Image source @ Visual China
Wen | Deep Pupil Business, author | Bao San, Chu Qingzhou, Editor, | Olga
In the past two days, the e-commerce giants have been in the news.
On the afternoon of April 24, Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and general manager of Tmall and Taobao, and Dai Shan took over. Subsequently, after two years, the case of v. Liu Qiangdong also passed on the latest developments, and a public hearing will be held in the United States on April 25.
"The times are a wave of pushing, it is difficult to believe that 30 years later, China's e-commerce is still these big guys." Huang Zheng said such a sentence in an interview in 2016.
Nowadays, the e-commerce front wave seems to be accelerating backwards.
The retirement of Internet tycoons is not a new thing, following Alibaba and Pinduoduo, JD.com has also ushered in a new CEO. In just three years, the founders of the three major e-commerce giants have all stepped down as CEOs and completed the delivery of power.
Some people have lived a idyllic life like idle clouds and wild cranes, some people are regaining their scientific research dreams to explore the possibilities of the future, and some people are called retreats and sit behind the scenes to control the overall situation... These Internet tycoons once had a crushing situation, and their words and deeds affected the business landscape, and now they are gone, which is also infinitely emotional. What is even more curious is that in the second-tier era of the big guys, the choppy Internet wave will rush to where.
Jack Ma: Change the jianghu
In 2019, on the 20th anniversary of Alibaba's founding, Ma Yun announced his resignation as chairman of the group's board of directors, handing over power to Daniel Zhang.
At that time, Ma Yun frankly said: "In addition to continuing to serve as a partner of Alibaba and making efforts and contributions to the partner organization mechanism, I hope to return to education... Education, public welfare, environmental protection, these I have been doing, I think I can do better. ”
Earlier in 2013, Ma Yun handed over the scepter of alibaba group CEO to Daniel Zhang, and gradually faded out of the front-line management work.
With antitrust becoming an important direction of China's Internet regulation in the past two years, Ma Yun has made fewer public appearances — except for Alibaba's internal activities, he has participated in activities related to rural education and agriculture.
In September 2021, Ma Yun appeared in Pinghu, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, to visit the agricultural greenhouse and inspect Ali's digital agricultural base; on January 10, 2022, Ma Yun appeared in a school in Wuzhishan City, Hainan Province, and connected with 100 teachers from many provinces and cities across the country.
Even though he has retired, through Alibaba's unique "partnership system", Ma Yun's board seat still exists, and he still has the right to make decisions about Ali's development direction.
However, Ma Yun's retirement life is not at all peaceful, and even set off a monstrous wave.
In 2019, Ma Yun published remarks such as "996 is a blessing" and "sending talents to the society", which aroused the disgust of young people. In 2020, Ma Yun shelled China's financial regulatory rules on the Bund, fell off the altar overnight, was criticized as a "capitalist who only knows how to make money", and the listing of trillion-dollar ants was urgently stopped, facing the fate of possible spin-off.
Subsequently, Jiang Fan's "peach incident" and Ali's female employees' "false reporting of sexual assault incidents" have repeatedly pushed Ali to the cusp of the storm, and have been criticized by relevant departments for allegedly manipulating public opinion. In 2021, Ali's revenue growth rate fell to 10%, a record low, and the stock market value once evaporated by 3 trillion yuan. Also this year, Ali was fined 18.2 billion yuan for monopoly operations.
Ali's life is becoming more and more difficult, the traffic of Taobao and Tmall is drying up, and the market share is constantly being eroded by competitors such as Pinduoduo and Douyin E-commerce. At the beginning of this year, Ali's top management was again greatly adjusted, Jiang Fan was "exiled" to overseas business, and the domestic business was handed over to Ali's old man Dai Shan.
Ma's most recent major public appearance was in May last year, when he appeared at the "Ali Day" group wedding, and Ma Yun, wearing a blue T-shirt and beige trousers, sparked cheers from newcomers. He also said through the host that he would give each of the more than 1,500 couples who signed up for the group wedding a bottle of Alibaba's anniversary wine.
