Not Lei Jun.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “chief character concept” (ID: sxrenwuguan), Author: sea, Editor: Jiang Yue.
Two familiar names appeared in the Xiaomi car-building plan on the Internet: Wang Chuan and Li Wanqiang.
According to Tencent’s “Shen Wang” report, although Lei Jun will personally serve as the CEO of Xiaomi car company, there are many signs that Wang Chuan and Li Wanqiang will be the main executors of the project. Previously, Wang Chuan had visited Ideal and Xiaopeng on behalf of the Xiaomi Group, and learned about the auto industry, and Li Wanqiang will return to be responsible for the brand marketing of the project.
In fact, these are two figures who are no longer active at the core of Xiaomi’s power.
Wang Chuan, a good friend Lei Jun met during skiing in 2004, the eighth founder of Xiaomi, single-handedly put Xiaomi’s TV business on the throne. As he grows older, he is put on a false position such as a staff member, literally. To expand and understand, it is to retreat to the second line; Li Wanqiang, who has known Lei Jun for more than 20 years, followed him to found Xiaomi and became the core founder. He once left and returned, and three years ago, he left again.
But when Lei Jun decided to build a car after 75 days of research, the appearance of these two names was not surprising.
After all, clothes are not as good as new, and people are not as good as old, not to mention a project like building a car that costs hundreds of billions and is decided in a short period of time. Fighting on the new battlefield is imminent. At this time, it is more important for the generals to be reliable than to understand the business.
01 Mentor, friend
In 2000, when I met Lei Jun, Li Wanqiang was 23 years old and was a college graduate with a tender face that could pinch water. And the 31-year-old Lei Jun has brought his fame from Wuhan Electronics Street to Beijing Zhongguancun. As the president of Jinshan Company, many young people look up to him, just like he looked up to Qiu Bojun back then-the idol of the era is always Back wave pushes forward wave. When Jinshan was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, the cover title of “it Times” was “Lei Jun and His Jinshan Kingdom”. The names of the founders Zhang Xuanlong and Qiu Bojun were no longer worthwhile Mention.
The first mentor of young people has far-reaching influence, often beyond the imagination of both parties.
Li Wanqiang and Lei Jun worked together in Jinshan for 7 years. The Pisces software designer later showed a terrible obsessive-compulsive disorder in Xiaomi, which was more or less influenced by Lei Jun.. In Jinshan, Lei Jun taught him to die.
Lei Jun is not a Virgo, but the best spokesperson for Virgo. He said one thing is the same. The PPT of each press conference has to compete with each other in the color and position of a pixel. He couldn’t bear the disharmony. Jinshan had learned from Microsoft for a while. Starting from the appearance, employees were required to wear suits to work. An executive put up a black suit with a light-colored tie and was driven away by Lei Jun as soon as he opened the door. You can take a taxi and go back to change a set now.”
Lei Jun’s shadow fell on A Li, closely fitting. Regarding the opinions of a poster, Li Wanqiang can ask from his colleagues to the cafeteria master.
Li Wanqiang spent 7 years with his eldest brother in Jinshan. In 2007, Lei Jun, who completed the mission of listing, was exhausted and exhausted. After bowing deeply in the office, he left. Two years later, Li Wanqiang also submitted his resignation, intending to go back to his hometown in Guangdong to open a photography studio and live the comfortable life of young people in the small town.
He was cut off by Lei Jun.
In 2009, Lei Jun decided to embrace the new trend of mobile Internet. In the two years he was an angel investor, he ran around and met friends, seeing the momentum of the new wave more and more clearly. In fact, since he invested in UCWeb in 2007, he has set a rule for himself: Never use computers in the office or at home.
Of course, no matter how strong it is, there is always self-doubt and instant collapse hidden in it.
On December 16, 2009, in the lounge near the Yanshan Hotel in Beijing, Lei Jun called several friends including Li Wanqiang over for a drink. Bottles of Heineken beer happily passed through these middle-aged people’s Throats, when the stimulation of alcohol makes their skin slightly hot, the rules, restraints and restraints that bound these bodies are gone.
At 11:30 in the evening, Lei Jun said, today is my 40th birthday. But there is no aura of C-bit joy on his face. Like an ordinary middle-aged man who is trapped in confusion, he has deep doubts about the meaning of the past: Is the life of a model worker for so many years wrong? Up?
