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The most powerful female CEO of a large Chinese factory

author:The investment community
The most powerful female CEO of a large Chinese factory

Unknowingly, a number of female CEOs appeared on the Chinese Internet -

In May, JD.com welcomed the first female CEO in history, Xu Ran, and she became Liu Qiangdong's most trusted female general after only 5 years after entering JD.com; Alibaba also has a female leader, Dai Shan, one of the "eighteen arhats", followed Jack Ma 25 years ago, starting with e-commerce customer service and becoming the female CEO of its most profitable department.

can be called the secret female military division behind the scenes of Pinduoduo, Abu (Gu Jiaojian) goes out with Huang Zhengshi and is regarded as the "female version of Huang Zheng" and has absolute power; And Zhang Nan, a post-80s entrepreneur, has also achieved an amazing career leap in a short period of time, at the helm of ByteDance, which is valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.

They are in charge of the most domineering companies on the Internet in China, but they are extremely low-key, with few traces on the Internet, and their names are very unfamiliar to the outside world. But in fact, long before the rise of the giant whale, they have been deeply involved in it, overcoming thorns in the long entrepreneurial years, until today they can stand alone and leave a beautiful figure in the decisive business sea.

It was an unprecedented scene. In the long-standing rules of the workplace, the higher the rank, the lower the proportion of women. Today, that stereotype is being shattered — women are moving into the centers of power in big factories and even becoming the heads of hundreds of thousands of large companies.

The history of the rise of Chinese Internet heroines

Ali Daisian: Follow Jack Ma for 20 years

The most powerful female CEO of a large Chinese factory

The earliest still starts with Ali.

In February 1999, 18 enthusiastic young people gathered in a room in the lakeside community of Hangzhou, and everyone looked solemnly at the impassioned Ma Yun in the middle, "We want to be a company that has been developing for 80 years (later 102 years), and we want all businessmen to own our website." ”

At this historic meeting, a young woman stared brightly, ready to follow in Ma's footsteps. She is Dai Shan. Originally from Hainan, Dai Shan graduated from Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Technology (now Hangzhou Dianzi University), was the last student brought by Ma Yun, and one of the later "Ali Eighteen Arhats".

As Alibaba's "No. 11 employee", Dai Shan named herself "Su Quan". In "Luding Ji", Su Quan has high martial arts, both courage and wisdom, and changed his fate after following Wei Xiaobao down Shenlong Island, and is the most "strong woman" character around Wei Xiaobao.

Just like Su Quan's personality, Dai Shan is also brave and resourceful on the road to Alibaba's rise. Although she is a college student, her starting point is the lowest customer service, often answering customer messages day and night. Years later, a small incident when Dai Shan started her business was widely spread - one day, Dai Shan, who was immersed in eating a boxed lunch, suddenly said to her colleagues around her: "When I have money, I will buy a room full of dried plum vegetables!" ”

Later, Ali became bigger and bigger, and Dai Shan's job also flowed, from an unknown small customer service, to sales, leading the legendary "China Supply Iron Army", and also managing Ali International Station, until Ali B2B was listed for the first time in 2007. It can be said that in the early years, Dai Shan was like a brick under Jack Ma, moving wherever he was needed. "The company let me do sales, I will do sales, let me do customer service, I will do customer service, I will not think too much, I am willing to do it happily." Recalling it, Dai Shan said calmly.

Since 2008, Dai Shan was transferred from the position of general manager of Alibaba Guangzhou to Taobao to do HR work, working with Lu Zhaoxi, then CEO and president. During that time, Daisanne always had a proven methodology to help employees clarify goals, find meaning, and clarify dreams, and boost the morale of the organization. In 2013, she was promoted to Chief People Officer of Alibaba.

Years later, Dai Shan returned to the B2B business group and led the team to achieve double-digit revenue and profit growth with the old business in less than two years. What's more, she also incubated two new businesses, Taote and Taocaicai, allowing Alibaba to gain a firm foothold in the fierce competition in the sinking market.

In March this year, Alibaba launched the most important organizational change in the group's 24-year history - under Alibaba Group, six major business groups and a number of business companies, including Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, Taobao Tmall Business, Local Life, Cainiao, International Digital Business, and Dawen Entertainment, were established to build a 1+6+N organizational structure.

Among them, Dai Shan is the CEO of Taobao Tmall Business - this sector contributes nearly 70% of Ali's revenue, which can be imagined that the group's absolute decision-makers trust and affirm Dai Shan.

JD Xu Ran: CEO who came out of PwC

The most powerful female CEO of a large Chinese factory

Last month, JD.com welcomed its first female CEO, Xu Ran, who will be responsible for the daily operation and coordinated development of the group's various businesses, reporting to the board of directors and chairman of JD.com Group, Liu Qiangdong.

