Since Ma Yun's retirement on September 10, 2019, many Internet tycoons have also chosen to retreat under the prestige, what kind of variables will this "trend" bring to China's Internet industry?
Author | High distant mountains
Editor 丨 Cai Zhen
Source | Mustang Finance
Another Founder of an Internet Company stepped down as CEO.
On the evening of October 29, Kuaishou (1025. HK) announced that from now on, Su Hua will no longer serve as CEO, and Kuaishou co-founder Cheng Yixiao will take over the position. Su Hua will continue to serve as chairman, executive director and member of the remuneration committee.
The "abdication" of Su Hua is slightly different from the previous Pinduoduo Huang Zheng and ByteDance Zhang Yiming. According to the announcement, Cheng Yixiao still needs to report to Su Hua. The voting rights of Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao also remained unchanged, with Su Hua accounting for 39.1% and Cheng Yixiao accounting for 30.95%. However, the management role is more clear, Su Hua is responsible for the company's long-term strategy, and Cheng Yixiao is responsible for the company's daily operation and business development.
Kuaishou needs such a change, at the beginning of the listing, it encountered funds to a trillion Hong Kong dollars, with the arrival of new market hotspots and the rationality of funds, it has now fallen back to 44.3 million Hong Kong dollars. The competition in the short video track is also becoming more and more fierce, the vibrato is running faster and faster, and the WeChat video number is also catching up, and the situation of Kuaishou is not comfortable.
Before this adjustment, kuaishou's management was considered to be a "dual core" leadership model, which was prone to problems of low decision-making efficiency and unclear division of labor. Kuaishou urgently needs a new story, can Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao tell this story well after adjusting the division of labor?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="126" > "change of coach" has long been foreshadowed</h1>
As the founder of Kuaishou, Cheng Yixiao is actually back to the position of CEO. In 2011, Cheng Yixiao, who came from a technical background, founded GIF Kuaishou, and it was not until 2013 that Su Hua led a team of professional managers to join.
From 2011 to 2013, Kuaishou was just a tool app for doing GIFs, and few people knew about Cheng Yixiao. At that time, Zhang Fei, an investor of Kuaishou, believed that most of the tool Apps were difficult to survive, and the ceiling was very low, and Cheng Yi, who recognized the limitations of Kuaishou GIFs, began to transform and break the situation.
But the transformation process was not smooth, and financing, management team and business development were all difficulties. Under such an opportunity, Zhang Fei made up a round, and Cheng Yixiao and Su Hua hit it off.
In order to introduce Su Hua, Cheng Yixiao and Wuyuan Capital each diluted half of their shares, and the remaining half was distributed to Su Hua and his team through options, and the CEO was given to Su Hua. This lays hidden dangers for the future development of Kuaishou.
Later, Kuaishou pulled Yin Xin and Yang Yuanxi, and took a lot of shares from Cheng Yixiao's hand. This also led to the listing of Kuaishou, Suhua held 12.68% of the shares, higher than the founder Cheng Yixiao's 10%. Su Hua's Class A shares are also higher than Cheng Yixiao's.
However, the addition of new blood such as Su Hua has also transformed Kuaishou from a GIF production tool to a video social software, and has slowly grown to a Kuaishou App that has more than 100 million lives today.
Before this division of labor adjustment, Su Hua was the chairman and CEO, responsible for Kuaishou's strategy and key decisions, speaking on behalf of Kuaishou's official external voice; Cheng Yixiao, as chief product officer, was responsible for the specific business development of Kuaishou content-related products, including e-commerce, games, products and other departments. Su Hua is the main outside, Cheng Yi smiles inside, this is the tacit understanding formed by the long-term cooperation between the two, fully discuss the problems encountered, and then act after reaching an agreement. The seamless cooperation between Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao was once considered by the outside world to be one of the keys to the success of Kuaishou.
Overall, the "dual core" leadership model worked normally during the rapid rise of Kuaishou, but with the fierce external competition and the heavy decline in stock prices today, some delicate situations have begun to emerge.
Under the rapid development, the problems of internal friction of organizational effectiveness and low decision-making efficiency brought about by the "dual core" leadership model have been diluted or even covered up. Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, who are also co-founders, were not completely clear about their rights and responsibilities in the company before.
The two seem to have a clear division of labor, but once something goes wrong, there is always an excuse - and I am not alone. In addition, if the chief product officer in charge of the company's specific business does not cooperate, the chairman responsible for management can only "make it difficult for a smart woman to cook without rice."
