Duan Yongping, who had been retired for a long time, was suddenly pulled back into the public eye.
In the past two days, a rumor of "Duan Yongping re-emerging from the jianghu and joining OPPO and vivo to build cars" has boiled in the Internet circle. But soon, Duan Yongping himself came forward to respond - "the re-emergence of the jianghu" thing will never happen. In response to oppo and vivo car building, this BBK "godfather" level figure is meaningful: "I haven't heard that we want to build a car, but it is possible to understand it." ”
In this way, the man who has left a strong mark on China's business history has been brought up again. Born in 1961 in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Duan Yongping was the first candidate of the state to resume the college entrance examination, but after graduation, he gave up the "iron rice bowl" work and resolutely went south to Guangdong to break in, and became famous with the "Little Bully". At the age of 34, Duan Yongping ran away to found backgammon, and later incubated OPPO and vivo, shouldering half of China's local mobile phone brands. But later, in his prime, he chose to give up his merits and fame and retire early.
At the age of 40, Duan Yongping went to the United States to join his wife and officially disappeared. "Create and excellent investment", Duan Yongping, who withdrew from enterprise management, quietly started to invest, not only gaining the four disciples of Pinduoduo Huang Zheng and Jin Zhijiang, Chen Mingyong and Shen Wei of the BBK department, but also the behind-the-scenes nobles of many entrepreneurs such as NetEase Ding Lei and Jitu Express Li Jie. Today, the outside world can still capture the shadow of Duan Yongping from these descendants.
Duan Yongping out of the mountain, joint OV to build a car?
I appeared: never again
Duan Yongping did not intend to go out of the mountain.
It has to start with oppo's car building. In the first half of this year, the entire Internet circle was crazy for "building cars", and Zhou Hongyi, Li Yanhong, Lei Jun, Li Yinan and other bigwigs rushed to this new position one after another. For a time, car building seems to have become a spiritual "aphrodisiac" for middle-aged men. During the period, OPPO founder Chen Mingyong was also rumored to be going to build a car.
In fact, as early as 2019, Chen Mingyong rarely talked about the topic of car building at the OPPO Future Technology Conference: "If the car manufacturer can't build a car, OPPO has this strength, and it will try in the future." Even if you build a car, you will focus on the areas that OPPO can do well. ”
In the following years, OPPO has successively applied for a large number of patents on the automotive software level, including "anti-collision reminder methods, devices, on-board equipment and storage media", "vehicle automatic driving methods, devices and vehicles", "vehicle networking communication equipment and other methods". And in the meantime, OPPO also cooperated with traditional car companies such as SAIC, the new forces Weilai, Ideal, and BYD.
Until April this year, OPPO's car construction seemed to have an eyebrow. There is news that the head of the person, Chen Mingyong, personally took charge and began to prepare for the car-making project, and has already explored and investigated the resources and talents of the industrial chain. Chen Mingyong also met with Zhu Wei, president of the China Passenger Vehicle Division of NINGDE Times, and the two sides chatted for several hours, and led the team to visit China Automobile Research Institute and other institutions. More OPPO employees broke the news on social software that OPPO has established an automobile division, and its headquarters may be scheduled in Chengdu. However, OPPO declined to respond to the matter.
Immediately after may, OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of the "OCAR" trademark, which is internationally classified as a scientific instrument. The outside world interprets "OCAR" as: O is OPPO, AND CAR is the meaning of the car, which is likely to refer to OPPO's automobile project. According to the Tianyancha APP, the current status of the trademark is still in the "application for registration".
At the same time, in order to expand the talent of the automotive industry chain, OPPO is also recruiting on a large scale in the first half of this year. In the OPPO recruitment website, there are many related positions such as "intelligent driving" and "vehicle system". Before this, a number of well-known people in the car-making circle have joined OPPO, including Guo Yandong, chief scientist of Xiaopeng Automobile, who continued to serve as the chief scientist after joining OPPO. In this way, OPPO's car seems to be on the string, only the official announcement.
