Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash, this article is from WeChat public account: Jingweiwei Venture Capital (ID: matrixpartnerschina) < / a>
Today, Alibaba is officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Alibaba share code is 9988, and the number of global offering shares is 500 million shares, of which the number of Hong Kong offering shares is 12.5 million and the number of international offering shares is 487.5 million. Each share will be publicly offered at HK $ 176. Counting Alibaba’s B2B business listing experience in Hong Kong in 2007, this is the second time Alibaba has gone public in Hong Kong. Zhang Yong said in the IPO address, “I said before that I would come back with conditions. This time, we are back in Hong Kong.”
This year is also the 20th year since Alibaba was founded. Previous articles on the changes in Ali’s organization also have various perspectives. In this article today, we are trying to tease out how the three companies that have completed the transformation at the founder level have established a transfer system. These three companies have large organizations, but each has its own characteristics, and some founders have distinct personalities. Some founders are extremely charismatic, and some are extremely sturdy.
Every company has a development life cycle, and people, business and strategy are often intertwined. From grinding the smallest product value prototype to completing market verification to business model iteration, from the founder’s single-point decision to collective decision-making, from a team of several people to hundreds to thousands to even tens of thousands-want Dealing with it is not a simple matter. This is inseparable from the person at the helm. It also requires the person at the helm to have great heart and wisdom to lead everyone to a farther distance, and also test the ability and courage of his successor.
Behind this must be long-term thinking. Even if the three companies we write today are all very successful companies in business sense, if you look at history, it is not difficult to find that they have also gone through many detours. Bleeding and tears.
The three companies also have common points in business. Despite having encountered bottlenecks at different stages, the company’s cash reserves have been strong, which gives the company the confidence to explore new businesses and trial and error. Of courseThere are many excellent companies. Due to space and discussion dimensions, we did not mention in this article. We hope that there will be more discussions with you on the different development quadrants of the company in the future.
It is very difficult to make an organization strong and meet the needs and laws of its own development. The real solution comes from the constant exploration of each founder, which is especially difficult.
Ali
Ma Yun —— Zhang Yong
Popular speech master-CEO with a down-to-earth CFO
Most companies in China today are founder-driven. There is still no consensus solution for Chinese private enterprises to give the next generation or look for professional managers. But Ali is an exception. Ma Yun believes that his retirement and Zhang Yong’s succession are a systematic plan. He carefully prepared a 10-year plan to allow young talents to take over and solve the problem of inheritance and development of the enterprise. Behind this is a set of echeloned young talents to cultivate the reserve system as a support. Over the years, Ali has formed a partnership system, a class committee system, a political committee system, and a rotation system.
Ma Yun: a businessman with strong personal charm (in office 1999-2013)
Picture from Ma Weibo
1. Very persuasive and charismatic speaker
On the fifth day of 1999, in the Hangzhou Lakeside Garden District, Ma Yun held the first full meeting of Alibaba. 18 people filled a room. Ma Yun spoke passionately for 2 hours, and specially invited him. The photographer recorded the whole video. This is the legendary “18 Arhat Conference”, which is one of the most famous scenes in the history of China’s Internet development.
At this meeting, Alibaba’s vision and mission have taken shape-the vision is to live for 80 years (later changed to 102 years) span>, the mission is to make the world have no difficult business, the service target is small and medium-sized enterprises, the company must be international from the beginning, and compete with the United States Silicon Valley. For many years since then, Ali has basically followed the path described by Ma Yun.
Even though Ma Yun was dancing, everyone who listened was somber. According to Jiang Fang, Peng Lei, and others after the event, he couldn’t understand what he said anyway, but watching him speak so passionately, I was embarrassed to interrupt.
Ma Yun also set a small goal for Alibaba: go public in 2002. Everyone put together 500,000, and thus started a new entrepreneurial road.
