zhihu Bookstore, ZhiHu (Value app), institutional accounts, paid columns launched, formal ad business started, feed ads launched.

2019: Salted membership launched, content layering began (free / paid / curated).

After 2020: Zhihu Yanxuan (e-commerce), video subsidies, vocational education courses, live e-commerce attempts.

Zhihu nearly tried all mainstream content platform monetization paths: ads, memberships, e-commerce, education, live streaming…

It’s not that Zhihu didn’t want to make money, but it was “embarrassed to make money.” This is not sarcasm but a continuation of its early product philosophy: restraint, rationality, anti-inducement.

Users have a perfectionist mindset: early Zhihu users were “content idealists,” willing to spend time on knowledge but unwilling to pay for content or be disturbed by ads.

Content is unsuitable for monetization: Zhihu’s content is “non-standardized” with long articles, structured, and slow-paced, difficult to scale production or rapidly monetize like short videos.

Community atmosphere conflicts with commercial logic: the “serious speech” atmosphere naturally conflicts with a “traffic first” ad logic.

Ad business started very late and was once viewed internally as “indecent.” In early Zhihu’s context, “serious speech” was a belief, while advertising was like betraying that belief.

The platform center wants to preserve rationality and restraint, while the commercial center tries to find spaces in the cracks, always wanting to insert ads everywhere. The two centers constantly conflict—two forces long at odds but never merging.

After 2017, Zhihu entered a “growth period.” User volume increased, financing rounds became frequent, and capital expectations rose. The problem was: Zhihu’s product form was inherently unsuitable for “fast growth.”

Zhihu’s content is long, slow, and structured; its users are restrained, perfectionist, and anti-ad. This community atmosphere inherently conflicts with “traffic logic.”

But pressure to grow exists. Zhihu had to start a series of “seemingly reasonable but actually conflicted” attempts:

Hot list launched: originally, Zhihu had no hot list to avoid “traffic hijacking content.” After launching the hot list, content prioritized click rates; clickbait and emotional content escalated.

Recommendation algorithm introduced: early Zhihu distributed content via follower relationships and topic subscriptions, a “decentralized” approach. With algorithms, the feed turned into “swiping,” users shifted from “active exploration” to “passive consumption.”

Short video attempts: Zhihu tried videos to attract younger users, launched several short video products: Ji Ying, video answers, salted videos, video recommendation feed. The videos produced felt like “philosophers doing talk shows,” or simply reused content; not short or engaging enough, making it the “least Zhihu-flavored” area.

Content layering: launched Salted membership, intended to improve monetization via payment. But users found “Salted” often meant “chicken soup collections” + “title-optimized versions,” diluting the original “knowledge feel” into mere “contentiness.”

Zhihu’s expansion wasn’t “doing something wrong” but “doing too much like others.” It tried to become a “platform-like community” but lost its “community uniqueness.”

Early Zhihu was a gathering place for “content idealists”: programmers, media, scholars, overseas students, entrepreneurs… They came to Zhihu to “speak seriously.” Such users, also called “inside the fifth ring users,” were too high-end, too rational, but too few to support commercial valuation. Zhihu had to “lower its standards” to accommodate a broader general audience.

As the user base expanded, platform content began “downward migration.” County life, mother-in-law conflicts, emotional venting, manufacturing confrontation, showing off wit, abstract culture… These aren’t “low-level,” but their expression style clashed with Zhihu’s original “rational temperament.”

Zhihu’s expansion resembled a top student trying street vending, wanting to earn money but fearing losing face.

As early as after the D round financing in 2017, Zhihu was pushed onto the capital track.

That year, Zhihu users surpassed 100 million; the community still maintained restraint, commercialization just starting. Though the platform continued to lose money, on the knowledge payment wind, Zhihu was considered one of the few content assets “with barriers, thresholds, and future.” Investors valued its rarity—a Chinese knowledge platform with high-quality users and a strong community atmosphere.

However, valuation had to have an exit. By the E round, Zhihu’s investors nearly reached consensus: start monetizing and initiate the IPO process to provide a clear exit for capital.

These investors were not “runners” but “exiting players.” They cared about the cycle, the window, and returns, not community culture, content ideals, or spiritual corners.

Zhihu’s founder Zhou Yuan was not opposed to IPO but preferred a slower pace. His vision for Zhihu was a long-termism product that “gradually grows,” not a platform company that must “grow fast.”

At the end of 2018, Zhihu welcomed a key figure—Sun Wei. He came from investment banking and was a typical finance executive, having served core executive roles at Deutsche Bank and MIA, and responsible for MIA’s IPO. His arrival marked Zhihu’s “pre-IPO restructuring period.”

Sun Wei knew what to do: prepare for the IPO and “clear the accounts” in financial reports. His first step was “cost-cutting and efficiency improvement”: layoffs, budget cuts, cutting non-core projects, even replacing long-used Slack with the free WeChat Work.

Replacing Slack wasn’t a small matter. Inside Zhihu, it symbolized early engineer culture: flat, open, free discussion; while WeChat Work represented process, permissions, and management. This change sparked strong resistance from many old staff—yes, resistance. It even led to heated discussions in Slack’s all-hands group chat.

An old employee posted: “Slack is our last spiritual corner.”

Shortly after, Zhihu fully implemented the KPI system. The content team, once driven by faith, began being driven by DAU, GMV, ROI, and other quantitative metrics. It changed from “doing the right thing” to “doing what can be quantified.”

The cultural change was visible. In 2019, many veterans considered it “Zhihu’s cultural rupture year.” That year, a batch of founders left; operational dominance rose; community atmosphere started to tilt towards down-market content.

But capital markets didn’t care about these “soft sentiments.” They only cared if Zhihu could go public, tell a commercial story, and turn a profit quickly.

In March 2021, Zhihu listed on the NYSE, becoming the “first Chinese Q&A stock,” with a market value once exceeding 5.5 billion USD.

Sun Wei completed his task; capital won; Zhihu completed the crucial transformation from “knowledge idealism” to “capital product.”

But the cost was clear: Zhihu changed from a “community company” to a “company’s community.” It went from a “place for serious speech” to a “content platform setting the tone.”

Sha Dachuan (2023–2024) succeeded Sun Wei as Zhihu’s CFO but only served one year. During his tenure, Zhihu’s stock price continued to fall, then he was reassigned as Chief Investment Officer (CIO).

Wang Han (2024–present) succeeded Sha Dachuan and proposed new financial governance plans after taking office.

Yet from the stock price perspective, falling from $83 to just over $3, the market remains lacking confidence, and Zhihu’s monetization path is still being explored.