Until this week, the OPPO car-making incident once again triggered a heated discussion in the circle, and this time it was a "joint vivo", which also brought out the business tycoon - Duan Yongping. A few days ago, Sun Yanbiao, chairman of Rising Sun Data, broke the news to the media that vivo and OPPO will jointly build cars and be directly operated by Duan Yongping, the "godfather" of the OV department. "Duan Yongping will lead the establishment of a brand new company," Sun Yanbiao said, "the investors are OPPO, Vivo and Xiao Tiancai, as well as Duan Yongping himself." Sun Yanbiao also revealed that Duan Yongping had returned to China.
But soon, OPPO and Vivo both denied that they wanted to build a car jointly. OPPO insiders said that this statement is "unreliable", and Vivo denied the possibility of three joint car manufacturing, saying that the three are independent entities without any equity relationship, and Vivo will continue to focus on the main business area of smart phones.
Duan Yongping, who has been retired for a long time, has also been pulled back into the public eye. He responded on the snowball under the name of "Avenue invisible I have a type": "Avenue retired 20 years ago. Many years ago, Dao Dao said that the 're-emergence' thing will never happen. ”
As for the OV series car manufacturing matters, he added, "I haven't heard that we want to build a car, it is possible to understand it", and at the same time posted a recent photo. At this point, Duan Yongping's return came to an end.
The Legend of Duan Yongping: After the Little Bully,
On the one hand, it has created two major domestic mobile phone brands
Speaking of Duan Yongping, I have to mention his legendary past.
In 1982, Duan Yongping, who successfully graduated from Zhejiang University, was assigned to the Beijing Electron Tube Factory with a monthly salary of 46 yuan. At that time, this job could be said to be the "iron rice bowl" that most people dreamed of, but Duan Yongping got tired of it after working for three years, and then was admitted to the graduate school of econometrics at Chinese Min University.
With the approval of the establishment of the Hainan Special Economic Zone by the state, a large number of aspiring young people went south to pan for gold, and Duan Yongping became a member of the tide. In 1989, with a high degree, Duan Yongping was quickly favored by Chen Jianren of Yihua Group, and took over the Loss of 2 million Nihwa Electronics Factory as the director, and Duan Yongping's business legend began. This year, he was 28 years old.
Seeing the huge trend of red and white machines in Japan and the United States, Duan Yongping immediately led the transformation of Japanese and Chinese electronics factories, specializing in video game consoles. In 1991, Rihua Electronics Factory was changed to Xiaobawang Electronics Industry Company, and in June of the same year, Duan Yongping used "Shanzhai" to reproduce a new product with almost the same performance and red and white machines, but the price was only one-third - Xiaobawang game consoles. In order to open up the situation, Duan Yongping tried to defy the public opinion, took out 400,000 yuan to invite Jackie Chan to speak, and smashed the first advertisement on CCTV.
The price of the people, the endorsement of kung fu superstars, the rapid popularity of the little bully game machine, in just four years to achieve a market share of 80%, almost monopolized the domestic game console market, "Tetris", "Contra", "Super Mary" and other games into the 80s, 90s generation of youth.
The inflection point followed. In 1995, Duan Yongping had a premonition that the company would not go far, began to retreat, and took away six core executives such as Chen Mingyong, the founder of OPPO, and Shen Wei, the founder of vivo, and began to create another business empire.
In September of the same year, 34-year-old Duan Yongping founded a BBK learning machine in Dongguan, which spread all over China with "the world has its own justice, and the payment will eventually be rewarded". At the time of the launch of the brand, the business boundaries of BBK are also expanding, and it has entered the audiovisual and communication industries, ranking at the forefront of the market, and the BBK empire has entered its heyday.
In 1998, when his career was at its peak, Duan Yongping met Liu Xin, who was then the chief photojournalist of The Palm Beach Post in the United States, and the two were in love and considered living in two places, and Duan Yongping promised Liu Xin: "After pushing backgammon to a new level, I will definitely come to the United States to meet her." ”
The following year, Duan Yongping gradually spun off BBK into three independent companies: Huang Yihe (later taken over by Jin Zhijiang) was in charge of the education business, Shen Wei was in charge of the communications business, and Chen Mingyong was in charge of the audiovisual business; he each accounted for 10% of the shares, and later OPPO and vivo. Nowadays, OPPO and vivo have risen to become China's leading domestic mobile phone brands, accounting for almost half of the Chinese mobile phone market.
