Who has the biggest ambitions on the Internet today?
Needless to say, Meituan will be mentioned.
Its borderless expansion has made it countless enemies, Didi Chengwei and Wang Xing have "turned against each other", Ctrip and Fliggy regard it as great enemies, and Hema Xiansheng has been in close contact with it......
Meituan's madness has its own confidence.
In January 2020, Meituan's Hong Kong stock market value rose all the way to 666.8 billion, far behind Baidu, becoming the third largest Internet company in China by market capitalization.
The era of the three-legged "BAT" is a thing of the past, and the "ATM" is starting a new chapter.
Source: Sina Finance
And who would have thought that ten years ago, Wang Xing was the "dark lamp of the industry" and "the most unlucky entrepreneur" in the circle, and his entrepreneurial record was "nine defeats without a win".
In the first half of 2011, it was the most dangerous time for Wang Xing and Meituan, and the battle of thousands of regiments was in full swing, whether it was Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen or third- and fourth-tier cities, the smell of burning money could be smelled on the streets of the city.
Subsidies are flying wildly, and advertisements are loud all over the world.
Because of Wang Xing's unfortunate attributes, Meituan is not favored by investors, and it has become the only group buying company that has not participated in the advertising competition.
When Wang Xing was holding a meeting on stage, the employees below were puzzled and asked: "Does Meituan still have any money? Why doesn't it advertise like its rivals?!"
After the conversation, from salespeople to city managers, a large number of employees have switched to other companies.
Winter has passed, spring is blooming, and Meituan has become the final winner of the battle of a thousand regiments.
Outsiders asked Wang Xing how he survived the cold, and he replied:
"Advance 30 kilometers a day. ”
This phrase appears very frequently within Meituan, and Wang Xing often talks about it.
In the outside world, Meituan has always been known for its "fast", and "the fastest delivery in 30 minutes" is the core competitiveness of Meituan Takeaway, which is also very in line with this impetuous era.
However, within Meituan, "patience" and "slowness" are the keys to success throughout, and the five words "long-term patience" can be seen and mentioned everywhere in the company.
It all started with Wang Xing.
A staunch "long-termist".
"Most people think that war is made up of hard work, but it is not, it is made up of waiting and suffering......"
Wang Xing said.
Wang Xing waited too long.
As soon as he entered Tsinghua University, he was regarded by his classmates as an outlier, a restless outlier.
On the day of the class self-introduction, Wang Xing said "The rise and fall of the world, the husband is responsible" thundered everyone.
His sister took him to a hometown party, and everyone else was asking the seniors about college love, the quality of the club, and other issues. When it was his turn, he blurted out, "What do you think is the meaning of life?"
The scene was a little embarrassing, and in the end, Wang Xing's sister came forward to play a round.
It's just that the personality is weird, the key is that this person's academic performance is not good, every day he pulls Wang Huiwen and Fu Dongping's roommates to play games all night, and when the final results come out, Wang Xing is down, Wang Huiwen is down, and Fu Dongping is down.
Wang Huiwen
But it was the tail of these three classes that created "Meituan", the vanguard of Internet companies, more than ten years later.
The seniors did not give the answer of "what is the meaning of life", Wang Xing found ——— entrepreneurship by himself.
In his mind: "The hero of the war years is the general, and the hero of the peace years should be the entrepreneur." ”
In 2001, Wang Xing went to the University of Delaware in the United States to study for a Ph.D., when the Internet was the world's largest outlet, with Google, Yahoo and Amazon in the United States and Baidu, Sohu and NetEase in China.
Wang Xing also wanted to get involved, but he never thought about what to do.
In 2003, he came across the "Theory of Six Degrees of Separation", which says that you can get to know anyone by going through six people.
Wang Xing tried, using his mentor as an intermediary, and finally contacted then US President George W. Bush.
Wang Xing was shocked, and he firmly believed that social networks would change the world, and he must not miss it.
On Christmas Eve, Wang Xing sent an email to his college roommate Wang Huiwen and a high school classmate Lai Binqiang, and he said excitedly: "SNS is very popular in the United States, and some people in China have started to do it, we have to hurry!"
Out of trust in Wang Xing, the two agreed, one dropped out of the Institute of Acoustics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the other resigned from the R&D center, and Wang Xing also chose to take a leave of absence and return to China.
In March 2004, the three of them rented a 130-square-meter house in Haifeng Garden, near Tsinghua University, with three desks in the living room as an office and a marching bed in each bedroom.
