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Wen/Nan Qi Dao
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At about 11:00 a.m. on April 2, Zhang Ping (not his real name) was in the conference room on the 8th floor of the West Tower of Baidu Building in Nanshan, Shenzhen, arranging work for colleagues in the project team. Suddenly, an email popped up on the computer screen, "To all the staff of Xunlei". He glanced at it and was stunned. "The boss was fired by the board of directors!" "The first thought was that I would also lose my job." Before that, They heard nothing.
Later, a colleague said, "A large group of people wearing white shirts gathered downstairs at 9:00 that day and appeared at the company at 10:00 to quickly take over the core departments such as finance. At the same time, the computers and data of key figures, including former boss assistants, were confiscated, and employees were not allowed to take computers out of the office."
Zhang Ping's company is OneThing Technology under Xunlei. His boss is Chen Lei, CEO of Xunlei and OneThing. Five years ago, Chen Lei left Tencent Cloud and came to Xunlei. Later, he succeeded Zou Shenglong, the founder, as the CEO of Xunlei Group and OneThing. Five years later, Li Jinbo, a former executive of Xunlei, returned to take over the position. After the news of the change, Xunlei shares rose 4.7 points on the same day, but continued to fall the next day.
This time, not only the CEO was replaced, but also the senior management of Xunlei and the overall adjustment of the board of directors. Chen Lei, CEO of Xunlei and OneThing, Dong Lei, Senior Vice President of Xunlei Group and Vice President of OneThing Technology, and other senior executives were dismissed, and Li Jinbo became the new CEO. Wang Chuan, Hong Feng, Zou Tao, Liu Qin and other members of the board of directors of Xunlei resigned collectively and were replaced by Li Jinbo, Duan Hui, Shi Peng and Luo Weimin. It can be said that the era of Chen Lei officially ended with a collective purge.
Xunlei, founded in 2002, is mainly remembered as a download tool. However, its importance is underestimated by most people. It is an excellent research specimen in the history of China's Internet development. Its research value is not only that it once went hand in hand with Tencent and had more than 400 million users. It has gone through every important stage of China's Internet, contacted every popular business outlet, and collected all kinds of major problems encountered by Internet start-ups in different stages:
Returning to China for entrepreneurship, large amount financing, rapid development, more than 100 million yuan of daily living, delayed listing, listing failure, transformation failure, bleeding relisting, founders losing control, founders leaving, professional managers taking over, stock boom, management infighting, policy supervision, stock crash, professional managers out, retired old employees returning to take over. These problems were concentrated in one company, which almost trampled all the holes that entrepreneurial development could step on.
Even so, the company, which has been established for 18 years, is still alive, and even its stock price once hit a record high, with a market value of $1.828 billion. Even if it fell sharply later, the market value is still more than 200 million dollars according to the closing price at the time of writing. As of December 31, 2019, the total amount of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments held by Xunlei still stood at 265.3 million dollars. The cash in the account has exceeded the market value of the company's stock. Similar cases include Jumeiyoupin. From the perspective of American stock investors, this means that they are not optimistic about the development prospects of similar companies.
In the 18 years of Xunlei's development, three men are closely related to the major turning point in history: Zou Shenglong, Lei Jun and Chen Lei. They respectively represent three stages of Xunlei's development: the founder stage led by Zou Shenglong, and the investor stage led by Lei Jun. Before him was Liu Qin, who had a close relationship with Zou Shenglong and Lei Jun. They gave a lot of help in early investment and Xunlei's development, but gradually faded out. Chen Lei represents the stage dominated by professional managers.
Zou Shenglong, Chen Lei and Lei Jun had a honeymoon.
Zou Shenglong, born in 1973, went to the University of Wisconsin Madison to study computer science at the age of 20, and later went to Duke University to study for a master's degree. This is also the alma mater of Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, where he met Cheng Hao, an entrepreneurial partner. After graduation, he worked in Silicon Valley for 5 years. Zou Shenglong was deeply influenced by his family and loved technology. His father Zou Dejun was the first Chinese to win the World Invention Award and the International Gold Award for Invention.
Chen Lei, born in 1973, is well off. He studied computer science at Tsinghua University, and then went to the University of Texas to study for a master's degree. He worked at Google and Microsoft in the United States, and later went to Tencent Cloud to engage in technology development and management.
They are the same age, share the same technical background, study in the United States, have been influenced by American culture and management methods, have a natural common language, and also foreshadow cooperation. Once encountered, it is inevitable to sympathize with each other. Now there are two versions. One is that Zou Shenglong invited Chen Lei to join Xunlei as CTO, and the other is that Lei Junli, a major shareholder, invited Chen Lei as CEO. The CTO is just a transition. From the perspective of discourse power, the latter is more credible. However, no matter which one is used, it shows that the three parties agreed with each other in the early stage, otherwise Chen Lei would not leave Tencent Cloud at the helm at that time.
