VC falls, KOL Agency eats full?

Written by: Jaleel, BUBBLE, BlockBeats

Editors: Jack, Zhang Wen, BlockBeats

This article acknowledges all the agencies interviewed: Evie (JE Labs); Miko (Hyperion); Ergou (BLOCKFOCUS); Dov, Gary, Joyce (Mango Labs); Sam (WOK Labs), (Anonymous), etc.

KOL Agency is filling in Crypto VC.

Last weekend, another Chinese encryption VC, who was once in the prime of the country, stopped. Against the backdrop of tightening liquidity in global financial markets, the crypto industry has fallen into a long "garbage time", and venture capital (VC) is experiencing an unprecedented cold winter. However, KOL Agency, a track that suddenly ran out of this cycle, is enjoying spring.

During a call with BlockBeats, Mango Labs founder Dov is walking on his way home after supper. His current work pace is more compact than when he is a VC, and he is overwhelmed with business and projects. He either holds meetings or makes temporary calls on the side of the road every day. After working in Agency's business full-time, his identity and pace changed.

Projects are difficult to do and VCs are difficult, but on the other hand, more than 20 KOL agencies have been born in the market in the past six months, becoming one of the hottest and most profitable new business forms this year. Dov, who was still in the VC field a year ago, seems to have foreseeed changes in the industry.

"Many VCs have not had a good time this year, and now they have begun to transform into Agency." The person who spoke was Hyperion founder Miko. A core team member of their team closed down a VC of their own last month and joined the Agency track.

This seems to be a commonality in the industry, and most of the core team members of the Agency have had investment experience.

Agency gradually became the "next stop" for VCs. When VCs lose their appeal to retail investors, Agency becomes the new narrative creator of the market. This is the winter of VC and the spring of KOL Agency.

VC people's "next stop"

Before a project party goes online, it wants to spread the popularity on Twitter. The most common action is to ask KOLs to help retweet, post long articles, post introductions, and do AMA. But the question is: Who will post it? What to send? How to contact KOL? How to evaluate ROI? If it is a newcomer project, even the first step may be difficult.

The project party needs voice, but does not know how to spread; KOL has content, but does not know how to connect. This is the real background of the birth of KOL Agency, the business generated by the market in the demand for information gap and trust.

"At that time, I was in Denver. Many foreigners who were doing projects asked me directly if I could introduce Chinese KOLs," Dov recalled. "I helped a project to connect with Chinese KOLs, but I didn't expect the results were very good."

At first, he didn't plan to do Agency full-time. But in the process of helping for a while, he keenly captured an industry change: "KOL is flip VC, which will be a very critical trend."

After returning to China, he did not immediately all in, but tried slowly. Until the end of 2023, at an event in Hong Kong, he once again felt the potential of the Agency model. It was then that his partner Lolo came to him and the two hit it off.

"She said that the logic of the 'KOL flip VC' I mentioned was very correct, so we can do something together. I thought timing was here, so I tried to take on several projects. At that time, there were not many projects, and it was not too lukewarm."

The turning point occurred in January 2025, when Dov's Mango Labs ushered in an explosive period, and traffic and cooperative projects began to grow significantly. This period is also the window period for the entire KOL Agency model to "upper" the entire KOL Agency model.

Ergou, the founder of another BLOCKFOCUS, is also one of the first people in the Chinese region to start the Agency business. When he entered the circle in 2018, Ergou worked in a software company to connect marketing and KOLs. After a year, he started to build a KOL account by himself. From posting content, catching popularity to participating in community interactions, he started to "play" his KOL account step by step.

"I only had 100 fans when I started doing Twitter, but the No. 1 sister had followed me." At that time, Ergou was still in her sophomore year, the youngest in the circle, but very active. He was also the age when he started to make a fortune at the age of 19. Ergou joked, "I am the one I was back then."

With the accumulation of connections and the superposition of resources, Ergou officially launched BLOCKFOCUS's Agency business in 2021, helping project parties find suitable KOLs for marketing and promotion.

" We are not MCN"

If you have ever paid attention to the traditional internet celebrity economy, you must be familiar with the word "MCN". In essence, the KOL Agency's role is very similar to the MCN in the Web2 world.

In the Web2 context, MCN (Multi-Channel Network) assumes the role of "intermediate" between brands and Internet celebrities: the brand does not need to connect with Internet celebrities one by one, but uses MCN companies to sign, price and manage them in a unified manner, and centrally arrange the rhythm of content production and communication.

