O2O

In 2015, O2O — 'Online to Offline' — was China's hottest buzzword, promising that apps could funnel internet users into real-world stores, restaurants, and services. Every startup slapped O2O on its pitch deck. Billions of yuan were poured into food delivery, on-demand massages, car washes, and even on-demand umbrella rentals. Most burned through cash and vanished. By 2016, O2O had become shorthand for reckless startup hype — China's version of the dot-com bubble, compressed into about eighteen months.

China's 2015 'mass entrepreneurship' wave, fueled by cheap venture capital and government encouragement, sent thousands of O2O startups chasing subsidized growth. Giants like Meituan and Ele.me survived; hundreds of copycats did not. The term now evokes both the era's wild optimism and its spectacular crashes, and is frequently used ironically to mock any overhyped business model.

O2O即"线上到线下"模式，2015年风靡一时，指通过互联网引流到实体消费，后因大量烧钱泡沫破裂而成为创业失败的代名词。