Byte reboot IPO?
Author | Xue Yaping
Edit | Zhao Jinjie
Source | Packed Lunch Finance (ID:daxiongfan)
Five months after Zhou was paid to step down as CFO in November last year, ByteDance hired a new CFO. Will the arrival of a new CFO become a signal for ByteDance to restart its listing?
On the evening of April 25, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo released an internal letter announcing that Julie Gao will join ByteDance in the near future as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and will be based in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Prior to Zhou's funding, ByteDance had no CFO. After less than a year as byteDance's CFO, Liang Rubo sent an internal letter to adjust the organizational structure, announcing that Zhou Shouzi would no longer concurrently serve as byteDance's CFO, and the company's finance department would report to Liang Rubo.
"Julie has a lot of experience and thinking about corporate governance and enterprise development, and has provided advice and help to many companies at different stages, and I believe that her joining will bring great help to the company." This also means that Zhang Nan, as the number one of Douyin, will no longer be the only female executive to report to Liang Rubo. Therefore, to be the CFO of a company valued at more than 100 billion US dollars, the outside world is curious, what kind of person is High Zhun?
Photo note: Skadden International LLP website
In ByteDance's internal letter, Liang Rubo said that since 2016, High-precision has cooperated with ByteDance's acquisition and financing projects many times. It is reported that in ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly, Mu Hitomi Game Company, and several rounds of private equity financing, Gao Zhun has provided legal services, and the total transaction volume has reached billions of DOLLARs.
Public information shows that Gao Zhun was born in Shanghai and received a doctorate in law from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining ByteDance, she was the China Managing Partner at Skadden Lloyd,Egidium, where she advised a number of technology companies on listings, mergers and acquisitions, and financing, and was listed as one of the 45 "Outstanding Women Under 45" by American Bar Magazine and the highest level (Band 1) of chambers of commerce at Chambers chamber of commerce at Chambers chamber of commerce at Chambers of Commerce for Chambers of Commerce for more than a decade.
"If a person wants to be truly proficient in a field, in addition to talent, he must also invest about 10,000 hours of effective training." This is a quote from a book that Gozun loves, "Outliers: The Story of Success."
In the first three years of his return from the United States, Gao Zhun invested 10,000 hours of work. In order to keep up with the rapid development of the Internet in China for two decades, Gao Zhun described himself, "In the past ten years, I have never left my computer and BlackBerry for more than 24 hours, including during maternity leave." ”
As a graduate of Peking University Law School, Gao Zhun told his story at the graduation ceremony of Peking University Law School in 2018.
Source: Peking University Law School official website
In the 1990s, after graduating from Peking University Law School, Gao Zhun chose to go to the University of Alabama in the United States to pursue a master's degree in sociology. When Gao Zhun graduated with a master's degree, the United States was in a period of economic depression at that time, and Gao Zhun looked for a job during the day and would work in a restaurant at night. Later, Gao Zhun finally found a job as a legal assistant, serving the low-income poor of Asian Pacific descent at a non-profit legal aid agency.
In order to be able to help some more people, Gao Zhun often worked late. In the United States in the 1990s, the use of ancient typewriters, Gao Zhun used such typewriters every day to fill out forms and deal with various trivial matters such as elderly welfare, domestic violence, and child custody.
After working for half a year, Gao Zhun's passion and ability were recognized by her colleagues, and her lawyer colleagues encouraged her to apply for law school and continue her studies. Two years later, Gao Zhun was able to pursue a Doctor of Laws degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1998, Gao Zhun graduated from law school and entered the Los Angeles office of an international law firm, where he stayed for six years.
Entering the 21st century, crossing the Internet industry bubble, China's Internet industry ushered in a vigorous development, many Internet companies have chosen to go public in the United States, Ctrip is one of them. Ctrip's listing in the United States is the beginning of the intersection of High-precision and Chinese-listed companies.
In 2003, In preparation for Ctrip's U.S. stock market, High-Technum used the then-recently adopted U.S. Accounting VIE Policy to explain the structure of Chinese companies. Since Ctrip, High-Precision has continued to participate in the listing of Chinese-listed companies in the United States. In 2005, Gaozun helped Baidu design the first AB dual-level equity structure for Chinese stocks, and in 2006, he helped Yu Minhong complete the listing of New Oriental in the United States.
Since 1998, he has been a lawyer for more than 20 years, and Has provided legal services for financing, listing and other capital market projects for more than 100 companies, including the consumer industry, technology/Internet/media industry, education industry, financial technology industry, and big health industry.
With the advent of the mobile Internet era, the high accuracy of continuous learning has kept up with the wave of mobile Internet.
In 2016, when ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, High-precision provided legal services for it. In 2021, when ByteDance's game brand Chaoxi Lightyear acquired Mu Hitomi Games for $4 billion, the High-Precision team also served as legal counsel.
In 2018, Gao Zhun mentioned that her clients at Skadden include 17 of the top 20 companies by market capitalization listed in the United States by Chinese stocks, and the majority of the leading new economy companies listed in Hong Kong.
As the CFO of the two airborne ByteDance, Zhou Shouzi and Gao Zhun have long known each other. According to 36Kr, during his tenure as a partner in DST China, Zhou Shouzi and Gao Zhun have cooperated in a number of technology enterprise transactions.
In 2018, as xiaomi's CFO, Zhou Shouzi and Gao Zhun once again intersected. According to Ryan Capital, at the time of Xiaomi's IPO in 2018, among the five legal teams behind it was Skadden International Law Firm, which provided Legal Counsel services in Hong Kong and the United States for Xiaomi, and one of the heads of this legal team was Gao Zhun.
According to the description of financial writer Fan Haitao on the ups and downs of Xiaomi's listing, it is not difficult to see that Zhou Shouzi and Gao Zhun had fought side by side for a period of time.
