I finally got through it. Finally, I can say goodbye to P2P completely and say goodbye.

This robbery, the "Digging for Wealth" team hit more than 3 people from more than 1,4 people, and fell to the bottom.

since I left Zhengzhou in 1999 and went to Alibaba, I have been in business for more than 2 years, which is the deepest and heaviest robbery I have ever experienced.

P2P, a once-popular entrepreneurial track, began to evolve into entrepreneurial purgatory at the end of 217. A large number of corporate capital chains are broken, and investors are wiped out.

P2P, a business model that was once strongly encouraged, reached the last moment when it was completely denied and liquidated.

The whole industry was born without an "ID card", but now it is "across the board". There is no exception in Zhejiang, and all of them have been retired.

some companies have been thundered, the boss has run away and the enterprise has closed down; Some companies have been put on file, and people inside and outside the company are worried.

we always put the interests of investors first.

on June 8th, Digging for Wealth completed the P2P business clearance ahead of schedule, and the loan principal and interest have been returned to the lender's account.

at this point, I can say that we are finally out of the dark valley of entrepreneurship.

You can sit down to catch your breath and look up at the sky.

You can also meet and chat with old friends. Your manager Lin asked me to sit down and talk, and sort out the experiences, stories and lessons of starting a business for 2 years.

let's start with the day we joined Alibaba.

In 1999, I saw an exclusive interview with Ma Yun in China Business News, and I felt a sense of intimacy in my heart.

At this time, Ali didn't look so tall. Ma Yun just wanted to make Alibaba an online market, where anyone in need could come to open a shop and do business.

On a whim, I wrote a long letter of 1, words to Ali Customer Service, talking about my thoughts on foreign trade e-commerce and making many suggestions. What a newborn calf is not afraid of tigers.

Before that, I was in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, with a like-minded fellow villager. He wrote codes and I made webpages. With the investment of a female boss, I set up a B2B website "China Trade Port", which is a bit like Alibaba in trade.

not long after I sent the letter to Alibaba, I received a reply from Jiang Fang (now Ali's partner). The letter was very long, and she answered every suggestion I made. I was surprised and moved.

goodwill immediately turned into action. I clicked on the job advertisement on Alibaba's homepage. Jump out a sentence:

"If not you, who?

If not now, when?”

(at this moment, it must be you)

It hit me in the heart.

in October 1999, at the age of 22, I took a green leather train for a day and a night, carrying a huge green canvas travel bag, and arrived in Hangzhou.

I got off the train station, and it was drizzling. Raindrops are falling on my face, which is a little cold. There is a damp smell of earth in the air, mixed with the fragrance of vegetation.

I got on the No.11 double-decker bus and found a window seat. The farther west the car goes, the fewer tall buildings there are on both sides of the road. I got off at the Gudun intersection of Wenyi West Road and came to the gate of a community.

Four golden characters "Lakeside Garden" jumped into my eyes. Standing at the gate of the community and looking in, I saw exquisite small buildings hidden in the dense shade.

The position I applied for is website planning, and I have no idea. I want to have a try, but I can't try editing again. In short, I want to join this company.

I was interviewed by three people: Sun Tongyu (later the president of Taobao) who asked questions with a notebook, Lei Wenchao, who was fluent in English when she came up, and Peng Lei, who was so kind that she had no sense of distance.

Peng Lei asked me, will you regret coming to Alibaba like this later? I don't know what she means.

She said that many people are afraid to come when they hear that the company is located in a residential area. Girls come to the interview with boyfriends.

I said, "It's very upscale. This is the most beautiful community I have ever seen." Later, qianjiang evening news interviewed Peng Lei and wrote an article called "This Tuba Road is right".

Oh, there was another person who was particularly impressed. When I was waiting in the living room on the first floor, I passed by many people, so Xie Shihuang came to say hello. He didn't treat me like an outsider at all, asking questions and asking questions. He was naturally familiar.

on December 16th, I officially became an employee of Alibaba, with the work number of 46. I am the first employee recruited by Ali from other provinces.

this is a very different company.

