Eight years old running, participated in Jinshan, the gathering age, Cheetah Mobile and other technology companies ringing the bell listed Lei Jun, finally waiting for their own ringing moment.
On the morning of July 9, the newly renovated Hong Kong Stock Exchange was not spacious, but it accommodated nearly 600 people. At 9:28, wearing a dark blue suit, tied the millet logo with the same color tie, Lei Jun took the stage and knocked on the port. The exchange has a weight of 200 kilograms and an enlarged version of the bronze plaque worth 300,000.
'The sound you knocked is too small!' said Li Xiaojia, president of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, to him.
'The first time I used it, I didn’t dare to knock it, what happened when I broke it?' Lei Jun joked.
When asked by reporters what he wanted to say to himself 8 years ago, Lei Jun was also unconcerned: 'I should have a hair on the day of opening. The hairstyle at the time is too shabby.'
In fact, in the past few weeks, Lei Jun has not been easy. The capital market has been ups and downs, and he admits that he can't sleep with anxiety. Especially after the issue price is set, the three major stock indexes fall to his heart. It’s broken.'
From submitting the prospectus and CDR application to the HKEx and the Securities Regulatory Commission respectively, and then suspending the CDR, Xiaomi’s listing route has been somewhat bumpy. On the first day of the opening, Xiaomi’s share price performance is not perfect, and the closing price is HK$16.80. The issue price of HK$17 fell by 1.18%.
This is like the experience of Xiaomi in the past 8 years. There are ups and downs. 'IPO starts from a low point, not necessarily a good thing.' Lei Jun said.
From the age of 22 to Jinshan, Lei Jun's experience can almost be used as a map of China's IT Internet industry evolution and change over the past 20 years.
More than 20 years ago, he participated in and experienced the rise of the software industry and the transition to the Internet. After the Jinshan listing in 2007, he left. The B2C e-commerce excellence at the beginning of the new century was sold to Amazon after 2004. Then he transformed into an angel investor. In the fields of e-commerce, game media, mobile Internet applications, etc., he invested in Vanke, Letao, Play, UCweb, Thunder and many other companies. Until he founded Xiaomi, he once returned to Jinshan Software as chairman.
He once said that Xiaomi is the last thing he started in his business. On the road of chasing dreams, Xiaomi's listing is only a new beginning. 'The most important thing now is to adjust the mentality and do a good job of making Xiaomi.'
The first 8 years 'long run'
This is not the first time that Lei Jun has ringed the clock at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Last time, it was also 8 years old.
On October 9, 2007, Jinshan Software was finally listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after preparing for and slamming multiple capital markets. Compared with the 600-plus crowded in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, only one dozen were gone. Personal. Jinshan listed on the first day closed at 5 Hong Kong dollars, compared with the issue price of 3.6 Hong Kong dollars rose 39%, financing 626.1 million Hong Kong dollars.
After Jinshan went public, Lei Jun returned to Zhuhai. It was still difficult to be overwhelmed when he accepted the exclusive interview with CBN. 'Jinshan has been established since 1988 for 19 years. Facing the double squeeze of piracy and Microsoft, we can live with the general software company in the same period. Up to now, there are very few, only the Jinshan family can be listed.
But what is surprising is that after two months of leading Jinshan successfully listed, Lei Jun left Jinshan for the reason of 'physical and mental exhaustion', and everyone was surprised.
From the age of 22 to 38, for 17 years, Lei Jun gave the 'best years' to Jinshan. In 1992, Lei Jun came in as No. 6 employee and served as CEO of Jinshan 6 years later. 'IT Model' is his Label, no matter how close, he only sleeps for four or five hours a day. He often works in Jinshan in the middle of the night, taking advantage of the elevator to close his eyes.
Qiu Bojun once commented, 'Lei Jun has been working hard, working hard and overloaded, bringing Jinshan Software from a small workshop that barely maintains a livelihood to a listed company with international influence.'
For leaving Jinshan, Lei Jun once said in an interview, 'I feel wrong in the late Jinshan, when you believe that you are very strong, like a tank car, open the mountain, cross the river bridge, thorns and thorns. But when you After killing, all over the body, bruises, tired and dying, you are thinking, it is so easy for others to succeed?' Lei Jun once said.
On the occasion of the fading out of Jinshan in 2007, Lei Jun invited friends to eat. According to a person at the scene, Lei Jun had lamented that he had not been able to climb to the top for more than a decade.
At that time, a post titled "Why Jinshan Can't Be Peaked" was widely circulated. The post said: Jinshan product line is too long to focus enough, endless overtime, thunder and rain is small... Conclusion, Jinshan Never get to the top.
