In this robbery, the "digging for money" team hit more than 300 people from 1400 and fell to the bottom.

I left Zhengzhou from 1999 and went to Alibaba to start counting. I have been in business for more than 20 years, and this is the deepest and heaviest robbery I have ever experienced.

Peer-to-peer, a once popular entrepreneurial track, began to evolve into entrepreneurial purgatory at the end of 20 17. A large number of corporate capital chains are broken, and investors are wiped out.

P2P, a strongly encouraged business model, reached the last moment when it was completely denied liquidation.

The whole industry was born without an "identity card", and now it is "one size fits all". Zhejiang is no exception. They have all been returned.

Some companies explode, bosses run away, and enterprises close down; Some companies have been put on file, and people inside and outside the company are very worried.

We always put the interests of investors first.

On June 8th, Digging for Wealth completed the clearance of P2P business ahead of schedule, and the loan principal and interest have been returned to the lender's account.

At this point, I can say that we are finally out of the dark valley of entrepreneurship.

You can sit down and catch your breath. You can look up at the sky.

You can also meet and chat with old friends. Your manager Lin asked me to sit down and talk and sort out the experiences, stories and lessons of starting a business for 20 years.

Let's start with the day when we joined Alibaba.

On 1999, I saw an exclusive interview with Ma Yun in China Business News, and I felt a kind of intimacy in my heart.

Ali doesn't look so tall at this time. Ma Yun just wants to make Alibaba an online market, and anyone who needs it can come to open a shop to do business.

On a whim, I wrote a long letter of 10 thousand words to Ali customer service, talked about my thoughts on foreign trade e-commerce and put forward many suggestions. What a newborn calf is not afraid of tigers.

Before that, I was in Zhengzhou, Henan, with a like-minded fellow villager. He writes code, and I make web pages. With the investment of a female boss, I set up a B2B website "China Business Port", which is a bit like Alibaba in trade.

Shortly after the letter to Alibaba was sent, I received a reply from Jiang Fang (now Ali's partner). The letter was long and she answered every suggestion I made. I was surprised and moved.

Goodwill immediately turned into action. I clicked on the job advertisement on Alibaba's homepage. Jump out to a word:

"If not you, who would it be?

If not now, when? "

At this moment, it must be you. )

It hit me in the heart.

1999 10, 22 years old, took a green leather train for a day and a night and came to Hangzhou.

I got off at the railway station, and it was raining in Mao Mao. Raindrops fell on my face, a little cold. The air has the moist smell of earth, mixed with the fragrance of plants.

I got on the 1 1 double-decker bus and found a window seat. The farther west the car goes, the fewer tall buildings there are on both sides of the road. I got off at Gudun intersection of Wen Yi West Road and came to the door of a community.

Four golden characters of "Lakeside Garden" jumped into my eyes. Standing at the gate of the community, I saw a delicate small building hidden under the dense shade.

The position I applied for is website planning, and I have no idea. I want to try, but I really can't try editing any more. In short, I want to join this company.

I was interviewed by three people: Lei, who asked questions seriously with a notebook (later president of Taobao), who spoke fluent English when he came up, and Peng Lei, who was so kind that he had no sense of distance.

Peng Lei asked me, don't you regret coming to Alibaba like this? I don't know what she means.

She said that many people are afraid to come as soon as they hear that the company is located in the community. Girls bring their boyfriends to the interview.

I said, "Very upscale. This is the most beautiful community I have ever seen. " Later, qianjiang evening news interviewed Peng Lei and wrote an article called "This Tuba Road is Right".

Oh, there is another person who is particularly impressed. While waiting in the living room on the first floor, many people passed by, and Xie Shihuang came to say hello. He didn't treat me like an outsider at all, asking questions. He is naturally familiar.

65438+February 65438+June, I officially became an employee of Alibaba, with the job number of 46. I am the first employee recruited by Ali from other provinces.

This is a very different company.

Push open the door, and you will see that everyone in the room is dressed casually, but everyone's face is staring at the computer screen, very focused.

Go to work at 9 am. At six o'clock in the evening, let's have dinner together and then continue to work overtime until eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening. No one complained.

