Huang Zheng: A good decision often requires a painful price.

Huang Zheng, this name has been silent for a year. In March, 20021,Huang Zheng announced his resignation as the chairman of Pinduoduo, saying that "he will devote himself to the research in the fields of food science and life science in combination with his lifelong interests, and explore new space for the rapid, high-quality and in-depth development of Pinduoduo in ten years."

Although there are many controversies in Pinduoduo, less than six years after its establishment, Pinduoduo has become the largest e-commerce platform in China, with an annual number of active buyers reaching 788.4 million. There is no doubt that Pinduoduo is successful. How did Huang Zheng do it?

Judging from Huang Zheng's past remarks, he is a man who likes thinking very much. Part of Huang Zheng's remarks were collected, and his thoughts on entrepreneurship, investment, life and epidemic situation were sorted out for readers ~ ~

First of all, a few things impressed me.

Looking back now, compared with my peers, my experience in middle school and university was very, very lucky, even a little special.

This experience made me deeply impressed by several things since I was a child:

Generally speaking, my middle school and university are lucky and full, but there is also a great regret, that is, the goal orientation is too clear, I wasted too much time trying to be a good student in the pursuit of being the first, and lost a lot of rebellion, naughty and pure enjoyment of youth. "Long live 60 minutes is a good philosophy" is what I slowly realized after many years.

Second, my first job.

The first company that paid me was Microsoft, but only as an intern. I have worked as an intern at Microsoft Beijing Research Institute and Microsoft Raymond Research Institute.

I didn't choose to stay at Microsoft when I graduated, because I thought I could see what I would be like after ten years at Microsoft, and because I asked my "life mentor" at that time.

He said, "Google looks like a great company and is worth seeing. It's also good for your future business. If you go, stay for at least three years, because you can't really enter an important position in a year or two and really understand this company. "

So, after graduating from graduate school in 2004, I went to Silicon Valley, and Google became my official job, code farmer and product manager. Later, Google entered China, and I was fortunate to participate in the initial stage of Google China as the first batch of employees who returned to China.

I have been at Google for three years (but I haven't left my job to start a business for four years). These three years are very worthwhile for me. Google has given me far more than I have contributed to Google.

First of all, realistically speaking, Google basically gave me financial freedom in a very short time.

I entered Google about half a year before Google went public, and I just graduated and entered the company to develop advertising background systems.

There were not many people at that time, and there were only a few hundred engineers. But soon the company went public, and the company's turnover profit and personnel increased rapidly.

I remember when I first entered Google, the company's hourly revenue was hundreds of thousands of dollars, and later it became millions of dollars. The number of employees has also increased rapidly from thousands to tens of thousands. The money in my bank account has also increased a lot in an instant.

To tell the truth, this feeling of falling pie from the sky was not strong at that time, because it was my first job and there was no emotional comparison.

After leaving Google for three or four years, I realized more and more deeply how rare a company like Google is and how rare it is to have the opportunity to enter such a company at such a time.

In terms of probability, people are lucky to meet once in their lives. At least this is a once-in-a-decade opportunity.

Secondly, Google showed me the side effects of people getting rich overnight. It seems that in Buddhism, how much money you get is rewarded accordingly. Without enough blessings, getting unexpected money is not necessarily a good thing.

This has been partially verified in the course of early employees of Google.

Because there is too much money in a flash, many people lose the motivation to work and start looking for new fun and careers, but they are often not good at and do not necessarily like those new things (flying a plane is not necessarily ok, doing binoculars is not necessarily ok, starting a business is not suitable for being a boss but in the position of a boss).

In this way, it has been delayed for many years, delaying the time when he is most likely to make more outstanding achievements.

Thirdly, Google gives me an opportunity to experience and understand the difficulties of foreign Internet companies in China and their competition with domestic Internet companies.

On the one hand, it is very difficult to get the trust and authorization of the company headquarters 100% across the barriers of space and culture; Without enough trust and authorization, it is not easy to deal with all kinds of commercial, non-commercial and unspoken competition in the face of rapid iteration of following the market.