But MCN also has its "heavy industry" characteristics. A friend who works in a traditional economic company told BlockBeats that the most famous MCN company in Hangzhou, Worry Media, KOL usually signs exclusive contracts with institutions for 3-10 years, and MCN is fully responsible for commercialization. Platform sharing, brand placement, account management, and even KOL's "popularity rhythm" are all designed step by step by step by company.

This model was once a hit in the short video era, but when it was copied directly to Web3, it became a bit unacceptable.

"Web3 has no contract effect. The KOL you trained can leave and go wherever you want." Ergou, the founder of BLOCKFOCUS, once considered the form of signing a KOL, but after he consulted with a lawyer, he found that this set would not work in Web3.

Therefore, this is also the current situation of all KOL Agency: "If you don't train KOLs, you won't sign exclusives."

Compared with the "buyout management" of Web2, KOLs in Web3 are more like freelancers. They can take on project A today, project B tomorrow, and even serve multiple agencies at the same time.

This is also resonant with Hyperion founder Miko.

Hyperion was founded in 2019 and initially focused on integrated marketing of the Web2 platform - Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Video Account... The team formulated a full-case communication strategy for brand customers, linking KOL resources, deployment plans and conversion paths to help brands explode their products in a short period of time. Until 2023, Hyperion officially transforms into the Web3 field.

In order to adapt to this more "wild" and more distributed market environment, Hyperion has made some transformations in its organizational structure and execution methods: not signing contracts and cultivating KOLs, but only conducting flexible cooperation: "Web3 KOLs cannot be managed. We will not sign or buy out whom. What we do is cooperate, not control."

Circle Barrier

Although Web3 does not have exclusives and buyouts at the contract level, in this industry that relies heavily on favors and trust, Agency, KOL and project parties also have their own "small circle" culture and barriers.

"Many KOLs give us the lowest quotations in the market, and they quote $5,000 or $8,000 to the outside world, but they just say it's enough to give it." Every KOL that cooperates is Ergou's good friend.

This relationship is not limited to business cooperation, but also extends to daily emotional management. Ergou and his team will give cakes and write greeting cards during festivals, play games and have dinner with KOLs, and even rely on "emotional" to solve the problem of deleting posts and public relations when a project has a public opinion crisis.

"We understand how each KOL is good at, what kind of content they are good at, what their fans are like, and even know their recent emotional state." Ergou said, "Only by understanding deeply can we achieve a real matching of delivery."

This emotional and cognitive cooperative relationship makes some KOLs more willing to cooperate with a certain agency for a long time, reducing the cost of repeated screening and communication, and also allowing Agency to gradually form its own "exclusive resource pool".

Circle culture is not only reflected in ToC's KOL network, but also exists at the ToB's project-party resource level.

Especially in the context of the shrinking primary market and intensifying information asymmetry, who can master the project and who can enter the core community has become the key to whether the new Agency can gain a foothold.

All of this requires strong industry connections and resources to endorse. This is why most founders of top agencies have VC or CEX career backgrounds. They understand project logic better and are more likely to access resources at the start of the project.

Evie, founder of JE Labs, who has a compound background such as traditional consulting companies, encrypted VCs and personal IP construction experience, started JE Labs' Agency business after leaving OKX Web3 wallet in June 2024: She revealed that JE Labs currently has almost no full-time BD, and almost all BD work in the industry is personally responsible by the founder, and so is Evie.

"What kind of projects you come into contact with and what kind of projects you cooperate with can very well show the circle you are in, and the endorsement behind you." Resource accumulation and connection endorsement determine whether Agency can receive the first batch of truly high-quality projects, and these "starting projects" are the starting point for creating a cycle of reputation.

A more advanced agency is "investing"

As this industry gradually matures and more competitors, there are no moats and deeper business cities, and everyone can only redirect the "service fees", and the overall revenue of the industry will become less and less. And these smart people who came from VCs have long realized this. So, the more advanced Agency began to transform. They are no longer intermediaries between KOLs and project parties, but gradually evolve into strategic partners with "investment logic".