Push open the door, and you will see that everyone in the room is dressed casually, but everyone's face is staring at the computer screen and very focused.

go to work at 9 am. At six o'clock in the evening, everyone will have dinner together and then continue to work, and work overtime until eleven or twelve in the evening. No one complained.

every night, I stay in front of the computer, burying myself in work or learning things by myself. The atmosphere here makes people have endless energy and want to fight.

In the evening, everyone ate around a big round table, talking and laughing. Let's play a killing game after dinner. On weekdays, the community is empty, leaving Ali and his gang.

I'm rather introverted. I feel like dreaming when I watch a group of colleagues who are working so hard and can play speculative games together after dinner.

the tennis court, table tennis table and chessboard are all ours. I can play table tennis, and many of my colleagues get acquainted on the table.

the days in the lakeside garden are really fantastic. Thirty or fifty people devote themselves to a common cause and a common dream. This is the ultimate state of entrepreneurship, and I think so now.

at the beginning, I was responsible for the planning and design of the website, and my job responsibilities were like those of the current product manager. I used to do it myself, and the ideas in my mind were all drawn at will, scribbled on paper and gestured to communicate with technicians. After arriving in Ali, it won't work.

We have a female engineer who has passed the Microsoft certification, and my needs basically meet her. Every time I ask for a demand, I am scolded and asked to revise it according to the format. Too many times, I am afraid to go to her, and the thought of making demands makes my scalp tingle.

But I had to go. I had to overcome it by myself. I learned from other people's previous documents, revised them over and over again, and later bought a copy of Software Requirements for self-study. I am very grateful to this female engineer. Without her strict requirements, I would just stand still and not break through.

in 2, after the internet bubble burst, Ali began to ask for income.

"China suppliers" take the lead, and an enterprise charges 2,-3, yuan. I think this business can be more templated and lower the price at the same time.

So we set up a team. I am the product manager, and Wu Yongming is the technical director. I worked as a paid member, and later I named it "Chengxin Tong".

when "Chengxin tong" was first launched, we naively thought it would explode, but as a result, there were few orders a day. In the first month of launch, I earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I felt so happy that I could support the team.

I don't think from Ma Yun's point of view at all. Hundreds of people in the whole company are pointing to "China suppliers" and "Chengxin Tong" for profit, which is far from enough.

in 24, we began to try telemarketing, which was first used by Ali in Internet companies, and it was a trump card.

I'm impressed. The fax machine is like a money printing machine. Money orders rush out, one after another. Soon, the income of "Chengxin Tong" exceeded 1 million.

We have gone from fighting in the meeting room every day to going out and booking a hotel for a strategy meeting.

But my heart is getting tangled ...

One morning in April, 24, I had something on my mind, woke up early, turned on the computer as usual, and received a message from Ma Yun through Yahoo! He is the only one online in the whole company.

ma yun has just arrived in America. After a few words, I got up the courage and wrote a line: "Mr. Ma, I want to leave Ali to start a business."

"how old are you this year?" Ma Yun asked me.

“27。” I answered.

"You're not old enough. Take another two years' exercise in Ali, and then go out to start a business. I am going to participate in a forum soon, and we will talk about it when we go back. " Ma Yun finished and went offline.

this time, I didn't listen to ma yun.

the next morning, I formally resigned. After four and a half years of employment, Ali didn't hold the "five-year-old" gold ring.

the idea of quitting my job and starting a business has been hovering in my mind for a long time, and a growing feeling is surging in my heart: if I don't take this step, I will regret it in the future.

since I left my hometown and came to Hangzhou, my biggest problem has been the housing problem. At first, I temporarily found a place to transition. Three months later, I moved to Gudang New Village and took two colleagues to live together. The rent was in 9 yuan every month.

Renting a house is a field with asymmetric information. You stand at the gate of a residential area, looking at tall buildings, but you don't know which one is renting. The landlord can't find the tenant, and the tenant doesn't know where the landlord is. If you go through an intermediary, the cost is very high.

after some analysis, I found that there are objective orders of magnitude for both buyers and sellers of renting houses, and the Alibaba model can also be established in this subdivision.

At that time, Alibaba only had B2B business, and Taobao was just a rudiment. In the whole market, almost no one has set foot in the field of life service.

