The Curse of a One-Person IP Company

What is a one-person IP company? It’s a company where almost all value is tied to the owner, who is both the biggest IP and the primary source of value. Zhang Xuefeng falls into this category, as do Luo Yonghao, Wu Xiaobo, Hua Yuhua, and formerly Luo Zhenyu.

A major characteristic of these companies is that the owner is heavily involved in the business—whether writing books, live streaming, recording courses, giving offline lectures, or handling specific business deliveries and external partnerships, the owner must be personally involved. Coupled with company management, this results in very high work pressure for the owner, making overwork the norm—during the boom of live commerce, the work intensity of Li Jiaqi, Viya, and others was roughly the same.

So some people wonder, why not transform into a traditional company? For example, the owner steps back behind the scenes, cultivating other IPs within the company, and hands over all business delivery to the team, only focusing on management. Wouldn’t that be more reasonable?

People who don’t understand might say so, but in practice, it’s extremely difficult. For instance, from Luo Ji Siwei to Dedao, from a one-person IP to an IP platform—has Luo Zhenyu succeeded? On the surface, it seems so, but in essence, I don’t think so. I even think it’s a step backward.

A one-person IP company’s biggest product is the owner himself. He is the source of trust for all clients. When this IP reaches hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, the company’s profits can surpass most listed companies. At this point, the structure becomes almost unchangeable. If the owner wants to step back, it’s almost like starting a completely new company with a different paradigm—if you’ve already mastered the “Dugu Nine Swords” and “Yijin Jing,” and are a top expert in the world, surpassing 99.99% of people nationwide, would you cut off your own balls to re-practice the evil-suppressing sword?

Zhang Xuefeng and other top IPs mentioned are already the ceiling for one-person IP companies—that’s as big as it gets. Zhang Xuefeng’s company has two or three hundred people, but most are teachers liaising with parents, each responsible for dozens of parents. It’s not the complex system of two or three hundred people each doing their own thing and working in harmony.

How are these people managed? Only in a flat structure, with perhaps some team leaders, each leading a group, and the owner only managing these leaders. But this has its limits. Top IPs require maintenance across many dimensions, and the owner is already busy enough just managing the IP. The remaining time, even if just listening to reports, can’t cover many people. If the business scales further, team size must increase, and the owner can’t keep up. This inevitably leads to more layers, and each additional layer lowers the quality at the end—have you played “Chinese Whispers”? When it reaches the bottom teachers, delivery issues will inevitably arise—just a few people messing up, and parents might casually complain online, not about the teachers but about Zhang Xuefeng “cutting the leek,” and the public opinion can swell dramatically.

In a one-person IP, users only trust the IP itself—users buy Zhang Xuefeng’s volunteer service, watch his live streams daily, and only feel at ease when Zhang himself gives advice. Otherwise, they think, “I can just ask AI,” but because it concerns their child’s future, even detailed AI answers aren’t trusted—who knows if the data has been polluted?

But as the scale grows, it becomes harder for the owner to personally serve everyone. So they have to selectively abandon service to most people based on price tiers—products with fewer paid features, like thousands or tens of thousands of yuan, are handed over to the team; only high-paying products—100,000, 200,000, 500,000 yuan—are personally delivered. Even then, there’s a queue, and appointments are hard to get because there are too many willing to pay that level.

At this point, the reputation of this IP will polarize—initially, during free services, everyone praised it; but as the owner’s direct delivery scope narrows, more people can’t afford it, are dissatisfied with the team’s delivery, or simply jealous, and start criticizing online. Look at all the names I mentioned earlier—doesn’t their reputation tend to follow this pattern? Those with weak hearts may even become depressed.

Reputation polarization isn’t because these people forget their original intentions, but it’s an inevitable consequence of an IP’s growth. They also find it very difficult to transform—an enterprise earning 200 million yuan with a profit of 100 million, trying to transform into a 2 billion yuan revenue company with the same profit, is it easier for the owner to run a company with 20 billion in revenue and the same profit? These are two fundamentally different companies, and forced transformation can often make things worse. It’s highly likely to turn into a company with 20-30 billion in revenue, bringing in external shareholders, with many internal incubated IPs. Once they grow, many go solo, causing more internal conflicts. While they may seem to be highly regarded in the industry, in reality, shareholders are constantly pointing fingers at the owner, demanding quick profit extraction and “harvesting” users, threatening to go public within a few years or face imminent collapse.

Therefore, many companies are inherently doomed from the start—how they rise determines how hard it is to shake off that shadow later. Because the process of rising is also the process of strengthening their paradigm—those two or three hundred employees weren’t hired overnight. You personally have built this with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, and the causal relationship isn’t something you can just sever instantly.

Yesterday, I saw a quote: “The process of crossing social classes has a mortality rate”—and that’s true. No matter which path you choose, trying to cross multiple levels or reach the ceiling of that path isn’t simple. Extreme effort and intelligence are just standard requirements; more importantly, there’s backlash. The higher you go, the stronger the backlash. Those who aren’t resilient in mind and body won’t be able to handle the results.