In extreme cases, with Google's appeal at that time, a job fair could fill a football field, but the actual situation of recruitment was a bit applauded.

In fact, it is extremely difficult to find a hardworking person with experience, potential and good values. Contrary to common appearances, it is often much more difficult to form a combat team than a local Internet company.

Of course, there are too many books about Google in bookstores and online. I can't write more detailed and better than them. A few people observed it, but I still want to record it, so I can come back and watch it later.

Google is actually quite similar to China in some aspects, such as the high status of the "working class" and its emphasis on ideology. Therefore, when there is ideological conflict, Google's response also exceeds that of ordinary commercial companies.

Google is also similar in management to China after the reform and opening up. It encourages grassroots innovation and dares to try. At the same time, the core power is highly concentrated, which has the institutional advantage of concentrating on doing great things.

I think Google's "don't be evil" goes deep into Google's genes, not just casually. Google really puts its mission and values before profit. For example, in the excellent company described in "The Foundation is Evergreen", Google's profit is a by-product of doing the right thing.

At the same time, "don't be evil" is actually a wake-up call to Google's evil ability. The deeper you go into Google, the more you find that Google has a strong ability to make profits from evil. Therefore, it is wise to announce to everyone that you will not do evil and let everyone supervise.

During my years at Google, most of Google's acquisitions were successful.

Most of these successful cases are to acquire a small company, have a good team, can be integrated into Google culture, and then grow into a big tree on Google soil. This is very different from mergers and acquisitions in order to eliminate a competitor.

There are also many things that Google can't fix or want to change.

For example, Google wants to use the winning bid model in the advertisement to make its own IPO, and then to some extent, change the ancient inefficient industry of stock issuance, but the result is average.

The founder of Google has been trying to prevent Google from entering the management mode of professional managers, but it seems that he has not escaped. Also, Google has made many social attempts and invested a lot, but its fate seems to be the same as Microsoft's search.

Some objective laws and status quo are not a simple wish, and often require much more energy than you think. This is a fact that people have to face, just like people always die.

Third, why start a business again?

Recently (20 16), many people asked me this question. Why do you want to start a business again? To sum up, I think it is mainly the following two points:

In the final analysis, this second point is actually the first point. Entrepreneurship can make me happier. At the same time, I certainly hope it can bring more happiness to people around me and more people I don't know.

Of course, I also know that I can't make everyone happy and like me. This is not my goal either.

Especially now, entrepreneurship is more social and involves more people than the last one, which doomed me to face some unhappy things and people who don't like me so much.

But returning to my true heart, I hope I can face myself frankly every day, feel at ease and do my duty. If I can gradually acquire the ability of selective memory, remember the happy ones and forget the anxious ones, so much the better.

Not long ago, Mr. Li Zhigang interviewed me. He asked me a lot of questions about starting a business. Mr. Zhigang's article is much better than my own, so I'll steal a few paragraphs here as a further answer to why I want to start a business again.

Li Zhigang: What do you think is the purpose of starting a business?

Huang Zheng: From the beginning, I was taught that starting a business is a good thing, so I wanted to start a business from the beginning.

At first, I wanted to be a company to make money, and at the same time I could be more Niu Yi. I have nine or ten months to rest at home before I pack my goods. I think more about life. In other words, the most important thing for people to live is that I pursue my own happiness. I found that two things brought me deep happiness.

The first one is to create something deeply with a group of friends I like. This process is really happy for me.

Laugh and cry together and tide over the difficulties together. The team feels the same as the family. I think I enjoy this process very much and look forward to a happy future. This is one aspect.

On the other hand, I hope to do something with more social influence than before, that is, something useful to myself and others, that is, to some extent, it can promote the occurrence of good money driving out bad money.

I gave an example to our colleagues before. Why does melamine appear? In fact, it is essentially a process forced out by consumers, and bad money drives out good money. That is to say, in fact, there must be a large number of dairy factories that did not use melamine at first, but those are all dead.

I think in the whole business form of China, not only in China, but all over the world, there is a cycle in which bad money drives out good money.