Taking JE Labs as an example, a good delivery strategy cannot be separated from an executive team that understands the industry and is good at implementing it. The JE Labs team is composed of members from diverse backgrounds such as consulting, VC, exchange, and web2 major marketing. It has both a macro market understanding and front-line practical experience. This cross-border integrated team structure allows the team to quickly understand the narrative focus of different track projects and flexibly adapt to communication needs at different stages. Within JE Labs, Evie divides business services into four categories, and corresponds to four different cooperation models:

1. Pure KOL promotion and distribution services: According to the needs of the project party, Agency is responsible for KOL screening, schedule execution, promotion and distribution direction/talking points design, and generally charges a 20% service fee.

2. Customized consulting services: When projects have more complex needs, such as founder IP creation, community growth strategy formulation, Narrative design or AMA full-link planning, JE Labs will charge monthly based on complexity and investment, but in order to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the cooperation, this type of cooperation will establish a cooperation model from at least 3 months.

3. KOL round, community round: If the project party hopes to raise funds through KOL round, community round, etc., Agency will provide a "financing service package" including Narrative packaging, airdrop planning, distribution logic, and KOL mobilization. The charging method is generally based on the total financing amount to withdraw tokens in proportion.

4. Long-term consultant cooperation: similar to Part-time CMO. For projects with potential, JE can serve as its part-time CMO or market consultant, participating in rhythm planning, strategic design and international delivery. The charging structure is "monthly payment + Token incentive". This type of cooperation is only open to a very small number of projects.

Evie calls it "resource leveraged investment" - deeply binds projects with cognition, resources, and voice, and gains real strategic voice while getting tokens.

She said bluntly: "There are many people in the market who understand Marketing and Crypto industry. But very few people can integrate the two and provide real and effective advice for projects at the strategy level."

"How does Narrative say? How does the economic model cooperate with the market? How does KOL distribution match the pace? We are not serving KOLs, but business logic." Evie summarizes the true value of Agency in this way.

She believes that the agency that only works with KOL connections has a very limited moat. Only those agencies that have gradually transformed into "strategy consultants + resource partners" have deeper customer stickiness and business sustainability.

Most of the top agencies that survive on the market have shifted their service focus from "execution" to "sustaining the runner-up", relying on the last three types of businesses - financing support, in-depth consultation, and strategic binding, building more stable cash flow and deeper industry barriers.

VC molts, the agency that becomes a butterfly in the cold winter

In fact, KOL Agency is not a new business in this cycle, its prototype has existed in the past few cycles.

In the bull market of NFT, a group of "MCN teams" serving NFT projects have emerged in the market, responsible for community construction, whitelist activities, Discord and WeChat group maintenance, and the coordination of early AMA promotion and distribution. At that time, many teams of NFT projects were not familiar with the operational logic of Web3, especially those traditional IPs migrated from Web2. They did not understand the pricing system of KOLs, did not know who should put the promotion and promotion in their hands, and lacked the right to "speak in the circle".

Therefore, this type of MCN assumed the original function of "content packaging + traffic landing", and to some extent, it was the prototype of the KOL Agency.

By 2021-2022, global liquidity will be rampant and the primary market will flourish. VC holds huge capital, and public chain projects, ZK infrastructure and Layer2 agreements are constantly emerging with king-level financing, and financing of tens of millions of dollars is frequently issued.

When money is no longer the scarce resource, other resources become scarce resources.

There are too many projects and serious shortage of post-investment resources. For the project party, what is lacking is not money, but more direct incubation resources are needed. Therefore, in the industry's self-regulation, another role that is closer to the project's "actual growth needs" is born: incubator/accelerator.

These incubators usually do not make investment decisions, but instead play part of the executor of VC post-investment, providing "implementation assistance" services from team building, incentive system design, media promotion, community operation, to sorting out user growth paths, with tokens as a reward. This type of model is somewhat closer to the current Agency niche.

It can be said that MCN is a "content-type predecessor", while incubators are a "structural-type predecessor". The birth of Agency is precisely the "refailure of the two" in the Web3 scenario.

Today, with the primary market stalling and the secondary market receding, VCs have entered a cycle of collective "abyphasia", and Agency has found a new path to rise.

As Evie said, "The current project parties may not necessarily lack money, but they must lack resources, execution, and a team that can accompany them to grow."

And Agency just fills the new gap in this era - using cognition to help build Narrative, using resources to connect communities, and using strategies to participate in financing and currency listing paths.

Disappearing VC bonus

If the last cycle was the highlight of VCs, then this cycle, they are facing a crisis of collective failure.

In Dov's view, the reason why VCs "left behind" in this cycle is ultimately due to the dislocation of supply and demand and the end of the dividends of the times.