For Lei Jun at that time, the joy of a successful listing may not be able to resolve the stagnation of Jinshan 8's long run without 'Dacheng'.
Shortly after Jinshan went public, Lei Jun once asked in the first financial news program called "Boss Hall" that he was a very old "old revolution", facing the rise and transcendence of Ding Lei, Ma Huateng and other younger generations. Is there a trace of anxiety inside? Lei Jun said, 'Learn to appreciate, congratulate others for success, go home and plant your own land.'
Near the end, the host asked: 'If there is no Jinshan in your life, what else?'
Lei Jun said a meaningful sentence: 'When you no longer call me the boss of Jinshan, but directly call me Lei Jun, I will tell you again.'
In the four years since he left Jinshan, Lei Jun, who turned to angel investors, invested in Vanke, UCWEB, Play, Thunder, Lacala and many other companies. He re-learned and thought through Internet thinking and became a 'professional household'.
'Putting a lot of friends and making the enemy small is his business logic. At the time, there was a popular saying in the industry that the Chinese Internet is a table (TABLE) with T Tencent, A Alibaba, B Baidu, L Leijun and E Zhou Hongyi.
Wang Kai, chairman of Yikai Capital, once said: 'All China is the experimental field of Lei Jun.'
For Lei Jun, he finally had the opportunity to come out and reflect on himself. He said: 'My biggest feeling when I left Jinshan is that the general trend is very important. To take advantage of the situation, Jinshan is like planting grass in saline soil. Why don’t I go to the air outlet? Flying a kite? Standing at the typhoon, the pig can fly to the sky.
Millet breakout
Don't underestimate the ambitions of the veterans.
If Lei Jun harvested the 'name' during the Jinshan period and created the excellence process, the sale of excellence and angel investment will yield 'li'. As for Xiaomi, this may be an unrealized dream when Lei Jun was 18 years old.
That year, college student Lei Jun read the book, called "The Fire of Silicon Valley". It said that his idol, Jobs, brought Apple into the world's top 500 in five years, and a group of amateur PC enthusiasts, which drove the entire industry revolution. After returning to Apple, Jobs redefines the phone, and Apple became the best IT company.
Before doing the mobile phone, Lei Jun was an enthusiast. This obsession and heavy investment made him believe that the smart phone would replace the PC as the computing center around people.
In 2010, China's smartphone market ushered in a year of spurt development. In this year, sales of smartphones exceeded 30 million units, up 35% year-on-year. Financial freedom, Lei Jun, who became famous, came to his own 'winds'.
He decided to follow the pace of starting a business after the age of 40, and also the two most successful predecessors - Liu Chuanzhi of Chinese entrepreneurs and Ren Zhengfei of Huawei, to re-enter the venture.
'You have everything, why do you want to do it yourself?' Lin Bin, who was vice president of Google China Engineering Research Institute, was puzzled when he heard that Lei Jun wanted to start a business. But Lin Bin, who was finally convinced by Lei Jun, sold most of it. Google and Microsoft stocks, all invested in Xiaomi.
Lin Bin recalls that in the cafe, Lei Jun painted the business model of Xiaomi on the napkin: first cut in from the open source Android operating system, do a good user experience, wait for the operating system to be accepted by the user, then do the mobile phone, and then pass the e-commerce mode. Selling products, ultimately relying on software and Internet services to make money.
In addition to Lin Bin, Lei Jun worked in Jinshan for many years, Li Wanqiang, former chief engineer of Motorola R&D Center Zhou Guangping, and former director of the Industrial Design Department of Beijing University of Science and Technology, Liu De, etc., also successively boarded Xiaomi.
On April 6, 2010, in the Yingu Building in Beijing's Fourth Ring Road, Lei Jun and a group of friends drank a bowl of millet porridge, low-key founded Xiaomi.
This 'creative team' is super-luxury, each of which is a long-time 'veteran' in the industry, with an average age of over 40 years old.
The start of Xiaomi, starting from the software. After the first version of the mobile operating system MIUI was released, there were initially only 100 users. Soon, in the case of Lei Jun’s influence, the company promoted zero investment, MIUI spread rapidly through word-of-mouth communication. Let Xiaomi see the hope of locking the route of enthusiasts.
Like a squid that squeezes into the sardines group, Xiaomi launches the Xiaomi mobile phone in August 2011. This is known as the top-level configuration, and the 'running point' wins the millet phone at a price of 1999 yuan, almost the same configuration phone price. Half of it.
The essence of Xiaomi's business model interpreted by Lei Jun is: to provide users with a sense of participation, to win the user's participation in the improvement of Xiaomi's products and the establishment of the brand, to jointly create an unprecedented software, hardware, Internet 'Iron Triathlon' company.