I think we have a little chance to achieve results today. This is to make those fruits that are not naturally ripe and put in the freezer in large quantities have a disadvantage. To a certain extent, we mean to let this fruit mature naturally, and we can sell it at a good price with little or no drugs.

I think this is a question of social value, which is equivalent to saying that I have made contributions to society.

Li Zhigang: How do you evaluate your team?

Huang Zheng: My metaphor for my team is that life is a process, and then we are like migrant workers working in Shanghai. At first, I was poor, so I moved bricks, and then I washed dishes. After washing dishes, I became a chef, and then I opened a restaurant.

Our process is like this, it doesn't mean that what I did before has nothing to do with it now. Even after I opened a restaurant one day, I would wash dishes and be a chef as soon as I turned around, and the whole thing would be strung together.

So if you look at our team today, it looks like a new company, but you see that they are all old people and have been starting businesses for many years.

Li Zhigang: What's your future dream?

Huang Zheng: Our team may be 20 years behind Ali's team. I think we may have the opportunity to make a different Ali under the new traffic distribution form, the new user interaction form and the new internationalization.

Of course, this sentence may be a bit too big at present, but it is not impossible to go step by step.

I'm not just a dream, I've also analyzed it, that is, it's the first time you go to see it, that is to say, the whole e-commerce market is actually undergoing great changes. The form of Ali's success today may not necessarily be the form of success tomorrow, but the demand of people still exists and will be further enlarged, so the potential market is great.

Second, the older generation is always old, and the younger generation or those of us who are gradually entering middle age will always come to that step, not me, but other peers, so what I have to do is to say that I have a normal heart, do what I should do in a down-to-earth manner, and strive to be the most reliable one among my peers.

Fourth, the relationship between entrepreneurship and investment.

1. Venture and other investments

I understand Buffett's saying that buying stocks is a part of buying a company, and we should have a long-term mentality to find good business and good partners.

On the other hand, choose a good "partner". When investing, we should regard the founder and CEO as our future partners, and whether we are willing to do something with them for a long time.

If the personality or culture of the founder and CEO makes you uncomfortable with long-term cooperation, it is best not to buy it on the first day.

This is the same as starting a business. If you feel that a person is not suitable for the team for a long time, but only has temporary use, such colleagues will often make you regret it. If this unsuitable person is a partner, it is not just a pity, but a regret.

Buffett mentioned in many places that Charles Munger (Charles Munger) made his ape become a human, and it was Charles Munger who made Buffett realize that he should buy a good company at a reasonable price instead of spending time picking up cigarette butts (a cheap company with some surplus value, but often not so good).

This is easier to achieve in entrepreneurship. If a business is particularly easy to do, it doesn't need to pay a lot of money, and it is often not a good business that brings a lot of cash flow for a long time.

Good decisions are often difficult and require a painful price.

A good company should try to solve/overcome those correct and difficult problems, instead of picking up a lot of sesame seeds everywhere (the mentality of picking up sesame seeds everywhere is often not even able to pick up sesame seeds, which is completely different from accumulating a small victory for a big victory).

Another price-related investment point is to see whether the loss-making transaction can be tolerated as a whole.

This will be more specific from the perspective of entrepreneurship, that is, when you invest in a business, you have to see if you will kill yourself. Living is the first priority of starting a business.

At the same time, it is often evaluated from another angle, that is, whether you can win or not and whether you have enough strength to invest in winning.

2. Entrepreneurship such as investment

In other words, it takes a lot of time to study what is right, and then think about how to do it. Walking in the right direction step by step is far better than running in the wrong direction.

Buffett said that he has met many ordinary people, made a lot of money in the financial industry, and seen many very smart and excellent people struggling in bad industries.

On the road to starting a business, it is often like investing, and choice is more important than hard work. Even if we move forward slowly on the right path, it will return 20% compound interest every year for 20 consecutive years, which is much higher than the increase of 100% this year and the decrease of 50% next year.