"Why does the project break the issue price as soon as it goes online? There are too many projects and too few retail investors. Everyone is competing for attention and liquidity, and these are the most scarce," said Dov.

Dov said from a macro perspective: In the last cycle, global capital was flooding, global asset prices expanded collectively after the epidemic, US stocks were high, the real estate market in third world countries was booming, and domestic first-tier investment was also extremely hot, even overheated. As people keep looking for new assets, crypto assets naturally become the "new outlet" in the eyes of retail investors. Against that background, Crypto VC stood at the forefront: the first-level cost is extremely low, the valuation is rising rapidly, and the project has completed several rounds of financing before it has been launched, and the book income has "flyed".

"You can understand Crypto as a split disc in traditional finance. The money that had no place to go at that time was flowing here," Dov recalled. "In the last cycle, VC was the biggest profiter of the dividends of the times."

But in this round, the faucet for US dollar printing was cut off, retail investors retreated, the market became cold, and everything changed.

Many VCs have not found PMF (product market fit), users have not increased in volume, products have not been implemented, and tokens have not even had the courage to go online. Even if it is online, it is often "supported as soon as the market opens." Some projects even began to modify the terms before unlocking the tokens: extend the locking position, lower the valuation, and even force repurchase.

There is no way out at level 1, and there is no buying at level 2. VC, who was once mythical, has now become a "industry borer" among retail investors. "It's like when you play memecoin, VCs are playing all the internal market and waiting for retail investors to take over, but retail investors will definitely not take over."

VC has no money, but the project still has to be taken over, so they found KOL. So in 2024, the "KOL wheel" began to become popular, and even now it has a "community wheel".

This is a "run run" that will come sooner or later.

Dov compared his experience in traditional PE: "In the past, when we invested in consumer brands, we started with a case of 100 million to 200 million US dollars. At that time, the market was too hot, and some projects did not even have profits, but their valuations were 100 times the revenue, which was completely irrational."

The same story happened in Crypto. In the past two years, Crypto VC has invested in "concept projects" everywhere with huge US dollar funds. "But when it was launched, I found that no one was using it, no one bought it, no one believed it. These projects became "paper wealth" piled on the table, and no one could buy it."

"These changes are changes in the global era and have nothing to do with exchanges, VCs, project parties, KOLs, and communities. A grain of sand in the era is a mountain of the industry." Dov told Rhythm BlockBeats.

In Dov's view, this is not only a problem with Crypto, but also a problem with Chinese VCs, but a global market is undergoing a round of global value revaluation: US stock IPOs broke the issue price at the opening, and Chinese stocks were no longer in the hot spot; there were very few companies available for Hong Kong stocks; VCs have lost the qualification to tell stories, and retail investors no longer buy it.

"Look at the United States, Ant Financial is not listed, Byte is not listed, and US stock IPOs are similar to those of the Coin, and most companies are poured out. Look at NIO, Daily Youxian, and Perfect Diary. Are the trends of these stocks the same as those of altcoins? Even in the traditional primary market, there is still a bubble."

Crypto's two cycles are exactly the same as China's consumer capital bubble at that time: "At that time, all brands used the same OEM factory, and they dared to tell new stories by sticking a brand and changing it to a packaging. Now many cryptocurrency projects are the same."

Today's projects compare who can tell stories, attract the most active communities, leverage the strongest topics, and get Twitter's attention war.

So Agency was "selected".

Blurry boundaries

Ergou observed this round of industry changes: "Almost every round of market trends will produce a batch of Marketing teams, incubators or accelerators, but most of them are just a flash in the pan. When a new round comes, it is a brand new face."

He recalled the early "rabbited" growth period of the industry in 2021: "At that time, everyone was doing it scattered and far from being systematic." But now, with the intensification of competition, the top agency has begun to form a trend of "reinstallation" of organizational structure and cognitive ability, and has truly begun to run like a lightweight Crypto VC.

Currently in the industry, there are two mainstream top agency models.

Teams represented by JE Labs are more inclined to adopt a "consulting company-type" architecture - each project is fully responsible by a "project manager", from the early strategy to the later execution, one stop to the end.

At JE Labs, the project manager is not only responsible for KOL screening, content review, delivery schedule, and data tracking, but also specializes in the track (DeFi, AI, Infra, etc.), and gradually accumulates cognitive and practical abilities in vertical categories. The language blocks have also been included in the refined management dimension: the team masters the KOLs and media resources in the Chinese, English and Russian-speaking regions, and accurately matches the communication habits and public opinion rhythms in each region.