For nearly half a year, except for a few small restaurants downstairs, the three of them didn't go anywhere, cutting off all social and entertainment.
In September of the same year, their first project, "Duoduoyou", was finally launched, and the website is exactly what the name suggests, encouraging users to meet more friends through friends on the site.
It's the project they have pinned their hopes on, and it's the one to bet all their chips.
Wang Huiwen's family is poor, and he only has 2,000 yuan on his bank card, so he borrowed 60,000 yuan from friends to start a business. Lai Binqiang took out all the savings he had saved after work, and there were tens of thousands of yuan.
What about Wang Xing?
Since he had the idea of starting a business, he has been preparing for this day, and he knows that starting a business together, capital is the most important. So he developed the habit of saving money, his father transferred more than half of his living expenses to him every month, and the scholarship issued to him by the school did not move, and he was reluctant to go into the barber shop even to cut his hair, so he simply bought a hair clipper by himself, and showed people with his head all the year round, and finally saved more than 100,000 yuan in about five years.
This habit has been retained by Wang Xing to this day, and has deeply influenced the behemoth of Meituan, so much so that it has been jokingly called "boiling water ball", which means that apart from free boiled water, there are very few other benefits.
Of course, that's all for later.
Unfortunately, success doesn't favor you because of how much effort you put in, it's like an emotionless machine that treats everyone equally.
"Duoduoyou" failed at the beginning, because there was little initial start-up capital left, Wang Xing did not have the strength to promote the website at all, and even the first batch of registered users could not be found.
In the dimly lit room, the trio stared at the deserted website page, confused.
What's next?
Borrowing!
Wang Xing firmly believes that the road of social networking will work, and if it doesn't work once, then fight to the end, just like buying a lottery ticket, buy more, and the winning rate will naturally increase.
Wang Xing rarely reached out to his father to borrow money, and Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang borrowed more than 200,000 yuan from friends one after another, and built a high-rise building with personal debts.
As the debts piled up more and more, the frustration also piled up, and the second "Wandering Child" project, which helped overseas students print photos and send them to their parents, was tragically destroyed by Waterloo and the "telegraphic invitation" imitating the American Invite website......
They have learned from experience again and again, adding payment points to their websites, imitating the mature models of foreign websites, and planning ways to attract new users.
But without exception, they all failed, and the three of them had already become numb.
Even their first-mover advantage has disappeared, and when Wang Xing returned to China, only Mu Yan, a student from Tsinghua University, was engaged in social networking alone, and now more than 30 companies are eyeing each other.
Winters in Beijing are cold, and they want to save money by renting an unheated house. The bitter cold wind found his own place through the narrow gaps between the doors and windows, playing music day and dancing night night, causing the chill to rage in the house.
Wang Xing and the three of them wrapped their clothes tightly, still so cold that their fingers were stiff, and they could only type the code one by one. In order to enliven the team atmosphere, Wang Xinggan said with a smile: "It's okay this way, you can write code with a clear mind." ”
At this point, Wang Xing still did not despair, he firmly believed that the end was ahead, and he did not choose the wrong direction, as long as he moved forward step by step, he would see the light of day sooner or later.
After a year of staying up like this, things ushered in a turning point.
On February 4, 2004, "Facebook" was born, a campus dating site founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, which spread rapidly in the United States and had the potential to detonate the world.
Wang Xing pays attention to it, studies it, and imitates it.
On December 8, 2005, the "School Intranet", which focuses on campus dating, was launched.
In order to promote the website, Wang Xing's team crossed the sea with eight immortals, each showing their magical powers. Wang Xing actively sponsored various festivals and club activities at Tsinghua University; Wang Huiwen was transported to the railway station by bus free of charge on the registration websites of various colleges and universities; Lai Binqiang was even more ruthless, playing a flash mob activity, taking advantage of the students' evening self-study to quickly write down the website and propaganda slogans on the blackboard, and then run away.
The school intranet became an instant hit, with 30,000 registered users in three months after its launch, and it skyrocketed to one million users in the future, which is a achievement that Wang Xing's team has never achieved.
Blessings and misfortunes always depend on each other, behind the prosperity of the school intranet is the embarrassment of having no money to smash, a few servers can't support so many users, and it goes down at both ends in three days, plus competitors have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, Wang Xing is very anxious.
At the beginning of 2006, Wang Xing received a strange phone call, who claimed to be from Sequoia Capital and had the intention of investing in them.
The opportunity to turn over was close at hand, and Wang Xing's team yelled excitedly in the room, and even couldn't help but think of the scene when the NASDAQ rang the bell.