In a conversation with MBA students, Buffett and Bill Gates asked the students in the audience a question to the effect that if you regarded each of your classmates as a company, and then you had to invest all your money in one "him", accounting for 5%, which one would you choose?

Often you won't choose the smartest or the most capable, but often you will choose the most reliable.

This metaphor is especially suitable for choosing the partners of a joint venture. Many times, what we want is a trustworthy long-term partner, not a person who seems to be very capable but never knows if he will stab you in the back.

Buffett often mentions a concept when talking about investment targets: the moat of business.

If all kinds of decisions in the process of starting a business are regarded as investment decisions, then we should distinguish what we get with time and money, which are assets and which are expenses. Those that are conducive to deepening the commercial moat over time are often "assets", and those that are more unfavorable to themselves over time can be regarded as expenses.

In the purchase of assets, the wrong waste is actually not very good, at most it is expensive.

However, the waste of expenses is very hateful and often has a negative impact. In the process of starting a business, there is a special asset that is unified in a certain culture, and another kind of expense is used to buy labor or skills.

The distinction and transformation between the two is very interesting, and it is also a very high ROI (return on investment).

If expenses become value-added assets, it is estimated that our CFO and investors will laugh themselves to sleep. But interestingly, many times when investing, the distinction between such major differences is often hasty and the weight is far from enough.

5. How to face the epidemic?

1. When is the evening?

In February 2020, coronavirus pneumonia-19, as a new word, became a household name all over the world, subverting our daily life.

When I write this letter (April 2020), half the people in the world are still living in their own homes, waiting helplessly for the little virus that caused the global crisis to disappear as soon as possible.

At the beginning of waiting, we are eager for life to get back on track; The longer we wait, the more we forget the time.

What era are we in today? What is the time?

For mankind, this is a crisis moment, full of rumors and chaos, and people are divided and even confronted because of different ideas and viewpoints.

This is a once-in-a-century special moment, but it may be just an ordinary moment in the long river of history.

Viruses are dangerous "messengers" sent by nature to human beings. Out of survival instinct, we try our best to mobilize our body energy to fight against it. The by-product of this confrontation is self-injury or even death.

Soon, fierce fighting spread from a single organism to the whole social organism. Companies, governments and countries of different sizes and types are fighting this threat in their own ways, and their by-products will inevitably hurt themselves.

All this just comes from an almost invisible virus, which can't be replicated without a host. A little "messenger" with a little information and no energy.

This is in sharp contrast to the threat of atomic energy that we have been worried about for decades. A dark cloud that can rise with great energy and a "messenger" that has almost no energy of its own, who will do greater and more lasting harm to mankind?

It's really like a dream ... is it inspired by nature? Teaching? Or punishment for us, or redemption? Maybe it's just a little joke between nature and human beings?

2. At the time of freshman

When Einstein wrote his famous equation E=MC2, he described the material world in his mind gracefully (in a sense, it can also be said to be arrogant).

But he did not explain the relationship between the spiritual world describing the material world and the objective material world, nor did he explain the relationship between energy and information.

Today, the whole world is in a normal abnormal state. Hundreds of millions of people are forced to stay at home and be separated from their relatives and friends. However, we are also linked by some kind of spirit and emotion. This relationship also affects the material world we can perceive.

The boundary between the virtual world and the physical world is blurred as never before, and we are beginning to see (not just imagine) that a new world is coming.

Or, more accurately, a brand-new human world is coming.

In this new world, the word "virtual reality" is out of date. Reality and virtuality can be transformed into each other, and reality becomes illusory, but illusion is a kind of reality. Similarly, the boundary between human material and spiritual needs has become increasingly blurred.

When this tiny virus entered the human world, it acted as a catalyst in the test tube and accelerated the formation of a new world.

Some dimensions of the past world are being rebuilt and some rules are being rewritten. This unstoppable force will fundamentally and permanently change the world we live in.

As I said in my previous two letters explaining "The Birth of Pinduoduo" to shareholders, new species will be bred and grown in a completely different way in the new soil. Now, it is time for the world to sprout and rebuild.

