When people start to miss Jack Ma

Although he has retreated into the background, Ma Yun is still the very topical Ma Yun.

On November 16, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that the Jack Ma family trust sold the shares of Alibaba's founder, and the market value of the shares involved exceeded $800 million.

Ma Yun reduced his holdings and was at a delicate juncture.

01

From Ali's internal point of view, the organizational structure reform of Dakai and Dahe was urgently stopped. After the new CEO Wu Yongming took over from Xiaoyaozi Daniel Zhang, within a few days of Double 11, he stepped on the brakes, the cloud intelligence group suspended the split, and the listing plan of Hema Xiansheng was temporarily shelved.

Alibaba's split plan can be called a blockbuster adjustment in the history of private enterprises, it was once pinned on high hopes, after only half a year, the wind direction suddenly changed again.

Just a few days ago, all of Ali's products crashed down for a while, which called into question the stability of Alibaba Cloud.

From the perspective of Alibaba, the key node of the Sino-US meeting, and in Ali's financial report, the explanation given for the cloud intelligence group will not be split is that "the United States has recently expanded restrictions on the export of advanced computing chips, which has brought uncertainty to the prospects of the cloud intelligence group."

In these special contexts, Ma Yun's shareholding reduction operation, or cashing out at a low level, will inevitably be amplified and interpreted, and will be regarded as his bearish on the internal and external environment of the company, so he must settle down and run away.

An entrepreneur like Jack Ma, his wind and grass can easily trigger a chain reaction in the capital market. As soon as the news of the reduction came out, Ali estimated that it also dived sharply, falling by nearly 10%.

Do you want to run away?

In fact, according to the logic that reducing holdings is equal to running away, Ma Yun has already run into outer space - after stepping down as CEO of Alibaba, Ma Yun has reduced his holdings many times and reached a scale of 100 billion. By 2020, Mr. Ma's shareholding had fallen to 4.8%.

Among them, the largest reduction in 2020, the cash limit is as high as 43 billion yuan, and now the reduction of 800 million US dollars, what is it?

Not only Ma Yun, but also the first generation of Internet entrepreneurship bosses, after stepping down, they basically reduced their holdings. Liu Qiangdong of JD.com, Huang Zheng of Pinduoduo, and so on.

Since you choose to fade out of the front line of management and hand over the enterprise to professional managers to take care of, it is very common to reduce your holdings and cash out and reduce the proportion of equity.

For individuals and enterprises, loosening control is all about diversifying risks. In addition, the realization of assets in hand is a normal feedback to entrepreneurship. After the entrepreneur retires, he also needs real funds to engage in some interest investment.

Therefore, returning to the perspective of the market, it is normal for entrepreneurs to reduce their holdings, it may not have so many meanings, and it can imply any signal or wind direction of "mountain rain is coming".

02

Of course, since it is a low-level sell-off, is there a negative prediction of corporate growth behind Ma Yun's reduction?

Indeed there may be.

Twenty years ago, Jack Ma opened a new era of online e-commerce, but now the Internet industry has changed its play.

In the past, Taobao and Tmall had to compete with JD.com and Pinduoduo, but now the popularity of live e-commerce, sitting on Douyin's ByteDance, is encroaching on the territory of traditional e-commerce step by step.

Data shows that in 2022, ByteDance's profit surpassed Tencent and Alibaba for the first time to become the most profitable Internet company in China. In the first half of this year, ByteDance's revenue reached $54 billion, and its revenue also surpassed Tencent.

I don't know how you guys are, anyway, I buy things now, and I rarely open Taobao, Tmall, or Jingdong and Pinduoduo. Many times, it is just a video, and when you see something you are interested in, you will place an order directly.

A new king should be established. used to be the leader of e-commerce, but now there is a momentum of parabolic downward movement. In the wave of consumption downgrade, even in the traditional e-commerce field, people need more Pinduoduo than Tmall.

Therefore, it would not be surprising if Jack Ma is not optimistic about Alibaba's business development and loses interest in controlling management.

But in my opinion, it may not be a bad thing to use Jack Ma as a signal of some kind and be keen to capture the economic situation and the direction of regulatory policies from his every move.

It shows that as an entrepreneur, Ma Yun, even if he has retreated into the background, still has certain characteristics of the times.

In a way, Jack Ma is indeed a collection of contradictions.

He used the rhetoric of 996 blessings to go to PUA to work workers, and the shrewdness of the capitalists was about to come out, but in some fields such as banking, he did promote the ice-breaking of reform and break the monopoly of traditional vested interests.

This may be a common denominator of that generation of entrepreneurs.

Breaking through in an unknown field, the entrepreneur's strongman attribute is full, and it is easy to be infected with the original sin of capital, but objectively, it does promote the collapse of the old order and the establishment of a new order.

He is not so good, but compared with Xu Jiayin's badness, the background of the entrepreneur is much brighter.

Therefore, looking at Ma Yun under the current situation, it is easy to see his true face clearly, and fall into the face of either a capitalist or an entrepreneur. The scenery should be long-term and considerable, so as to evaluate the merits and demerits.

I don't know if you have noticed that in the past two years, Ma Yun, who has retreated into the background, has ushered in a drastic change in his reputation and reputation. Behind the news of Ma Yun's reduction, I see a sudden change in the style of painting in the comment area, and many of the posts are praises or regrets for Ma Yun.

A few years ago, Ma Yun, who was regarded as an evil capitalist and wanted to be hung up on the street, has now become the object of nostalgia, and more and more people are beginning to miss Ma Yun's face that no one is convinced.

Ma Yun is still the same Ma Yun, what has changed is just the current situation.

03

The future entrepreneurial environment may become more and more intolerant of bold fanatics like Ma Yunzhi, from the Internet to finance, to real estate, the era of savage growth has passed.

I can't say it's a regression, but I always feel like something is missing. So, cherish the days when Jack Ma is still a weather vane.

Ma Yun's reduction and cashing out can repeatedly trigger rumors of running away, and even interpret the change in the direction of the economic environment, indicating that he still has value and influence.

When the feast of wealth ends, this generation of entrepreneurs may really disappear from the field of public opinion.

Today's Internet is no longer the noise of the bigwigs at that time, and their historical mission has been completed. When people begin to miss Jack Ma, the era that belongs to Jack Ma has finally passed.

Do we miss Jack Ma or do we still miss the atmosphere of passion, fire, and entrepreneurship who dare to dare to do things, and who knows.