But as soon as they met, Wang Xing realized that something was wrong.
When faced with the investor's questions such as "how to make money on the intranet" and "how to promote the next plan", Wang Xing's mind was a mess, he had no financing experience at that time, and mistakenly thought that as long as the other party took a fancy to him, he would definitely invest, but the question of more money and less money never expected these questions, and the answer was very dry.
The pigeon flew away and flew to the cage of the opposite family.
Half a year later, Sequoia Capital invested $5 million in the school's intranet rival "Zhanza.com".
Not only that, there was also an American investment institution that wanted to invest in the intranet, but because Wang Xing's financing amount was too low, they thought that Wang Xing's judgment of the market was wrong, so they gave up.
But in Wang Xing's eyes, the reason why he asked for a low price was because he felt that this amount of money was enough to destroy his opponent, and capital did not understand him, and he did not understand capital.
Two failed financings have led to a collapse in the school's intranet, and the opponent has plenty of ammunition, and it has stepped on the edge of the cliff.
One day in October 2006, Wang Xing's team of six people came to the food stall next to Huaqing Jiayuan in Wudaokou, they didn't say a word, just cared about pushing the glass and changing the lamp, the empty wine bottles were piled up at their feet, and the sad emotions overflowed into the house.
On that day, Wang Xing sold the school's intranet to his rival "Thousand Oaks Interactive" for $2 million, and the two merged and changed its name to "Renren".
Three years of entrepreneurship stop there.
Everyone in the team got a lot of money, Wang Huiwen paid off his debts, and bought a house in Beijing and Dalian, and was later dragged around the world by Lai Bin.
Wang Xing's entrepreneurial dream is still not extinguished, just as he firmly believes that social networks will be popular across the country, and he firmly believes that he will succeed.
What he needs is waiting, patience.
The Internet is a miracle field, and people believe that if you are "fast" enough, you will be able to be richly free.
In those years, Zhongguancun's Chuangye Street was crowded with people, and people's mouths were full of investment and listing, opening their mouths for millions and closing their mouths for hundreds of millions.
Every day, legends are born, and every day there are ideals shattered.
Feng Xin's acquisition of Baofeng Video has 280 million users in just two years, and its market value is approaching 40 billion after 37 consecutive daily limits after listing.
Storm Video ran so fast that Feng Xin didn't have time to stop and think about it, and later, he was arrested for bribery, and Storm Video also became the memory of a generation.
The 08 Olympics is also the peak moment of Sohu, and the advertising slogan of "watching the Olympics and going to Sohu" resounded throughout the land of China.
Source: Sohu Sports
Zhang Chaoyang is full of pride, since then scandals, female companions, his figure gradually disappeared in the entrepreneurial sector, and active in the entertainment sector, when he appeared in a fashion magazine with a half-naked image, the arrogance in his eyes overflowed the paper.
He is more of a playboy than an entrepreneur.
Source: NetEase Technology report
In the Weibo war, Sohu was defeated, and gradually fell from "the first stock of the Chinese Internet" to "no such person".
Countless histories and lessons are telling Wang Xing that the more he pursues the "fast" field, the more he needs to be "slow".
In early 2007, a social networking site called Twitter set off a global craze that had the potential to overtake Facebook.
Wang Xing, who loves social networking sites, naturally didn't want to miss it, and immediately contacted Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang.
In desperation, Wang Xing poached his Tsinghua junior, Baidu's senior software engineer Mu Rongjun, from Baidu.
In May of the same year, "Rice No" was launched.
At that time, there were six or seven Chinese companies that imitated Twitter, but only "Fanno" had the most complete and user-friendly functions.
The meal is very successful, Chen Danqing, Chen Xiaoqing, Liang Wendao and other big names gathered here, and even Zhang Xiaolong, who has always been taciturn, is its loyal fan, and in less than 5 years, 2359 news have been posted.
If nothing else, Fan will replace the current position of Weibo.
But that's how fate plays tricks.
In June 2009, Fan received the first advertisement, and Wang Xing's phone was also blown up by investment institutions.
But the good news lasted less than a month, and the website suddenly received a notice of offline rectification, due to the non-standard management of sensitive speech.
This offline is 505 days.
Wang Xing fell in front of the finish line again.
Wang Xing's mother later recalled those days:
I'm very worried about Wang Xing, he has been very strong since he was a child, and he is serious about his work, this time it hit him too hard, things were done so well, but he was stopped, his mood can be imagined.
