1,5 Milliarden Yuan in Werbung investiert und die Metrostationen mit Portraits beklebt... Kann Yupao Direct Recruitment, in das Lei Jun seine Hoffnungen gesetzt hat, die Türen für Angestellte in Büros nicht öffnen?

At the Xierqi Subway Station in Beijing, well - known internet giants such as Tencent, Baidu, NetEase, and Didi are clustered here. This is the most famous gathering place for programmers in Beijing. Every day, tens of thousands of internet practitioners surge like a tide at the Xierqi Subway Station.

Recently, this subway station that has witnessed countless internet myths has suddenly been bombarded by the magical advertisement "Looking for a job! Yupao Direct Recruitment, chatting on the phone is just fast!" What's even more amazing is that these advertisements have no celebrity endorsements. Instead, the founder Zhou Feng appears in person to endorse his own brand.

Public information shows that Yupao Direct Recruitment was founded in Chengdu in 2017, aiming to facilitate online job - hunting for blue - collar workers. Behind it are Shunwei Capital, founded by Lei Jun, and others. At the end of last year, it announced a strategic expansion from blue - collar recruitment to white - collar job - seeking.

The "BUG" column found that there are very few white - collar positions on the Yupao Direct Recruitment App nowadays. The platform still mainly features blue - collar positions such as waiters, security guards, workers, and chefs. In response to the doubts, Yupao Direct Recruitment explained, "We are actively expanding this market through advertising and other means."

Zhou Feng himself also admitted that he invests a large amount of money in traffic promotion every year, with a cumulative investment of over 1.5 billion yuan, but in fact, it hasn't achieved widespread popularity.

Now, facing competitors like Zhaopin, Liepin, Maimai, and BOSS Direct Recruitment, is it really useful to rely solely on burning money for advertising?

From a Migrant Worker's Family to Lei Jun's Circle of Friends

In December 1988, Zhou Feng was born into a farmer's family in Zizhong County, Sichuan. His father was a steel bar worker, and his mother was a tower crane operator. Many of his relatives and friends around him were also migrant workers. During his childhood summer and winter vacations, he often lived at his parents' construction sites.

In April this year, when Zhou Feng was interviewed by "Cheng Qian's Circle of Friends", he said, "In 2007, my mother's salary was only 700 yuan, and my father's was only a little over 1000 yuan. I started delivering takeaways as soon as I entered school because my poor parents had to work outside. Because of poverty, when someone in the family got sick, we had to borrow money for treatment. Because of poverty, I wanted to do some business."

In July 2017, Zhou Feng's Yupao Direct Recruitment (formerly Yupao.com) was born in a rented room, aiming to provide safe, efficient, and precise employment service support for millions of construction industry workers.

"At the beginning, I didn't know what entrepreneurship was. I followed the best - practice paths of Wang Xing and Zhang Yiming and copied their quick - start models." From the early community - based recruitment, to embedding a recruitment webpage in the official account, and then to posting recruitment information through mini - programs, his business scale grew rapidly. Around 2019, Yupao.com created dozens of mini - program matrices, and the total number of users increased to over 8 million by the end of that year.

To make a breakthrough, Zhou Feng hoped to leverage the power of capital. Since 2019, Zhou Feng has met dozens of investors. However, in the eyes of investors, his business didn't have much appeal because BOSS Direct Recruitment, Zhaopin, 51job, and 58.com had already done well. They thought there was no opportunity in the recruitment industry. Why could Yupao succeed?

In 2021, to integrate recruitment resources, the Yupao Direct Recruitment App was launched, and its download volume in the app market increased rapidly. "Our profit structure is DAU × customer unit price × repurchase rate. We mainly charge fees from enterprises and contractors, as well as advertising fees. It means those who are in a hurry to recruit or find a job pay," Zhou Feng said.

The turning point in fate came unexpectedly. In 2021, when Zhou Feng received a call from Zhongding Capital, he had long since given up on the idea of financing. He casually quoted "a valuation of 2 billion yuan, and an investment of 200 million yuan", and the other party readily agreed. "I went to Shanghai, had a meal, and then signed the investment intention letter. Actually, I would have accepted 1 billion yuan. Anyway, I had never seen so much money at that time."

In 2022, both the revenue and the number of users of Yupao.com tripled. The revenue reached hundreds of millions of yuan, which was also contributed by the newly added insurance business (group insurance and accident insurance). At this time, Shunwei Capital, founded by Lei Jun, also approached. After conducting due diligence, when the investment committee was hesitant, Lei Jun said after reviewing it, "Doing this has great social significance." So, Shunwei invested over 100 million yuan in him.

"Because of this, I'm in a group with Lei Jun and Wang Xing. There are over 400 CEOs in Shunwei's group. That group is so high - end that I'm even embarrassed to post advertisements," Zhou Feng said.