As soon as the news came out, the outside world wondered, who is Xu Ran? More of her growth trajectory is difficult to trace, but the resume is enough to show her excellence. According to public information, Xu Ran graduated from Peking University and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers after graduation, focusing on the TMT industry and the US capital market for nearly 20 years. It was not until July 2018 that Xu Ran officially joined JD.com Group as vice president of finance. Since June 2020, Xu Ran has served as the chief financial officer of JD.com Group and began to appear on JD.com's earnings calls.

In fact, within JD.com, "Xu Ran" is not an unfamiliar name, and she has personally handled and participated in all mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and listing affairs of JD.com in the past five years. In 2020 618, JD.com completed its secondary listing and rang the bell for the IPO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, this time the outside world did not see Liu Qiangdong's figure, but in the group photo of JD.com's representative, standing on the right side of Xu Lei, then JD.com retail CEO, it was Xu Ran.

"She is professional, younger and more combative than me and Lao Liu, and has been recognized by the entire executive team in terms of company cultural inheritance and values, and can lead JD.com to a period of more focused business health and development quality." Xu Lei, who announced his retirement, said of her, and Sandy will be the perfect candidate for JD.com's next CEO.

A JD.com employee described Xu Ran's style to Tiger Sniff as follows: she would be like a chief of staff, telling Lao Liu "patiently, rationally and calmly" about the core issues through data and reports, emotionally stable and extremely organized.

After joining JD.com for only 5 years, he became the CEO, and this e-commerce giant whale is entering the historic "female CEO era".

Pinduoduoabu: A quack legend

Tracing the history of Internet e-commerce, there is also a very secret woman - Pinduoduo Abu.

As a rising star of e-commerce, the rise of Pinduoduo caught peers off guard, and everyone exclaimed surprise. This made that in the years of Pinduoduo's barbaric growth, almost all the spotlights were focused on the young head Huang Zheng. But in fact, behind him, there is a little-known junior sister of the same family.

Abu, whose real name is Gu Wanjiao, is very low-key and mysterious, and her information is almost impossible to find on the Internet. The only public information shows that Gu Jiaojian, a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang, graduated from the School of Computer Science of Zhejiang University in 2009 with a master's degree and is the younger sister of Huang Zheng Zhejiang University. Based on this calculation, Gu Wanjian should be a post-80s generation.

During her master's degree at Zhejiang University, Gu was an intern at Shanghai Ouku Network Technology Co., Ltd. – Huang Zheng's first entrepreneurial project. In her graduation thesis "Adaptive Recommendation System Based on Commodity Category Structure", Gu Wanjian also thanked Ouku Company, Huang Zheng, Chen Lei and others at the end.

Since the beginning of Ouku.com, Gu Wanwan has been fighting with Huang Zheng, and even directly became the CEO in Huang Zheng's game company "Dream". In 2015, Huang Zheng and his internal team incubated a project called "Pinduoduo" - using WeChat community fission to release fruit grouping, waiting for the number of people who placed orders to form a group, and then purchasing fruits for delivery, that is, the prototype of Pinduoduo.

But Gu Jiaojian pointed out the loopholes of the spelling model, without a supply chain, the pinning goods will only be in a passive state, "I think this spelling model can also be made into a platform." In less than half a year, Gu Jiaojian integrated and optimized the model of putting together good goods, and then gamified the order process, and Pinduoduo was born, which became popular overnight.

Soon, Pinduoduo opened up the sinking market in a different way, and "chopping a knife" rose and fell in the online community, taking away users who originally belonged to Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms. In 2017, Pinduoduo, which was established only 2 years ago, exceeded 100 billion in transaction volume, and to reach this figure, it took Taobao 5 years and JD.com 10 years. In 2018, Pinduoduo successfully appeared on the NASDAQ IPO bell-ringing stage, and the scenery was unique, becoming a non-negligible presence in Chinese business. In this period of rapid progress, Gu Jiaojian is undoubtedly one of Huang Zheng's closest partners on the road to entrepreneurship.

In July 2020, when Pinduoduo was about to turn two years after its listing, Huang Zheng, who had always been disgusted with appearance, chose to "retire" and "hand over the company to younger colleagues", and Chen Lei, who accompanied him all the way, took office. But within Pinduoduo, it is believed that Abu is the real number two, and is still responsible for managing the company's main business internally.

