Guest businessman Wu Ting: Li Bin of Weilai never chases the wind, only digs the moat

He is probably the most inspirational left-behind child in China, who grew up in a mountain village with his grandfather, but was admitted to Peking University in one go when others stopped at junior high school education. started a business before graduating, and founded two listed companies along the way, and also voted for several unicorns.

He is China's "Godfather of Travel" Li Bin.

Founded Yiche in the early days of Internet popularization, invested in Mobike during the sharing economy boom, and then stepped on the new energy tuyere to establish NIO, it seems that Li Bin is an out-and-out tuyere hunter, doing whatever is hot, and he has done it.

But in Sister Ting's view, Li Bin is not chasing the outlet, but building a moat. Why do you say that? Click to follow, Sister Ting will take you to reacquaint yourself with Li Bin.

In June 1974, Li Bin was born in Wuling Village, Anqing, Anhui Province, and was my hometown.

Don't worry about the poor family first, Li Bin took the first business class in his life at his grandfather's place.

It turned out that the old man was not an ordinary farmer, but a businessman, who was engaged in the business of ploughing cattle. He bought the cattle at a low price when they were not in good health, raised them fat and strong, and then sold them.

And Xiao Li Bin's job is to find a good pasture and feed the cattle.

What is this called today? AMC! Non-performing asset management, buy unfinished buildings, revitalize operations, and then sell them, and people will be small.

In addition to selling cattle, the old man also wholesaled medicinal wine and tobacco, and even had a two-level agent, the old man was busy making money, and Xiao Li Bin was at home to help keep accounts. A left-behind family has become a business school.

It is said that he learned to do business, and in the eighties and nineties there were opportunities everywhere, Tsinghua University and Peking University were not as bold, Li Bin should have entered the society early, right? No, he knew that academic qualifications were the moat, and others would be satisfied if they studied a technical secondary school, but he had to go to high school and take the university entrance examination. Hui merchants are like this, only reading is high.

In 1992, Li Bin was admitted to Peking University and became the first Peking University student in the county.

During college, Li Bin showed his true qualities as a scholar, took 17 exams in a week, majored in sociology, and passed the computer system analyst exam, becoming the first liberal arts student in the country to pass this exam.

Li Bin, who spent all day in the computer room, found that the Internet industry on the other side of the ocean is making great progress, and it is estimated that the opportunity for China's Internet is coming soon.

Therefore, he wanted to start a business, in order to start a business, he did more than 50 part-time jobs during college, selling stationery and serving plates.

In 1996, Li Bin, who had not yet graduated, had already saved tens of thousands of yuan, relying on this money, he established Antarctic Science and Technology Company, which could earn hundreds of thousands of yuan a month, and the wages of workers in state-owned enterprises at that time were only a few hundred yuan a month.

Such a lucrative business should be very technical, right? On the contrary, he is doing the same thing as the old man.

At that time, the Internet servers were all in the United States, and domestic entrepreneurs had the need to register domain names, so Li Bin first registered in the United States and then sold them to Chinese to make the difference.

How high is this spread?

Let's put it this way, the famous investor Cai Wensheng made his fortune on domain names, he owned more than 5,000 domain names at that time, Tudou, iQiyi, Storm Audio, and Ctrip's domain names were all bought from him, and each domain name was sold for more than one million, and how much does it cost to register a domain name? Less than 100 yuan, the yield is 10,000 times.

But only 1 year later, Li Bin gave up on the chicken that laid golden eggs, or for the same reason, he thought that the fallen master had no moat.

Later, after a short period of joint entrepreneurship with Li Guoqing, in 1999, Li Bin came out and founded Yiche.com.

At that time, Internet information was like psoriasis advertising, east and west, not enough aggregation, consumers wanted to buy a car can only run around 4S stores, running people have lost a lot of weight, and they may not be able to buy the right one.

Everyone else is complaining, but Li Bin has realized the way to start a business, and poor information is the moat!

Gather car information and make a platform for everyone's reference, car companies can advertise, 4S stores can get clues, consumers can compare prices online, open, transparent and comprehensive, there must be a big market!

Sure enough, BitAuto became popular as soon as it was launched, with more than one million daily visits in less than three months.

In 2010, 36-year-old Li Bin sent Yiche to the New York Stock Exchange.

On the contrary, Yi Che was the first to eat the crab and found that it was full of yellow fat, and then a group of people pounced on it and rushed to eat it. The largest of these is Autohome, which is no slower than Yiche. At this time, the moat of poor information seems to be no longer useful.

What is a moat that is always reliable?

I think one is ecology and the other is technology.

Li Bin later invested in a large number of companies such as Mobike, Uxin second-hand car, Dida Travel, Electric Bang, Netcom, and Master Maintenance, covering cycling, car trading, maintenance, taxi, and media, so he used capital to establish a travel ecology.

And technically, it is inseparable from the well-known Weilai, which he has devoted all his efforts to.

After 2010, China's new energy vehicles entered the fast lane, the country put forward a new energy strategy, local governments also paid subsidies, almost every car company is working hard to transform.

But then we found out that the so-called transformation is actually mixed, many car companies do not develop at all, and the car is directly pulled into the car cemetery, and it is not a lot of money to eat subsidies anyway.

On the contrary, Li Bin, a layman from the Internet, prefers to die technology and build cars seriously.

In order to find talents, he went abroad 17 times in a year, brought Mazda COO and Motorola CTO under his command, and established R&D bases in Beijing, Shanghai, San Jose, Munich, Germany and other places, vehicle research and development, on-board software, and intelligent driving.

Of course, the automobile is a capital-heavy industry, forced by financial pressure, Li Bin also knows how to make trade-offs first, his research and development is focused on intelligent driving, and the car manufacturing link, directly signed an OEM agreement with JAC.

In 2018, the first NIO ES8 rolled off the assembly line, and in September, NIO landed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Li Bin rang the bell for the second time.

It's not enough to have a moat for intelligent driving, in order to make NIO stand tall in the tram war, he also dug 3 moats that he thinks are right:

The first is the mode moat, where others are studying fast charging, and NIO directly replaces the battery; the second is to serve the moat, to be the home of NIO, to mingle with car owners, and to build a user enterprise; and the third is to make a car moat, to make NIO mobile phones in person, just to let car owners enjoy better car products.

Up to now, NIO's mass-produced vehicles have approached 400,000 units.

But no matter how deep the moat is, it will be filled by time, not to mention that the process of digging the river is laborious and costly. The speed advantage of battery replacement is being attacked by new super fast charging technology. From 2019 to the first half of 2023, NIO has accumulated a loss of 76.4 billion, if it weren't for Hefei state-owned assets and Middle Eastern tyrants frantically playing money, NIO may have entered history. At least in terms of sales and finances, NIO doesn't seem to be the most beautiful boy among the new forces.

Then we have to ask: in this case, why is capital still willing to continue to invest money in him?

I think it may be Li Bin's idea of constantly digging moats.

On December 6, 2023, NIO spent more than 3 billion yuan to acquire the JAC foundry to fill the manufacturing moat; At last year's press conference, Li Bin also announced the "Yang Jian" self-developed chip, which is one of the best lidar chips in the industry.

Author | Wu Ting

Resources:

[1] "Careerist" Li Bin, "100 Billion Trader" Li Bin, "Left-behind Youth" Li Bin.Titanium Media.2017

[2]蔚来挺过ICU.BT财经.2023

[3] The Godfather of Travel, Li Bin and His Hidden Empire, Zhidong.2017

[4] Chinese name "Yang Jian" NIO released the first LiDAR self-developed chip.InternationalOnline.2023

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