He (Zhou Shouzi) remembers that he rented a room near the Securities and Futures Commission, but every time he was so busy that he could only go to take a shower and then turn back. He only remembers being in the office every Saturday and Sunday, revising the prospectus repeatedly with the finance, legal, public relations teams, and a number of investment banks, law firms and other institutions. During this time, Zhou Was described as "dark in the dark".
Zhou received capital
In addition, it is worth noting that these two CFOs who parachuted into ByteDance first of all did a good job in their own field, and they were also associated with ByteDance a long time ago.
Prior to becoming the CFO of Xiaomi and ByteDance respectively, Zhou Shouzi was a partner in the Beijing office of DST, a world-renowned investment institution. The founder of this investment institution is Yuri Milner, also known as one of the most invested and successful foreign investors in China's Internet industry, participating in the investment of China's Alibaba, JD.com, Meituan, Xiaomi and so on.
It is understood that during his work at DST, Zhou Shouzi will meet with 350 entrepreneurs every year in order to study entrepreneurial projects and observe the development of China's mobile Internet. By the time Lei Jun found him in 2015, Zhou Had studied 1,000 companies.
The reason why Lei Jun will poach Zhou Shouzi, there are media reports, because in the case of DST investment in millet, Zhou Shouzi played a very important role in the valuation pricing link, so it was appreciated by Lei Jun. Lei Jun once called him a world-class investor.
In March 2021, Zhou Waszi parachuted into ByteDance. In addition to the parachuting of executives, more importantly, he helped Xiaomi to list its Hong Kong stocks three years after becoming the CFO of Xiaomi, and was known as the "second handsome of Xiaomi" within Xiaomi. Therefore, his arrival is seen by the outside world as a signal for ByteDance to launch its listing plan.
Before Zhou Shouzi landed on ByteDance, he met Zhang Yiming and became in contact with ByteDance. ByteDance also mentioned in his original internal letter, "The funded are very familiar with our business, team and culture, he met us during his time at DST and pushed DST to invest in ByteDance at a very early stage." ”
You know, the early ByteDance was not optimistic about Chinese investors, Xu Xiaoping, co-founder of Zhen Fund, later said that "we missed angel investment, eternal regret", Sequoia Capital's Shen Nanpeng also missed ByteDance's A round of financing, reflecting that "venture capital is a game with regret", Zhou Hongyi also ridiculed himself "invested very early, but sold the stock at a very low price".
Just after Chinese investors rejected ByteDance, Zhou Shouzi appeared. At that time, Zhou Shouzi, as a partner of DST's Beijing office, met Zhang Yiming, who was running around for financing, noticed the growth trajectory of this product, and also thought that Zhang Yiming was very capable and full of confidence in ByteDance. Therefore, under the guidance of Zhou Shengfu, Yuri agreed to lead the Series B financing, and after the investment, DST obtained a 7.2% stake in ByteDance.
This investment directly laid a heavy foreshadowing for Zhang Yiming's later recruitment of Zhou Zhengfu. A year later, ByteDance's valuation soared to $500 million.
The arrival of the new CFO is considered by the outside world to be a signal that ByteDance will restart its listing. According to the first financial report, the addition of ByteDance by Gaozun this time may further enhance the company's financial capabilities and the unfinished listing of the baton week.
During the five-month window after Zhou Washizu stepped down as CFO, ByteDance also underwent some new changes.
In an internal letter in November 2021, Liang Rubo not only announced that Zhou Shouzi would no longer be the CFO of ByteDance, but also clarified six of ByteDance's newly established business segments: Douyin, Vigorous Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Sunrise Lightyear and TikTok.
Whether it is the adjustment of the organizational structure or the complement of the CFO, it shows that ByteDance is in a high-growth stage driven by traffic, transforming in the direction of refined operation, and moving closer to the management model of mature large companies. For example, according to the late LatePost report, at the end of 2021, ByteDance's two major content product divisions: the interactive entertainment division and the general information platform (the department where today's headlines are located) merged into Douyin BU, which was managed by Zhang Nan.
In January this year, there was news that "ByteDance's strategy and investment department was dissolved", of which Zhao Pengyuan, the former no. 1 position of Zhan Investment, took 5 people to the president's office to be responsible for the company's overall strategy; the financial investment team was all dissolved.
The relevant person in charge of ByteDance responded that the company conducted an inventory and analysis of the business at the beginning of the year, decided to strengthen the business focus, reduce the investment with low synergy, disperse the employees of the strategic investment department into various business lines, and strengthen the cooperation between the strategic research function and the business. Planning discussions are also underway for the business and teams involved.
On the other side of strengthening business focus, ByteDance began to increase the B-end business, hoping to find new increments for its own business map.
The latest news is that Byte is going to make used cars. According to Titanium Media from a number of people close to ByteDance, ByteDance's second-hand car project has long been launched internally and prepared for a long time, and the project may be named "understanding good cars".
In addition to second-hand cars, ByteDance has also launched the e-commerce APP Douyin box and completed the registration of software copyrights for music APP soda music. Last year, Byte officially announced the opening of the volcano engine capability and entered the cloud computing, hoping to become China's fourth public cloud after Ali, Huawei and Tencent.
ByteDance, the world's largest unicorn company, is still laying more chips for its own listing.
Resources:
"Byte ushers in a new CFO, or will restart the listing" 36Kr
"Speech by Alumni Representative Ms. Gao Zhun at the Farewell Ceremony of the Class of 2018", Peking University Law School Official Website
ByteDance: The Secret from 0 to 1 by Matthew Brennan
"Moving Forward" Fan Haitao
"The Lawyer Team Behind The Xiaomi IPO" Ryan Capital Ryanben Capital