The inspirational story of Cheng Binghao, the founder of Kaixin.com.

The inspirational story of Cheng Binghao, the founder of Kaixin.com.

Cheng Binghao, the founder of Kaixin.com, was born in a peasant family in Mentougou District, Beijing. He is lean, simple and low-key. In order to satisfy my parents' wish of "having an urban hukou", I gave up the opportunity to go to college and became a secondary school student. Later, I fell madly in love with programming. In February 2008, after leaving the position of CTO of Sina, Kaixin.com was founded. Now Kaixin.com is one of the most popular websites in China. Let's take a look at the inspirational story of Kaixin.com founder Cheng Binghao.

In the summer of 20 1 1, a reporter finally met Cheng Binghao.

This is a founder who disappeared for a whole year. He is like a Frankenstein coming out of a cave, and he needs to pause for dozens of seconds to answer a question. He looked at the empty ceiling as if he were thinking seriously, but his expression was like a pupil who was drawn by a teacher to answer questions for no reason.

Once brilliant, the scenery is no longer. Kaixin.com achieved 500% user growth in 2009, but in the past year, the user churn rate was as high as 65%.

The latest news is that it is rumored that Kaixin.com will be sold to rival Sina or Tencent. Cheng Binghao sat in front of us, refusing to confirm or falsify the news, just like an ordinary person who didn't want to admit defeat and couldn't prove his success.

A hero died at a crossroads. What's he thinking?

I can't make mistakes.

Cheng Binghao walked into the conference room with a Nestle coffee cup, which is no longer a rumored nectar glass jar. He is very thin, and his T-shirt is stuck in his pants, which always makes people feel that his clothes are one yard too big. His face was haggard and his eyes were sunken. When he smiled, the wrinkles around his mouth were crowded together.

It's really slow for Cheng Binghao to lean forward, cross his arms and lock his brow into a Sichuan character. If there is a mistake, it is that we are slow. From the beginning, team building was slow, commercialization was slow and the pace of opening up was slow.

At this time, Alexa's data shows that the number of users in Weibo has increased by 100%, which corresponds to the sudden drop of traffic in Xin Kai.

Mistakes, this is the problem that Cheng Binghao finally made up his mind to face. Since its establishment at the end of 2007, Kaixin.com has been focusing on SNS business and has been positioned as a technology company. After the second round of financing was completed in the second half of 2009, a financial officer was recruited at the suggestion of Sina, and the previous accounting business was outsourced to an accounting company. In other words, from the perspective of a complete corporate structure, Kaixin.com only began to consider corporate governance at that time.

In the second half of 2009, there were only 65,438+000 people in Kaixin.com, and there was no professional sales team and advertising team. In 2065,438+065,438+0, the company expanded to more than 600 people, which took less than two years. More precisely, Cheng Binghao even started to play the role of CEO a year ago, and before that, he just led the technical team to practice hard on products and technologies.

Cheng Binghao is a founder full of technical labels.

199 1 year, after graduating from technical secondary school of Beijing Nuclear Industry School, Cheng Binghao entered China Institute of Atomic Energy, and was directly assigned to the technical department because of his interest in computers. 1At the end of 998, Cheng Binghao joined Sina and has been the CTO of Sina.com since he was a senior engineer.

Within a few hours of the interview, the words technology and user experience run through. Every time he mentions marketing and marketing, he will replace it with technical content and user experience.

Compared with Renren.com CEO Chen Yizhou, Cheng Binghao is obviously a bit dull. Chen Yizhou followed Facebook's opening strategy in 2007 and proposed opening in 2008. As for the application, Chen Yizhou played Allegro and quickly launched it for the market to verify. Once it is unpopular, it will be closed immediately.

Cheng Binghao's thinking logic is in the opposite direction: no mistakes. You can't make mistakes in writing programs, so you can't make mistakes in making decisions. In 2009, following Renren.com, 5 1.com and Juyou.com also opened their platforms to attract developers. Cheng Binghao said that I hadn't thought about opening up at that time. It was not until this year that Xinkai began to open on a large scale. At this time, Internet companies from Sina to Baidu and Tencent opened in one fell swoop, which undoubtedly pushed Xin Kai into an embattled situation.