Obviously, Ma Yun appeared to boost the morale of the Ali people in the difficult situation. This is probably the scarcest thing for Ali right now.
Once, Ma Yun mentioned on different occasions that he was not happy at all when ali had a value of tens of billions of dollars, and the happiest thing was when he received a salary of 91 yuan a month as a teacher. But after more than three years of retirement, Mr. Ma still failed to return to the podium as he wished, and became a rural teacher as an ordinary person.
Huang Zheng: It's time to brush up on your clothes
"After resigning as chairman, I hope to combine my lifelong interests and devote myself to research in the fields of food science and life sciences, and explore a new space for high-speed, high-quality and in-depth development for Pinduoduo in ten years." In 2020, when Huang Zheng announced his retirement, he said that he would "touch the stones on the road in 10 years" and left.
"Our wealth is just society that lets us keep it for them, and if you really think that this money is your own, then trouble is coming." 」 Compared with Ma Yun's "not interested in money", Huang Zheng has practiced the concept of "money is a tool, not a purpose".
In The article "Turning "Capitalism" Upside Down" published by Huang Zheng tells the story of how he accompanied his masters Duan Yongping and Buffett to dinner when he was 26 years old, and was impressed by the wisdom of the stock god "money accumulates first and then distributes".
Master Duan Yongping was 41 years old when he retired, and it was at the time of the step by step that the sales of VCDs reached the first place in the country. When the number of active users, total revenue, growth rate and other business indicators of Pinduoduo hit a record high, and even surpassed Alibaba to become the largest platform for China's e-commerce users, Huang Zheng also chose to retire and retreated in the most brilliant moment.
After leaving Huang Zheng for more than a year, Pinduoduo began to face the dilemma of weak revenue and user growth. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Pinduoduo's stock price fell sharply, and the well-known investment institution Hillhouse reduced its holdings of more than 90% of Pinduoduo shares in the fourth quarter of last year, while Himalaya Capital directly liquidated its positions.
Without "hanging the curtain to listen to the government", Huang Zheng had already stepped down from all the management positions of Pinduoduo when he left, handed over the power to Pinduoduo CEO Chen Lei and COO Abu, and he no longer asked about the daily operation and management of Pinduoduo, and even voluntarily gave up the super voting right of 1:10 - of course, Huang Zheng still holds 28.9% of the shares of Pinduoduo, which is the largest shareholder of Pinduoduo.
That is to say, Huang Zheng, who seems to be whisking away, actually comes and goes freely, and when Pinduoduo is facing difficulties, it is not impossible for him to return to business.
For example, before Lu Qi "parachuted" Baidu, he suddenly announced his resignation only 483 days later, and Robin Li, who once retired, had to return to the front line and take on the heavy responsibility of reform with his wife Ma Dongmin, leading Baidu to continue to "win the AI era".
Another interesting fact is that retired Internet moguls seem to have a preference for the life sciences sector.
Huang Zheng set up the Star Science Fund with $100 million; ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO and said he hoped to spend more time participating in "brain science" research; Sogou founder and CEO Wang Xiaochuan issued an internal letter when he retired, saying that he hoped to contribute to the development of life sciences and medicine.
In addition, Baidu founder Robin Li also expressed interest in life sciences, and in 2020 set up a life science platform company "Baitu Shengke"; Shanda Network founder Chen Tianqiao invested 1 billion US dollars to establish the Brain Science Research Institute as early as 2016, and plans to invest 100 million US dollars in the field of brain science every year.
Musk, known as the "Iron Man of Silicon Valley", is extremely fanatical about life sciences. In 2016, Musk established Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company, whose ultimate goal is to achieve digital immortality, where consciousness can be downloaded and stored in a chip, and a young body can be re-"read" for a new body, and consciousness will last forever.
After achieving fame, it is an instinct of human beings to return to the torture and exploration of the essence of life. China's current venture capital direction is also transforming from to C Internet to hard technology, betting on life sciences, perhaps the Internet giants are gambling on another new era.
