ByteDance's CFO has no strangers; the superstar must match the top talent and be able to navigate the next IPO to restart.
Author | Dong Xiaohua Edited | peace
After 5 months of vacancy, ByteDance's new CFO was in place.
On April 25, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo announced in an internal letter that Julie Gao, a senior partner at Skadden ("Skadden International"), one of the world's top law firms, will join ByteDance as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Image source: Wall Street Journal
High-precision is byteDance's publicly announced second CFO. On March 24, 2021, ByteDance announced in an internal letter that zhou, former senior vice president of Xiaomi, had joined as CFO.
On April 30, a month after Zhou Received Capital joined, ByteDance announced through an internal letter that CFO Zhou Shouzi would concurrently serve as ceo of TikTok.
In November 2021, ByteDance adjusted the company's organizational structure, and Zhou Shouzi no longer served as the CFO of ByteDance, and his responsibility position was TikTok CEO. Since then, byteDance's CFO has been vacant.
This also means that in the past year, ByteDance has completed the replacement of two CFOs.
Whether it is high-precision or Zhou, the news of its inauguration as CFO of ByteDance has triggered speculation about the super giant's restart of the IPO.
ByteDance is one of the few Internet companies in the current domestic environment to maintain growth momentum and development prospects. In terms of recruitment, it is also fierce, often at the expense of super high salaries to recruit a variety of talents around the world.
What kind of person can be the CFO of ByteDance? What are the requirements for candidates when ByteDance screens this important role? Let's take a look at some of the commonalities between Zhou Shuzi and Gao Zhuan.
1
Don't look for strangers
Compare the two internal letters of ByteDance and you will find that they use some very similar descriptions when evaluating both CFOs.
Recently, in this all-staff letter from CEO Liang Rubo, he mentioned, "Since 2016, High-Precision has cooperated with ByteDance's acquisition and financing projects many times, and is familiar with the company's mission, culture, team and business. ”
In March last year, when ByteDance announced that Zhou Waszi was the CFO, the internal letter also mentioned, "(Zhou) Iszie is very familiar with our business, team and culture, he met us during his time at DST and pushed DST to invest in ByteDance very early." ”
In a word: these two have deep roots with ByteDance, have deep cooperation, know the roots, and recognize each other.
At the end of 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for $1 billion; in March 2021, ByteDance acquired Mu Hitomi Games, and its total consideration was rumored to be about $4 billion.
These two well-known acquisitions in the history of ByteDance have been deeply involved in high accuracy. Coupled with several rounds of private equity financing by ByteDance, its deep involvement in project transactions totaled more than a few billion dollars.
Zhou's relationship with ByteDance began in 2013. At that time, ByteDance only had one product in today's headlines.
However, since 2012, ByteDance's B round of financing has progressed hard, and no one in the domestic capital market understands and is optimistic about today's headlines.
In the second half of 2013, DST, a well-known investment institution with a Russian background, invested $10 million in today's headlines to help it survive the "days without money".
At that time, it was Zhou Shouzi who promoted the headlines of DST Investment, who was a partner in DST China at that time, and he was not yet 30 years old.
2
Just the pyramid tip of the contestant
Before joining ByteDance, Gao Zhun and Zhou Shouzi had shining experience and achievements in their respective fields, which is a proof of their outstanding business ability.
Prior to Skadden, Henman was a senior partner at Skadden International and a member of the Policy Committee of its global governing body.
According to public information, Skadden International was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in New York, USA, with a total of more than 2,000 lawyers, and is one of the world's senior law firms.
Skadden International has been consistently named the most prestigious law firm in the United States by Vault, and Forbes magazine called it "the strongest law firm on Wall Street."
In addition, Skadden International is also known as the "King of Chinese Stocks", many Chinese companies go to Hong Kong, U.S. stocks listed, and a large number of Chinese stock companies that return from U.S. stocks to Hong Kong for secondary listings, have hired Skadden International to provide Hong Kong and U.S. legal services.
Many of Skadden International's Chinese stock businesses are operated by High Precision.
She joined Skadden International as a Partner in 2009 and prior to joining ByteDance, she was the China Business Leader of Skadden International.
Gao Zhun has been a lawyer for more than 20 years, and in 2003, she participated in the IPO of Ctrip, the first Chinese-listed company, to explain the structure of Chinese companies with the newly adopted U.S. accounting VIE policy at that time. In 2005, Baidu went public in the United States, and she helped Baidu design the first AB dual-level equity structure for Chinese stocks. In 2006, she provided legal services for New Oriental, China's first private education company, to list in the United States.
In 2018, Chinese companies ushered in a wave of listings, and Gao Zhun participated in the IPOs of a number of Chinese technology companies, covering 7 of the top ten IPO in the industry that year.
So far, Microman has provided legal services for the listing of more than 100 companies and other capital market financing projects, including Meituan, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Xiaomi, etc.
She has also provided legal services for many M&A and private equity projects, including Baidu and ByteDance.