At the same time, Xiaomi has also become the intersection of the 'Leijun Department' investment company group business. For example, Fanshi is also selling Xiaomi mobile phone at that time. Its Fengda is one of the three distributors of Xiaomi. Jinshan provides security for Xiaomi. Cloud storage and other services, YY, Thunder also provide voice, acceleration, storage and other services.
At that time, Xiaowan’s co-founder, Li Wanqiang, told the First Financial Reporter that selling 100,000 units was free of death, and selling millions of units was a ticket for official entry. Under many doubts, Xiaomi’s first generation mobile phone Sold more than 3 million units.
Xiaomi, who was initially firmly on the heels, directly stimulated the Internet to be incited. Ali almost entered the mobile phone industry with Xiaomi at the same time; Zhou Hongyi said that he decided to come in after half a year of thinking; Li Yanhong, Ma Huateng and others have also been eager to try. Brushed to choose low gross profit, low profit, I hope to seize the Internet hardware entrance.
'It seems that (mobile) gameplay has begun to change. ' A mobile phone ODM merchant sighed at the first financial.
'I am not OK'
Despite the controversy over 'under-supply' and 'hunger marketing', Xiaomi has indeed become a 'phenomenon-level' company. By the second quarter of 2014, Xiaomi surpassed Samsung for the first time and became the first in the domestic smartphone market. Globally, Xiaomi has become the third largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung and Apple.
'The peers' research on the millet model, learning, and imitation have reached the 'pixel level', and Xiaomi has turned from the industry's chaser to the target of being chased by the whole industry. ' Lei Jun said in an interview.
This even attracted the attention of the traditional industry. In the same year, Vanke Yuliang led a team to visit Ali, Tencent and Xiaomi, which triggered a discussion about whether the Internet thinking can reconstruct or even subvert the real estate industry.
However, the Chinese mobile phone market is changing rapidly. After the rapid expansion period, the mobile phone manufacturers' marathon run is not only a sprint, but also a lasting endurance.
Once, 'only fast breaks' millet, gradually revealed problems caused by 'infrastructure construction' is not strong enough.
The supply chain and channels are the two hurdles facing Xiaomi. Lei Jun admits that Xiaomi has a three-month supply chain that is extremely out of stock. One example is the Xiaomi mobile phone that was originally expected to be released in mid-2015, until February 2016. It was released, it lasted for 19 months, this is what happened to Xiaomi before.
In the channel, due to excessive dependence on the e-commerce model, the Xiaomi mobile phone could not sink to the third-fourth line, the fourth- and fifth-tier cities in the fierce competition, but these markets, OV caught.
In 2015, Lei Jun’s goal of 80 million sales that he shouted at the beginning of the year failed to achieve. 'In the face of such transcripts, Are you OK? To be honest, I am not OK.' Lei Jun said in his speech at the later millet annual meeting. .
This year, Xiaomi’s last press conference, Lei Jun recalled his first experience in Beijing. For him, there is nothing more than 24 years ago, after 13 hours of train bumps, only one person from Wuhan to Beijing, It was so stunned when I walked in the empty station square.
'In Beijing, the building of Xiaomi is still far from high enough.' Lei Jun said.
In 2016, Xiaomi fell out of the top five global shipments for the first time. In the domestic market, Xiaomi also fell from the boss to the fifth. The quarterly shipments fell more than 40%, and the annual shipments plummeted 36%.
In overseas markets, because of the patent issue, Xiaomi was subject to patent litigation, which was almost banned.
Competitor Huawei glory is catching up with Xiaomi in sales, and the model 'blue-green brothers' OPPO and vivo, which are almost the same as Xiaomi, have become the 'black horses' of mobile phones. Both of them have surpassed Xiaomi to enter the top five in the world, and the top three in China.
Is Xiaomi’s Internet thinking ineffective?
Because the growth rate slowed down, Xiaomi, who walked down the altar, began to face unprecedented doubts. 'The Internet is a tool, not a panacea.' Xiaomi's competitor, Zhao Ming, president of Huawei Glory, told the First Financial Reporter.
In 2016, Lei Jun told reporters when he reflected on Xiaomi, 'Xiaomi used to rush too fast, and overdraft growth in advance, and needs to slow down and make up the class. 'He thinks that the problem of Xiaomi is that 'the heart is devil', asking for internal Let me talk about the first.
This year, 'remediation' became the key word of Xiaomi. The real difficulty in sales rebound is that the entire mobile phone industry is highly dependent on the global supply chain and the global industrial chain. Once the decline, the wall pushes everyone, 'all the resources are scarce Nothing, the price has gone up, everyone thinks you can't do it.'