A Kuaishou employee said that some projects should be reported to two people separately, and if one of them raises objections, the project progress will inevitably be blocked, "If it is a person who makes a decision, even if it is wrong, it can quickly correct the direction later." Two people make decisions, report upwards You have to think about one person, and one of them is not satisfied. Over time, the whole company is very 'Buddhist'. ”
More intuitively, in June last year, the top 50 employee of Kuaishou "Blue Sky" wrote more than 2,000 words of article "Talking about our company's illness", pointing to the many impacts and problems brought about by Kuaishou's "dual core" leadership model.
Kuaishou is also looking for change. In April 2019, Kuaishou set up an operation and management committee, including Su Hua, Cheng Yixiao, and heads of multiple departments, aiming to reduce the cost of hierarchical communication and accelerate decision-making efficiency, but the committee was "multi-mouthed and miscellaneous", and everything was discussed, which failed to fundamentally solve the problem of Kuaishou's unhappiness; two months later, it launched the "K3 Campaign" against Douyin, and the monthly active users soared, the effect was remarkable, and the gap with Douyin was narrowed.
In the past two years, Kuaishou has made many organizational changes, and the heads of various business departments have been frequently transferred. On September 28 this year, Kuaishou once again announced the transformation of its organizational structure, which will shift from functional to business unit system. At the same time, Yan Qiang, the former head of the operation department, issued a full email announcing his resignation. Yan Qiang belongs to the "Suhua family" within Kuaishou, and according to the "Caixin Network", many Kuaishou employees said that they were not surprised by Yan Qiang's departure, and said that this was "the victory of Cheng Yixiao".
For the outside, Kuaishou needs a soul figure, just like Zhang Yiming to ByteDance, Ma Yun to Ali, and Liu Qiangdong to JD.com. As long as you mention this person, you can think of this company, not necessarily the founder of the company, but it must represent the company.
Kuaishou also needs a new CEO who can be responsible for performance, can be responsible for the development of the company, and has the ability to make the business effective in the short term, and more importantly, can take responsibility for problems. Previously, Su Hua was the CEO, but he was also the chairman and co-founder, and when something went wrong, no one could hold him accountable.
Now that the CEO of Kuaishou has been taken over by Cheng Yixiao, the internal division of labor is more clear, and the organizational structure is clearer, but how long can the market give Kuaishou? We'll see.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="125" > big guys back in the background</h1>
In recent years, the founders of Internet companies have retired, or withdrawn from the daily operation and management of the company, focusing on strategic matters, or investing in exploring more cutting-edge fields.
First there are Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong, and then there are post-80s entrepreneurs Huang Zheng and Zhang Yiming.
On September 6 this year, Jingdong Group announced that Xu Lei, former CEO of Jingdong Retail, was promoted to president of Jingdong Group. This means that Liu Qiangdong resigned from this position and "handed over the baton" to Xu Lei, who is now 47 years old.
Although Jingdong has long been involved in the handover of the senior management team, this time Liu Qiangdong "handed over" the position of president of Jingdong Group to Xu Lei, and the outside world still felt quite abrupt.
As early as 2018, when JD.com encountered a lot of "trouble", this once again exposed the risks brought about by jd.com's management team relying too much on "key people".
On July 16, 2018, JD Group announced the implementation of the rotating CEO system, with Xu Lei, then CMO of JD Group, concurrently serving as the first rotating CEO of JD Mall.
Xu Lei walked to the front of the stage at that time, and the pressure could be imagined. Fortunately, Liu Qiangdong's sentence "Whoever disobeys Xu Lei is disobeying me", which gives Xu Lei a reassuring pill.
However, in the view of Guo Yongqing, a professor at the Shanghai National Accounting Institute, after Xu Lei became the new president of Jingdong Group, Liu Qiangdong still firmly controlled JD.com. Xu Lei's "Fuzheng" president can be said to have sat more steadily in the position of the "second in command" of Jingdong Group. And the "number one person" still belongs to Liu Qiangdong.
The announcement is very clear that Xu Lei, who has been promoted to president of Jingdong Group, will be responsible for the daily operation and coordinated development of various business segments, and report to Liu Qiangdong, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Jingdong Group.
Similar to liu Qiangdong's situation of being the top decision-maker in the front line after "handing over the baton", it is the Internet upstart - Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance.
On May 20, Zhang Yiming announced his retirement and handed over the CEO's staff to his brother in the same dormitory at the university. Zhang Yiming feels that being a CEO is particularly passive: listening to reports and summarizing every day, making approvals and making decisions, which causes internal perspectives and slow updates of knowledge structure.
