Short hair, round face, Dan phoenix eyes, a small mole on the side of the mouth, "invisible to everyone", this is many people's first impression of Xu Xin.
However, it is such a seemingly unassuming woman, waving her hand but throwing out a number of listed companies including Wahaha, JD.com, NetEase, Meituan, Ctrip, etc., holding tens of billions of dollars, and even being called a "Chinese female version of Buffett".
But behind the praise, her family background, growth experience and her life are full of controversy, some people say that she is legendary, some say that she is lucky, others say that she was just "born in a good family"...
Xu Xin, what kind of person is he?
According to public information, Xu Xin was born in the mountain city of Chongqing in 1967 and grew up in a well-off family.
Regarding Xu Xin's family, most of the information that can be made public is vague, and it is a summary to mention that "her father once gave her great help in her study and work" is a summary.
Because her surname is Xu, the family economic situation is good, her father was also a veteran, it is said that the local background is deep, so there are many rumors, saying that Xu Xin's grandfather is xu Haidong, a general of the People's Liberation Army, but this rumor has not been confirmed by conclusive information.
But in an interview, Xu Xin revealed that his father was the director of the Sichuan automobile factory. From an article in the "Operator" magazine titled "Xu Rengen: A Rare Strongman", Xu Rengen, the head of a large state-owned enterprise at the main hall level with 130,000 employees and an annual output of 12,000 trucks after 1990, was Xu Xin's father.
“...... Inside, Mr. Xu Rengen was born in Zhejiang, graduated from Jilin University of Technology, and was assigned to the Sichuan Automobile Manufacturing Factory in the 1960s, starting from the grass-roots employees and always becoming the director of the factory. This is completely consistent with the description of Ms. Xu Xin's father when Forbes Chinese Network interviewed ms. Xu Xin, so I can probably be sure that this Mr. Xu Rengen is Ms. Xu Xin's father. ”
Regardless of whether this Mr. Xu Rengen is Xu Xin's father or not, Xu Xin, who grew up in a better environment, has never suffered any hardships, especially has a personality, and even before going to high school, he only knew how to play, often skipped class, and won the title of "Skipping Class King".
Even Xu Xin himself lamented that he was too naughty when he was a child: "I was very naughty when I was a child, and I liked to play with boys." I often skipped class with my good friend, she watched the dream of the Red Chamber on the shore, I touched fish in the river, I didn't take chemistry class all afternoon, chemistry class Mendelev periodic table, I don't know what it is, I can't keep up. ”
Mixed and mixed, Xu Xin mixed to graduate from junior high school, when she had three choices: one was to go to high school, one was to go to secondary school, and the other was to go to technical school.
Xu Xin's mother originally supported Xu Xin to go to the technical school, she felt that "reading the technical school, there is a salary of 16.5 a month, and it can be distributed and stable." ”
But Xu Xin did not go, at that time it was just her rebellious period, and she herself felt that it was not a matter of mixing up, so she proposed an idea that everyone felt was "whimsical": to go to a key high school.
At that time, there were 50 people in a class, Xu Xin ranked about 25, and the junior high school she was studying in was not a key school, so with her grades and rankings, the difficulty of going to a key high school was tantamount to ascending to the sky, and Xu Xin did not know what evil he had in the end.
But fortunately, the father supported Xu Xin's idea, thinking that since his daughter wanted to learn, it would be a good thing after all, so he spent a lot of money to hire a tutor and "open a small stove" for Xu Xin one-on-one. Soon, the original "king of truancy" was transformed into a successful admission to the city's key high school: Nankai Middle School.
It is difficult to say whether this is Xu Xin's original talent for learning, or whether her father gave her "help" to a certain extent, but it is undeniable that Xu Xin really wants to change from the state of "rebellious girl", so that in the three years of high school, Xu Xin, who "played with his life to learn", got a high score in the college entrance examination and successfully entered the foreign language department of Nanjing University.
In 1988, Xu Xin graduated from Nanjing University.
As soon as she graduated, she entered the head office of the Bank of China under the arrangement of her family and was assigned to work as a small salesman at the counter.
According to Xu Xin himself, during the period when he was a salesman at the counter, he did all the work of "registration, copying, and stamping", but he did not go with the flow:
“...... I was not discouraged by this, I still worked very seriously every day, where I could shine, I was brilliant, the Bank Knowledge Grand Prix took the first ah, as a March 8 red flag bearer, as a regiment branch secretary, ah, after doing this for three years, I felt that the honor had been there, but I was not making progress, and I was very dissatisfied with this state. At that time, I rode to work every day past the Right Anmen Overpass, which had been repaired for a long time, and I secretly swore in my heart that before the bridge was repaired, my life must change. ”
Determined to change his life, Xu Xin ushered in his own opportunity: In 1991, the Chinese government and the British government jointly helped China train British certified public accountants, and the Bank of China won a place for Xu Xin to take the entrance examination for British certified public accountants.
