Top of the Great Era

Chapter 3059 Setting an Example

That morning, Zhou Buqi made an appointment with the two Ma bosses from Alibaba and Penguin and sat down to have a chat.

The topic first revolved around Alibaba's upcoming IPO.

Everyone went to express congratulations.

Alibaba is now incredible. The current explosion of the domestic e-commerce market has greatly increased Alibaba's revenue and future potential. There are even many people in the market who believe that once Alibaba goes public... then Alibaba is likely to surpass Ziweixing and become the company with the highest market value in the country.

Alibaba's industry status and leading role are far beyond the reach of companies like Ziweixing, Baidu, and Penguin.

It’s not the size of the company, nor the influence of the entrepreneur.

It serves as a demonstration.

There are many directions for success for these large domestic Internet companies, but the models are similar, that is, traffic first and products second.

If an Internet company does not have traffic channels, it will often be eliminated by the market even if it has excellent products.

The most typical traffic channels are, of course, search and social.

Take QQ for example.

Penguin has dozens or even hundreds of products, all of which have achieved very good results. However, in the early years, the company was in a muddle, and only made a chat software, but had no idea what the chat software was used for or how to make money.

Even the founding team didn’t understand it. They just made this product by “luck” and tapped into the secret of traffic.

After gaining the traffic advantage of QQ, Penguin's development became more and more prosperous and unstoppable.

Baidu is similar. Relying on the powerful traffic of its search business, it quickly established a complete Baidu product ecosystem and became another powerful Internet giant in China.

Even Ziwei Star is the same.

The real way for Ziweixing to break out of the circle is not through Xiaonei.com or Pengyou.com, but through Weidian Security Guard.

Weidian Security Guard does not make money, but its real significance is that it can quickly enter thousands of households across the country with security as the entry point. Then, relying on Weidian Security Guard as a breakthrough, it opened up the traffic of thousands of households, which led to the subsequent explosion of a series of products.

The road to success for first-tier Internet companies including Sohu, NetEase, YY, and iQiyi all uses traffic as the entry point. They first gain traffic and then rely on it to make products.

This has become the "template" for the domestic Internet.

  It seems that if you want to make an Internet product, you must first have traffic!

If a product has no traffic, no matter how well you do, you will not be successful.

Many entrepreneurs have died here. They developed a very good product, but they had no traffic. Then they found that the industry giants had copied their products and made the copycat products successful by relying on the strong traffic.

This can be discouraging for many people.

It feels like the road to entrepreneurship is blocked.

Because there are only so many "traffic entrances" on the Internet, and now they are basically divided up by the three major entrances of Baidu, Ziweixing, and Penguin. If other companies lose their traffic entrances, doesn't it mean that they will never be able to turn around?

Young entrepreneurs will all be indignant and hate monopolies.

Some more "mature" entrepreneurs chose to compromise and bow to the giants, either joining Baidu, relying on Penguin, or getting strategic investment from Ziweixing.

But there is one company that is different.

That's Alibaba.

Alibaba did not start out relying on traffic, but on products.

Other companies first have traffic. They first do some random things to get traffic, just like Weidian Security Guard, YY Voice, and shared bikes. They don’t have to make money, but they must get traffic.

Once we have the traffic, we can talk about the subsequent commercial development and the normal operation in the future.

No traffic, nothing to talk about!

Only Alibaba is different. Alibaba makes products and wins by products... Over the past few years, Alibaba has always been facing a strategic crisis, which is the lack of traffic sources, so it has to cooperate with many large companies with traffic.

After the product is completed, find ways to attract more external traffic through the product.

Different from the strategic structure of other giants, Alibaba's business line is built on products and starts from products. Other companies are different, they are built on traffic and start from traffic.

Which method is better? From the perspective of success rate, of course, it is better to start from the perspective of traffic.

However, for many small companies and entrepreneurial teams, they do not have traffic. If they do not want to succumb to the giants, Alibaba is a more representative example. Alibaba started with its products, successfully broke through the traffic bottleneck, and became a world-class enterprise. This will form a kind of demonstration and role model for many small companies and entrepreneurial teams.

It can be said that Alibaba’s success is a new trend in the domestic Internet industry.