Wang Xing fell, but he didn't stop.
"I can't tell you how to succeed, but failure can be defined, and when you give up, you fail," he said. ”
Wang Xing himself has long maintained a habit of opening dozens of browser windows every morning to watch foreign technology websites and forums, which makes him always the first person to discover new areas on the Chinese Internet.
At the end of 2009, Groupon broke into his sights.
The site, which focuses on group buying and coupons, is a hit in the United States, raising $30 million within a year of its launch.
Wang Xing felt that there was a lot to be done.
But failure after failure almost destroyed his self-confidence, and when he announced his switch to a group buying website within the team, he unconsciously asked: "What will happen to everyone if the company goes out of business tomorrow?"
After that, Wang Xing cried, and his colleagues also cried.
On March 4, 2010, "Meituan" was officially launched.
On March 15th, Wowotuan was launched, on March 18th, Handsou was launched, and on April 25th, the online group was launched......
The "Battle of a Thousand Regiments" has officially begun.
Meituan is the first large-scale group buying website in China, but it doesn't have a big chance of winning.
"Tuanbao" raised US$2.2 million in financing just after its establishment and completed a Series B financing of nearly 300 million yuan eight months later, "Dianping" initially held an investment of US$2 million, followed by an influx of US$125 million, and "Lashou" received three financings of US$5 million in three months after its establishment.
What about Meituan?
Since Wang Xing has not won a battle since he started his business, no one dares to vote for this "unlucky ghost".
Zhu Xiaohu, a big man in the venture capital circle, commented: "The investment circle generally does not dare to invest in Wang Xing, because there must be a reason why a person has failed so many times. ”
It wasn't until the end of 2010 that Wang Xing received a belated investment of $12 million, which was the first to reject Sequoia Capital.
A large amount of capital poured in, causing the "group buying war" to escalate into an "advertising war".
People think that "voice" is above all else, as long as the voice is loud enough, it can attract enough consumers, can also attract the attention of investors, and at the same time can be listed in the first step to make money.
Tuanbao smashed 550 million, Dianping.com invested 3~400 million, and glutinous rice spent 200 million, but Meituan did not move, and everyone thought that it had run out of ammunition and was hovering on the verge of life and death.
Non-ya.
In Wang Xing's view, the essence of group buying is to "take advantage", and the benefits visible to the naked eye are the killer feature. In addition, there is not much money in the company's account, so it must "stock up" to survive the cold winter.
He first launched the "10 yuan invitation rebate" campaign, and then announced the first service of "expired unconsumed refund", and added a seven-day refund without reason.
Source: Tencent Technology
When other group buying companies collude with merchants to raise prices first and then discount, he issued an internal death order prohibiting bribery to merchants and must give consumers real discounts.
Wang Xing played the right game, and 70% of Meituan's members were introduced by friends and the stickiness was extremely high.
On the other hand, the advertising war has left them in a quagmire and dragged down their coffers, and in just one year, only about 1,000 of the more than 6,000 websites remained.
Winter has arrived.
When competitors had no rice to cook, Wang Xing showed off the company's account: $61.92 million.
This extremely dazzling number has sent Meituan to the first place in the industry.
After this battle, Wang Xing seems to have opened up the second pulse of Ren and Du, and the takeaway war is invincible, "Maoyan" has opened up a new era of movie seat selection and ticket purchase, and Ctrip and Qunar have been forced to retreat by "Meituan Hotel......
In the face of the influx of congratulations, Wang Xing sighed: "Many things are overnight success on the surface, but in fact, there is a long accumulation behind them, and the TED talk I like very much seems to have suddenly become popular a few years ago, but it was actually founded in 1984." ”
This is indeed the case.
Today's Chinese Internet has long passed the period of reckless entrepreneurship, miHayou has achieved corner overtaking by deeply cultivating the niche field of "two-dimensional games"; starting point Chinese network has waited for many years and finally ushered in the era of "big IP"; Jingdong lost 30 billion yuan in self-operated logistics for ten years, but finally stood out in the e-commerce war with heavy casualties with this big killer.
On the track of entrepreneurship, the contestants have changed round after round, some people cheat out, some people give up, some people are greedy for speed and get injured, but those who seem to be one step slower, but in fact have better endurance, and finally move to the finish line.
This is a victory for long-termists.
Resources:
1. "The Biography of Wang Xing" - Wang Jing, Chen Run
2. "Nine Defeats and One Victory": Meituan Founder Wang Xing's Ten Years of Entrepreneurship" - Passionate Jiang