Stay in front of the computer every night, bury yourself in work or teach yourself something. The atmosphere here makes people have endless energy and want to fight.

In the evening, everyone ate around a big round table, talking and laughing. Let's play a killing game after supper. On weekdays, the community is empty, leaving only Ali and his gang.

I am very introverted. Watching a group of colleagues work so hard, they can play speculative games that they have never heard of before after dinner. I feel like dreaming.

The tennis court, table tennis table and chessboard are all ours. I can play table tennis, and many of my colleagues met at the table.

Life in the lakeside garden is really dreamy. Thirty or fifty people devoted themselves to a common cause and a common dream. This is the ultimate state of entrepreneurship, and I think so now.

At the beginning, I was responsible for the planning and design of the website, and my job responsibilities were just like those of the current product manager. I used to do it myself, and the ideas in my mind were all drawn at will, scribbling on paper, making gestures and communicating with technicians. When we get to Ali, it won't work.

We have a female engineer certified by Microsoft, and my needs are basically connected with her. Every time I ask for a demand, I am scolded and asked to modify it according to the format. Too many times, I dare not go to her, and my scalp is numb at the thought of asking for it.

But I had to go, so I had to overcome it myself, learn from other people's previous documents, revise them repeatedly, and later bought a book, Software Requirements, to teach myself. I am very grateful to this female engineer. Without her strict requirements, I would just stand still and not break through.

In 2000, after the Internet bubble burst, Ali began to demand income.

"China suppliers" take the lead, and an enterprise charges 20,000-30,000 yuan. I think this business can be more templated and lower the price at the same time.

So we set up a team, I am the product manager and Wu Yongming is the technical director, to do a paid membership project, which was later named "Cheng Xintong".

When Cheng Xintong was first launched, we naively thought it would explode, and as a result, there were not many orders a day. In the first month, I earned hundreds of thousands, and I feel so happy that I can support the team.

I didn't think from Ma Yun's point of view at all. Hundreds of people in the whole company point to "China suppliers" and "Cheng Xintong" for profit, which is far from enough.

In 2004, we began to try telemarketing, which was first used by Ali in Internet companies. It was simply a trump card.

Very impressive. A fax machine is like a money printing machine. Money orders rushed out one by one. Soon, the income of Cheng Xintong exceeded 1 100 million.

We go from fighting in the conference room every day to going out to a hotel for a strategy meeting.

But my heart is getting tangled. ...

One morning in April 2004, I had one thing on my mind. I woke up early, turned on the computer as usual, and received the news of Ma Yun through Yahoo! He is the only one online in the whole company.

Ma Yun has just arrived in America. After a few words, I got up the courage and wrote a line: "Teacher Ma, I want to leave Ali to start a business."

"How old are you this year?" Ma Yun asked me.

"27。" I answered.

"You haven't reached the age, exercise in Ali for another two years, and then go out to start a business. I'm going to attend a forum soon, and we'll talk about it when I get back. " Ma Yun finished speaking and went offline.

This time, I didn't listen to Ma Yun.

The next morning, I officially resigned. After four and a half years of employment, Ali didn't take the "five-year-old" gold ring.

The idea of quitting my job and starting a business has been hovering in my mind for a long time, and an increasingly strong feeling is surging in my heart: if I don't take this step, I will definitely regret it in the future.

Since I left my hometown and came to Hangzhou, my biggest problem has been the housing problem. At first, I temporarily found a place to transition. Three months later, I moved to Gudang New Village and took two colleagues to live together. The rent is around 900 yuan every month.

Renting a house is an area with asymmetric information. You stand at the gate of the community, looking at tall buildings, but you don't know which one is rented. The landlord can't find a tenant, and the tenant doesn't know where the landlord is. If you go through an intermediary, the cost is very high.

After some analysis, I found that both buyers and sellers of renting houses have objective orders of magnitude, and Alibaba model can also be established in this subdivision.

At that time, Alibaba only had B2B business, and Taobao was only the embryonic form. In the whole market, almost no one set foot in the field of life service.

There is still a window period of one or two years in the field of life service. I want the stupid bird to fly first and seize the opportunity. After I left Ali, I made a BBS called "Easy Rent Network".