Around the supply chain issue, Lei Jun replaced Zhou Guangping personally in charge of mobile phone product development and supply chain management team to solve supply problems.
The new retail also knocked the ceiling of the e-commerce channel for Xiaomi. Xiaobin President Lin Bin mainly grabbed Xiaomi's direct store Xiaomi home and explored the offline 'new retail' model.
This is followed by the replenishment of the market. In 2016, as the soul of Xiaomi Internet Marketing, Li Wanqiang returned. Previously, he relied almost exclusively on Xiaomi on the line. Not only did he bring in many celebrity spokespersons, but he also named young artists such as Qi Qiyan. Program, launch offline advertising.
Xiaomi, who fell to the bottom, is expecting a rebound.
This year, Lei Jun resigned as the chairman of the gathering, the position of director, and the former CEO Li Xueling took over as chairman. His reason for resignation was 'to focus on Xiaomi company'.
Counterattack and challenge
In the summer of 2017, Lei Jun could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
In the second quarter of this year, shipments of Xiaomi mobile phones increased by 70% from the previous quarter to 23.16 million. Xiaomi began to resume rapid growth.
'2017 is the year of millet's counterattack.' Lei Jun said that there is no mobile phone company in the world, which can be successfully reversed after the decline in sales, except for Xiaomi.
When asked again about the sales problem, Lei Jun bluntly said that he did not care about sales, but Mihe was particularly concerned about it. 'Xiami fell out of the top five and is also the top five in the world, but what about it? Is Xiaomi not coming back?'
This year, Xiaomi has advanced into the 100 billion club. In 2017, the total revenue of Xiaomi was 114.6 billion yuan, an increase of 67.5% compared with the 68.4 billion yuan in 2016.
After the counterattack, Lei Jun set a new goal for Xiaomi: Start a counterattack in a comprehensive manner, and return to the first place in the domestic market within 10 quarters. 'We want to use the province as the unit, the city as the unit, and each county and even the community. The grid is a unit, and the soil is in battle, and the blood is in the end. '
However, on the issue of listing, for many years shouted 'not listed within 5 years' Lei Jun reneged.
Before Xiaomi, Lei Jun had experienced Jinshan, and the gathering was dripping, Cheetah Mobile, Thunder and other companies listed. He once said that he knew the advantages and disadvantages of the listing. For example, if the listing has a short-term share price, the enterprise should not be qualified. It is easy to succumb to the pressure of the capital market...
Now, the Hong Kong stock market allows 'the same rights and different rights', and borrowing the capital market to realize a bigger dream may be the " homeopathic" in the eyes of Lei Jun.
However, whether Xiaomi is a hardware company or an Internet company has caused a lot of controversy. The dispute refers to the valuation of Xiaomi. The experience of the IT industry and the capital market over the past 30 years shows that the valuation of hardware companies is much smaller than the Internet. .
After experiencing the '84 Questions' of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and suspending the issuance of the China Depositary Receipt (CDR) plan, the Lei Jun and Xiaomi executive teams were divided into three teams, including Hong Kong, New York, London, Singapore, etc. in six days. Seven cities have carried out roadshows.
'I arrived in Boston at 1:30 in the morning. I started at 7:30 this morning. I opened seven meetings in a row. Now I fly to San Francisco and stayed for 19 hours. ' 'Model Lam' Lei Jun said in a circle of friends.
At an investor promotion meeting, he bluntly said, 'The price of this $55-70 billion is that I don’t want to ask for a price. It’s not worth even $55 billion?' Even Lei Jun said, ' Xiaomi is a rare and versatile company in the world. The valuation should be the valuation of Tencent by Apple.
Lei Jun’s big hobby is playing chess. The end of the game, the outcome is fixed, but the business is full of variables.
Xiaomi just started the roadshow 'Fire is very bad'. Every day someone asked Lei Jun to ask for a quota, but the last one or two days encountered pressure. Especially after the issue price was set, the three major stock indexes fell so that his heart was broken.
It seems that the 8-year-old Xiaomi has a long way to go – how Xiaomi adjusts his business rhythm, whether the profitability of future software and services can keep up, can the ecology of Xiaomi's construction support Xiaomi's use of hardware to make money on the Internet? business model?
Lei Jun said in Hong Kong that the mobile phone industry may not grow rapidly, but Xiaomi has ten times more room for growth.
At this point, he wants to understand that he can't rely on diligence and hard work, but also has to find the 'wind vent' to fly in the wind, has been 8 years.
That year, Chen Li, Chairman of Bilibili, first entered the startup Xiaomi Company. Lei always said to him: 'Millet may succeed, but it may fail, but I want to be a company I am ideal for.'