The founder is eternal, and the successor can be replaced. Are the next generation of “heads” of the Internet ready?

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “燃 财” (ID: rancaijing ), Author Kong Mingming, Editor Zhou Yifan .

“A generation will grow old, but there are always young people.”

On the afternoon of December 3, 2019, US time, Google ’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, announced through Google ’s parent company ’s official website: Resigned from the position of CEO and President of Alphabet, and Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google, took over and became the new CEO of Alphabet. It also means that Page and Brin will exit Google management.

On September 10, 2019, one year after Jack Ma announced that he would no longer serve as the chairman of the board of directors, Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong officially took over as Jack Ma and became the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba. era”.

The big brother needs successors

Mapping of the shift time of the founders of the four major technology giants / Ran Finance

In the decades of the rapid development of the Internet, many people have become legends by virtue of the Internet, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, etc. These Internet companies also co-exist with the founders.

Companies have their own growth cycles and life cycles, and Internet companies are no exception. After the company has reached a certain stage, they need to consider how to remove the “founder label” and become a sustainable enterprise organization, and choosing the right next “successor” has become a question they need to consider carefully.

The first generation of legends is choosing to withdraw from the rivers and lakes and hide behind the scenes, and the next generation of “heads” are emerging. For this new generation of “heads”, taking over from the legend is not an easy task. They need to continue to inherit the company’s culture and achieve continuous growth, but also to face people’s review, comparison and comparison.Cut. In 1998, after meeting with Jobs, Cook, impressed by Jobs’ “genius”, joined Apple and became vice president of computer manufacturing. In 2007, Jobs appointed Cook as Chief Operating Officer.

From the outside world, Jobs is often regarded as a very aggressive manager, and Cook’s style is more inclined to understand and think of others. Since entering Apple, Cook has played the role of implementing Jobs’ crazy obsession. He built Apple’s supply chain management system in one hand, pushing the global response speed to the extreme in the industrial era.

In August 2007, Zhang Yong officially joined Ali. Since then, he has been living in a five-star hotel in Hangzhou. After a few years, no one at the hotel knew him.

The big brother needs a successor

Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Zhang Yong

Xiao Yaozi, born in 1972, is a Shanghai native. He studied finance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 1991. Before joining Alibaba in 2007, he was CFO at Shanda. In the early days when Zhang Yong joined Alibaba, he was optimistic about the B2C business, led Taobao Mall, which was not taken seriously at the time, on the right track, and invented the far-reaching “Double 11” shopping festival. And in the mobile Internet transformation, create a mobile phone Taobao this “carrier-class” APP.

“Don’t think too much, take advantage of the situation, both looking up and looking down, and doing things down,” is Zhang Yong’s own principle of survival in Ali for many years. For Zhang Yong, this road is Ma Yun’s decision, Ma Yun is responsible for the world, and Zhang Yong is responsible for turning these ideas into reality.

It can be seen that, unlike the founders of the legend, these successors are usually more gentle and better at handling internal company relations, and have all served as the right arm of the founder, not only inherited The company’s internal culture can perfectly implement and implement the founder’s strategy.

The boss needs a successor

In Silicon Valley, founders tend to be younger when creating these Internet or technology companies, so it ’s a common phenomenon to introduce professional managers to manage the company during the company ’s development. And at a certain age, these founders will need to give back to the new generation of leaders.

Google was founded by Page and Brin, who were then graduate students at Stanford University. Both were born in 1973. After officially registering and launching Google to the public in 1998, Page and Brin-managed Google was one of the fastest-growing companies in history. But for yearsb621ac14d_img_000 “data-img-size-val =” 720,480 “>

Apple CEO Tim Cook

When Jobs died, Apple’s market value was about 330 billion US dollars. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple became the first company in the United States to break through the trillion dollar market value. At least in Apple’s market value, Cook achieved a substantial increase in performance. But Cook is also being questioned by Apple’s loss of innovation. In Xu Zhong’s opinion, after taking over as CEO of Apple, Cook has always been “good times,” but how to achieve the next growth after good times is a new problem that Cook will face.

“Are you worried that you will become the CEO in the shadow of Jack Ma?” When asked this question, Zhang Yong answered: “First, Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba, and Jack Ma’s existence is an objective fact; Second, the shadow is not the shadow, it all depends on how you do it. Ma Yun definitely hopes that the people he chooses will succeed. So, what you have to consider is how to make good use of the resources of the chairman of the board of directors, not as a burden.

Internet companies are moving from initial extensive to refined operations and management, and for a company that wants to achieve long-term development, the choice of successor is crucial. In Xu Zhong’s view, a company must prepare its own succession system at least 10 years in advance, so that it can “go through more business life cycles.”

* Some of the pictures in the text are from the Internet. References:

“Who is the successor of the Google Empire?” 》 , The Silicon Star Du Chen

Empire Restart: Three CEOs of Microsoft in Ten Years, Vanity Fair, Compilation / Sina Technology

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