Similar to Liu Qiangdong, the 38-year-old Zhang Yiming has retained the highest decision-making power over the enterprise while handing over the command of front-line affairs. Although ByteDance has not yet achieved listing, the outside world believes that Zhang Yiming, who resigned as CEO, still firmly holds the voting rights of ByteDance.
Zhang Yiming believes that ByteDance has been "eating the old money" in recent years, and then ByteDance needs to do something more creative. Zhang Yiming's open letter claimed that he was responsible for this.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="91" > Ma Yun, Huang Zheng: Retreating to the second line is still a soul figure</h1>
In recent years, many of the founders of major domestic Internet companies have chosen to take a back seat, including ali and Pinduoduo, who are in full swing.
On September 10, 2019, at the Celebration of Alibaba's 20th Anniversary at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center, Ma Yun announced that he would resign as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Alibaba. Before that, Ma Yun had said in an interview that he had been preparing for his retirement for 10 years so that the younger generation of talents could take over.
Interestingly, the young talents selected by Ma Yun Daniel Zhang are not much younger than Ma Yun. Ma Yun was born in 1964 and was only 55 years old when he retired, just when he was rich and powerful; and Daniel Zhang was born in 1972, which is no less than Ma Yun. This caused a cheer from netizens, and it was good to be young.
Despite the high-profile announcement of retirement, Ma Yun did not mean to "return to the hidden mountains and forests". In his retirement speech, Ma Yun said, "The world is so good, I love to be lively, there are so many opportunities, where I am willing to retire at such a young age, I hope to change the jianghu." As for which "jianghu" to switch to after retirement, Teacher Ma gave six words and three things: education and environmental protection public welfare.
In fact, in addition to the above three things to be engaged in after retirement, the outside world believes that as the founder of Alibaba, Ma Yun, who has retreated to the second line, will still participate in Alibaba's affairs in his unique way. This is not only because he has a stake in Ali, especially Ant Group, as an entrepreneur, who does not always care about the pace of development of the enterprises he founded?
Image source: CCTV News
Another Internet tycoon similar to Ma Yun's retirement situation is Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo. The reason why the two are similar is that after announcing their retirement, they still play the role of spiritual leaders in the organizations they founded.
As early as December 2020, when Nongfu Shan Quan Zhong Was the richest man in China for the first time, 40-year-old Huang Zheng had already ranked second in the rich list, surpassing the "double horse". Many lists bluntly say that Huang Zheng will be the next richest man in China. Sensitive Huang Zheng took the initiative to adjust.
On March 17, 2021, after the release of the 2020 financial report, Huang Zheng issued a 2021 annual letter to shareholders, announcing his resignation as chairman and replacing him by the current CEO Chen Lei. This move was seen by the outside world as Huang Zheng's rapid retreat.
Similar to Ma Yun, Huang Zheng resigned from all management positions in Pinduoduo. More thoroughly, Huang Zheng also voluntarily gave up the 1:10 super voting right; and entrusted the voting rights of the shares under his name to the board of directors to vote for decision-making. For the shares of Pinduoduo held in his hands, he said that he would lock in and not sell them in the next three years.
Prior to this, in July 2020, Huang Zheng stepped down as CEO of Pinduoduo, donated and transferred part of his equity to a charitable fund and Pinduoduo partner collective. As a result, the shares controlled by Huang Zheng personally fell to 29.4%, and the voting rights were correspondingly reduced to 80.7%.
Even if he retired and gave up the super voting power in his hand, no one would doubt Huang Zheng's strong influence on Pinduoduo.
What to do after retirement, Huang Zheng said that "will combine personal lifelong interests, dedicated to research in the field of food science and life sciences." Huang Zheng's dream since childhood is to become a physicist, "I don't know what in the world is fixed, but I only know that as soon as I see the stars, I will start dreaming." 」 He believes that retiring from Pinduoduo to pursue a career in science is "also a very happy thing."
Of course, unlike Ma Yun, who is willing to stand under the spotlight, Huang Zheng's personality prefers to be quiet and keep a low profile.
Looking back, the earliest batch of early Internet entrepreneurial bigwigs in China, represented by Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong, many of them have "retired from success", but they still hold great power behind the scenes. However, su hua, Zhang Yiming, Huang Zheng and other post-80s entrepreneurs in the mobile Internet era are in their prime, and they also choose to retreat at their peak, which is a pity for China's Internet industry. What is your thought on the "stepping off the bandwagon" of young Internet leaders? Feel free to leave a comment below.