There is still a window period of one or two years in the field of life service. I want stupid birds to fly first and seize the opportunity. After leaving Ali, I made a BBS called "Easy Lease Network".

once after dinner with friends, we all thought that the restaurant service and the quality of the food were poor, and we wished we had a website where we could complain and evaluate.

The name "Word of Mouth Network" originated from a friend's dinner party, where a dozen people at a table discussed the word of mouth of a certain product. Suddenly, it flashed, and the name "word of mouth" was good.

Before I finished my meal, I rode my bike home and turned on the computer to check whether the domain name of "koubei.com" was registered. Fortunately, it has a good relationship with me.

in June, 24, I rented a small house of more than ten square meters in Gudangwan New Village. With 8, yuan earned by saving money in Ali for more than four years, I started my business seriously. I put 4, yuan into the company for operation and the remaining 4, yuan for living expenses.

But the investment is like a bottomless pit. Soon, the money is almost burned-money is far more useless than I thought. However, I still intend to stick to it for at least two years, and I can usually see certain results in two years.

I'm trying to find VC financing. Investors think that the investment in life services is huge, and they can't see the benefits in the short term, and they all express their disapproval.

I've found several investors, but there's nothing below. I was a little depressed. I walked around and found that everyone didn't know who Li Zhiguo was. At that time, it was not as good as it is now. As soon as I left Ali, a bunch of VCs rushed to the door.

I have been suffering for two years. The turning point came from Mrs. Ma Yun and Zhang Ying. She just left Ali and chatted with me. After another year, she invested 2 million yuan in her own name, which solved my urgent need.

in August 25, Alibaba announced the acquisition of Yahoo China. Soon, Ma Yun found me and asked me about the future plan of Word of Mouth: "Do you want Word of Mouth to go public independently, or do you want to go back to Ali to do things against To C?"

I realized that life service is a long-term career. When Ma Yun met me at the lakeside garden for the second time, I decided to accept Ali's investment and stick to it for a long time.

on October 26th, 26, due to the layout of the To C plate, Alibaba made two rounds of strategic investment in word-of-mouth network with a capital contribution of 15 million dollars.

however, Yahoo China has not achieved impressive results. After many revisions, neither the search engine nor the comprehensive portal ranked in the top three in the industry.

Alibaba began to re-examine the future direction of Yahoo China and put forward the idea of merging Yahoo and Word of Mouth.

Yahoo is the "upper body", with vision, brand and traffic; The word-of-mouth network is responsible for the "lower body", understands life service and has execution.

As an old employee of Ali, I agreed to merge without much thought. I think I should think about this issue from the perspective of the group.

In retrospect, life at that time was like running on a highway, flying at a high speed, and before it was too late to think about it, it had already passed. When I walked to the front, I found that the exit next to me was going to Shanghai and I took an unknown road.

At this time, the number of registered users of Word of Mouth has reached 1 million, ranking first in the classified information industry. Among them, Yellow Pages is second only to Dianping.com, and the daily UV has reached 2.2 million. But this is still not the same as Yahoo China's daily PV of 1 million.

from Ali's point of view, the merger may be the best result. In June 28, Yahoo China and Word of Mouth were formally integrated into "Yahoo Word of Mouth".

in order to direct traffic to word-of-mouth network, Yahoo China homepage has opened up a new entrance for word-of-mouth network, and all categories of classified information of word-of-mouth network are put on Yahoo homepage.

but contrary to expectations, this integration only brought 1 million daily PV for word-of-mouth network, equivalent to 5% of the 2 million PV of word-of-mouth network at that time. Users have their own needs, and their ideas are not consistent with our preset.

After that, "Yahoo Word of Mouth" changed several presidents in succession. Everyone had different understanding of classified information and yellow pages, and every leader was eager to try. "Yahoo Word of Mouth" experienced the pain of integration.

when I gave my word of mouth to Ali in early 28, Ali gave us $15 million, and another $1 million was on the account.

Modern management theory holds that every post should be replaceable after the company moves towards regularization. But this theory does not apply to startups and innovative businesses.

afterwards, I often reflect on the reasons of word-of-mouth network.

My mistake is that, although Ma Yun is willing to listen to the opinions of his subordinates, from beginning to end, I have never strived for the autonomy of Word of Mouth, which makes the fate of Word of Mouth too passive.

I hope I won't make the same mistake again.