For Alibaba, which follows the product route, the road to success is much more difficult than for those Internet companies that follow the traffic route. It has encountered far more crises, setbacks, hidden dangers and pains than other Internet companies such as Ziweixing, Baidu, and Penguin.

How can we encourage Alibaba employees to persevere in the face of huge difficulties? This requires encouragement of values, ideals, beliefs, struggle, and blessings, and the creation of a value system for Alibaba employees with a sense of superiority.

Just like JD.com must resist outsourcing and must stick to the value of "brotherhood".

JD.com also has a product route.

Without a firm and cohesive value belief to support it, it would be impossible to continue. Resisting outsourcing is not only Liu Qiangdong’s choice, but also the only way for JD.com to succeed. Once he gives up the “brotherhood”, JD.com’s crisis may follow.

Most of the technology giants in Silicon Valley started out with product lines, so the slogans they shout are all about ideals and the future, and about changing the world.

From this perspective, Boss Ma may also be more popular abroad.

His business philosophy is more widely accepted in Europe and the United States.

Zhou Buqi asked Mr. Ma, since your corporate philosophy is idealistic, why does Alibaba still hire so many outsourced employees? How should this be understood? Since Alibaba is moving closer to Silicon Valley giants, why doesn't Alibaba refuse outsourcing like Silicon Valley technology companies?

Boss Ma said: "This has to do with national conditions."

Zhou Buqi was immediately amused by him.

Boss Ma said: "Our economy has developed too fast. Those big companies in Silicon Valley have developed for many years. Although Alibaba was founded very early, it was more about accumulation in the early years. The real explosive success has only been in the past five or six years. Our development time is too short. We have achieved the development achievements that Silicon Valley giants took many years to complete in a very short time, so we must take some temporary measures."

"Temporary?"

Zhou Buqi understood what he meant.

Boss Ma said, "Yes, it is a temporary measure. In our corporate management, a very important principle is to hire slowly and lay off quickly. Lay offs must be fast. Once a decision is made, it must be executed quickly. The sooner the better. Delays will lead to changes. Hiring should be slow and there must be full and comprehensive considerations to avoid hiring the wrong person."

Zhou Buqi nodded and said, "Well, hiring the wrong person is more serious than not hiring anyone at all."

Boss Ma smiled and said, "That's right, so recruitment should be slow. Big American companies like Google and Amazon can start recruiting from the very beginning, and they recruit globally. They have been doing this for many years, and an excellent talent system has long been established. It is enough to just patch up the system every year. This is not possible in China. First, the growth is too fast. The business growth rate is much faster than the recruitment rate."

After a pause, Boss Ma continued, "There was also a shortage of talent in China in the past few years, and some of the talent was employed by foreign companies, which made Internet companies like us lack a systematic talent system. In recent years, the domestic Internet industry has been recognized, and more and more high-level talents have recognized us. Compared with Silicon Valley giants, we are at least ten years behind in talent development, but we have kept pace in business development."

"It really is."

Zhou Buqi learned a new perspective.

From Xiang Shuwen to He Yang, then Meng Houkun, Guo Pengfei, Li Yanhong, to the current Boss Ma, everyone has a different perspective. Boss Ma's perspective is obviously much higher than Boss Li's.

Boss Ma said: "Since the company's human resource structure is not yet perfect, we can only rely on human resource leasing to solve some of the employment needs. However, I believe this is only a stopgap measure."

"expedient?"

Zhou Buqi laughed, he didn't believe it at all.

Boss Ma said: "As long as we are given enough time to slowly recruit the people we need, I believe the model of human resource leasing will disappear in the future. At least it should not exist in Alibaba."

Zhou Buqi snorted, "Once the hole is opened, it will be difficult to close it! It's easy for you to say now, but it may not be possible in the future. When the dam bursts, if you can't plug it in the first place, then forget about plugging it in the future."

"Hmm?" Boss Ma was very curious. "You want to close it? You want to solve this problem of outsourcing manpower?"

Zhou Buqi said: "That's what I mean!"

"Okay, go ahead and do it." Boss Ma was very happy. "If you do it well, I will learn from you. Well, you should do this! You are already in this position, so you should do things that match your position. You should stand out and set an example for our domestic counterparts! And let those foreigners see that domestic Internet companies are not all sweatshops."

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "You still know it's a sweatshop?"

Boss Ma sighed, "Don't be so easy-going. Every family has its own problems."