Stepping down as CEO at the age of 51, "Happy" Ding Lei's offensive and defensive philosophy

NetEase cannot do without Ding Lei.

Author 丨 Ye Ting

| Tech figures

Ding Lei, who was ridiculed by the outside world as a "Buddhist entrepreneur", seems to really want to retire.

Before May Day, a news about the resignation of Internet tycoon Ding Lei and Li Li taking over the baton spread in the circle, and later confirmed by the media that Ding Lei's resignation was not false, but it was too early to say that he was relegated to the second line.

Ding Lei is currently the executive director and general manager of NetEase Network Co., Ltd., and has stepped down from his position as a main company under NetEase's "NetEase News".

Although the company's insiders also came out to respond that "this is a normal industrial and commercial change", there is no shortage of arguments on the Internet that "NetEase cannot do without Ding Lei". Especially based on the fact that Ding Lei has a monopoly in the company, more people speculate that even if he wants to retreat, he may not be able to throw his hands away.

First, netease's position as the leader still has to let Ding Lei sit steadily

NetEase-style success is inseparable from the penetration of Ding Lei's aesthetics and preferences.

Withdrawing or not retiring is no longer a matter of personal choice. Here there is not only the consideration of where netease business should go, but also the trade-off of who will be the next successor.

Playing games, raising black pigs, picking tea leaves, and burning ceramics, Ding Lei's work over the years was once ridiculed as "holes above the neck.". With Ding Lei's values, he missed all the outlets of the past decade, but also because of his business instincts avoided many pitfalls under hot money.

It's really magical. Former rival Sohu has gone, Sina is struggling with Weibo, and NetEase's annual revenue still exceeds 70 billion yuan. As of press time, NetEase's market value is 65 billion US dollars, which is more than 100 times the market value of Sohu at 600 million US dollars, and even surpasses Baidu Didi, which has been in the limelight.

To operate NetEase as a century-old family business, we must acknowledge the role played by the Ding Lei spirit in it, so will his resignation trigger new risks?

As far as Ding Lei's management style is concerned, the most talked about on the Internet is that he does not understand hierarchical decentralization. For example, crossing the department head and directing programmers to work these operations is very normal in Ding Lei's eyes, and he has always questioned the necessity of so-called management. In his own words, "Only those who do the specific work contribute value."

Of course, such a corporate culture has benefits, employees who are buried in the work can often be entrusted with heavy responsibilities by Ding Lei, even if the supervisor leaves, the impact on the business is actually not large. But it can also create a problem, not knowing how to cultivate successors.

It is especially important to be prepared before throwing up your hands, not all entrepreneurs have a stable professional management team behind them, from this point of view, NetEase's position as the leader still has to let Ding Lei sit steadily.

Moreover, it can also be seen from the proportion of equity that Ding Lei rarely holds nearly 45% of netease shares and is the company's solid helmsman.

I think that Ding Lei actually tried to decentralize power, and invited Taiwanese Li Jinghui as CEO, turned himself into chief technology officer, and took out 4% of the shares as equity incentives. Unfortunately, it was finally broken up because of the power struggle, which evolved into the hottest Internet topic in 2001, the "Ding Li Controversy".

Many people speculated that it should be a snake bite, and Ding Lei was no longer willing to give his authority to others.

But in any case, the consequences of this are obvious, especially at the moment when the rapids have become a trend, Ding Lei wants to throw his hands away, I am afraid it is not so easy.

Second, from the interest to find the love, Ding Lei style successful business code

Smooth NetEase is extremely dependent on Ding Lei's vigilance. He is extremely restrained in any new business that wants to burn money and compete at the capital level.

Whether it was the group buying war in 2008, the video war in 2009, or the cloud disk war in 2011, he did not follow the trend.

Following his values, "We must do the right thing, the action can be slow, but the strategy must be correct, look at it and then keep up, so that the risk is relatively small, and the mistakes made by others will not be made again." ”

Behind this determination, there is not only a business intuition that is beyond ordinary people, but also a fairly professional scientific analysis.

Guan Guoguang, a former NetEase executive and president of Now Fast Money, said: "In the Internet industry, people who only understand products and do not understand technology. There is not much of a future. A person who only understands technology and does not understand the product is just an outsourced engineer. Ding Lei has achieved the integration of technology and market. ”

Some media have commented that Ding Lei, Duan Yongping, Huang Zheng, three old friends, like to explore the essence of things. Walking away from the spotlight, away from the public's sight, not making speeches at the outlet, and not talking about chicken soup, many of the projects Ding Lei has done started from interest.

When I did netease open classes that year, I faced a suggestion that he didn't know employees at all: "Boss, I see that there are good open classes abroad, you invest 100,000 yuan for me, I will do it." Ding Lei thought it was funny, thought for a few seconds and agreed.