He has been named to America's Bar Magazine's 45 "Outstanding Women Lawyers Under 45" worldwide and has been listed as the highest level (Band 1) of the World's Leading Business Lawyers by chambers of international commerce at Chamber of Commerce chambers at Chambers of Commerce Chamber of Commerce at Chamber of Commerce chambers for more than a decade.
Before zhou received capital to join ByteDance, he had two well-known work experiences: DST China partner and Xiaomi CFO.
During his time at DST, he was responsible for promoting DST's investment in a number of super unicorns such as ByteDance, JD.com, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Kuaishou, and Didi. Today, these are companies that hold the right to speak in China's Internet community.
In July 2015, Zhou Shouzi joined Xiaomi as CFO. In 2018, Xiaomi went public in Hong Kong, becoming a super large IPO that attracted global attention at that time, and CFO Zhou was a key player in it.
In September 2021, Zhou Shouzi was selected as one of the 40 global business elites under the age of 40 at Fortune in 2021.
In general, before joining ByteDance, Gao Zhun and Zhou Shuzi both stood at the tip of the pyramid in their respective fields, which was the ceiling for many professional managers.
3
Understand Both China and internationalization
ByteDance is a super giant rooted in China with operations all over the world.
Being the CFO of such a giant company, and possibly taking on its next IPO, requires both understanding of China and a high degree of internationalization.
Both Gao Zhun and Zhou Shouzi have such characteristics.
According to public information, Gao Zhun was born in Shanghai, graduated from Peking University Law School with a bachelor's degree, and then received a master's degree in sociology from the University of Alabama and a doctorate in law from the University of California, Los Angeles.
From 1998 to 2004, He worked in the Los Angeles office of an international law firm. In 2004, she returned to China and continued her legal career.
In 2009, GAL joined Skadden International as a partner, and since then, it has begun the process of serving a large number of Chinese stocks to list in the United States and Hong Kong, and dealing with the global capital market.
A Singaporean, Chow graduated from University College London in economics and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
In addition to serving as DST China Partner and CFO of Xiaomi Group, he also became president of Xiaomi International in November 2019, responsible for Xiaomi's international business.
In 2020, Xiaomi's overseas market revenue was 122.4 billion yuan, an increase of 34.1% year-on-year, accounting for 49.8% of Xiaomi Group's total revenue.
In terms of office space, the main office locations of LC Are Hong Kong and Singapore. When Zhou Was appointed CFO last year, his office was also in Singapore.
Both Hong Kong and Singapore are seen as bridgeheads for Chinese companies to go to sea. These two places are not only highly similar and interconnected in language, culture and Chinese mainland, but also provide convenience for Chinese mainland enterprises to go to sea in terms of tax policies, currency inflow and exit, and capital turnover.
Therefore, taking Hong Kong and Singapore as the main office is enough to see ByteDance's expectations for the role of CFO in the internationalization of the company.
4
Always excellent, always diligent
People who are better than you are still more diligent than you, which is terrible; and Gao Zhuan and Zhou Shouzi are "exceptionally diligent" professional managers.
In June 2018, as an alumni representative, Gao Zhun delivered a speech at the farewell ceremony of the 2018 graduates of Peking University Law School.
In her speech, she gave some "plain" life advice to the students and students who are about to graduate, which can be summarized as follows: professionalism, heartfelt service attitude, continuous learning ability, long-term diligence and perseverance, full of passion and positive energy.
Regarding long-term diligence, she mentioned a book written by American author Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers: The Story of Success." The book says that in order for a person to truly master a field, in addition to talent, he must also invest about 10,000 hours of effective training.
Since returning from the United States in 2004, Gao said, she has worked 10,000 hours in three years. She has never left her computer and cell phone for more than 24 hours in the past decade, including during maternity leave. She believes that these have laid a solid foundation for her long-term overseas listing of outstanding Chinese companies on the front line.
Zhou Shouzi is also an exceptionally hard-working person.
After graduating from the University of London in 2006, Zhou's first job was to join Goldman Sachs as an investment bank analyst. The job lasted two years, with few weekends, and working until one or two in the morning was the norm.
But it is thanks to this intensive work that Zhou's understanding of the capital markets and TMT (telecommunications, media and technology) industries is improving.
Xiaomi founder Lei Jun once commented on Zhou Shouzi that he has a kind of diligence like revenge on the world.
In 2018, during Xiaomi's preparation for the IPO, Zhou Shouzi posted a picture he particularly liked on Weibo, which read: "In the next year, even sleeping is a waste of time."
Correspondingly, inviting the top talents to join, ByteDance will definitely give enough attractive returns.
ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo mentioned in an internal letter, "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."
As the world's most highly valued non-listed company, when ByteDance IPO has become a topic of great concern in the market in recent years.
36Kr quoted people close to ByteDance as pointing out that with the addition of High Precision, Byte or Douyin may restart the IPO.
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