"Er Li" is a lifelong enemy? Li Bin started his business twice, but lost to Li Xiang in both cases
Both are serial entrepreneurs, and they are also new power bosses, Li Bin and Li Xiang are inevitably compared.
Yiche.com failed to win Autohome, Weilai also lost to Ideal, and Li Bin's two ventures lost to Li Xiang. Could it be that "Er Li" is really a lifelong enemy?
1. Easy car loses to Autohome?
In 2000, Li Bin, who was only 26 years old, got 10 million yuan in funds and founded Yiche.com, which filled the gap in the market and was popular in the automotive industry.
In 2010, 36-year-old Li Bin rang the listing bell on the New York Stock Exchange, and BitAuto became China's first automotive Internet company to be listed overseas.
In 2005, 24-year-old Li Xiang founded Autohome after selling Bubble.com and began to compete with Li Bin.
In 2013, 31-year-old Li Xiang also rang the listing bell on the New York Stock Exchange, and Autohome successfully landed in the capital market.
However, in every way, Yiche is inferior to Autohome.
The logic of BitAuto is that sales is king, while Autohome takes content as the core, and both ordinary readers and car manufacturers have a higher recognition of Autohome. From user data to quality feedback, BitAuto is slightly inferior.
Moreover, Bitauto has been losing money for many years, and its net loss expanded to $170 million in 2019, so it had to complete privatization in 2020 and end in delisting.
On the other hand, Autohome made a big profit of $160 million in 2019 and has a market value of about $3.4 billion today. On the car portal, Li Bin's easy car lost to Li Xiang's Autohome.
2. NIO has not won the ideal?
In 2014, 40-year-old Li Bin initiated the establishment of NIO. As the first new force to be established, NIO is favored by the capital market and has received investment from well-known institutions such as Temasek, Baidu Capital, Sequoia, and JD.com.
In 2018, NIO was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange. At its peak, NIO became the world's third-largest car company after Tesla and Toyota in terms of market capitalization.
In 2015, 34-year-old Li Xiang established Li Auto and also entered the car manufacturing industry.
In 2020, Li Auto was listed on the NASDAQ in the United States, becoming the second new force to be listed in the United States after NIO.
Eight or nine years have passed, and the ideal has caught up and left NIO far away.
In terms of sales, in the first 10 months of this year, 284647 vehicles were delivered, a year-on-year increase of 193.51%. In the same period, NIO had only 126026 units, a year-on-year increase of 36.3%.
In terms of profit, NIO has accumulated a loss of 76.4 billion yuan in the past five and a half years. In the worst second quarter of this year, NIO lost nearly 260,000 yuan for every car sold. In the third quarter of this year, the ideal earned 2.81 billion yuan, making a profit for four consecutive quarters.
In terms of market capitalization, NIO is only about $13 billion, while Ideal is as high as $42 billion, more than three times that of NIO. Moreover, Li Bin also announced that NIO would lay off about 10% of its workforce in order to survive the winter.
3. Li Bin, Li Xiang's lifelong enemy?
is also an industry boss, and all the years of entrepreneurship are related to automobiles, and they are also in the same vein (both surnamed Li), Li Bin and Li Xiang are simply enemies for life, destined to be opponents of each other.
The personality traits and ability biases of the two of them are very different, which may also have created their different entrepreneurial results.
Although Li Bin personally started a business and operated many physical enterprises, some media commented that he "is more important than an entrepreneur in his bones, an investor is greater than an industrialist, and his capital operation ability is far greater than his fine operation ability".
In other words, Li Bin is gentle and elegant, long-sleeved and good at dancing, and has a relatively high status in the rivers and lakes, so he is suitable to be a leading big brother who is accumulating a game, but not a manager of a specific operating enterprise.
Li Bin is best at financing ability, so he is known as the "godfather of travel", and has brought out more than 30 Internet travel companies such as Yiche, Yixin, Weilai, and Mobike, Uxin.
However, Li Bin is not good at making specific products and managing the daily operations of enterprises. Weilai's continuous losses are related to Li Bin's lavish spending and lack of moderation.
And Li Xiang is the complete opposite of Li Bin. Li Xiang has a distinct personality, dares to speak and act, and is known as the "car madman". Although he has a fiery personality, Li Xiang is a very good product manager with a strong ability to go from 0 to 1.
Autohome's user experience is second to none in the industry, which is related to Li Xiang's insistence on making content king.
At the beginning of the car, Li Xiangli defied public opinion, regardless of the ridicule of the industry, tenaciously adhered to the technical route of extended-range car manufacturing, and with great patience and sacrifice, he buried himself in making products seriously, creating the core selling point of "daddy car", and finally made Li Auto an instant hit and became an industry leader.