Li Wanqiang has witnessed all this and also saw his eldest brother’s determination to embrace a new life. So, when Lei Jun said, “Don’t be nonsense, do it with me”, he quickly put down his hometown and went-even though he didn’t know exactly what Lei Jun wanted to do at the time.
He became the man standing behind Lei Jun. On the day of the opening of the Xiaomi company, his father brought a pot of millet porridge that had been boiled for 5 hours. Since then, drinking porridge has become a tradition for Xiaomi every time he changes offices. Loyalty is also the background color of Li Wanqiang. Many years later, he rejected Luo Yonghao’s job offer, saying, “I only want to work for Lei Jun in my life.”
It took Lei Jun a year to persuade Wang Chuan to join Xiaomi.
Summon Li Wanqiang, Lei Jun has a somewhat convenient status as a elder brother, and he treats Wang Chuan differently. When the two met at the ski resort, Wang Chuan was already the boss of Leishi Technology, which was the largest VOD system and equipment company in China at the time.
Wang Chuan has a catch phrase, “I will help Lei Jun.” Wang Chuan might just be accustomed to being polite, but Lei Jun took it seriously. During his tenure at Jinshan, he wanted Wang Chuan to be the CEO, but was rejected, so he was given the status of executive director and worked one day a week. Wang Chuan did his best, and once rushed to work four or five days a week, and did everything he needed to help.
After Xiaomi was founded, Wang Chuan was even more helpful. Lei Jun asked Lei Jun to visit Guo Taiming and recommended the designer friend Zhu Yin to Xiaomi. The latter participated in the design of the MIUI 5 system, which Lei Jun liked very much.
But Lei Jun wants more. Wang Chuan is the person who understands hardware best among his friends. At that time, Wang Chuan had done a lot of watching and planned to transform into a set-top box to enter the TV industry. If such a character can join Xiaomi, Lei Jun will be even more powerful.
However, after a year of intermittent discussions, Lei Jun has never made any real progress. Wang Chuan is unwilling to start a business with friends. It is his consistent life philosophy to separate friends from business.
Like the most patient hunter, Lei Jun is waiting for the key meeting.
Finally, money gave him confidence, wine gave him courage——
In June 2012, at the celebration banquet of Xiaomi’s C round of financing of US$216 million, Wang Chuan came. When all the guests were gone, Lei Jun took Wang Chuan into the office and opened a bottle of red wine in his drunkenness.
“Wang Chuan, do you want to come over?” He also mentioned the terms of cooperation. Read more about Xiaomi’s acquisition, and the valuation is twice the market price. “If you don’t come now, you can only To make it clear, you may look down on our Xiaomi.” After speaking, he drank the red wine in the glass.
That night, under the joy of victory and alcohol, Wang Chuan really felt Lei Jun’s need for him.
He became the eighth founder of Xiaomi.
02 Glory, gaps
On the stage of the Xiaomi conference, there will always be only one real protagonist.
“Wang Chuan never stood on the Xiaomi press conferenceOn the stage, it may be the Xiaomi employee who appeared the most in Lei Jun’s speech. “Geek Park wrote in a report in January 2016.
At that time, Xiaomi TV had been in three generations, but it had never held its own press conference. Each time it was a “one more thing” identity, taking a ride on mobile phones or other product press conferences.
This is also normal. The most popular Internet TV brand that year was LeTV. The annual sales volume of 2015 was 3 million units-Xiaomi TV shipped 1 million units in the same year. However, fortunately, Lei Jun’s principle to Wang Chuan is “I support what you do”, and the bottom line for the TV business in the early days is “not to lose money.”
Wang Chuan is content to stand behind Lei Jun. When he needs to show his face, he doesn’t resist, but he never steals the limelight.
On March 25, 2016, Xiaomi TV held its own strategy conference, Wang Chuan’s first home game, even though Lei Jun and Chen Tong were sitting down and clapping desperately, he was still nervous to the point where his voice was slightly weak. tremble. Half a year later, when Lei Jun gave Wang Chuan the first half of the Xiaomi conference to talk about Xiaomi TV, he completed it routinely and repeatedly emphasized in subsequent media interviews, “Lei is always one of the most outstanding product managers in China. One” “Absolutely China’s most outstanding product manager” “Really China’s most outstanding product manager”.
Wang Chuan is actually a product controller. The first product he tinkered with at Xiaomi was a TV box, which was launched in November 2012 and was a big success.
