There are not many men at the "dinner table"

Image source @ Visual China

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Congratulations to Dongge for his successful "graduation".

Liu Qiangdong stepped down as CEO of Jingdong Group and went to revitalize the small mountain village.

In fact, 4 years ago, Dongge hinted at his "ambition". At the Wuzhen Internet Conference, "There are still tens of millions of people living in extreme poverty in our country, which is a shame for every one of us who are rich!" ”

It can be seen that Dongge deeply hates the rich people who "have a small goal of one hundred million" and "earn billions a month". On that day's "Dongxing Dinner Bureau", half of your circle came, except for the Internet big guy who "earns billions a month".

The meal was supposed to be the epitome of the jianghu. Between the intertwined, it is all the combination of the Internet world.

Xiao Ma Ge sat firmly in the C position, and Liu Qiangdong and Wang Xing were left and right arm. After the feast, the 16 big men at the dinner table scattered.

The sequel to Wuzhen Rice Bureau is the successive retirement of a generation of Internet tycoons. At the same time, there may be the internet era that was once surging.

01

On the morning of April 7, Jingdong Group issued an announcement announcing that Liu Qiangdong would no longer concurrently serve as the CEO of Jingdong Group, and Xu Lei, the "second boss", would take office.

At this moment, Liu Qiangdong, who just celebrated his 48th birthday more than a month ago, can be said to be "early departure".

At the "Dongxing Bureau" of that year, Zhang Yiming, who separated Lei Jun, Wang Xing, and Ma Huateng from Liu Qiangdongzhong, earlier than he retired. Last year, at the age of 520, Zhang Yiming, 38 years old, announced his resignation as CEO of ByteDance.

The meal is exquisitely seated, even if you love like a family, you are also divided into guests.

Dongxing Bureau Image source: Network

The seat of the "Dongxing Bureau" is particularly exquisite, with Ma Huateng in the middle and Liu Qiangdong and Wang Xing next to him.

At that time, Tencent invested in both JD.com and Meituan, JD.com played e-commerce, and Meituan engaged in local life. What the two of them eat is the market share of Jack's horse, which is next to The Little Ma brother on the rich list.

The dinner bureau can match transactions, and there are occasional "anti-eyes" to choke each other.

Zhang Yiming and Cheng Wei were the youngest people at the dinner table. Not long after participating in the dinner, there was a smoke between today's headlines and Tencent. The Douyin link was blocked by WeChat, and the two families frequently went to court.

If it weren't for the frequent invitations of Internet bigwigs to drink tea later, and the country's strong "wall breaking", I am afraid that you would not be able to share the Douyin video with your WeChat friends now.

Su Hua sat across from Zhang Yiming. 5 months after Zhang stepped down as CEO of Byte, Su Hua also stepped down as CEO of Kuaishou.

For the "junior" in front of the dinner table who is 1 year younger than himself, Su Hua must have expected his growth rate unexpectedly.

In 2016, Kuaishou had hundreds of millions of users, and Douyin was just launched when it was popular in rural China. Three years later, the Douyin DAU exceeded 400 million, quickly winning the white-collar workers in first- and second-tier cities, while Kuaishou's DAU was less than 300 million.

Although many people refer to the competition between Douyin and Kuaishou as a "fast trembling war", Su Hua and Zhang Yiming have little intersection in public. The group photo on the "Dongxing Bureau" is one of the few group photos of the two people.

One east and one west, the farthest distance from the dinner table.

Su Hua could not grab Zhang Yiming in the market share of first- and second-tier cities, but he invested in Zhou Yuan, who was closer to his seat. In August 2019, Zhihu completed the F Round of 434 million financing, and the lead investor was Kuaishou.

Nowadays, when you open Zhihu, you can not only see the urban elite of "people in the United States, just got off the plane", but also follow the fast old iron to call "666".

Zhu Xiaohu of GSR Ventures and Wang Xiaofeng, former CEO of Mobike, are also members of the "Dongxing Bureau". Before the meal, Zhu Xiaohu and Ma Huateng had set off a fierce debate on the Internet about sharing bicycles. However, this did not prevent them from talking about wine at the dinner table.

The dinner bureau is sophisticated, and the shopping mall is for the benefit.

A month after the "Dongxing Bureau", Zhu Xiaohu transferred his shareholding in the small yellow car to Hangzhou Ma, and he withdrew perfectly; after another four months, The Meituan Wang Xing completed the marriage with Mobike with a "bride price" of 2.7 billion US dollars.

At this point, the two males of the shared bicycle have all changed hands. Wang Xiaofeng also stepped down as CEO of Mobike and gradually faded out of the public eye.

Now look, a quarter of the 16 big guys in the "Dongxing Bureau" have "retired", and a quarter are venture capitalists, and only Xiaomi Leijun is still active in the Internet circle among the remaining people...

02

In fact, the Wuzhen dinner game of the day was divided into two games, the first was Ding Lei's dinner game.

However, Ding Lei's dinner bureau was only carried out for a few moments, and Liu Qiangdong and Wang Xing led the crowd to leave the table and organized another "Dongxing Bureau".

Ding Lei Rice Bureau Image source: Network

As the big brother of the Internet circle, Ding Lei sat on the throne of "China's richest man" in 2003. At that time, the rich list was a real estate developer, and the only people who could talk to Ding Lei were Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu and Robin Li of Baidu.

