Half a life away, return is still 'teacher Ma'.
On September 10, 2019, the 36th teacher's day in China, Ma Yun's 55th birthday and Alibaba's 20th anniversary. Today is also the day when Ma Yun officially stepped down as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba group.
On August 28, Ma Yun once said: "I'm not chairman of Alibaba, but it doesn't mean I don't start a business, it doesn't mean I retire."
"Autumn is very turbid, a pot of wine, light a lamp and watch the sword, look back at the rise and fall of the sea of people, sail and sing with the years." Just like the lyrics of the song "the wind is clear" sung by Ma Yun and Faye Wong, it is also time for Ma Yun to start a new life journey when he sees that Ali with big hands can be alone.
Handover under partnership system
A year ago today, Ma Yun and Alibaba announced on their official microblog: with the approval of the board of directors, one year later, that is, on September 10, 2019, the 20th anniversary of Alibaba, Ma Yun will no longer serve as the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba group, and Zhang Yong (xiaoyaozi), the current CEO of Alibaba group, will take over the post of chairman of the board of directors. After September 10, 2019, Ma Yun will continue to serve as a member of the board of directors of Alibaba group until Alibaba's annual general meeting in 2020.
Perhaps, as Alibaba has previously said, Ma Yun has long been free from Alibaba's trivial and micro issues, and has rarely provided Alibaba's business platform directly.
In fact, the current Ma Yun is more a spiritual symbol to Ali than he needs to worry about specific business. Because, as early as 2013, Ma Yun handed over the identity of Alibaba CEO to Lu Zhaoxi, and then in 2015, Zhang Yong took over from Lu Zhaoxi.
For Zhang Yong, Ma Yun is obviously relieved. Ma Yun spoke highly of Zhang Yong in his open letter: because of his strategic pattern and his role in organizational culture inheritance, Alibaba's torch relay to him and his team is the most correct decision reflected in Ma Yun's partnership with Alibaba.
Resume of Zhang Yong:
Source: Alibaba official website
He joined Alibaba in August 2007 and served as CFO of Taobao from June 2011.
From August 2008 to June 2011, Zhang Yong concurrently served as general manager of tmall. After tmall became an independent platform in June 2011, Zhang Yong became president of tmall.
From September 2013 to may 2015, Zhang Yong served as the chief operating officer of Alibaba group.
In May 2015, Zhang Yong served as CEO of Alibaba group and a director since September 2014. He is also a member of ant Financial Investment Committee.
Before joining Alibaba, Zhang Yong served as CFO of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Co., Ltd., an online game developer and operator listed on Nasdaq Stock Exchange from September 2005 to August 2007. From 2002 to 2005, Zhang Yong served as senior manager of audit and Enterprise Consulting Department of PWC Shanghai.
Zhang Yong is currently the chairman of the board of directors of Gaoxin retail, a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, and the director of microblog, a company listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.
Zhang Yong holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Shanghai University of Finance and economics.
Without holding a press conference, just a simple open letter, Ma entrusted Alibaba's future to 'others'. This seemingly 'understatement' handover took Alibaba ten years.
In 2009, Alibaba established the partnership system when it was only 10 years old.
In Ma Yun's view, the partner system is not a simple personnel system, but a set of decision-making, talent and governance arrangements to maintain Alibaba's ecological health. For this reason, Alibaba has high requirements for partners -- 'having worked in Alibaba for more than five years, having excellent leadership ability, highly recognizing the company's culture, making positive contributions to the company's development, and willing to make every effort to inherit the company's culture and mission'.
Today, Alibaba has 38 partners, including Jiang Fan, the current president of Taobao, and even a 'post-85'.
In fact, after entering the partnership era, Alibaba has completed many handover and accumulated experience: Lu Zhaoxi took over as CEO of Alibaba Group in 2013; In 2015, Zhang Yong took over as CEO; In 2016, Jing Xiandong took over as CEO of ant financial services and took over as chairman one and a half years later. Not only Alibaba and ant, but also rookies, Alibaba cloud and other sectors have completed at least one management handover.
For bigger enterprises, finding successors is a worldwide problem. Whether many top companies can find suitable successors and complete a smooth transition is also a matter of luck. Ma Yun once said that the last mistake he wanted to make was' I retired and the company went bankrupt '. Talent reserve has become a must in the long-term battle of large enterprises.
Last year, Alibaba insiders told the daily economic news (wechat: nbdnews) reporter that in Alibaba, the handover not only appears at the CEO level, but also at the M4 (director) level, the company will require it to find and cultivate successors for its own posts. If this is not done well, even if the daily performance is very good, the year-end performance will be greatly reduced. For this reason, in Alibaba, the successful shift handover is not accidental, but normal.
Image source: video screenshot
Ma Yun's top 10 moments
1、 1984: accidentally admitted to undergraduate
In 1984, this was Ma Yun's third time to take the college entrance examination.
This year, Ma Yun's math score soared from 1 point three years ago to 79 points, but the total separation undergraduate line is still 5 points short, so he can only go to the junior college of Hangzhou Normal University.