His pursuit of perfect products is hidden in the design of the Mi Box remote control. He admired Jobs, often studied Apple products and imagined what he would do if he did it-the answer is always no better, Apple is a desperate company. Therefore, when making the remote control, he made a request that whether it is an 80-year-old or a 4-year-old child, he can operate it directly without reading the manual.
After the product was released, the general manager of TVB came here admiringly, “I can finally see who made this box and remote control.” Wang Chuan smelled the familiar breath of despair. This is a highlight moment that makes him proud-although in the eyes of the outside world, data such as the number one shipment of Xiaomi TV in Q2 in 2018 are more powerful self-certifications.
Compared with Wang Chuan’s concentration, Li Wanqiang is not so happy.
During the difficult years of starting a business,He became a brick of Lei Jun, where he needed to move. From the earliest he led the MIUI system, was responsible for Xiaomi marketing, established the Xiaomi fan system, and built the Xiaomi e-commerce company, Lei Jun hardly let him stay in his comfort zone.
Lei Jun’s picking, Li Wanqiang fully understands.
Without spending a penny to find 1 million users for MIUI; rejecting the 30 million market budget application, and opening up the market for Xiaomi mobile phones without spending a penny, these are all difficult problems that Lei Jun gave him. Li Wanqiang solved them one by one, and by the way wrote these experiences into the best-selling book “Sense of Participation”, and became a marketing expert himself.
But he can’t get enough happiness from success in the worldly sense.
In 2014, Xiaomi was immersed in the joy of being No. 1 in annual shipments in China. At the end of December, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi had raised 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, with a valuation of 45 billion U.S. dollars. However, in hindsight, the crisis was already surging at that time. There were hidden dangers in Xiaomi’s supply chain, online traffic peaked, and the counterattack of OV Huawei and other friends also intensified. In India, Xiaomi suffered a patent lawsuit from Ericsson, which led to the closure of the goods.
One day at the end of the year, Li Wanqiang walked into Lei Jun’s office and first pointed out that Xiaomi’s practice in 7 countries and regions around the world was “a big problem.” Later, he proposed the decision to leave. During that time, his abnormal state has been noticed by colleagues. He was emotionally excited one second, and suddenly fell silent and low in the next second.
He got his wish.
Shortly after Li Wanqiang left, the Xiaomi crisis broke out, and the problem gradually surfaced. In the fierce battle deciding whether to survive, Lei Jun obviously summoned Li Wanqiang again. A year later, the former “No. 2” of Xiaomi returned to take charge of Xiaomi’s marketing department and Xiaomi Pictures.
Starting from 2016, Li Wanqiang accompanied Lei Jun and worked together to bring Xiaomi out of the muddy land, but for him, the pleasure of hunting from 0 to 1 like that back then has become more and more difficult to obtain.
A quarrel was recorded in the biography of Xiaomi, “Going Nowhere”. In May 2016, there was the first positive quarrel at the regular meeting of Xiaomi executives. There was a problem with the sales of Xiaomi Mi 5. The head of the mobile phone department passed the responsibility to the marketing department. This angered Li Wanqiang, who had just returned. Quarrel.
Responsibility between departments is not uncommon in the system of large companies–but it’s the same as Li WanqiangIn Xiaomi’s first experience, the period of “incredible democracy, countless inspirations every day, and the days of great enthusiasm” is far from the same.
Lei Jun finally got down and fired the highly respected head of the mobile phone department and reorganized the supply chain, but Li Wanqiang’s return did not last long. After the dissolution of the publicity department of Xiaomi Pictures in 2017 and the appointment of Xiaomi’s brand strategy officer in November, Li Wanqiang gradually faded out of public view in 2018 until the end of November when the news of his resignation was officially announced.
Like a kite plunged into the clouds, it embraces freedom.
As for how far-reaching the impact of a decision is, the most qualified answerer has only time.
In October 2017, when Xiaomi held an executive meeting to discuss listing matters, Wang Chuan was the first to object, “From a capital perspective, Xiaomi does not have the urgency to go public because Xiaomi does not lack money.” Listing will bring a steady stream of money and a steady stream of pressure. He is worried that due to factors such as stock price, Xiaomi will not be able to adhere to some long-term strategies.
Of course he couldn’t stop the trend. The listing of Xiaomi also changed his situation in Xiaomi: he bid farewell to the TV business he had done with one hand, and was successively appointed as Chief of Staff, President of China, General Manager of Major Appliance Business Unit, Chief Strategy Officer and other positions. In the restructuring of the company’s frequent operations, he was eventually thrown off the front line of the business to make way for young people.
