Who is Alibaba's new CEO Wu Yongming?

As soon as the "618" ended, Alibaba ushered in a new organizational change.

At noon today (June 20), Alibaba announced that with the approval of the board of directors of Alibaba Holding Group, Daniel Zhang will officially step down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Holding Group on September 20 this year, and will serve full-time as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group.

At this time, the post-Jack Ma Alibaba's "helm" had just concluded a conversation with three Nobel laureates in economics.

Accordingly, with the approval of the board of directors of Alibaba Holding Group, Cai Chongxin, Executive Vice Chairman of the Group, will become the chairman of the board of Alibaba Holding Group; Wu Yongming will become CEO of Alibaba Holding Group and will continue to serve as chairman of Taotian Group.

The aftershocks of Ali's quest for change continue.

Tsai Chongxin was entrusted with a heavy task, and it was no surprise that the bad review editorial board was one of Alibaba's only two permanent partners, the other being Jack Ma. He has helped Alibaba complete multiple rounds of financing and foreign investment, and is also Jack Ma's "think tank". In 2018, he spent $2.35 billion to become the owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and a member of the NBA China board member.

And the person who makes the bad review editorial department more interested is Wu Yongming.

When the "old Ali" returned one after another, why did he sit in the position of CEO of Alibaba Group?

In public information, Wu Yongming is one of Alibaba's "eighteen arhats" and Alibaba's first generation of programmers. After graduating from the Computer Science Department of Zhejiang University of Technology in 1996, he is also the youngest of the eighteen arhats. He joined the China Yellow Pages, founded by Jack Ma, and a year later followed Jack Ma to Beijing, where he was responsible for the technical development of the website of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation at the time. In 1999, he followed Jack Ma back to Hangzhou to help found Alibaba.

In Alibaba's organizational restructuring in May this year, Wu Yongming joined Taobao Tmall Group as chairman and served as a director in both Local Life and Alibaba International Digital Group.

Wu Yongming has always been seen by the outside world as stronger than his technical background, serving as the chief technology officer of a number of important businesses such as Taobao and Alipay, but in the later period of Alibaba, he gradually turned to the acquisition business.

Technically, Wu Yongming is not only Alibaba's first generation of technicians, but also the backbone of the business. In 2004, when Alipay was founded, he served as Alipay's technical director. He is also a man who "shapes technology into products", and in 2006, when he was responsible for integrating China's Yahoo advertising system (which was acquired by Alibaba at the time), Wu also came up with the idea of building an advertising platform that was merged back into Taobao in 2008, now known as "Alimama". Ma Yun called this "stuffing Ali's mother back into Taobao's womb" at the time.

In terms of acquisition, Wu Yongming has also done well, he has participated in the acquisition of Amap, UC Browser, Momo, Umeng and other businesses, UC Browser has brought a very large traffic entrance to Ali, and Umeng has brought mobile data-related business capabilities to Ali. Alibaba's wireless is also jointly promoted by Wu Yongming and Jiang Fan, founder of Youmeng.

Interestingly, when the bad review editorial department combed through the acquisitions in which Wu Yongming participated, it was found that many projects were coordinated with Cai Chongxin, Wu preferred the business perspective, and Cai led the financial perspective.

In terms of personal style, a person who has been in contact with Wu Yongming recalled to the bad review that Wu has a very good personality, is gentle, and "speaks in a gentle tone and speaks softly". Inside Ali, Wu Yongming was called "Wu Ma", and it is said that when he followed Ma Yun north, everyone divided into dormitories and each dormitory had a "mother", and Wu Yongming was called "Wu Ma", even if his internal flower name was "Eastern Evil".

In 2015, Wu Yongming founded Yuanjing Capital, and in the understanding of the bad review editorial department, Yuanjing is "one of the best investment institutions in Hangzhou" in the words of practitioners, and "has invested in all the famous enterprises in Hangzhou".

Some people close to Yuanjing Capital said to the bad comments that Wu Yongming investment is more willing to look at people, investment decisions are more emotional, brave to try new things, not much to say, but very moral, jianghu reputation is very good. As for the status of the rivers and lakes, there is a saying in the circle called:

"Kunlun in the north and Wuma in the south".

In this sentence, Kunlun refers to Zhou Yahui of Kunlun Wanwei, and Wu's mother is Wu Yongming.

Regarding the handout gas and investment vision, there is another interesting point, Yuanjing Capital has invested in hammer technology, Lao Luo has gone around in circles, and now he is engaged in AR startup Thin Red Line, Wu Yongming continues to invest.

Yuanjing Capital's investment business covers a wide range of fields, involving different fields such as hard core technology, medical technology, and industrial intelligent manufacturing, and the ideal car that has recently been in the limelight is also on Yuanjing's investment list.

A recent Ali person analyzed to the bad review editorial board that after the major adjustment of the organizational structure with 1+6+N as the core, Alibaba Holding Group is actually gradually shifting from business operations to capital operations and asset operations, no matter who it is, it will no longer accept reports from more than 30 different business lines at the same time as the Daniel Zhang once did, and the work mode and direction have changed greatly. He described Alibaba Group as "going to be more like Renaissance and Berkshire." Hathaway".

According to this line of thinking, Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming are to Alibaba what Warren Buffett and Munger are to Berkshire. Hathaway.

An Alibaba insider also told the bad reviewer that he believes that Cai and Wu's past experience and good business are more suitable for Alibaba Holding Group after the restructuring.

From the recent market rumors, we can clearly see that the future direction of Alibaba Holding Group is to find new entrepreneurial businesses and find the spirit of innovation.

Therefore, Wu Yongming, who is young, prestigious, has an excellent reputation, has a sensual and innovative investment style, and can coordinate the relationship between all parties, may be the most suitable candidate for the CEO of the group.

As for the reason for Daniel Zhang's resignation, it was mentioned in his letter dated June 20 that "at present, the complete spin-off of Cloud Intelligence Group has begun to start, and it is at the most critical moment, which requires that we must devote ourselves to it, and at the same time, considering the requirements of standardized governance of the company in the spin-off process, I personally should no longer serve as the chairman and CEO of both groups at the same time".

When the bad review editorial department asked an Alibaba insider for verification, the person said: "I think this is an active choice of Xiaoyaozi. ”

The outside world has interpreted that Daniel Zhang joining Alibaba Cloud (Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group) is only a "supervising the battle" role, and now, in the future, Xiaoyaozi will put all its energy into Alibaba Cloud.

The above-mentioned Alibaba person also mentioned similar words to the letter of all employees, believing that at the current critical moment when Alibaba Cloud is challenging and the listing is imminent, concurrently serving will form an obvious conflict of interest.

In the opinion of the bad review editorial department, whether in terms of business judgment, technical decision-making and change, and even customer insight, Cloud Intelligence Group needs a strong CEO to lead the team far behind the competition surrounded by strong enemies. As the business where the Big Six is most likely to be the biggest growth leader, the burden on Daniel Zhang seems to be no lighter than before.

Therefore, the bad review editorial board believes that this change is to let the right people go to a more correct position in strategy at this stage.

This change was interpreted by many outside voices as switching the Daniel Zhang era to the Cai Wu era, just as the Ma Yun era switched to the Daniel Zhang era.

The bad review editorial board believes that defining Alibaba in terms of the era of someone and some people is somewhat narrow.

Alibaba Group is just adapting to the ever-changing business environment and looking for an optimal solution.