Fleecing the Pig, Not the Sheep

A Sales Model That Redefined a Generation

The idea is that a business doesn't have to make its money from its core operation. Instead, it leverages the data and relationships that the core operation generates to spin off an entirely different, more lucrative line of business.

Put simply, the sheep is your core business and the pig is the business you spin off from it—but the money-making wool grows thicker and faster only because of the pig.

Back in 2013, two taxi-hailing apps—Kuaidi and Didi—were vying for users. Passengers who booked rides through the apps got discounts, and drivers received subsidies. Promoting these apps alone cost hundreds of millions of yuan.

Clearly, that kind of money is nearly impossible to recoup from the taxi business itself. And yet, it ultimately drew huge numbers of people to open online accounts—and the total balances in those accounts climbed into the hundreds of billions!

So how exactly did they pull this off?

The reason is that the accounts didn't just let customers pay fares and collect subsidies conveniently—any balance left sitting in the account also earned interest at rates higher than a bank deposit. As a result, customers were drawn to move money they would otherwise have kept in the bank into these online accounts. In just a few short weeks, the funds held in these accounts grew by hundreds of billions. Hundreds of billions—a figure some banks couldn't achieve even after decades of effort!

And once these app companies were sitting on that much cash, they could move into financial services—a domain once reserved for banks alone. The growth potential for the business was, in a word, limitless.

This example perfectly captures the "fleecing the pig, not the sheep" mindset. In today's business landscape, your core operation isn't always the main way you make money. By strategically leveraging the data and relationships tied to that core operation, a company can expand into other, far more profitable arenas. Just look at Kuaidi and Didi: they started out to simplify the process of booking a ride, yet they ultimately steered users into the world of finance and achieved success beyond anyone's imagination. This not only shows how vital strategic thinking is—it also underscores that in an era of rapid change, opportunity often lies in the most unexpected places.