When a startup company embraces capital by going public, freedom is the stamp duty that entrepreneurs pay to wealth.
As for Wang Chuan, is he aggrieved? No one knows. Anyway, his mantra is always the same: I will help Lei Jun.
03 Needed, needed
“This is made by Vancl, 80 sticks, non-ironing.”
In the summer of 2009, Lei Jun ran to the old alley on the second ring road in Beijing for a meeting. When he met a young investment manager from Morningside Capital, he couldn’t help but talk about the white shirt he was wearing. Starting from the price, the conversation opened. He talks about e-commerce, tailoring, spinning fineness, and logistics.
Fancl Eslite is his investment project. Fan Haitao recorded this scene in his book “No One Goes Forward” and said, “Every time he invests in a new company, he (Lei Jun) will quickly become an expert in this field.”
Lei Jun is very smart, like a walking learning machine. Before he decided to make a mobile phone, Lei Jun carried a black nylon backpack with more than a dozen mobile phones everywhere. When he saw the right person, he took out the mobile phones and arranged them in a row to explain with enthusiasm.
The same is true for cars nowadays.
He was as early as 201Visited Musk twice in 3 years, bought 4 Teslas, two for personal use, and two were given to Fu Sheng and Yu Yongfu. In the investment landscape, the existence of nearly 10 electric vehicle companies, including Weilai and Xiaopeng, is also a foreshadowing. And He Xiaopeng advised him to build a car long before Lei Jun invested in Xiaopeng.
According to the data released by Lei Jun himself, Xiaomi started investigating and building cars on January 15th. It took 75 days to conduct 85 industry visits, in-depth exchanges with more than 200 automotive industry veterans, and 4 internal management discussions. The board of directors was held twice before finally deciding to build a car.
In 75 days, it was decided to start a project with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan and an investment of 10 billion US dollars in the next 10 years. Xiaomi can be regarded as a running entry. At this time, the CEO can only be Lei Jun himself. Only in this way can the car-making project receive the full support of the Xiaomi Group.
There are many interpretations about why Xiaomi makes cars. Externally, the domestic electric vehicle market education has been initially completed. Players such as Tesla, BYD, and the new energy “three silly” have made electric vehicles no longer a new thing, and the corresponding industrial manufacturing foundation is also approaching mature; internally , Xiaomi needs a new story, mobile phones have already entered the stock market, Xiaomi’s stock price is sluggish, and Lei Jun is somewhat aggrieved.
This is more like a choice to follow the trend.
In 1999, Lei Jun, who was still working at Jinshan, went to the United States to investigate and noticed the newly emerging Google. After returning to China, he also wrote articles for analysis, but there was no follow-up action. He later sighed: In the field of Internet entrepreneurship, we must act quickly.
22 years later, Lei Jun made up for this regret.
When people arrive in the year of destiny, they may also be more clear about many things: to do but not to succeed, it is better than to think but not to do. Whoever chooses to do it is the key to deciding whether it can start and how far it can go.
Support, trust, in a business society, this is a value that cannot be measured by numbers.
Lei Jun used to give no hesitation. Li Wanqiang mentioned to Caijing magazine, “Lei Jun looks very gentle, but it is difficult to be persuaded, but he gave us a permission, that is, If you do this, if you don’t let the company capsize, you will do it. ‘.” A similar right was given to Wang Chuan.
Now, this has become Lei Jun’s mostImportant indicators.
Wang Chuan and Li Wanqiang, one is as solid as a rock, and the other is as close as a kite, but they never leave the line completely. They are the people who have been with Lei Jun for the longest time, and they are also the people who have no key business at hand and can devote themselves at any time. They may be replaced by more professional people in the future, but at this moment, supporting Lei Jun to build cars is their most important mission as friends and as well-informed subordinates.
What’s more, this vigorous car-making movement may have a more far-reaching impact than mobile phones than TVs.
Of course, there is more wealth.
Some data sources:
1. “One Go Forward”, Fan Haitao, CITIC Publishing Group
2, “Xiaomi Wangchuan: I never thought that Xiaomi TV could be a crash”, Hongjie Jiang, Geek Park
3. “Why did Wang Chuan mess up the Xiaomi TV 3S conference”, Anshu, retail frontier
4. “Lei Jun in the Eyes of Li Wanqiang”, Song Wei, “Caijing”