Huang Zheng: From the self-made post-80 s richest man to the dilemma of capital exploitation, Pinduoduo's fate is very embarrassing

2065438+September 2005, an e-commerce platform with the slogan of "buy more and fight more" came into being, but not so many people were optimistic about it at that time.

Fakes, inferior products, and large-scale use without spending money have always kept this new platform at the bottom of the contempt chain for a long time.

At that time, Huang Zheng, who founded this project, did not expect that in just three years, Pinduoduo would come back against the wind.

At that time, he was only in the start-up period. Although Google has already realized the freedom of wealth in his previous career experience, he is just a low-key person who doesn't want to have any sense of existence.

However, when Pinduoduo's market value exceeded 40 billion, and it was successfully listed in the United States, people's doubts have unconsciously turned into curiosity about the self-made post-80s generation.

Huang Zheng was born in 1980. His parents are just ordinary working-class people. He has achieved a lot since he was a child, and he belongs to the kind of person who rewards hard work in heaven.

When he was a child, his dream was to be a scientist. Ordinary people talk about such a distant place, but he is extremely serious. In the sixth grade of primary school, he won the prize in the Mathematical Olympiad and was recommended by his teacher to apply for Hangzhou Foreign Language School.

At first, he was a little embarrassed. Listening to the name of this school seems to be far from his more interested mathematics and physics and his scientific dream. He didn't know how awesome Hangzhou was until he went to this school.

At that time, only outside Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province could enroll students in the whole of Zhejiang Province. It can be said that as long as you enter this group of schools, you have already represented the top level in various places, and you don't need the college entrance examination at all. 80% of them are directly sent to famous universities in China.

Later, after six years in Hangzhou, Huang Zheng was sent to the mixed class of Zhejiang University, and this so-called mixed class, the full name of which is called the elite education class for cultivating top-notch innovative talents in engineering, is completely a status of learning gods in the eyes of ordinary people.

At that time, Huang Zheng chose a computer and entered the laboratory organized by Pan Yunhe, president and academician of China Academy of Engineering, focusing on data mining and artificial intelligence.

Huang Zheng's excellent talent, coupled with the guidance of his tutor, soon reached an excellent position on the computer level, and soon became famous in the IT field because of his excellent ability.

At this time, he met the first noble person on the road of life, that is, Ding Lei, the founder of Netease. Because I saw an article written by Huang Zheng on the Internet, I came to ask him specially, and also explained Huang Zheng's technical strength at that time from the side.

Later, with the help of Ding Lei, Huang Zheng met Duan Yongping, the founder of BBK.

Duan Yongping is an alumnus of Zhejiang University in Grade 82. Later, Huang Zheng said that Duan Yongping was an old-timer who helped him the most, and his qualifications could also be described as a legend.

For example, Duan Yongping, who just turned 40, is willing to step down as the chairman of BBK, which is not necessarily what ordinary people can do calmly, and then moved to the United States to become a legendary investment master, which can also be said to be a summary of him.

In 2006, Duan Yongping filmed Warren Buffett's dinner for $62, and it was Huang Zheng who was with him.

It can be said that Duan Yongping is willing to have dinner with Huang Zheng and Buffett. At the end of the day, he took a fancy to the bright spot that Huang Zheng has shown. As an investor, he knew better that he could not do business at a loss, so he chose to start a business in Pinduoduo instead of investing in Huang Zheng.

Of course, Duan Yongping does have absolute foresight, and it is a rare good luck for 26-year-old Huang Zheng to know him. At least with the advice of such a strategist, he took at least ten years less detours than others.

After graduating from the United States with a master's degree, Huang Zheng asked Duan Yongping about employment, and he received a double invitation from Microsoft and Google.

On the one hand, there is Microsoft, which is already a minor celebrity, and on the other hand, there is Google, which has a bright future but is full of unknowns. Duan Yongping suggested that Huang Zheng go to Google and told him that "Google looks like a pretty awesome company and is worth seeing. If you go, you will stay for at least three years, because it is impossible to really enter an important position to understand this company in one or two years. "

Huang Zheng accepted Duan Yongping's suggestion and joined Google. During this period, Google developed rapidly and its share price soared. At that time, Huang Zheng's shares in Google rose to several million dollars, which became the first bucket of gold for his later venture.

It was not until the expiration of three years that Huang Zheng left Google China and started his own business.

Genius's ability and luck, in the final analysis, can not be separated from Huang Zheng's unremitting efforts step by step, and it is with this attitude that his talent has a real stage for display.

2065438+In July 2008, after the listing of Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng admitted in an interview that Duan Yongping, as an angel investor, has promoted Pinduoduo to today.

This is a part of Pinduoduo, but it is far from representing the whole.

In fact, until today, there has never been less controversy about Pinduoduo. Many people question Pinduoduo's marketing methods or induce consumption, but they have to admit that Pinduoduo's strategy of "encircling the city from the countryside" is successful.

When we look back at those people who have a certain influence in various business fields, they all have a * * * nature, and that is how to gain the trust of users, which is the cornerstone of any business empire.

For example, Lei Jun gave his millet a price/performance ratio of "cheap, beautiful and easy to use", while Huang Zheng initially gave Pinduoduo a shopping paradise for ordinary people.