Liu Qiangdong: I will not abstain from leaving office
"I'm sure I won't retire until I'm 65." At the Davos Forum held in early 2018, Liu Qiangdong was full of pride and ambition in his words, and there was no sign of "retreating behind the scenes". For the big and small affairs of Jingdong, Liu Qiangdong has always been hands-on, and the outside world generally believes that Jingdong does not have a "second in command".
Unexpectedly, the "Minnesota incident" discredited Liu Qiangdong, and Jingdong's stock price fluctuated sharply, once hitting the lowest point since its listing. Old Liu, who is in his prime and has extraordinary ambitions, also has to act in a low-key manner and choose to avoid the limelight for the time being.
And he and JD.com also realized that separating the founder and the company's brand is the best protection for the company. After that, JD.com gradually began a multi-year high-level power transfer.
At the 2018 JD Mid-year Strategy Conference, Xu Lei, CMO of JD Group, began to serve as the rotating CEO of JD Mall, reporting to Liu Qiangdong. After that, Jingdong gradually erased the word "rotation" in its external publicity, until the Jingdong mall was upgraded, and Xu Lei officially became the CEO of Jingdong Retail Group, and this time, he was promoted to CEO of Jingdong Group.
In fact, Liu Qiangdong only retreated behind the scenes and never intended to completely decouple from the JD.com he founded.
According to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Liu Qiangdong still holds 13.9% of the equity of JD Group and 76.9% of the voting rights, retains the "most critical" position of chairman of the board of directors of JD Group, and will continue to attend jd.com's most important management meetings, such as the monthly SEC (Strategic Executive Committee) meeting and quarterly business analysis meetings, etc., and has not completely stayed away from the company's business.
Xu Lei can sit firmly in the "second position", and it is inseparable from Liu Qiangdong's support of "whoever disobeys Xu Lei is not obedient to me". After Xu Lei became the CEO of Jingdong Group, he still had to "report to Liu Qiangdong".
In the official announcement of JD.com, "long-term strategic design and major strategic decision-making deployment" means that Liu Qiangdong still holds decision-making power, "young leading talent training" points to the right to appoint and dismiss personnel, and "rural revitalization" means to continue to fight with Ali, Pinduoduo, Meituan and other powerful people.
"Many people think that Lao Liu is very strong, and they think that if there is something that needs help, there is no point in finding the executives under me, and they can find me." Liu Qiangdong himself said in an interview with financial writer Wu Xiaobo.
Liu Qiangdong did not leave Jingdong, and Jingdong could not do without Liu Qiangdong. It can be predicted that Xu Lei was only "corrected", and the authority could not be challenged, and the core power was still firmly in the iron fist of Lao Liu.
Today, only Tencent Ma Huateng, Baidu Robin Hong, NetEase Ding Lei, Meituan Wang Xing, Xiaomi Lei and other old cannons are still active in the front line, serving as the company's chairman and CEO, and managing the daily operation of the group. Even labor models such as Lei Jun announced their new goal for the next stage: all in building cars.
These long-term carrying the banner of the enterprise, every word and deed, every move is related to the success or failure of the enterprise. Looking back at the road to entrepreneurship, not everyone is willing to give up the supreme Iron Throne.
The end of the "golden age" of Internet tycoons
The background of the big guys retreating to the second line is that domestic Internet supervision is becoming increasingly strict, and the secondary harm of the Internet such as commercial monopoly, platform two choices, and big data killing is multiplied, and it is always facing a regulatory hammer. It has become increasingly difficult for large Internet companies to pursue monopoly excess profits.
In a word, today's Internet development has long passed the era of fighting to the top, being happy to take revenge, and creating heroes in a chaotic world, and has entered a new stage of establishing rules and stressing systems.
Since most Internet companies have a relatively complete corporate governance structure and operating mechanism, even if the founders retreat behind the scenes, the company can still move forward steadily along the established track. In the past, when the "second-in-command" took over real power, what they needed was to steer the giant ship without touching the reef and find a development path that met the needs of the country in the great changes.
Without their times, there are only the times of them.
The internet giants are leaving one by one, perhaps announcing that the golden age has come to an end, and in the new era everything is still possible.