Three of the 6 founders of ofo are entrepreneurs, and of course there are others who insist.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Three Words Finance” (ID: sycaijing), the author harvest.
Today, there are media reports that the co-founder of ofo, Zhang Weiding, has left, and has recently started an independent venture. The new project is called “BLANK”, which is mainly engaged in fast-moving products. The first products include washing products such as shower gel.
张巳丁
Accordingly, Zhang Xinding’s new company is called “Airless Wuwu (Beijing) Commercial Co., Ltd.” with a registered capital of RMB 1 million. It was established on July 19 this year, but there is no name of Zhang Weiding in the industrial and commercial materials.
According to the investment ratio, the entire project is estimated to be 30 million yuan.
For the independent entrepreneurship, Zhang Dingding responded that “there is no such thing.” The ofo said it was inconvenient to respond.
ofo has represented a miracle of entrepreneurship after the 90s, and now it has gone down the altar. Zhang Weiding is definitely not the first to go out of independent entrepreneurship. The 90-year-old Peking University Lianchuang team has slowly “disintegrated”. Where did they go after leaving?
90 After Peking University’s team, I wanted to change the world
ofo initially had five co-founders, who took the post-90s as the core, and the remaining four were Xue Ding, Zhang Yuding, Yu Xin, Yang Pinjie, and all of them graduated from Peking University.
From left to right: Zhang Yiding, Yang Pinjie, Yu XinXue Ding, Dai Wei
Among the five people, two are studying finance, one studying information management, one studying international relations, and one studying archaeology.
Another co-founder, Zhang Yanqi, was introduced from the outside at the end of 2016. He was the youngest regional general manager of Uber. After Didi announced the acquisition of Uber, he joined Didi. Since then, he joined OfO as COO in November 2016.
According to public reports, Zhang Ding met with Dai Wei at Peking University Bicycle Association. Xue Ding is a college roommate of Dai Wei. Among the five members of the Peking University, Zhang Ding and Xue Ding first followed Dai Wei’s business, and together they founded the predecessor of theo’s small yellow car – “ofo riding tour”.
Dai Wei was the chairman of the North University Student Union, and Yu Xin was his deputy at the North University Student Union. After graduating in 2013, Dai Wei once taught in Qinghai for one year. Yang Pinjie and he became familiar with the same Qinghai teaching experience.
After the establishment of ofo, Yu Xin and Yang Pinjie chose to join the team. Together with Zhang Yanqi, ofo formed a pattern of six co-founders.
About the division of labor between Lianchuang, Zhang Dingdi said in an interview that there is no clear division of labor, which is “where companies need us to go, we will go where to open.” But Dai Wei has absolute authority in the team.
It is understood that Zhang Yuding was responsible for campus development, personnel finance and security control in ofo; Xue Ding was responsible for campus development, supply chain and city operation in ofo.
Theo at the peak of the time, the financing is constant, the purchase of bicycles is crazy, and I have spent thousands of people asking for deer, and there are more than 3,000 employees.
But with the sharing economy boom Fading, the shared bicycle business was in trouble, another star company Mobai sold the US group, ando also fell into the embarrassing situation of thousands of people returning the deposit overnight.
Then,o continued to reduce its staff, from 3,400 in prosperity to more than 400. For the first time, the headquarters moved to a place where rents were cheaper and smaller.
At the end of 2018, ofo moved away from the ideal international building and moved to a cheaper Internet financial center, where the office of ofo Beijing was located. And in the past few years, ofo has often moved. It used to be because of the expansion of the company. I had to find a bigger place to work, from one floor to two floors, to three or four floors.
With more than 10 million refunds, the number of queues is refunded.After a year, there are still about <16 million million users waiting in line. Some media have reported the refund rate of ofo. From February 16th to 18th, the refund amount was 22,000, and on August 19-21, the refund amount was 5,600. According to an average daily refund of 3,500 people, ofo will take more than 10 years to repay.
To this end, ofo is self-help through a series of initiatives. Washing in P2P, selling online and offline advertisements, taking orders from the public, entering the e-commerce field, and launching a pile model.
But can you rely on these ofo to survive? The time left for Dai Wei may not be much!
In the heyday of 2017, Yu Xin delivered a speech entitled “ofo is not just the last mile to change” at the 2017 (16th) China Internet Conference. Yu Xin pointed out that ofo wants to change more than just This last mile, ofo hopes to truly change the way people travel, lifestyle, and consumption habits in the city, change everything related to users, and thus change the world.
于信
Now, the sharing economy does bring some changes to our lives, but ofo’s goal of changing the world may become very far away, and the young people who want to achieve these goals will eventually fall apart. It is.