Ding Lei is a person who works for interest, and it can even be said that many projects were done for himself at the beginning, such as the most jumpy pig raising reason, Tang Jun said in an interview with the media, Ding Lei ate hot pot in Chongqing and was overwhelmed by a pig's blood, and went back to build a pig farm, taking the standard of Kobe cattle to raise pigs.

Starting with "interest" and then making a product that has market demand but is not well met is one of the secrets of Ding Lei's success.

In addition to "like", Ding Lei's favorite word to hang on his lips is love. Find your passion and hit the nail on the head. NetEase Cloud Music is an example.

When NetEase makes games, he will require all employees to love games, and the friends who can enter the cloud music must also be music lovers.

"Love" is the core driving force of NetEase in business. Both in the past and in the future. This is also NetEase's business philosophy - "like a fool, insist on one thing, go crazy for a thought, and one day you will find the answer you want."

Looking back now, there is no doubt that the energy of the above corporate culture, along the way, Ding Lei can be said to be very smooth, in just three years, from Guangzhou Gold Rush Road to the Nasdaq in New York, USA.

Although he and the company experienced two years of internal and external troubles during this period, because of Duan Yongping's financial assistance, NetEase quickly denied Ji tailai, and Ding Lei also became The richest man in China at the age of 32.

Ding Lei also admitted that he was lucky, "Do what you like, don't have to punch in at work, be financially free, and don't do anything if you don't want to." Wu Xiaobo once said that Ding Lei is the only happy boy in the Internet circle.

Third, Ding Lei, who is well versed in the way of attack and defense, is an alternative believer in the Internet circle

While Ding Lei manages himself with his unique interest, he also brings fire to NetEase. His casual business instincts have been creating benign data feedback for a long time, until in recent years more and more people have begun to question the layout of their business "lame".

NetEase said to the outside world that it is not a game company, but it can seriously read the financial report, but the big money is mainly from the game. And not only the game business full of hidden worries, but also the NetEase Youdao and Tencent NetEase Cloud Music, which are in the copyright dispute between NetEase Youdao and Tencent, which are full of hidden worries, but also netease cloud music, which is full of hidden worries, but also the netease cloud music that ding Lei is eager to make some moves to give investors confidence.

I don't know what kind of expectations investors have for the future direction of NetEase, but the news of Ding Lei's resignation did trigger a wave of rise in NetEase's stock price.

Of course, this is not enough. The metaverse is the next target that Ding Lei is aiming for. At present, NetEase has built a next-generation Internet technology architecture for the "meta-universe", according to Ding Lei's judgment, as long as the time is ripe, NetEase may run faster than anyone.

Metacosm, an oil-American science fiction writer Neil Stephenson's work "Avalanche" triggered the concept, by telling a virtual digital world parallel to the real world, but also successfully attracted the attention of Tencent, Byte, Baidu and other big manufacturers.

As far as NetEase, which operates light assets, it is not small to understand the complex technical challenges such as AR, AI, and VR involved behind the metacosm in the future.

This second curve with high hopes actually has great uncertainty, and Ding Lei's courage to speak like this should come from the advantages of the game in the meta-universe landing and the precipitation and advance layout of NetEase in virtual technology and VR.

And 20 years have passed, the tide of the times has risen and fallen, and Ding Lei seems to rarely dominate the lead, and he has never been left behind.

To some extent, what Ding Lei is best at is risk aversion. Before the epidemic situation, the Haitao industry was almost destroyed, Ding Lei sold 2 billion US dollars of Haitao Koala to Ali; before the pork boom, Ding Lei got 1200 acres of land to raise high-end pork for several years.

Remember that in the face of Ali's repeated regulatory storms, Ding Lei was the one who reacted the fastest. When other giants are only offline related financial products, NetEase simply shut down and shut down the server.

In the eyes of many people, choosing such an opportunity to announce the suspension of operation is a smart choice for others, and some even praise him for knowing how to attack and defend.

The real reason for this retirement is also to avoid certain risks. But it is recognized that the key to Ding Lei's success lies in his unique way of thinking.

Some time ago, an article "Why Ding Lei was wrong" questioned Ding Lei's proposal for a unified charging port, pointing out that he had repeatedly called for administrative intervention in the market, and the level of performance was worrying.

A lawyer's letter from netease's legal department asked the blogger to delete the draft, triggering a huge public opinion crisis, and just when it was about to arouse greater negative emotions, Ding Lei wrote a letter of apology to personally extinguish the fire.

Writing this, Ding Lei wore glasses and smiled, and the image of the sunshine child without the slightest aggression reappeared in front of his eyes, as if to say that he could not rely on inertia in doing things, not to be happy with things, not to be sad with himself, and to take the best policy.