Weidong Yang, Founder, and CEO of YAYA Live

A chat with Weidong Yang, Founder, And CEO Of YAYA Live

YAYA Live has been ranked among the top 3 social apps in Thailand just five months after its launch, rising as a new star in the vertical live streaming market. Thanks to its rapid growth, YAYA Live has announced a series A funding round of about 1.5 million US dollars in July 2021.

It is our honor to have Weidong Yang, Founder and CEO of YAYA Live, with us for an interview on how to run a live streaming platform successfully. Here are the excerpts from our interview with Mr. Yang.

What are the main reasons behind YAYA Live’s tremendous success?

I think there are three reasons:

Firstly, our strategy on establish YAYA Live’s brand by creating quality content. Quality content has helped us attract premium users with high purchasing power and willingness. It also helped YAYA Live stand out from the competition as quality content is rare in the market. We have been making various efforts to establish our differentiation based on the quality of our content, such as signing contracts with celebrities for endorsements and introducing more celebrity streamers.

Secondly, our emphasis is on organization localization. We’ve built a relatively big local team in every market, delivering excellent execution.

Lastly, our business model proved to be working well. We drive revenue through live streaming, generate profit through gaming, and scale up user traffic through in-app socializing.

What made YAYA Live choose to go for a premium content strategy?

Well, we believe that this strategy aligns with our founding principles. There are many options, and the audience is pretty open to different types of content. We have seen that some platforms have paid a heavy price for their choices of providing crudely made, vulgar, or even legally controversial content. To keep our business safe and stick to our principles, we decided to adopt the strategy of providing premium content.

We learned that you were part of the founding team of Kitty Live. Did this experience influence how you build and run YAYA live?

Of course, it did. When I was at Kitty Live, I was responsible for content and revenue, and I also built a team for Southeast Asia business from scratch. From those experiences, I’ve learned two essential things:

1) Premium content is excellent for monetization.

2) A highly localized team is vital for achieving excellent execution and results.

These two principles have been proven effective by Kitty Live. So, we will stick to them in running YAYA Live.

YAYA Live has achieved rapid growth since its debut. Was it expected or a surprise to you?

I am a bit surprised by such a result. It feels a bit too fast. We are happy to see that our strategies are working. However, it may also make us blind to our disadvantages. For example, there were some issues in our training and management of our streamers, but our team didn’t take the problems seriously because there was much optimism when experiencing rapid growth. To maintain healthy growth, I have been trying to improve our marketing and products while slowing down the pace.

Will YAYA Live tap into other markets? If yes, how are you going to choose your target markets?

We will cover other markets in the future. There are several global markets, such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, North America, and the Spanish-speaking markets. Our criteria in choosing a target market would include the ROI and the competitions we will face in the market. Thailand is an excellent choice since its return has been attractive, and there is still room for growth.

What kind of situation or stage was YAYA Live in when you first got in touch with ZEGOCLOUD?

At that time, we were building all things from the ground up. We selected our technology vendors from several candidates for our core modules. And we were doing a lot of research, trying to find out the advantages and disadvantages of each solution provided by the candidates.

What made you choose ZEGOCLOUD?

Before I founded YAYA Live, I already had experiences with ZEGOCLOUD because my ex-employer Kitty Live also had been using ZEGOCOUD, and I had built up much confidence in ZEGOCLOUD during my years in Kitty Live. ZEGOCLOUD has been serving Kitty Live well throughout Kitty Live’s evolution from a small startup to a big platform. I believe ZEGOCOUD was the right choice for us because it has been delivering excellent performance, scalability, and services.

Do you think ZEGOCLOUD has contributed to the success of YAYA Live?

I think ZEGOCLOUD’s consistently high level of service is what we value the most. To win customers, one of the most important aspects is the quality of live streaming, such as smoothness, real-timeliness, and stability. And it takes a considerable amount of time for a platform to polish its user experience. Therefore, getting consistent and timely support from our technology partners. Although we are still a small company, we appreciate that ZEGOCLOUD has delivered excellent and attentive services to YAYA Live.

The peak time for the live streaming business is usually from 10 pm to 2 am every day, which is outside the regular working hours for the ZEGOCLOUD team. Also, there are time differences for some markets. Despite all these odds, ZEGOCLOUD has delivered high-quality services promptly and consistently, which we sincerely appreciate.

Thanks to ZEGOCLOUD’s strong support, YAYA Live has stood out from the competition and established its footing in the market.

Wrapping up:

Implementing a premium content strategy, building a highly localized operation team, and having a technology partner that can provide stable and reliable technical support have enabled YAYA Live to gain market recognition in Thailand and laid a solid foundation for its next expansion in Southeast Asia.