Considered to be Pinduoduo's "behind-the-scenes military master", Huang Zheng gave Abu enough power and trust, and she rushed to the forefront of many major sections of Pinduoduo, and her execution was very strong. For example, in Duoduo grocery shopping, Abu had hesitated to do it, but Huang Zheng gave absolute support and insisted on going all out, and she made up her mind and stood at the forefront of Duoduo grocery shopping. Similarly, the current cross-border e-commerce project TEMU, which is currently soaring overseas under Pinduoduo, is also led by Abu.

An employee who has left told us that Abu has always been in the most central position of Pinduoduo, "equivalent to an internal CEO", which can be said to be "the female version of Huang Zheng". "LatePost" also described the importance of Gu Jiaojian to Pinduoduo, "If Abu raises doubts about a certain business, they will 'tremble and come up with all the solutions they think are feasible'; if Chen Lei mentions it, they will also change it, but 'change it and it's over.'" They summed up Abou's management style as simple and direct, result-oriented, with only do-and-don't do, no intermediate.

In the same style as his senior brother Huang Zheng, Abu, who has always been at the core of Pinduoduo's power, hides herself behind the scenes of this e-commerce empire and can be called the most secret "female head".

Douyin Zhang Nan: ByteDance No. 2 bit

The most powerful female CEO of a large Chinese factory

When everyone thought that the overall situation of the Internet had been decided, Douyin was born. Since its birth, Douyin has been playing a fierce challenger role, using a young model and faster speed to eat away at the cake of e-commerce, social networking, and local life, and the overseas version of TikTok will sweep the world in the future. And now at the helm of this giant is also a female CEO - Zhang Nan.

Like other female leaders, this young woman is also very secretive, and her growth as a teenager is barely visible on the Internet. But unlike other female CEOs, Zhang Nan came from an entrepreneurial background, and immediately joined Toutiao after his project was acquired by Zhang Yiming in 2013, responsible for a relatively marginal product of Toutiao.

In 2015, Zhang Yiming led a group of teams to Okinawa for an annual meeting, and that night a group of more than a dozen people sat around the izakaya and talked about the short video that was hot at that time, including Zhang Nan, many people felt that they still could not let go of this market space, but still did not shoot.

At the beginning of 2016, Zhang Nan and Zhang Yiming resumed discussing short videos and felt that they still couldn't give up. They locked themselves in a small dark room and closed it for more than a month. In September 2016, Douyin came out. After 17 months of launch, DAU exceeded 100 million, becoming the fastest growing product of China Mobile Internet after WeChat.

In 2018, Zhang Nan became the first female CEO of Douyin, fully responsible for Douyin, volcano, market brands and other businesses; Two years later, he was promoted to CEO of Beijing ByteDance, officially taking charge of the company's China business, becoming Zhang Yiming's most trusted female general, commanding the huge Jiedao Army.

In charge of Douyin, Zhang Nan has spared no effort to promote the e-commerce territory in the past two years, and at the same time, the giant has welcomed another female executive - Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin e-commerce. According to public information, Wei Wenwen was admitted to Chinese Min University in 2000, graduated from the school with a master's degree in computer application technology 7 years later, and after working in Baidu, 58 Home and other Internet companies for several years, she joined ByteDance in 2017, responsible for the advertising and commercialization related business of today's headlines, giant engine and other products, until 2021 she was promoted to the president of Douyin e-commerce, responsible for the business in China, which is very inspirational.

They are taking over the big factories

So far, we have seen a scene that has never been seen before in China's Internet circle - more and more women have entered the core management of companies, and they have achieved transformation beyond ordinary people again and again in the business world dominated by men, and even become a huge organization where the CEO began to head more than 100,000 people, and are the idols of countless young people.

Looking back at their inspirational careers, it is difficult to summarize them into a clear rule, they may firmly accompany the soul figures at the very beginning, start from the most basic work, and grow up with the big factory; Or under the pendulum of the times, with their own hard work to break into a career, the history of career leaps can be called hearty.

But there is no doubt that in such a changing rivers and lakes, they are bound to make more efforts, break through the shackles of their dreams, and break prejudices with their strength, so that they can reap today's bright side.

In the workplace, they are as determined, resolute and fierce as Mulan, but at the same time they also have natural temperature and human touch, in the cold business world, they can have a unique female perspective, insight into the difficulties and problems faced by the organization, and can also delicately perceive the needs of customers, and quietly promote the development of the company.

How do you become as successful as they are?

Zhang Nan once gave advice, thought-provoking: "Don't be superstitious about the methodologies of successful people, most of them are post-fact, compared with these so-called methodologies, I believe more in the most essential meaning and value of everything or things in the world" - all roads lead to Rome, do the right thing, everything will happen naturally.

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