At that time, Pinduoduo's predecessor was to fight for good goods, taking a novel mode of starting with fruits and operating independently. Prior to this, Huang Zheng had started his own business three times.

After resigning from Google, Huang Zheng's first project was to sell mobile phones. He established a self-operated e-commerce platform Eurocool, which is controlled by BBK. Originally, this was a good start, but Huang Zheng soon discovered that it was a very realistic problem that Europe Cool could not beat JD.COM.

In order to avoid falling into a war of attrition with JD.COM in the following days, Huang Zheng resolutely sold the platform, leaving only the technical team.

In 20 10, faced with the huge pressure of survival, Huang Zheng led the technical team to organize the second venture: Qi Le, an e-commerce operation company, hatched a dream-seeking game in Qi Le in 20 13, which was their third venture.

With the accumulation of these three experiences and considerable cash flow, Huang Zheng's fourth entrepreneurial project: assembling good goods.

Pinhao is a self-operated platform for fresh food, which essentially imitates the model of JD.COM. In just 20 16 a year, the self-operated income reached 457 million.

However, although a large number of orders poured in due to the novel model, due to poor consideration, there were problems in delivery, such as undeliverable goods, warehouse explosion and fruit rot, which suddenly became a huge challenge for this new platform.

Later, in order to solve the storage problem, Huang Zheng immediately sent more people to catch up with the work, but this did not solve the problem, because the warehouse was solved and express delivery was also a problem. 300,000 bills are sent in the same place, and even all courier companies can't send them together.

Although he encountered difficulties, it was a particularly precious experience for Huang Zheng, so he could quickly understand in introspection that self-management was convenient to control the quality of goods, but he had to face various delivery pressures. Although the cumulative number of active users has exceeded 10 million in just a few months, Huang Zheng is also soberly aware that such internal friction is bound to require better projects to balance and neutralize it.

So, in 20 16, Pinduoduo and Pinduoduo merged, and Huang Zheng became the CEO of New Pinduoduo, which started the social e-commerce. At this time, the new platform also abandoned the original self-operated mode and began to take the Taobao mode, and seized the peak of the development of WeChat at that time, meeting the needs of users and firmly grasping the first batch of loyal users.

"Sharing friends and learning about swordsmanship" has become a new content hotspot, and the overwhelming publicity has also given Pinduoduo new vitality. At that time, Huang Zheng was very satisfied with the growth rate of Pinduoduo. In an interview, he said happily that "our transaction scale will reach 654.38+billion in one month, and it will definitely exceed10 billion in one year".

No one expected it at that time, but in three years, Pinduoduo achieved 1000 billion GMV.

If the scenery of many products continues, the promotion of people may become stronger and stronger, but now a bomb finally exposes the ugliness behind all the capital to our eyes again.

Belonging to the first day of welcoming the 20021new year, it originally represented brand-new hope, but I never thought that for a 23-year-old girl, everything would come to an abrupt end.

On New Year's Eve, Pinduoduo employees who worked overtime until 1: 30 in the morning and died suddenly on their way home, like kings, once again exposed the 996 scam about eating human blood steamed bread under the capital squeeze.

However, the newly opened "Buy More Vegetables" section in Pinduoduo has exposed too many problems from the very beginning.

No matter how public opinion ferments, shirks responsibility and apologizes, Pinduoduo's "excessive overtime" cannot be denied.

Many people say that it is obviously unacceptable for us when the face of capital defines everything as the active choice of the bottom for a better life.

Huang Zheng created the legend of "more products" step by step, but inevitably caused too many unsolved problems, which is the dilemma of "more products".

Perhaps because of this, the low-key Huang Zheng chose to step down as CEO of Pinduoduo in 2020 and withdraw from the board of directors.

But does cold-blooded capital mean no solution? When people's hearts become blurred in front of interests, even when oppression is portrayed reasonably, it not only makes us chilling, but also is the sorrow of this society.

A person's life can be as light as a feather and as heavy as Mount Tai. What really makes people angry is the perfunctory and confident attitude of Pinduo, which is also a problem left there since Pinduo was born.

Buying more vegetables is indeed the rising part. It is understandable to be expected, but a 23-year-old girl full of longing should never pay for all this.

Capital cannot override people's lives. This is the bottom line. People who call 996 a blessing just forget the fact that young people's overtime hours are constantly extending.

This is the exploitation of ordinary people by capital, and it is also the reality that everyone who is called the bottom but is constantly working hard has been facing.

What is even more frightening is that when we accept this result in a subtle way, everyone is using a kind of chicken soup that "eats bitterness and becomes the master" to motivate themselves to work hard, but they don't know that in the constantly consuming health, everything will only be borne by themselves.

I think Huang Zheng, who created the business legend, really didn't expect Pinduoduo to succeed so quickly. Of course, everything is because of the weather, location and people under a huge tuyere.

He didn't expect that Pinduoduo, which was finally intervened by capital, turned into a bloody steamed bread, and did not spit bones, but the benefits were endless. It is so pale to define this society with a capital.

As ordinary people, we may not be able to control the capital, but in the end, I hope everyone will pay attention to their health in the new year and not be overworked. There is no end to overtime, and every time it will only be a physical consumption.

Refuse, be responsible for your health and be kind to yourself.

Thanks for reading!

Writing/deep sea stars, listening to the power of the world with words.