Feel the time

① the direction of time

Humans have been trying to understand and control the world with the logic and principles we have mastered.

We did succeed in many things, such as science. In the scientific world, we try to separate from the objective material world, observe and understand objectively from the perspective of transcendental God, and define this objective material world through finite equations.

Under this framework, time becomes a reversible parameter in the equation -t = (-) t, which is just a parameter in the equation describing the motion of an object according to a predetermined trajectory.

However, when a tiny virus awakens us from our dreams, we find that human beings are not above the world, but only a negligible part of the observed world.

The only thing we can do is to stop everything in our hands, wait for time to pass and feel the traces of time flowing.

We further realize that time may not be a reversible parameter in the equation, but an irreversible vector. It is a powerful and directional force that silently drives everything we see and feel.

No matter how stubbornly we yearn for symmetry and eternity, time is always creating all kinds of asymmetry, irreversibility and death in the world.

The first law of thermodynamics (U = Q-W) gives us a certain sense of control and certainty, while the second law of thermodynamics (S >；); = 0) also let us humbly realize that there is another existence outside the material world composed of force and mass.

Entropy is related to information. I'm not sure whether entropy is connected with the spiritual world, but it does help me feel and understand time.

Time should not only be a reversible variable in the physical world, or an isolated imagination in the spirit. Silent and endless time is more like a powerful driving force behind the appearance of the material and spiritual world.

② Time, crowd and uncertainty

When Newton first revealed F = M(dV/dT), he gave us an illusion that we could control the world, or at least gave us some knowledge and hints that we could control power.

We don't worry anymore, because every object can calculate its trajectory through its position, mass, speed and acting force.

We assume that all the past history of each object has been completely contained by its current state, and each object is independent.

Under this assumption, a large number of interactions between a large number of objects will become more and more complicated and chaotic with the passage of time, and will also be uncertain and random.

The arrow of time seems to create confusion and uncertainty. The so-called probability is an approximate statistical description of the trajectory set of deterministic objects under a large number of interactions.

However, when we are isolated at home and waiting in anxiety and uneasiness, we begin to doubt whether "the mutual independence of each object" is really a correct assumption when we try to understand and explain the world.

In our desire for certainty, we selectively accept simple assumptions, such as "independence between objects", to help us explain the complex world. Our desire is so strong that we begin to believe that this is the truth.

But what if probability and randomness are the natural properties of every object? What if a large number of objects are intertwined and interrelated in nature?

Just like our human society, no matter how independent each individual is, we define our existence in the real and virtual world through association.

Because of these internal relations between objects, it is no longer so effective to study isolated individuals by trying to shield the correlation between objects.

On the contrary, we see that with the passage of time, a large number of interactions between individuals have become a force that brings order and certainty to society and the world. We feel the power and magic of time again.

Step 4 seize the moment

When novel coronavirus swept the world, every living thing had to face the cruel challenge brought by nature. Relatively young people may have some luck and comfort.

This is not to say that we should profit from "danger" Any attempt to take advantage of others' danger or take advantage of loopholes to make profits for oneself is extremely stupid in the face of time, which is tantamount to an arrogant gambler trying to win time in a casino.

On the contrary, let us feel the impulse and motivation to work harder. This is because we understand and cherish precious youth more than ever before.

We are more and more aware of our responsibilities. We need to prove that our generation is advancing with the times and different from the past. In this new world, new species and creatures are bound to be born and thrive.

The vigorous development and trend of nature will not be changed by any individual's will. Understanding these laws of nature should not make us feel superior, let alone allow us to rule nature.

On the contrary, it enables us to modestly recognize and admit that we are just a drop in the ocean in the natural evolution of the world.

As a poet wrote: "I look back coldly, only to see that the joys and sorrows of its tortuous irrigation have disappeared into an eternal desert." Only then do I know that all my efforts have just completed an ordinary life. "

With this perspective, we are both extremely humble and calm, and extremely grateful for our precious youth and great responsibility.

Therefore, we will invest more firmly in the future and strive to build a new world before us. In this new world, our beautiful journey has just begun.