Another long-distance run in Jinshan.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “People’s View” (ID: sxrenwuguan), the author Liu Yimei Huang Yingying.
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Lei Jun, who always keeps the pace of superiors striding forward, dedicated the only two retreats to Jinshan.
In 2007, the Lei Jun, worth 800 million, was a little tired.
For outsiders, he is very successful. In October of that year, he sounded the bronze plaque of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for Kingsoft, and also ended the eight-year marathon IPO and paid off the debt of Jinshan. Not high, for those old employees who have stood firm for many years, listing is the best account.
Figure: Qiu Bojun, Lei Jun, taken in Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007
Removing the heavy load of the Lei Jun, like the bow after the arrow is off the string, instantly lost the target and tension.
The road to a tough IPO has emptied him. He is exhausted, “it is difficult to express in words”, “scarred and bruised, tired to die”; he is unwilling, “it is so easy for others to succeed?” Tencent and Baidu have only spent six years from establishment to IPO.
So, when he was at the end of the four-week vacation, he found that he did not get the lightness and happiness he imagined, but he fell into suffering and sorrow. Leaving, it became a redemptive choice.
When submitting his resignation application, the old boss Zhang Xuanlong was angry with him for the first time in 16 years.
The cold weather in Beijing in December. Someone recorded the last time Lei Jun appeared in the Jinshan office. “The annihilation of the cigarette butt in the hand, Lei Jun stood up from the sofa in the office and picked up the backpack and put it on his back. The bag was heavier than usual, his movements were more than usual. Slow.”
In that year, Lei Jun was 38 years old and had been in Jinshan for 16 years. After graduating from college to a year of incomprehension, he can be said to have left the most pure, precious, and creative life for more than a decade.
The young Lei Jun is undoubtedly lucky.
He met the “Idol of All Programmers” in 1991. He was only twenty-seven years old. He was wearing a woolen coat, a famous brand, and walking with the wind.Like a star, I passed by me.”
Lei Jun also wants to be such a star. Jinshan Company, who is in the position of Qiu Bojun, wrote the program and was considered by the young man to be the road to success. A programmer, a software, a loneliness, famous in the name of the hero, this is the romance of the technology companies of the 1980s and 1990s.
Qi Bojun is a typical example. He became famous at the age of 24 because of a print driver. After joining the Jinshan Company at the invitation of his boss Zhang Xuanlong, he retired for a year and a half in a hotel room in Shenzhen. After three hospitalizations for hepatitis, he finally finished 12 With 2000 lines of code, WPS was born.
Figure: Kingsoft Software Co., Ltd. founder Bojun
This software carries the ambition of Qiu Bojun: to replace the popular WordStar. He succeeded, there was no press conference, no advertisements, and WPS quietly entered the computers of thousands of households,
When the WPS was completed, Qiu Bojun was only 25 years old. He created the dazzling first page of Jinshan Software.
In January 1992, the 23-year-old Lei Jun was one step closer to his dream: he became the sixth employee of Kingsoft. At that time, the market share of WPS once exceeded 90%. With a wholesale price of 2,200 yuan and an annual sales of more than 30,000 sets, the software has annual sales of more than 66 million yuan.
Three years later, Lei Jun rushed to the battlefield, carrying a “pangu” component consisting of WPS, electronic watches and dictionaries. His opponent is the giant Microsoft, and the Word that it has just brought into China.
But the Lei Army failed.
“Pangu” was launched in April 1995, and it failed to open up. This software, which lasted for more than 2 million yuan in three years, ended up selling only 2,000 sets, less than one-tenth of the plan.
This puts the entire Jinshan in jeopardy. In 1995, Jinshan’s annual sales were less than one-third of that in 1994. In the newly-purchased office building in Zhuhai, the number of people from the most prosperous period was reduced to more than 20.
In 1996, the situation was even worse. There were Microsoft before, and there were piracy. WPS was struggling. Jinshan once failed to pay wages, and the development department staff also took two-thirds. Microsoft even wants to dig up Qiu Jun with 700,000 annual salary.
In that year, Lei Jun was 27 years old and he said, “I lost my ideal.”
He proposed to resign, was asked to retain, and finally rested for six months.