Another type of representative is the "dividing of labor and collaborative" agency represented by BLOCKFOCUS and Hyperion. This type of team cuts the entire marketing process into multiple modules and is completed separately by different members. For example, BD colleagues connect with customers in advance to promote cooperation implementation; the project central control leader grasps the overall project rhythm, node feedback and resource coordination; KOL operations: manage KOL resource pools, coordinate the delivery rhythm; content and data colleagues write content, review data, and adjust and optimize. This split operation is more suitable for taking on multiple projects and running simultaneously, and is more convenient to create SOP processes and realize large-scale replication of services.

Whether it is the project manager system or the multi-work collaboration system, the top agency is no longer a "intermediary", but gradually evolved into a lightweight VC - one must understand both marketing, the project itself, and even the investment and financing strategies.

Top Agency, only three things

The compound capability of "advisor + media + investment + strategy" has gradually developed such an agency into a lighter and more stable cash flow VC.

The core competitiveness and moats of these top agencies have changed from "who knows more KOLs" to three other things: choose better projects, speak better narratives, and design them well to exit.

Select the project

It depends on whether the support group behind the project party is native enough; the background of the founding team, historical integrity records, resource vision, practical ability, etc.

The criteria for the top agency options are actually not much different from investors choosing Portfolio.

Every cooperation has its effect. So the KOLs that cooperate with Agency make money every time, and retail investors of KOLs can make money, so the market attaches different importance to, trust and buying levels of this Agency.

Therefore, Ergou, the founder of BLOCKFOCUS, rejected a lot of project cooperation: "Whether more cases can increase revenue, it also means more management costs and training costs. If the brand is destroyed for the purpose of making volume, it will be more cost-effective, and the trust mechanism is particularly important."

When an agency can make multiple successful cases in a row and get high praise from customers, it will enter a positive cycle: more high-quality projects come to the door, word-of-mouth communication enhances brand stickiness, and then screen out better customers and then form better cases. At the same time, old customers may also conduct second or third repurchase to form long-term cooperation.

Buy "Narration" and get "Construction"

If a16z is a representative of the "VC-level" influence created by building narratives, today's top agency is replicating this ability.

During the cold start of the project, users didn't even understand what the project was doing - what really worked at this time was not the technical manual, but the clear and contagious narrative.

What the top agency needs to do is to use complex and difficult technologies and products to make retail investors understand, listen, and be willing to follow in one sentence.

Mango Labs' COO Gary once gave a vivid metaphor: "Agency is like house design and construction. 20 years ago, people bought construction and gave design; now, buying design and getting construction."

"KOL Service" is construction, and "narrative, rhythm and content control, crisis event handling" is "house design".

An excellent agency is no longer just "finding a few KOLs to tweet", but is truly involved in the early strategic planning of the project: from narrative construction, budget allocation, to KOL screening, communication rhythm, and expression of economic models, every link needs to be "deeply customized".

JE Labs founder Evie introduced BlockBeats in detail his fine hierarchy of KOL resources. Each category has clear positioning and evaluation criteria:

1. Brand KOL: This type of KOL is usually a researcher, senior media person or content creator. They have a deep reputation in the industry and may not necessarily have the largest number of fans, but they have a strong voice and are good at helping projects establish long-term narratives and brand endorsements.

2. Traffic KOL: represents an airdrop hunter. This type of KOL has strong community mobilization and can quickly gather users to participate in project activities. Agency will track its conversion effect through Ref links and accurately quantify the data.

3. Trading KOLs: Mainly based on single bloggers, they usually have a strong community or trading community that can directly affect token prices or on-chain transaction volume. Some KOLs cooperated with by JE Labs can have a monthly order volume of over 10 million US dollars. This type of KOL is generally bound to a commission-sharing bot to directly evaluate the contribution value using data.

Within Mango Labs, one of Joyce's jobs is to maintain the KOL List. She recalled her status when she first joined: "At that time, I was just an ordinary user, and I didn't quite understand what influence is."

But after doing this job, she began to truly realize: "What kind of KOL can really affect readers' perceptions? What content is valuable in the eyes of the project party? These are completely two sets of standards."