Once after having dinner with friends, we agreed that the service and food quality in the restaurant were very poor, and we thought it was good to have a website where we could complain and evaluate.

The name "Word of Mouth Network" originated from a friend's dinner, where a dozen people at a table discussed the word of mouth of a product. Suddenly a flash of light, "word of mouth" is a good name.

I didn't finish my meal, so I rode home and turned on the computer to see if the domain name of Word of Mouth was registered. Fortunately, it has a good relationship with me.

In June 2004, I rented a small house of more than ten square meters in Gudangwan New Village. With 80,000 yuan earned by scrimping and saving in Ali for more than four years, I started my business in earnest. I put 40,000 yuan into the operation of the company, leaving 40,000 yuan for living expenses.

But investment is like a bottomless pit, and soon, the money will be burned out-money is far more useless than I thought. However, I still intend to stick to it for at least two years, and generally I can see certain effects in two years.

I tried to find VC financing. Investors think that the investment in life service is huge, and they can't see the benefits in the short term, and they all express disapproval.

I found several investors, but there is no following. I'm a little depressed. I walked around and found that everyone didn't know who Li Zhi was. It was not as good as it is now. As soon as I left Ali, a bunch of venture capitalists rushed to the door.

Two years. The turning point came from Mrs Ma Yun and Zhang Ying. She just left Ali to chat with me. After another year, she contributed 2 million yuan in her own name, which solved my urgent need.

In August 2005, Alibaba announced the acquisition of Yahoo China. Soon, Ma Yun found me and asked me about the future plan of Word of Mouth: "Do you want Word of Mouth to go public independently, or do you want to go back to Ali to do something against To C?"

I realize that life service is a long-term undertaking. When Ma Yun met me in the lakeside garden for the second time, I decided to accept Ali's investment and stick to it for a long time.

On June 26th, 2006, 10 Due to the layout of the To C plate, Alibaba made a formal strategic investment in word of mouth in two rounds, with a capital contribution of150,000 USD.

However, Yahoo China has not achieved impressive results. After many revisions, neither the search engine nor the integrated portal ranked the top three in the industry.

Alibaba began to re-examine the future direction of Yahoo China and put forward the idea of merging Yahoo and Word of Mouth.

Yahoo is the "upper body", with vision, brand and traffic; Word-of-mouth network is responsible for the "lower body", understands life service and has execution.

As an old employee of Ali, I agreed to merge without much thought. I think I should think about this problem from the perspective of the group.

In retrospect, life at that time was like running on the expressway, fast, and it had passed before I thought about it. When I walked to the front, I found that the next exit was for Shanghai, and I took an unknown road.

At this time, the registered users of WOM have reached10 million, ranking first in the classified information industry. The Yellow Pages is second only to Dianping.com, with a daily UV of 2.2 million. However, compared with Yahoo China's daily PV of 654.38 billion, it is still far from it.

From Ali's point of view, the merger may be the best result. In June 2008, Yahoo China and Word of Mouth were formally integrated into "Yahoo Word of Mouth".

In order to lead traffic to word-of-mouth, Yahoo China homepage has opened up a new entrance for word-of-mouth, and all categories of classified information of word-of-mouth are placed on Yahoo homepage.

However, contrary to expectations, this integration only brought 6.5438+0 million daily PV to word of mouth, equivalent to 5% of the 20 million PV of word of mouth at that time. Users have their own needs, and their ideas are not consistent with our preset.

After that, "Yahoo Word of Mouth" changed several presidents, and everyone had different understanding of classified information and yellow pages. Every leader was eager to try, and "Yahoo Word of Mouth" experienced the pain of integration.

At the beginning of 2008, when I gave my word of mouth to Ali, the US$ 6,543.8+0.5 million and another US$ 6,543.8+0.5 million invested by Ali were in the account.

Modern management theory holds that every post should be replaceable after the company moves towards regularization. But this theory does not apply to start-ups and innovative enterprises.

Afterwards, I often reflect on the reasons of word-of-mouth network.

My mistake is that although Ma Yun is willing to listen to the opinions of his subordinates, from beginning to end, I have not tried to win the autonomy of word of mouth, which makes the fate of word of mouth too passive.