In May of that year, Cai Chongxin and Ma Yun, who helped friends talk about acquisitions, talked once, creating the urge to join the team. Cai Chongxin graduated from Yale Law School of the United States, and then worked for a world-renowned investment company. His annual salary at that time was 700,000 U.S. dollars (about RMB 5.8 million at the time) . When he came to meet Ma Yun, his family was about to welcome its first child. And Ma Yun said that he can only afford 500 yuan a month. But Cai Chongxin still came.
Just ten months after the “Eighteen Arhat Conference”, Ma Yun persuaded Sun Zhengyi to have 25 million US dollars.
2. Advance strategic vision
Alibaba’s main business is B2B. Alibaba has built an online platform to help Chinese manufacturing companies display and sell their products to overseas buyers. During this period, important executives such as Li Qi, Guan Mingsheng, and Wei Zhe were successively introduced to create the “China Iron Supply Army”.
In 2003, eBay entered China by acquiring a 33% stake in eBay for $ 30 million. Touched by eBay, Jack Ma and his team decided to becomep>
Zhang Yong, a senior Alibaba Group executive who was initially regarded as a “professional manager”, became the CEO of this recognized Internet company with a strong culture after an 8-year career. Even Ma Yun himself said: “I’m ashamed to say that I used to say that the world is not afraid of being afraid of being the CEO of CFO, and Xiaoyaozi is a CFO. This is really a beautiful mistake.”
From Jack Ma to Zhang Yong, Ali also happened to experience changes in the business from “desktop” to “mobile”, from simplification to business depth to B-side, and multi-point development. Ma Yun said that Zhang Yong is the most outstanding business leader in the talent training system under the Ali partnership mechanism. He gave him and his team the relay torch, “the most right decision I should make now.”
Subsequently, Jingxian Dong became the CEO of Ant Financial. The two became the actual business operators of the two groups. Moreover, not only Ali and Ant, but also important parts of the Ali system such as Aliyun and Cainiao have also completed at least one transfer of the management team.
4. Not afraid to be compared with Jack Ma
On September 10 this year, Jack Ma officially retired, and Zhang Yong “turned to the right”, and the designate chairman of the Alibaba Board of Directors officially became the chairman of the Alibaba Board of Directors.
Zhang Yong is not afraid to be compared with Ma Yun. In 2015, Zhang Yong took over as Ali’s CEO, and was asked—are he worried about becoming CEO in the shadow of Jack Ma? Zhang Yong replied: “First, Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba. Jack Ma’s existence is an objective fact. Second, the shadow is not a shadow, it all depends on how you do it. Jack Ma definitely hopes that the person he chooses will succeed. , The consideration is how to make good use of the resources of the chairman of the board of directors, rather than seeing it as a burden. “
Microsoft’s current CEO Nadella is the leader Zhang Yong admires. “He, like me, has not been a CEO for a long time. Some things he has done since he took office, such as the reform of Microsoft and the reform in the new stage of the cloud, I think it is very good. It is the past and the pioneering. Zhang Yong said in an interview.
Since taking over as CEO in 2015, Zhang Yong has raised Alibaba’s stock price by more than 200%.
When talking about Ali’s new leadership collective, Ma Yun said, “Zhang Yong is not alone today. He has a team and team. Today Zhang Yong has a group of people on his side to support him.”
In Ali’s latest earnings report, there are as many as 38 partners alone. They come from all walks of life and backgrounds, and 90% of them work in Ali= “Small title” class = “text-sm-title”> Eric Schmidt: Professional manager who can write procedures and understand commercialization (in office 2001-2011)
Picture from Schmidt Instagram
Schmidt is a Silicon Valley hero-Of the three Silicon Valley elite managers, Schmidt is the oldest person, so he is also the only one who has the same generation of Silicon Valley heroes Gates, For those who have experienced head-to-head confrontation in Jobs, his sly character and flexible wrist can be called the “old fox” in the industry.
Schmidt holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and in his early years worked as a researcher at Bell Labs and Palo Alto Research Center.
Schmidt joined Sun in 1983, serving as CTO and CEO. He led the development of Sun’s independent programming technology platform, turning Java into Sun’s most powerful market weapon ever. He actively pursued a network software strategy, laying the foundation for Sun’s rapid growth in the early 1990s.