However, what is surprising is that at the age of 40, in order to fulfill his promise to live with his wife in the United States, Duan Yongping officially retired from the jianghu.
Retiring at the age of 40, Duan Yongping harvested four disciples
There are also super unicorn companies
He is not in the jianghu, but the jianghu will always pass on his legend.
Time back to that year before retiring, Duan Yongping left a sentence for the OV cadres: "Do a good job of dividing the money, do not close the door well, do not have a burden." As a result, Jin Zhijiang, Chen Mingyong, Shen Wei, and later Pinduoduo Huang Zheng were considered to be Duan Yongping's "four disciples".
Since then, Duan Yongping has gradually disappeared from the public eye, and has made an investment in a muffled voice. The first shovel of gold in his investment career came from NetEase. In April 2002, Mr. and Mrs. Duan Yongping bought 1.52 million shares of NetEase shares in the open market for $2 million, accounting for 5.05% of NetEase's total share capital. This was undoubtedly a charcoal in the snow for NetEase, which was hovering in the line of life and death at that time.
With the substantial growth of wireless performance, NetEase's profits soared rapidly, and the stock price also opened the first round of upward offensive, from about $1 all the way up to more than $15. A year later, Ding Lei became China's richest man, and the investment also brought Duan Yongping a huge profit of $100 million.
In 2006, Duan Yongping auctioned Buffett's charity lunch for $620,000, accompanied by a young man, Huang Zheng, the future founder of Pinduoduo. At that time, Huang Zheng was just a small employee working at Google after graduating with a master's degree. Duan Yongping and Huang Zheng's acquaintance originated from Ding Lei, who graduated from Zhejiang University, and the two saw each other at first sight.
In 2015, when Huang Zheng established Pinduoduo, Duan Yongping not only offered advice, but even poured out his money to directly fund it. Huang Zheng also inadvertently mentioned in a previous interview, "Among my angel investors, the one who has the greatest influence on me is Duan Yongping, who is constantly teaching me to do the right thing first, and then to do the right thing." ”
As one of the "Four Gate Disciples", Huang Zheng's style of handling affairs is almost in line with Duan Yongping. First, Huang Zheng rarely appears in public; second, in the growth process of Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng talks about "duty" and "ordinary heart", which is the core of Duan Yongping's entrepreneurship and investment. More subtlely, also at the age of 40, Huang Zheng stepped down as CEO of Pinduoduo and officially lived in seclusion behind the scenes.
At the same time that Pinduoduo swept the e-commerce, a courier company, Jitu Express, also quickly dominated one side in Southeast Asia and fiercely broke into China's local express delivery jianghu. The founder Li Jie is the former CEO of OPPO Indonesia and the general under Duan Yongping. Relying on OPPO's local resources, network system and mobile delivery business, J&T Express has developed into the most powerful express delivery dark horse in Southeast Asia in just two years.
Following the successful route in the Southeast Asian market, J&T Express quietly entered China in 2019 as Jitu Express, setting off a bloody new war. The data shows that in less than 1 year, the daily single volume of Jitu has exceeded 20 million, and more than 80% of the single volume comes from Pinduoduo, which is also the only express delivery company in China that does not rely on Ali or Jingdong so far to reach a daily order volume of 20 million.
As the head of the person, Li Jie rarely appears in public. Many people close to Li Jie almost unanimously use the word "low-key" to describe this hidden big man. Looking back, the speed of the Pole Rabbit Express is like the Pinduoduo of that year, stirring up the rivers and lakes that have become a foregone conclusion with the speed of lightning and cannot cover their ears. The low-key bosses operate aggressive business wars, and li jie and Huang Zheng's styles seem to have something in common. This is the same as the legendary story of Duan Yongping creating a small bully, OPPO and vivo.
If the avenue is simple, the rapids retreat bravely. This is exactly the simple life and business philosophy of Duan Yongping in the eyes of the outside world, and now everyone sees such a familiar shadow in his disciples and capable generals.