Admitting to Investing Over 1.5 Billion but Failing to Gain Widespread Popularity

In May this year, Yupao Direct Recruitment announced a cooperation with Xinchao Media and called it "a brand campaign centered on scenario penetration".

According to the information on the official website of Yupao Direct Recruitment, this round of Yupao Direct Recruitment's advertising storm started in Chengdu on April 27 and expanded to six first - and second - tier core cities across the country, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, in June. Recently, Yupao Direct Recruitment's physical advertisements have appeared in various offline scenarios, including subway stations, bus stops, commercial buildings, residential apartments, and so on.

Why invest a huge amount of money in large - scale advertising? Yupao Direct Recruitment officially responded that, firstly, it hopes to solve the pain point of "high recruitment costs and limited job - seeking space" and attract more high - quality enterprises to settle on the Yupao Direct Recruitment platform; another key goal is to let more workers and employers know that when it comes to recruitment and job - seeking, they should choose Yupao Direct Recruitment.

In addition, Zhou Feng also started to build his personal IP as the founder and invested a lot of manpower and costs.

In February this year, Zhou Feng posted a video on his video account on WeChat and Douyin about his growth experience from childhood to adulthood, revealing his humble origin, the experience of being fostered since childhood, being laughed at by classmates, and being bullied on campus. As of now, Zhou Feng of Yupao Direct Recruitment has nearly 60,000 followers on Douyin, and he has launched two dialogue programs, "Weekly Summit" and "Their Stories".

As for why he wants to build his personal IP as the founder, Zhou Feng specifically made a video to explain, "The main core is that I saw the combination of Tesla and Elon Musk, and Xiaomi and Lei Jun. Technology plus marketing will be the core competitiveness and moat of future companies." He said, "We invest a large amount of money in traffic promotion every year, with a cumulative investment of over 1.5 billion yuan, but in fact, we haven't achieved widespread popularity because our brand lacks a story."

Such high - density advertising requires huge financial support. Can Yupao Direct Recruitment maintain it in the long run? According to public information, Yupao Direct Recruitment's annual revenue has exceeded 1 billion yuan, and the company's valuation is 4 billion yuan.

In the news section of its official website, a set of visually impactful photos attracted attention. In April this year, in the meeting room of the company's headquarters, 8 million yuan in cash was carefully stacked into a spectacular "pyramid" for distributing year - end bonuses to all employees. Some netizens in the comment section commented, "It's all the money earned by migrant workers." Zhou Feng replied, "The hundreds of millions of yuan we raised through financing are used for operations."

Struggling to Break into the White - Collar Market Despite Heavy Advertising Investment?

With this large - scale advertising campaign, Yupao Direct Recruitment's ambition to move up the market has become obvious. After gaining a leading share in the blue - collar market, Yupao Direct Recruitment has started to expand into the white - collar market to complete its strategic expansion, aiming to build a comprehensive and multi - functional recruitment service platform.

In December 2024, Yupao Direct Recruitment completed the acquisition of Haitou.com, a comprehensive campus recruitment platform in China. In March 2025, Haitou.com announced its strategic integration with Yupao Direct Recruitment and officially changed its name to "Yupao Direct Recruitment Campus Recruitment". Yupao Direct Recruitment said, "The completion of this acquisition marks Yupao Direct Recruitment's strategic expansion from blue - collar recruitment to white - collar job - seeking."

In 2025, Yupao Direct Recruitment accelerated its development and publicly disclosed a set of data: the number of registered users has exceeded 100 million, the cumulative number of job positions provided has reached 536 million, and it has successfully facilitated 446 million person - times of employment, creating an income of over 500 billion yuan for workers.

Compared with well - known recruitment platforms like Zhaopin and BOSS Direct Recruitment, Yupao Direct Recruitment, a platform specifically designed for migrant workers, seems rather "niche". Can it really break through from the migrant worker market and enter the white - collar recruitment field?

The "BUG" column found that there are very few white - collar positions on the Yupao Direct Recruitment App. The platform still mainly features blue - collar positions such as waiters, security guards, workers, and chefs. In response to the doubts, the customer service of Yupao Direct Recruitment explained, "Currently, the platform still focuses on blue - collar recruitment, but white - collar recruitment can also be done. We are actively expanding this market through advertising and other means."

A senior person in the recruitment industry said, "There are quite a few companies in the recruitment market, including Zhaopin, Liepin, Maimai, and even Kuaishou has a blue - collar recruitment business. So, the market competition is quite fierce. If Yupao wants to penetrate from its blue - collar base into the white - collar market, advertising bombardment alone is far from enough."

This article is from the WeChat official account "Sina Tech", written by Yan Yan and published by 36Kr with permission.