I hope I won't make the same mistake again. The founder should be responsible for the company he built himself and take it in the right direction.

At a meeting, Ma Yun met me, patted me on the shoulder and only said two words: "Let go."

Yeah, let go. Let go of the past and look forward.

In 2009, I left the reputation I founded and participated in the establishment of Alibaba Cloud Computing Company as the senior director of the data platform department and the service operation department.

After staying in Alibaba Cloud for more than a year, I realized the importance of data and that technology research and development is not my specialty.

20 10 September, I left Alibaba Cloud. After that, I started my angel investment career. A year or two later, my friend and I founded Amoeba Capital, focusing on early Internet investment.

I want to help more entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is stepping on a stool than height, and VC is a stool. Once VC enters an industry, it will be driven by capital. You can't avoid financing.

I saw the opportunity of the outbreak of the mobile Internet, and invested in more than 20 projects, such as Little Olympics, digging for money, taking a quick taxi, Mushroom Street, Facebook Exchange, Erwei Goods, Petal Net, gourmet restaurant, garden house, Maimiao Technology, Boca, time and space electric car, Fudi Pioneer Park, etc., and later there were praises, the same shield, graffiti and so on.

Judging from the valuation, the most successful projects are "fast" taxi, "praise", "mushroom street", the same shield, graffiti and so on.

The combination of "Kuaidi" taxi and "Didi" has a combined valuation of $50 billion to $60 billion, making it one of the best growing start-ups in China.

At the beginning of 20 16, Mushroom Street and Beauty Theory merged, and the combined valuation was close to $3 billion. At present, the valuation of the "Zanzan" listing part is nearly HK$ 30 billion (only 565,438+0% assets are acquired).

In 2008, I took several old Ali people to learn driving together, including my business partner in the word-of-mouth period and her husband Zhao Xiaowei.

I don't have much time to practice driving in the driving school. Four or five of us often get together to chat, and everyone thinks that the mobile Internet is going to rise.

Once, I told a story about a small accounting application I bought, which cost 29 yuan and was used on a smart phone. I think there is a play: "How about this direction?"

Zhao Xiaowei is also very excited: "I recognize this direction." It turned out that as early as 2000, he made a PC-side bookkeeping system for himself and his wife.

I said, "No one has ever kept a good account. You made one on the computer. Can you move it to your mobile phone? If you do it, I will invest. "

This is how the bookkeeping App startup project called "Digging Money" started. I invested 300,000 yuan.

In the first three months, Zhao Xiaowei was the only full-time employee, nicknamed "Yuanbao". Three months later, there were four people in the company. Like Ali, the earliest place to dig for money was Lakeside Garden.

Digging money is my continuous investment project. By 20 13, I invested more than RMB10 million. But for digging money, this money is far from enough. For a time, I often visited investment institutions.

The reason why I agree to dig money is that people's money needs to be managed. But other investors are not optimistic about this team, because the three founders are all from traditional software companies and have no experience in internet entrepreneurship.

20 10 Before and after Apple launched the iPhone 4, smartphones were still in the popularization stage, and most of the downloads for digging money were natural traffic. Unlike the rigid demand of American bookkeeping users for tax returns, China users are more interested in tasting fresh things.

Reflected in the data, the beginning of the month is the peak of users' downloading and bookkeeping. Every year, old users give up bookkeeping and choose to leave. Although Caijing has reached 40 million downloads, there are only a few million monthly users.

Facing the problem of investors, I kept explaining that there are 65.438+03 billion people in China, and as long as there is 65.438+0% bookkeeping, there are 65.438+03 million users.

Feng Li, partner of IDG Capital, said that the era of "Internet finance" has arrived.

Feng Li once led Yixin. CreditEase was established for a long time, and began to lay out offline business very early to provide lending services for users who could not enjoy the services of traditional financial institutions.

I also realize that there are still many people in China who can't borrow money or manage money, and can provide "Internet finance" services for these users who dig money.

In order to inject financial genes into digging money, I first thought of the "information policy data" invested by Amoeba Capital, a company that provides consulting and solutions around the retail business of commercial banks.