Half of the 6-person founding team started their own business and lost executives
In addition to Zhang Weiding, public reports also show that Xue Ding and Zhang Yanqi have also started their own businesses.
As early as January of this year, shareholder changes occurred in Beijing’s affiliated company, Berklock Technology Services Ltd., Xue Ding and Zhang Yuding exited. According to the data, after the change, the founder of ofo Dai Wei holds 70%, the co-founder Yang Pinjie holds 20%, and the co-founder Yu Xin holds 10%. At the time, the ofo responded that the action was a normal adjustment of the subsidiary.
However, according to the industry and commerce data, Xue Ding and Zhang Ding Ding have already withdrawn from Beijing Baikeluo Technical Service Co., Ltd., but they are still shareholders of ofo main company Beijing Baikeluo Technology Co., Ltd.
According to Caijing.com, a person close to ofo said that in early January 2019, Xue Ding withdrew from the nail office of the general office of theo. The group has less than ten people in total, and the previous six co-founders are in the group. All the employees in this structure can inquire.
Xue Ding
In Xue Ding’s Baidu Encyclopedia, there is such an entry:
May 30, 2019 ,ofo co-founder Xue Ding established a new company called Beijing Space Sharing Technology Co., Ltd. with a registered capital of 1 million yuan.
The related public reports appeared in June this year. Xue Ding’s start-up from bicycle to shared accommodation is also a shared economy and entrepreneurship.
And another Lianchuang Zhang Yanqi, as early as June 2018, reported that he had left. At that time, the report pointed out that theo was severely laid off, and many management members such as COO Zhang Yanqi left the company and the overseas department was dissolved. Subsequently, the letter denied that COO and PRD were separated and the overseas business was dissolved.
张严琪
In February of 2019, Hong Kong’s “South China Morning Post” reported that Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick and ofo former COO Zhang Yanqi cooperated to introduce CloudKitchens (cloud kitchen) into the Chinese market. This report satisfies the fact that Zhang Yanqi left the business.
This time, Zhang Yanqi entered the industry shared kitchen, which is also a shared economy and re-starting business.
It can be said that the two co-creators who choose to share the economic industry in starting a business should have a deep understanding of the sharing economy. Different fromof’s blind expansion and vicious competition, whether it is shared accommodation or shared kitchen, it pays more attention to quality and is closer to the essence of the sharing economy. It can adjust the imbalance of resource allocation through technology and mode. But how big their market needs are worth thinking about.
In contrast, Zhang Xinding’s new consumer brand is in line with today’s new consumer economy, with a focus on fast-moving consumer goods and greater operability.
In addition to Dai Wei, the other two co-founders in Xinhe and Yang Pinjie did not have any news about re-starting business. In a recent article on LatePost, I wrote a letter about the inner thoughts of Yu Xin. After the half-year-long meeting of the executives, the executives submitted a summary of 500 words, and wrote in the letter “ is another year of inaction, but what should I do? Can’t put it down.
About the recent Daiwei situation, in June this year, some netizens met Dai Wei to drink coffee in the China Electronics Building across the street from the Internet financial center of theo. In public reports, it is difficult to see Dai Wei.
In addition to the joint venture, some of the management staff of theo also lost.
In May of this year, pre-ofo public relations director Shi Shaochen announced in the circle of friends that he had joined the H chain hotel several months ago and was responsible for public affairs.
H Hotel was established in January this year to locate the OYO hotel, a single hotel brand that has expanded rapidly in the past two years, and has now obtained strategic investment from China Lodging Group and IDG Capital.
In addition, in 2018, Lee appeared in the ofo brand leaderZe Hao, this year’s identity became the co-founder of the e-cigarette brand “Snow Plus”.
In the past two years, e-cigarettes have become a new outlet. Luo Yonghao, Zhu Xiaomu, and uncles have chosen e-cigarettes to start businesses. There are countless small brands.
It’s obvious that most of the young people who went out of the company chose the sharing economy and the new consumer track, and they were engaged in their own operations or branding, but they didn’t have the “fierce” speed of ofo.
Conclusion
In just three years, with the help of capital, theo climbed to the peak at almost legendary speed, but it seemed to fall again overnight.
In the ups and downs, these post-90s entrepreneurs may have experienced unimaginable ups and downs between others, and these 90-year-old entrepreneurs have entered the 30-year-old barrier.
ofo is no longer a myth, but the story has not yet completely ended. Someone left, some chose to stick.
For entrepreneurs, failure may be the biggest gift, a tool to correct the direction, and the story will continue in the future. The dream of changing the world can be, if it is realized?