However, the God of fate favored him. This year, Hangzhou Normal University didn't recruit enough English majors. The school decided to reduce the score and admit several students with good English. Therefore, Ma Yun went to the undergraduate major with college grades.
After graduation, Ma Yun was assigned to Hangzhou Institute of electronic technology as a teacher. From then on, the title of 'teacher Ma' will accompany him all his life.
2、 1995: meet the Internet
At this time, Ma Yun has started his first business - the establishment of Hangzhou Haibo translation agency.
In 1995, Ma Yun had an opportunity to go to the United States. In Seattle, Ma Yun touched the Internet for the first time in the company of a local friend.
Ma Yun's narration in the "people" column of CCTV in the future, the scene at that time was as follows:
Ma carefully entered four letters in Yahoo's search bar: beer. The search results came out, and Ma Yun saw beer all over the world. But not China. He entered 'Chinese beer', but returned 'NoData' (no data).
After returning home, Ma Yun quit his job of "iron rice bowl" and founded China yellow page, one of the earliest Chinese websites on the Internet.
3、 1999: '18 Rohan conference'
On the fifth day of the lunar new year in 1999, 18 people filled a room in Hangzhou Lakeside Garden community,
This was the first full meeting of Alibaba. Ma spoke enthusiastically for two hours and specially invited a photographer to record the whole process.
This is the legendary '18 arhat conference', which is one of the most famous scenes in the history of China's Internet development.
Although Ma Yun danced and danced, everyone who listened to him looked solemn. According to the memories of the people present, I can't understand what he said anyway, but I'm sorry to interrupt him because he spoke so passionately.
At first, Alibaba could not even pay its employees 500 yuan a month, and the company was about to go bankrupt. However, with CAI Chongxin's efforts, Ali received investment from large institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Softbank, totaling $25 million.
4、 2003: mysterious' Taobao '
In the global Internet bubble, Ali survived. In April 2003, Ye Feng, a little girl who had been employed for less than a year, was suddenly called to Ma Yun's office.
Ye Feng came in and looked. Ma Yun, Cai Chongxin, Guan Mingsheng, Peng Lei and other big men were all there. They were shocked.
Ma Yun said to her: now you have a secret task. You need to leave the company and do it in another place. You can't tell anyone about it, even your parents, family and boyfriend. Would you like to?
They moved out of the office area and returned to Alibaba's entrepreneurial Holy Land: lakeside garden. Began to do the secret task day and night.
On May 10, the project was successfully launched. Ye Feng named it 'Taobao'.
Five and 2003: Alipay
In October 2003, Taobao launched its Alipay service for the first time. In second years, Alipay broke up its independence from Taobao. In the following decade, Alipay gradually launched a series of financial services, such as mobile phone payment business, credit card fast payment business, balance added service, balance treasure, sesame credit and ant flower chant. Today, ant financial has become the world's largest Unicorn company.
However, Alipay's development is not a smooth road. In 2014, during the Spring Festival of the horse, WeChat launched a red envelope payment and completed more than 100000000 card cards overnight. It has made a fortune in the third party payment contest, which has fallen behind Alipay. At that time, on January 29, 2014, Ma Yun left a message on his current account:
Almost overnight, all circles agreed that Alipay's system would be completely surpassed by WeChat's red envelope. How well the experience and product & hellip& hellip; That's great! The plan and execution of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor were perfect. Fortunately, the Spring Festival passed quickly, and the days ahead are still long, but it really taught us a profound lesson.
6、 2005: Yahoo 'help'
Two years after its establishment, Taobao has reached the abyss.
This time, it was Yang Zhiyuan, a friend Ma Yun met in Beijing in 1997 and co-founder of Yahoo.
In 1997, Yang Zhiyuan returned to China. At that time, Ma Yun, who was still doing translation work, was assigned to accompany Yang Zhiyuan to visit the Great Wall. Many years later, Yang Zhiyuan began to hear about Alibaba and found that Ma Yun of Alibaba was the same person as the tour guide of that year.
In 2005, Yang Zhiyuan made an amazing decision: exchange $1 billion, plus all Yahoo China assets, for a 40% stake in Alibaba.
So far, this investment is still known as the most profitable investment in the history of Silicon Valley. Talking about Yang Zhiyuan's achievements, many people will say: first, create Yahoo; Second, invest in Ali.
7、 2009: Double 11. In August 2007, Zhang Yong came to Taobao as CFO from the game company at that time. But what he did went far beyond finance. In 2009, Zhang Yong took over a project called 'Taobao Mall'. At that time, it was just an accessory of Taobao. There were no businesses stationed and no consumers cared. Later, Zhang Yong discussed with the team to hold a big promotion in the second half of the year, so there was double 11 singles day. The double 11 created by Zhang Yong has become a miracle in the history of the development of the world Internet. 8、 2013: landed in US stocks. In 2013, Alibaba started the listing process again (previously, Alibaba B2B had withdrawn from the Hong Kong stock market in 2012). Since the Hong Kong stock market at that time did not recognize "different rights of the same share", Ali chose to go to New York for listing. Moreover, this listing is no longer a separate B2B business, but the whole group. On September 20, 2014, Alibaba was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. On the same day, Ali's share price soared by 38.07%, making Ma Yun the richest man in China