Then, with the help of his father, Xu Xin successfully entered the PwC Accounting Firm, which is known as one of the "Big Four" in the world. Because he did not understand the work of accounting, and had the blessing of his father's "aura", no one really dared to look for Xu Xin to do a project for a while.
"We had to fill in the schedule for every hour, and every day after work looking at my blank schedule, I felt helpless and useless." Xu Xin recalled, "I often sat in a big house, transparent glass, other colleagues were all left by the hour, I stayed there, no one nodded, the pressure was particularly great." ”
Although her father's arrangement and aura gave her convenience, Xu Xin did not think that she could always be comfortable. She knew that without ability, no matter how big her family background was, she would be "looked down upon and gossiped about", so she couldn't sit still.
In order to get rid of the status quo, Xu Xin conducted a study of Puhua's project. Because the leader of her office speaks Cantonese, so the project is mostly related to companies in Guangdong, but Xu Xin herself does not speak Cantonese, and she feels that it is difficult for her to practice Cantonese in a short period of time, so she simply changed directions, personally went to the manager of the Japanese project, and said to him:
"I don't speak Cantonese, and your Japanese customers don't speak Cantonese, so we speak English."
So Xu Xin, who spoke a plan with a fluent English and customers, became a unique landscape in the company, many people came to the door to name her on the project, and Xu Xin's schedule was also full.
At that time, Xu Xin became more and more convinced of the idea of "the harder you work, the luckier", and for the first time, she affirmed her ability, thinking that she could achieve without relying on her father.
So she began to use her spare time to work and study hard, like a sponge, taking all the experience she could absorb for herself:
"The three years of working at Puhua are the three years I have made the most progress, I have learned that I have to work not only hard, that is to work hard, and I cannot sleep until the work assigned by the boss is finished." In those three years, I used my spare time to desperately review the exam, completed 18 courses in three years, passed the British CPA exam, and finally caught up with my Hong Kong colleagues. ”
She always believed that she could do it. She will use her efforts and achievements to prove that she is not the second generation of officials who "rely on relationships and do not learn any skills" in people's eyes.
In this way, Xu Xin, who is good at learning and excellent work performance, was recommended by Puhua to enter the Hong Kong local investment institution Baifuqin, in 1992, Xu Xin led the team to participate in the first investment in Wahaha, for which she spent 40 million US dollars, betting that "Chinese will not drink foreign bottled water like foreigners."
As it turned out, she was right. Wahaha, which was not valuable at the time, has now become a listed company worth more than 100 billion.
In 1999, Xu Xin played her own strengths in investment, she invested in NetEase, which was not optimistic about everyone early, and insisted on holding shares when the Internet bubble burst in 2000, accompanying Ding Lei through two years of "hell", and now netease market value has exceeded 80 billion US dollars;
In 2004, Xu Xin invested in Tencent; in 2006, Xu Xin invested in JD.com; in 2010, Xu Xin invested in Meituan and Ctrip...
Now it seems that these companies have brought her more than thousands of times the return, and every "precision investment" that stands on the cusp of the wind has allowed her to ride on the express train of the development of the times and become a "queen of investment" praised by everyone.
But some people praise must be questioned, many people stare at Xu Xin's investment, watching her already surpass her father's wealth achievements, thinking that her success "has another inside story".
Some people say that her success comes from the influence of her family with a business atmosphere and the help of her father, who is the boss of a large state-owned enterprise, but again, we cannot deny Xu Xin's personal ability and investment vision.
The second generation of officials, the second generation of the rich, Wang Sicong, Yao Anna, and the infamous "my father is Li Gang" and the like, the help of families and relatives can help them gain wealth and fame, but they cannot help them get their ability.
She may not be indifferent to the criticism of her family and herself, but her strength is also here: she can turn all her help into motivation and become a chip in her own hands. She will always insist on being the unique self, these doubts, can not defeat him, will only make her stronger, and her investment record is the best illustration.
In 2014, Xu Xin attended the graduation ceremony of his alma mater, Nanjing University, and delivered a speech. She said there was once a sentence that she still remembers.
"I remember when I was studying at NTU, we had a cool black female teacher, she was the teacher who taught us black literature, her name was Donald. The first day she walked into our classroom, she wrote a few words on the blackboard, words that I had never heard before, and one that shocked me the most so far: You are unique, you are the miracle of life, in the past 500 years, no one has ever been like you, and in the next 500 years, no one is like you! ”
Now it seems that this sentence may be the truest portrayal of her heart.
Author: Wu Xin