Viruses know no borders, and they are more responsible at a critical time.
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “GGV Jiyuan Capital” (ID: GGVCapital) , author : Fu Jixun.
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Introduction to the author: Fu Jixun is a managing partner of GGV Jiyuan Capital. He has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital and has worked with many successful entrepreneurs.
Fu Jixun has been paying attention to investment in online travel, travel, corporate services, consumption and other fields. He has invested in Qunar (NASDAQ: QUNR), Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU), Grab, UCweb, Didi Chuxing, Manbang Group , Meicai and other companies are currently serving as directors of companies such as Xiaopeng Automobile, Hello Travel, and Coca-Cola.
Fu Jixun has played an important role in many major strategic mergers and acquisitions in the industry, including Youku and Tudou (the first multi-billion dollar merger in China ’s technology sector), Baidu / Qunar, Ctrip / Qunar and Mushroom Street / Beauty said .
Author: Jixun
Edit: Zhang Ying
After the Spring Festival of 2020, I still fly frequently: I returned to Singapore to visit my family before the Spring Festival, and then visited Europe, Finland, Norway, Russia, and other countries. I flew to Hawaii because of internal company meetings, and then because of work Go to Silicon Valley, USA, and fly back to Singapore. In mid-March, my family and I returned to Shanghai to start isolation at home.
The journey along the way brought me a lot of emotions. The haze of the virus went with me. Soon after I came back from Europe, I heard that Europe had changed because of the epidemic; after leaving the United States, I also heard that the epidemic in the United States also began to rag.
The rapid development of the epidemic spread to the whole world, which is beyond everyone ’s expectation. Under such a sudden and huge threat, we, as independent individuals, as members of society, the planet, and even an enterprise What should leaders do, and what social responsibilities should they shoulder? This is something I have been thinking about recently.
The challenge of “Viruses Without Borders”
The last stop of my trip to Europe in early February was St. Petersburg, Russia. At that time, I learned that the epidemic in Asia was already very severe. Not only China, but also South Korea, Japan, and even Singapore. The situation was worse. So I bought it in St. Petersburg. The mask is going to be brought back to Singapore to share with some friends.
The local reception staff in Europe are all Chinese. The local Chinese working in Helsinki, Finland, have lived in Helsinki for many years. The Norwegian staff member will return to China every summer and go to Norway to work in winter. I see that they are more concerned about the epidemic in China, and they are each looking for different resources to find ways to send it back to China.
But at that time, only Chinese people overseas were more sensitive to the epidemic. Locals all believed that new coronary pneumonia was a thousand miles away. At the end of February, we had a meeting in Hawaii. From Singapore to Hawaii, I always wore masks before and after boarding, but I found that most people basically do n’t wear masks. In this atmosphere and scene , I am wearing a mask alone, I still feel “a bit strange”.
The next few daysI needed to fly to San Francisco to work. My friend in the United States told me that the situation was good, so I flew to California. At the time, I was quite alert. I wore masks before boarding the plane and on the plane, but unexpectedly, the others around me looked particularly relaxed. Still, I saw no one wearing masks as I saw in Hawaii.
But what everyone did not expect was that after a few days, the overall situation began to change drastically, the number of infected people in the United States began to increase, and the United States and Singapore began to blockade.
Looking back again, all the changes I have seen in this short 20-day trip have shocked me a lot. The virus has no concept of borders, and it can easily enter every country without a passport. The speed of its invasion of a market is very fast. Although the situation in China is slowly recovering, the impact of the virus on the world is still huge.
“What else do we have to do”
After the events of the previous year ’s trade disputes and “blocked globalization”, the distance between people around the world has been widened, but the epidemic tells us one thing: the earth is still a whole, and no one can live without it. Who, there are not so many gaps between people.
The epidemic is forcing us to reflect: As investors, we promote the development of technology and the Internet. AI, robots and other technologies are designed to make everyone’s work and life more convenient and social development more efficient. But beyond these, what should we do when we encounter a crisis? To what extent?
Actually, in my opinion, whether it is as a leader of a venture capital institution or as a separate individual, it should fulfill the responsibility of giving back to society.
“There is money to give money, force to contribute.” Everyone should do something within his power. The more energy you have, the more theoretically you should do.
This process is also divided into several steps, the first is to assume the responsibility of individual individuals. For example, if everyone is good at themselves, isolation and protection are actually the most important. This time my trip was also very special, from the United States to Singapore, and then to Shanghai, but every time I went to a place, I followed the country’s regulations and obediently stayed in the house for two weeks.
We also all heard about things that refused to quarantine and concealed false reports. Some outpatients in hospitals will lie about their travel history. I have a friend who is the chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board. Never lieOtherwise, it will cause greater harm to people around and medical personnel. Because she was afraid, she lied and reported it, which was very irresponsible and did not help anyone. It is not good for yourself and your family, it is also harmful to controlling the epidemic and even the entire global socio-economic.
Second, under the circumstances of protecting yourself and your family, you can help the people around you and take on the responsibility of taking care of others. The mask I bought in St. Petersburg this time, my wife and I sent some to the “Chinese Medicine Hospital” in Singapore, because these hospitals are not under the jurisdiction of the government, nor can they get the government’s material support. If everyone can give more care to the society and more help to the surrounding people, the epidemic may pass more quickly, whether it is for the society or for myself, I think it is good.
Thirdly, enterprise leaders should lead enterprises to give back to society and fulfill the social responsibilities that enterprises must undertake. When an enterprise takes root in society, it should naturally be “taken from society and used in society”. Social responsibility should be undertaken by all enterprises, and the tasks that enterprises at different stages and different natures can undertake are not the same.
Big companies will assume more responsibility. For example, Alibaba has done a lot during the epidemic. Whether it is General Ant Financial Peng Lei or Mr. Ma Yun, they are calling for various kinds of support for the domestic epidemic and helping many domestic disaster areas. After waiting for China’s epidemic to slow down, Ali is also trying to help more countries and overseas disaster areas, and its sufficient logistics capacity to cover the world also helped a lot in this epidemic. In my opinion, this is the social responsibility and humanistic care that a large company should have.
Like many start-ups, they have also provided the support they can. For example, Xiaopeng Automobile provided funds and vehicle sources to support the epidemic prevention in Wuhan’s hardest hit areas.
For GGV, we are a global venture capital organization, and we need to reflect the ability of globalization. Under the epidemic situation, there is a lot of information and materials in the world that are not flowing smoothly, and it is even more necessary for us to connect different needs and resources and grab time with the epidemic situation. I hope we can break some of the difficulties and let the relief materials and information flow better.
So when I was in Singapore during the Spring Festival, I received a message from Peng Lei. She told me that China ’s protective clothing, masks and other resources are relatively tight, asking if I can help find medical supplies? At that time, I immediately contacted local friends in Singapore and even Indonesia and Vietnam to find these materials.
The process of finding the middle of materials will not go into details, and it has also gone through complicated material selection work. After the materials were implemented, we also encountered many challenges in logistics and customs during the delivery to Wuhan. The difficulty of landing was very high. Fortunately, the follow-up logistics management and docking work were performed by friends of Ali and Cainiao. Ali ’s friends are also very hard. Although Ali Logistics has strong globalization capabilities, the challenges in these work processes cannot be ignored. They are not smooth and easy to achieve, and they also need to spend a lot of effort.