Wang Xing: The past has not gone, the future has come

“In this era, more companies are like meteors, very gorgeous, but a meteor will burn out when it burns up; a planet can exist for a long time, but it will not shine by itself; a star will shine, and at the same time it and Meteors emit light in a different way. Meteors burn up, while stars rely on nuclear fusion, so stars must be big enough. "

On June 25, Meituan-Dianping officially opened in Hong Kong. The stock exchange submits a prospectus. According to Bloomberg, Meituan aims to raise $6 billion at a valuation of about $60 billion. The prospectus disclosed that as of now, co-founder, chairman and CEO Wang Xing holds 11.4386 shares.

After more than ten years of entrepreneurship, Wang Xing finally wants to take a company public after two failures. If the Xiaonei network was defeated by cash flow, and Fanfei was defeated by not understanding politics, Wang Xing is no longer so simple and naive.

"If I were born a million years earlier, as a man, I should be hunting at this moment. I should be wearing an animal skin skirt, holding a javelin, catching goats and wild deer, or I might be fighting with tigers, leopards and jackals. It’s a life-and-death fight. If I don’t do it right, I will be bitten to death, and my family will starve to death. Every time I think about this, I decide to concentrate on returning to the real jungle of China’s Internet.”

Wang Xing is an ambitious person after all, and ambitious people always have a rebellious streak, always chasing their dreams, and will never be controlled.

In the winter of 2003, because his tutor was on vacation, Wang Xing had been spending a whole year in the library of the University of Delaware. During this year, he browsed a large number of websites and read various miscellaneous books on society, economics, life sciences, etc.

At that time, Wang Xing could already see that SNS, a new website form, was not just about chatting, but that rich and colorful online life and products would be generated and run based on it. This prompted him to make a major decision to return to China to start a business in the direction of SNS.

In the fall of 2005, after researching Facebook and analyzing the current domestic situation, Wang Xing found that the frequency of social interaction and willingness to try emerging Internet products among campus people were significantly higher than that of ordinary community users. Therefore, he finally decided to develop Xiaonei.net, and first selected three schools, Tsinghua University, Peking University and Renmin University, and accumulated the first batch of high-quality core users for Xiaonei.com through activities such as lottery draws and free cars.

A year later, the number of users of Xiaonei Network suddenly increased sharply. However, at this time, Wang Xing no longer had enough funds to increase investment in servers and broadband. However, this market quickly attracted the participation of many companies.

Wang Xing didn’t know how to deal with investors. When Sequoia Capital came to him, he couldn’t explain the promotion ideas and business model; another investor promised to give them money, but only needed 1 million for them. The U.S. dollar expressed doubts and later unilaterally withdrew the investment letter of intent. At that time, Chen Yizhou, who was running a similar website, approached them for the first time and said that if you didn't sell, he would spend money on the market. Wang Xing was actually angered and refused to talk to Chen Yizhou again. In this way, opportunities were missed again and again, and it was only when he was forced to run out of ammunition and food that he agreed to accept Chen Yizhou's $2 million acquisition. Watching others move the tables and chairs away one by one, the stubborn Wang Xing lowered his head in sadness.

After staying in the new company for less than two months, Wang Xing came up with a new entrepreneurial idea. On May 12, 2007, Wang Xing launched China's first microblog Fanfou, half a year later than Twitter. As of the first half of 2009, Fanfou had millions of users. In July of that year, Fanfou was shut down for 505 days due to sensitive comments, and Sina Weibo was launched a month later.

In the next six months, Wang Xing, unwilling to be lonely, ran around and tried multiple projects again, but none of them succeeded. At the end of 2009, Fanfou held a small annual meeting to discuss "What would happen to everyone if this company ceased to exist tomorrow?" Wang Xing cried on the spot. It was one of his few emotional moments.

In 2010, Wang Xing had gradually lost his previous immaturity and began to shift from a pure Internet geek to business. He had a deeper understanding of the Internet.

Wang Xing used advanced technological vocabulary to explain what he wanted to do in his third start-up: Just as light is both a wave and a particle, group buying combines marketing and sales, which is the most wonderful thing in human history. One of the business models.

On March 4 of the same year, after receiving US$20 million in financing from Sequoia Capital, Wang Xing officially founded Meituan.com. At that time, Groupon, the originator of group buying, had just been established for more than a year. Compared with China's early group buying websites such as Liba.com and 51 Group Buying, Meituan.com focuses not on products but on consumer services for local white-collar workers. So in just a few months, Meituan.com became the number one group buying company in China. However, this wonderful business subsequently attracted more than 5,000 competitors.

“I was very dedicated to doing things the first two times, but it doesn’t mean you can do well just because you work hard. To do something well, you really need to have everything ready, but to get it done If you want to smash it, any link will do.”