20 13 10, Caicai announced the acquisition of the new test data, and Gu, the founder of the new test, became the president.

A prerequisite for Li Feng to invest in mining for money is that you Li Zhiguo must come in. Otherwise, he thinks the investment risk is a little high.

Do you want to change from an investor to an entrepreneur? At that moment, I hesitated. For me, it was a difficult choice.

The rational voice is to continue to make good investments. At that time, I had invested in mushroom street, fast taxi and other projects, knowing that the return of Amoeba would be good.

But I also know that digging for money has reached the most critical moment. It was also my idea to do bookkeeping. I need to help the team seize this fleeting opportunity. As for investment, if we increase the intensity of digging money, we can continue to do so.

2065438+February 2004, I officially became the CEO of Caicai, nicknamed "Haibei"-the oldest currency in China.

When people talked about how many people became rich overnight after Ali went public, I was in tight contact with investors.

Two months later, we obtained a $50 million Series B financing from investors such as Broadband Capital and CICC, and the accumulated financing amount exceeded $80 million with the previous two rounds of A and A+.

I have 20 years of experience in the internet industry, and I have nearly 20 years of experience in the financial industry ... The integration of business people in suits and ties and grassroots internet entrepreneurs is smoother than expected.

After the merger, a new company was established, which was divided into Shanghai Finance Division and Hangzhou Mobile Internet Division. The Shanghai team will come to Hangzhou for a meeting every week. Everyone can bear hardships and pay attention to execution.

The goal I set for myself is to explore a successful business model within five years, help the company embark on the track of benign and high-speed development, find a CEO to replace me, and then come back and invest well.

Who knew that Internet finance would fall apart one day? ...

Can there be a platform to help the public manage their finances? My idea was first realized by Yu 'ebao on 20 13.

Seeing that Yu 'ebao was on fire, we quickly set up a "wealth management" business team and launched similar money fund products. 20165438+1October 18 Around the first "18 financial day", the sales volume will be 10 billion yuan.

The rapid development of wealth management business is completely beyond my imagination. By August of 20 14, the wealth management transaction volume exceeded 10 billion yuan.

With more and more users, digging money is no longer limited to simple bookkeeping. We should be the people's all-round asset stewards.

At the same time, digging money is transitioning to more professional asset management, and P2P is one of them.

As the main mode of Internet finance, P2P developed explosively in 20 14 and became a typical differentiated financing service outside the banking system.

The essence of P2P is transparency. Users know what I bought and what the assets are like. Real P2P makes data more transparent, thus reducing financial risks.

However, by the end of 20 17, the situation of P2P industry changed suddenly: the informal financial platform frequently exploded, the platform could not be redeemed, and the boss ran away. ...

The State Council took the lead in the special rectification of Internet finance and began to rectify the industry. At first, it was the scale of pressure drop, and then it was a full retreat.

Banks will close down if they don't open for a year, not to mention unlicensed internet finance companies. Everyone has different ideas.

Some companies are still "lucky", thinking that they may make it to the end, that is, the lucky ones who get the license to "turn positive"; Some companies have fallen into a deep pit and are constantly caught in a vicious circle.

This series of events happened unexpectedly, which also brought great influence to Caijing.com's business and company's operation. Me, digging for money, the whole industry, is in a quagmire and in a dilemma.

Every day in the company, I can hear employees discuss P2P and discuss the future of this company and this industry. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.

Stop advertising, like a dangerous signal. Everyone feels nervous. Excellent talents began to drain and returned to the "big factory" to make a living; There are also some employees who seek stability and enter the state of "resting for health".

From starting a business to now, I encountered this dilemma for the first time: running and running, the entrepreneurial track was closed, and the whole industry I joined was denied liquidation.

So many employees have to live, and there is pressure from shareholders. At any time, someone will hold a flag and force you to pay immediately. ...

A well-known company was put on file and a group of policemen rushed into the company. Some of our colleagues went to see it and came back to say that the scene made people feel cold behind them, only "cold heart" and "despair"

In the winter of 20 19, the epidemic began to wreak havoc.

The P2P business has been completely stopped, the expulsion work is under intense pressure, and there is not much time left.