In 1997, Schmidt became Novell’s CEO and Chairman of the Board, responsible for the company’s strategic planning, management, and technological development. He quickly rebuilt Novell into a profitable company, and also worked hard to delay Novell’s time to the end ( IPX is replaced by TCP / IP).
Page thinks Schmidt is okay because Schmidt was once a programmer. In fact, a piece of software code that Google still uses today was written by Schmidt earlier. Brin likes Schmidt because he feels like someone who appears on Burning Man’s Day.
Google hired Schmidt. He joined as chairman in March 2001 and plans to become CEO in August.
1. Subdued predecessor>
He started to focus on so-called “moon landing” projects, such as wind power startup Makani, smart home company Nest, and artificial intelligence research institution DeepMind. This became the basis for Alphabet to complete the reorganization.
In August 2015, Google announced an asset reorganization. After the reorganization, Google was placed under the newly formed Alphabet. At the same time, the move separates Google ’s core search and advertising businesses from emerging businesses such as Google’s self-driving cars.
At the time of Google ’s split and reorganization, Page took the initiative to give up the position of CEO and chose to be responsible for Google X ’s innovative business. (including autonomous driving, Future Lab, etc.) , promoted internal employee Sanda Pichai to CEO. He set his sights on the future and devoted more energy to the department that maintains his future. As Pichai’s left and right arm, Pichai will assume the mission of bringing mature products to commercial success.
Sanda Pichai: Mr. Haohao, a product manager (since 2015-present)
Picture from Google
Sanda Pichai was born in Chennai, India in 1972. He studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Wharton Business School. After graduation, he joined McKinsey & Company as a consultant.
1. Strong strategy, execution and innovation ability
On April 1, 2004, Pichai joined Google. At that time, his position was just a product manager responsible for the Google Toolbar, which helps users quickly access Google search when browsing the web. This is not a sexy product, but it is extreme for GoogleIt’s important because 70% of Google’s revenue at that time came from the search business on Internet Explorer.
During the crucial period when Yahoo’s strong foray into the search business, Pichai repelled his competitors and defended Google’s key position. At the same time, Pichai has successfully established good cooperative relationships with Dell, Apple, Adobe, Mozilla and other companies, turning Google Search into the default search engine for browsers such as Firefox and Safari.
In addition, he thought about the future of the product from a strategic level, and analyzed the search business pattern at that time. Sooner or later, Microsoft would launch its own browser. By then, Google would lose huge traffic entrance. So he suggested to management that Google enter the browser market, but the then CEO Schmidt was afraid of disrupting relations with Microsoft and refused to implement the project. Schmidt’s career has been in the shadow of Microsoft for a long time, and he seems to have a deep fear of Microsoft.
Until Microsoft actually launched Internet Explorer, it changed its default search engine from Google to its own search. Google was determined to be Chrome, and Pichai was the project leader. Pichai has gathered a lot of talents and carried out a series of gradual innovations. Each dimension is a little stronger than the opponent. Multiple “stronger” dimensions are combined to create a product with a sufficiently good experience. Chrome has successfully improved the user ’s online experience, binding users to the browser and ensuring they use Google Search.
After the battle of Chrome, Pichai fully proved his strategy, execution and innovation ability, and was further recognized by Google management. After Page regained his role as Google’s CEO, Pichai was immediately promoted to senior vice president.
In 2013, Pichai took over the Android department. At this time, it was the years when smartphone shipments rose the most. Android became the key to Google’s transition from the PC era to the mobile era. Forefront. Chrome is the increase of Google in the PC era, and Android has become the increase of Google’s mobile era.
2. Pokey ’s scarce diplomatic skills and collaboration capabilities
In the process, he recruited, trained, and maintained a great team. The team at Pichai are recognized as the best product managers in the company, and their reputation is similar to that of the engineering team in the search department. He has no enemies within the company, and can always direct company policies to benefit his team while not harming the interests of other teams. Thanks to his pragmatism, peace, and good coordination, Pichai has gained a strong leadership and recognition within Google.