Zhang Chaoyang and Robin Li were also guests at the dinner party that day.

Later, the portal fell into a bottleneck, Robin Li ranked higher and lower in the wealth list, Zhang Chaoyang found a different world, and the physics class he taught was surprisingly popular.

The Wuzhen Restaurant reflects the development of China's Internet industry.

From 2014 to 2015, Binduo, the seat of Wuzhen Rice Bureau, was an Internet platform enterprise. In 2016, there were big men from the field of smart phones and consumption in wuzhen' rice bureau: Yu Chengdong, Lei Jun, Wang Xing, etc. In 2017, a group of post-80s Internet tycoons were invited to enter the game, and the types of industries were more abundant.

Only from 2018, the heat of wuzhen rice bureau began to cool down. In 2019, only the photos of Ding Lei and Robin Li leaked out, and half of the country was missing half of the wall. In the past two years, the "bureau" is even more rare to see.

After last year's financial report came out, Robin Li complained: Our advertising business is affected by education, real estate, tourism and other industries; Ma Huateng also complained: the advertising demand in education, insurance and games and other industries is weak... iQiyi directly called "serious shortage of content", which is almost as strict as the Q State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's strict supervision of variety shows and online dramas.

Liu Qiangdong is no exception. For JD.com, under the influence of weak consumption, repeated epidemics and other factors, 2022 is not a "stable win" year.

The industry out of the dividend period is on the one hand, the country's anti-monopoly also makes the big guys frightened.

At the end of 2020, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines in the Platform Economy (Draft for Comment). It is mentioned that red envelope subsidies, brand blocking, two choices, big data killing, search downgrading, traffic restrictions, etc. may become manifestations of abuse of dominance.

In November last year, the State Anti-Monopoly Administration was listed in Beijing's Xicheng District, which shocked many Internet tycoons.

In fact, since the Internet heat wave swept Through China in the late 1990s, the mainland Internet industry has gone through more than 20 years.

When technological innovation became weak, they began to create concepts, and they played tricks with big words and new words; and as antitrust power struck, they at least superficially became obedient enough.

The big guys gradually faded out of the public eye, and there was no longer the rhetoric of "making billions a month".

03

After Liu Qiangdong resigns as CEO, he will devote more energy to long-term strategic design, major strategic decision-making and deployment, the cultivation of young leaders and the cause of rural revitalization.

Rural revitalization comes first, and common prosperity comes later.

Half a year ago, a meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission may have empowered the Internet tycoon Daigo.

Not long after that, Hangzhou Ma increased its capital by 50 billion yuan and launched the "Special Plan for Common Prosperity"; Wang Xing played the "fit body", the United States is better, the group is together, the Us group is better together, and the genes come with common prosperity.

In fact, in February this year, Dongge contributed to the common prosperity.

At that time, Liu Qiangdong announced that he would donate 62.3766 million shares of JD.com's Class B ordinary shares to a charity for charitable purposes such as environmental protection and education. According to JD.com's stock price at the time, the value of these stocks was equivalent to $2.34 billion.

More big guys are investing in the life sciences, which sounds very Buddhist.

When Zhang Yiming announced his resignation as CEO of ByteDance, he expressed his yearning for life sciences. He mentioned in the letter that he will focus on long-term important things such as long-term strategy, corporate culture, and social responsibility, such as virtual reality, life sciences, and scientific computing.

In mid-March last year, when Huang Zheng resigned as chairman of Pinduoduo, he also said that the increasingly fierce and even alienated competition in the industry made him realize that the traditional competition based on scale and efficiency has its inevitable problems, "To change, we must find answers in core technology and its basic theory." ”

What is the core technology and what is the basic theory? The answer is life sciences.

He wants to "touch the stones on the road ten years from now" and devote himself to research in food science and life sciences. For example, potatoes and tomatoes are planted in the field to control their heavy metal content, and 100 million US dollars are donated to Zhejiang University to explore research in the intersection of biology, medical treatment and other fields.

In October last year, Wang Xiaochuan, who stepped down as CEO of Sogou, found another "love", which is also a life science.

However, according to the statistics of Ai Media, from 2016 to 2019, the number of enrollment plans for biology majors increased by 6%, while the number of computer enrollment plans increased by 32% in the same period.

There's a saying: The 21st century is the century of life sciences, but you must not go to the biology department.

On the same day that Dong Ge announced his "graduation", Yu Minhong said a sentence that spread widely: "I may have become an obstacle to the next stage of New Oriental." ”

Xu Lei first walked into the Jingdong conference room in 2007. At that time, Liu Qiangdong was leading Jingdong to fight the 618 promotion, and Xu Lei was recommended to Liu Qiangdong by Xu Xin of Today Capital (the VCS queen of the online "Tuan Bread" two days ago) as a "strategist". At several strategy meetings before 618 that year, Xu Lei contributed a lot of ideas.

Big factories need to be replaced.

On September 26, 2021, the annual Wuzhen Internet Conference arrived as scheduled. Lei Jun, Wang Xing, Zhou Hongyi and other Internet giants arrived at the meeting, and Ali sent Daniel Zhang.

This time, there was no meal in Wuzhen.