The salary of senior executives is reduced by 30%-40%. Several floors of the office building were returned, and only 300 people were left in the original 1400.

The epidemic is getting worse and worse, and the players can't return to work normally. Some of them have poor home networks, while others don't have computers.

Colleagues who can return to work in the technical department work overtime overnight and make an "acquisition system" that can also be used by mobile phones.

We had a conference call for several days to discuss the solution, but we couldn't stop the eviction. Once we stop and slow down, the consequences will be unpredictable.

The atmosphere of depression and anxiety lingers. In winter, some colleagues even hide in the car for meetings, afraid to let their families know the "bad news" of the company.

The epidemic has shaken the economy, and more and more people don't pay back the money. ...

Starting from "China Trade Port", including Tong, Koubei. com, Alibaba Cloud and Amoeba Capital, Digging Caiwang is my sixth venture.

In the past five ventures, I have achieved success from 0 to 1.

This time, I faced an unprecedented "robbery". I told myself that I must calm down and face the difficulties. ...

Leave for a while, even to catch my breath. Start a business, you are a driver and drive a car; The investor is the co-pilot, watching the road for you. Investors are tired and want to go to Maldives for a holiday, you can; Entrepreneurs can't.

Leading the team out of the predicament and towards victory is an upgrade of entrepreneurial passion.

As early as 20 16, we defined the company's mission as "wisdom and wealth are owned by all", which has quite high requirements for the company's development.

The performance culture of Caibo Company is WPS(Wacai Performance System), which strives for the safe and stable operation of all business lines and completes the cost and risk control management.

We have developed an "intelligent collection system" for digging money. Later, it was used by Xihu District Government to serve the asset recovery of other P2P platforms, and the recovery rate of overdue assets increased by nearly 10 times.

In the past seven years, digging for money has paid nearly 3 billion yuan in interest. At such a moment, we choose to protect the interests of users first and pay the principal and interest of lenders.

On June 8, 2020, at a historic moment, we paid the lender's principal and interest in advance.

Now I can proudly say that my team and I have experienced the rest of our lives.

The rest of my life is rebirth.

I hope to turn bad things into good things, sum up the experience and lessons of these years and move on. Only in this way can we be worthy of the support of the final team, the shareholders and the trust of the government.

In the future, the soldiers will be divided into several roads, and several battle-hardened executives will take you to continue your business and find a breakthrough. What are you afraid of when it's so difficult to walk here?

I am studying the A-share market.

Peter Lynch said, invest in the companies you touch in your life. I saw Hengshun vinegar and Haitian soy sauce in my kitchen, so I bought some each. Last week, we saw that the income was 102% and 106%. Unfortunately, I didn't have the habit of eating Fuling mustard tuber at home and missed it.

I also bought Bank of Ningbo, with a return of over 80%. Their white-collar loans are doing well. There is Ping An Bank, and Ma Mingzhe is the most innovative and Internet-friendly in the traditional financial system.

Combined with the profound experience and lessons of finance, I also want to see if the fund can be sold.

Climbing out of the bottom, I will try with more awe.

In the second half of the year, I will visit the best fund managers in China and prepare to launch a new business of "investment education". Financial management is a long-term thing, not overnight.

Sometimes, I still think of the fantastic days when I first joined Ali in the lakeside garden:

The old carpet in the living room, the mottled pink wallpaper, and the broken glass door that can be opened by force, we are afraid of losing the computer all day. Dozens of people crowded into a room, with no rules. Good ideas collide several times, and the ideas come to the ground immediately.

How nice it is for a group of people to do one thing with passion and dedication every day, every month and every year.

My wife has been asking me: "How long will your entrepreneurial state last?"

When I was working on word-of-mouth network, I promised her that I would take another five years off. Now, the eldest son 12 years old and the youngest son is 5 years old. I still can't stop.

Traveling to Gansu, Qinghai with my family, I was tortured by high reaction, cold and backache, lying in the back seat of the car and leafing through John Berger's Persistence. This book accompanied me through Yangguan and Dunhuang.

I always remember the author said in the book:

"keep going ... overcome adversity and opponents, and no difficulty can stop our rise."

-End-