You asked me to go back and say whether I would think about it for that long. I said I would do it again, because I would be more cautious when it comes to the user experience. (Inspirational life) Cheng Binghao thought deeply for a long time. As a programmer, he undoubtedly penetrated the thinking that he can't make mistakes completely, but under the great rivers and lakes of China Internet, Cheng Binghao's thinking and playing style seem out of place.

Breakthrough self

It's time to change. Over the past year, Cheng Binghao has hardly faced the media, which is also the most serious period when Xin Kai was questioned by the outside world.

Are you anxious now? Hearing this question, Cheng Binghao was silent. He looked up and sighed. The air has solidified and the situation is embarrassing. Have you been pressured by the external environment, the rapid development of Weibo and the endless stream of SNS games? I keep asking.

There are endless innovations in the Internet, and any product will be diverted by new products. Xin Kai moved other people's things, and will be moved by others today. This is not a sprint, but a marathon. Cheng Binghao said, we won't say what others have done, but we will do something targeted. He finished in one breath and leaned back as if he had finished his defense.

Cheng Binghao is unwilling to face the problem directly, and the pressure of survival is imminent.

This year, Cheng Binghao stopped tackling key problems technically, but actively ran, which made recruiting management talents a headache. Fortunately, Xin Kai. There is still no despair. None of the brothers who followed Cheng Binghao through thick and thin have left. To tell the truth, this is the real ammunition that Cheng Binghao wants to pull back a city.

If all goes well, Cheng Binghao wants to change himself, more want to change Xin Kai, and want to make a breakthrough and complete the transformation of the Internet from entertainment to practicality.

He seems to be naturally resistant to talking about business topics and unwilling to talk about transformation. Do the media like to use the word strategic transformation now? He asked me, putting his face on his hand. Just a few days before the interview, some media said that Kaixin.com had been transformed, which he thought was a misunderstanding.

In Cheng Binghao's view, Kaixin.com is an SNS platform. Trying any feasible Internet model on the platform is a logical progression, an extension of business, not a transformation. We have separated from the original SNS, but no one actually defines what SNS is. If we make an innovative SNS business model, believe it or not, it will become the standard and other SNS will follow suit. Speaking of excitement, he tapped his finger on the desktop.

It is an undeniable fact that Kaixin.com has indeed adjusted its business model and business focus several times in the past year, but there is no sign of success. At the beginning of 20 10, Kaixin.com opened the group buying business. 20 1 1 April, 2008, layoffs due to business problems. From 20110, the group purchase business was outsourced to Group F. It can be said that Kaixin.com gave up the group purchase business.

Anyway, Cheng Binghao must try again.

Li, a former colleague of Cheng Binghao at Sina and a partner of Defeng Capital, commented that Cheng Binghao is such a person that it is difficult for people to give up. He really looks like a technician.

Cheng Binghao may put the final redemption on e-commerce. According to outside comments, the social business application that took half a year to develop is the focus of Kaixin.com in the next stage.

From the second half of 2009, Cheng Binghao had the idea of grafting e-commerce on SNS. Because more than 30% of UGC content in Kaixin.com is about commercial consumption. To this end, he also visited Alibaba and had in-depth communication with Ma Yun in Beijing. At that stage, Li Shubin, CEO of Haolemai, who was also born in Sina, also gave him a lot of advice. Until the middle of 20 10, Cheng Binghao visited most domestic e-commerce websites, and the feedback he got also verified his previous judgment.

Cheng Canbing's planned social commerce is sticky, awakening silent users? For this, in the four-hour interview, Cheng Binghao did not give a clear answer, which made the discussion of the model somewhat superficial. What he mentioned most were those works that constantly innovated and gave people a better user experience.

The state of this company is as stiff as the founder's answer. It's there, but it can't go forward or backward. Looking back now, the word listing has been very far away for Xin Kai. 20 10 in July, Kaixin.com planned to go public in the United States, but it was blocked. Now, Cheng Binghao shook his head and said, Is that important? It doesn't matter.

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