It is precisely based on this calm consideration that Wang Xing exercised extreme restraint during the Thousand Regiments War and did not get involved in physical group buying in the early days; he did not smash offline advertising; he did not use express delivery. city ??underwriting; instead, we focus on the IT backend, speed up the supply to merchants, launch efforts on the mobile terminal earlier, and use scientific methods to accurately calculate every input and output. Interestingly, in 2011, competitors were poaching people everywhere. Most of the people poached by Meituan were sales staff and regional managers, but there were no IT engineers.

At that time, Wang Xing’s attitude towards capital was also more mature than before. "There are two types of entrepreneurial failure. One is running out of money, and the other is losing confidence. Confidence can be self-fulfilling, but you still have to have enough money to spend when needed."

Withstand the pressure In addition to Wang Xing's intuitive judgment of firmly grasping cash flow, the decision not to spend money on advertising is more importantly his ability to persuade different voices within the team and investors. At this time, the slogan “Either be awesome or get out” was posted on the wall of Meituan’s office. WANG

"When faced with something dissatisfactory, there are three options: one is to endure, the other is to walk away, and the third is to change it. Most people choose the first two, and a few people choose to change it. It is a very small number of people who eventually became the people who changed the world.”

Due to the things we did and didn’t do in 2011, 2012 was the year of consolidation for the group buying industry. , Meituan not only survived, but also occupied more than 40% of the market share, undoubtedly taking the top spot in the group buying industry. From 2015 to 2017, Meituan’s revenue was 4 billion yuan, 13 billion yuan, and 33.9 billion yuan respectively, a year-on-year increase of 223.2 and 161.2.

After several twists and turns, Wang Xing became more and more convinced that the narrow road that is difficult to walk can become wider and wider. "Whether it is the previous startup or the current Meituan, when faced with choices, I think there is a big principle. That is, insist on doing the right thing, not the easy thing."

In "Forrest Gump", someone followed Forrest Gump to run across the country, but one day Forrest Gump stopped running, "Don't say that. Because if you run away, you will keep running.”

Someone asked on Zhihu: As an Internet practitioner, what entrepreneurial opportunities have you missed? Wang Xing replied, "My consistent and true thought is: move forward with all your heart. There is no so-called missed opportunity, it was not your opportunity in the first place. If you don't love the past, you won't be confused with the present, and you won't welcome the future."

Wang Xing has also read "Human Weakness" and "The Greatest Salesman in the World", but he has never read these books again because "the height that successful learning can reach is limited." He likes Qian Mu's saying that "the past has not gone, but the future has come." Wang Xing believes that the most long-term things are: one is what you do, when you started doing it, and how long it has been until now; the other is how far the things you think can affect you. So he worked hard to build Meituan into an evergreen company.

“Living is the longest thing a person can do, followed by thinking, and then starting a business.

”

Today, Meituan’s strategic layout involves many aspects such as catering, travel, movies, payment, new retail, travel, etc. Each category can almost grow independently, so that it is difficult for you to accurately describe What kind of company is it? Every once in a while, opponents will question Meituan. Some people joke that half of the Internet is its enemy.

In terms of opponents, Wang Xing. I think it's like driving a car, you have to look at the rearview mirror occasionally, but you can't drive with your eyes on the rearview mirror. "Traditional industries are like slicing noodles, one slice is one noodle, and it's a linear economy; the network economy is like ramen, every time you slice it, it's a linear economy. The number of noodles will double. "

Wang Xing said that he never considers competition when making business choices. He has two logics: first, group buying data can directly show which categories have large transaction volumes, without having to guess; Second, high-frequency verticality can form a category of small platforms. Meituan must not let this opportunity pass to others.

Of course, some people question this and think that Wang Xing’s idea seems to be very clear. , bringing users with its services, but the reality is that Meituan has not been able to be "one of the best" in all the fields it has entered, and its cumulative effect is definitely not 1 1gt; 2. Through bumps and bumps, Wang Xing, who loves to toss, has become strong enough. It seems that all the accumulation in the past is accumulating energy for future explosions.

He likes Gandhi's words very much. ：Be the change that you want to see in the world. Wang Xing believes that the world should be like this. You can actively promote this change instead of just waiting for death.

Hamlet went too far. It becomes nihilism; excessive Machiavellianism is close to conspiracy theory. Whether you are starting a business or doing other things, it is extremely important to be on the right side of history and to be able to survive until that day.

" A group of entrepreneurs gathered on a yacht in Hainan. After the discussion, they said they could swim. When everyone was hesitating and looking at each other, they heard a splash and someone had entered the water. That person was Wang Xing. ”