Accounts with obvious browsing may also have real interactions; while small accounts with some abstract content may profoundly affect the core groups of a track. There are even some people who have established a strong sense of practical trust by sharing real-time records every day. "So you can't tell the difference between good and bad by the number of fans, but the degree of matching."

Therefore, in addition to positive marketing, some agencies will also creatively plan some "script-style verbal wars" to accurately control the rhythm of public opinion and quickly expand the topic of projects through hot events. For example, Hyperion is good at building popularity from the perspective of "entertainment narrative".

"We are essentially traditional marketers, and for us, Web3 is just another content platform. We want to rework what Web2 has done in Web3," said founder Miko.

Their style of play has very traditional "entertainment industry attributes": project linkage, fight, script killing, KOL open and secret battles, and even FUD scripts, using these personalized marketing to bring more project dissemination.

"You can't just send a list and let everyone post content at the same time," Miko explained. "You have to design the order of appearance, how you speak, and how you talk like a director, a bit like choreographing a drama of multi-person conversation. The communication needs to be dramatic, so there is a little memory."

In his opinion, these whole work is a reflection of another form of execution and transmission tension. Their choice of KOL is not only limited to "traffic bloggers", but also many Web3 KOLs such as developers, investors, DAO organizations, etc., and can also promote them from multiple angles when disseminating projects.

"It may even achieve the effect of breaking the circle and crossing the border, because we are transformed by traditional MCN, and have media resources and rich network resources in traditional industries such as the entertainment industry, sports industry, and fashion industry." Hyperion's core team has several Internet giants like Tencent, and they also have rich network resources in traditional media and mainstream network media.

"We currently have offline salon spaces in Hong Kong, and the spaces in Shenzhen are also being renovated. In the future, these venues will be open to Web3 entrepreneurs and practitioners for free for everyone to hold exchange meetings, salons or industry sharing," said Miko.

VC and Agency Resource

In addition to the aforementioned KOL screening, narrative creation, community fitting and other tasks, most project parties actually face a large number of trivial but critical resource matching needs. And this is precisely one of the core advantages of many head agencies.

From handling public opinion crisis, buying docking, to introducing market makers and trading platform resources, these services seem to be scattered, but they can truly open up the "back door entrance" of the project's growth path. As BLOCKFOCUS founder Ergou said, "The value of this information is far greater than that of ordinary KOLs."

He pointed out that many times Agency is more clear than the project team itself, and better understand the needs that the project party really cares about most - Shangshu.

"For example, if a project wants to go to a trading platform, we can provide key information: tell them the focus of currency listing on different trading platforms, the current narrative hotspots, and sometimes even indirectly inquire about the internal judgment of the rhythm of currency listing." Ergou said: "BLOCKFOCUS is not only a KOL Agency, but also a KOL incubation MCN. The most important thing is that our team is more like a crypto consulting company. Any Crypto team needs a senior broker who can find ways to help the team solve problems in a substantial way, and it is very suitable after our team settles down."

These "information differences" may not be known to outsiders, but they have become a conventional ability in the network system of the top agencies.

Mango Labs founder Dov also mentioned in public and in conversations with BlockBeats many times: "This is not an industry secret, but our long-term public thinking and industry experience."

He further pointed out: From the perspective of a trading platform, its logic for listing coins is actually very clear - there are only two KPIs: attracting new users and bringing transaction volume. So, as long as a project can bring people or money, it is a "worthy" project.

In addition to these projects, Dov also summarizes a type of project that is "naturally more likely to be favored": the narrative is simple and straightforward, emotionally infected; the community is real and active, KOLs are concentrated, and there is topicality; retail investors can understand it, trading platform BD can establish projects, and the media can also spread: "The essence is that you need to give the trading platform a reason enough Make Sense."

So when we go back to the beginning of the article and see ABCDE Capital announces that it will stop investing in new projects and shift its focus to incubation and secondary markets, this is actually no longer a surprise. Whether it is VC or project, everyone finds that making money is becoming increasingly difficult now, so it is better to do some businesses with stable cash flow.

Without the rare historical release of money in 2021, the way out for traditional first-level VCs may change earlier - either to second-level or to resource-based VCs, similar to the form of incubation and agency.

The character boundaries between these top VCs and head agencies are becoming increasingly blurred.

However, the Agency industry is still young and most teams have not yet experienced a full cycle. How long will this spring last? Can Agency survive the next round of market reshuffle? What new forms will be derived from the next cycle? Agency are still exploring their answers.