After Chen Lei served as CTO of Xunlei for two years, Zou Shenglong wrote an email entitled "Tomorrow will be better" in July 2017, congratulating Chen Lei on taking over as CEO. The email was full of praise words, "In the past two years and more, (Chen Lei) has demonstrated excellent innovation ability and tenacious breakthrough ability; as the company's co CEO and OneThing CEO, Chen Lei's excellent leadership and steady strategy implementation ability have been seen by the whole company." "I agree with the board of directors that Chen Lei is capable of assuming full CEO responsibility."
On April 2, 2020, Xunlei changed the CEO's email
All this praise and sweetness disappeared when Li Jinbo, the former Xunlei minister who left in 2014, returned to take over from Chen Lei. On April 2, 2020, in the internal letter sent by the board of directors of Xunlei to all employees, the official statement was that "during Chen Lei's tenure as CEO, all the students of Xunlei Group worked hard to build the current diversified business system of Xunlei", without even a symbolic thank you, to stabilize the morale and draw a clear line.
From Zou Shenglong, Lei Jun, Chen Lei to Li Jinbo, what happened in this period? Why did this company that once overtook Tencent fall here? Does it have a future?
Zou Shenglong Era of Xunlei
The culture and gene of any company are inseparable from the founder. What happens now can often be traced back to history. Zou Shenglong, the founder of Xunlei, knows technology and works hard. He is an experienced but unlucky entrepreneur:
He was one of the early Internet entrepreneurs in China. He once went hand in hand with Tencent, but now the market value is more than 2200 times different;
He and Xunlei have participated in almost every Internet outlet, such as downloading, video, player, browser, app store, game, map repair, finance, live broadcast, blockchain, etc., but the results are unsatisfactory;
He introduced star investors such as Morningside, Google, Xiaomi, and so on, but finally went public with bloodshed, and the market value was lower than the book cash;
He wanted to control the details of every product, but lost control of the company before listing;
He introduced professional managers, but caused internal strife that shocked the industry, and finally the professional managers were out;
Zou Shenglong is a tangled person. He not only advocates western free culture, but also controls everything like traditional parents. Zou Shenglong is deeply influenced by American culture. He believes in the engineering culture of Silicon Valley, technology first, advocates freedom and equality, and encourages everyone to do what they want. He gave employees formal freedom, even indulgence. But it will not really let go in real power.
A number of former employees of Xunlei reported that in the company, if Boss Zou focuses on any product, it will definitely end up dead. In the history of Xunlei, Zou Shenglong paid attention to every product detail in the landmark version such as Xunlei 6, and ended up dead in the end. Later, the employees of Xunlei reached a tacit understanding that they would not report to Zou Shenglong on any new project they wanted to do, but would do it first, because as long as he knew, he would have to intervene, and the intervention would be doomed. Boss Zou's desire for control is evident.
Lin Jun's comments on Zou Shenglong's article
There is a saying in management that we should not use tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness. We are haggling over every detail of our products and will never let go. However, the business outlets related to the company's development are hesitating and often missed.
During the financial crisis from 2008 to 2009, Boss Zou hesitated to go public, and finally gave up. The subsequent Xunlei prospectus shows that the cumulative installed capacity in 2008 has reached 260 million, with a market share of 73%. The operating revenues were 16.8 million US dollars respectively. That is about 100 million yuan. By this time, Xunlei had completed three rounds of financing, amounting to more than 30 million dollars. Not bad money, not bad flow.
At this time, the thunderbolt was developing rapidly. In fact, it was going through a big historical stage unconsciously. 2008 is the 10th anniversary of China's Internet and the first year of smart phones, which is the turning point of China's Internet. China's PC Internet has reached its peak, and mobile Internet has begun to sprout. This year, Google released the Android system, and Apple released the iPhone 3G phone. Xunlei has also been trying to diversify.
The light and shadow magician who bought the map repair software in 2008 stopped working six years later. Metu, which was born in 2008, once had a market value of more than HK $90 billion, and now has more than HK $6 billion.
Xunlei is the first to develop the video playback function, which is earlier than Youku Tudou. Later, Youku Potatoes was sold to Ali for 4.5 billion dollars, and iQiyi's market value was 3.6 billion dollars. "When Xunlei did it, the copyright of a TV series was only 3000 yuan, but now it is estimated that it has increased 10000 times. Why didn't he do it? Because boss Zou is stingy, he dare not burn money, and dare not let go." A former senior executive of Xunlei said it was a pity.
Pan Luan mentioned in his article about Xunlei that "Xunlei also tried to develop its own games in 2008. However, Zou Shenglong was not determined." So Cheng Hao pledged his shares of Xunlei and went out to work as a game company independently. But it is difficult to walk. "When Xunlei Game asked us for traffic, the big boss (Zou Shenglong) agreed, but in actual processing, we would have many rules and conditions (such as user experience) to block, so that valuable resources can be used for the development of their own projects." Even the co founders tried to innovate, but they could not break through the internal barriers of Xunlei, as others can imagine.
In the same year, Tencent's online game revenue reached 2.33 billion yuan, accounting for 32.5% of the total revenue. Cheng Hao never smokes, but during the period of playing games, he began to smoke a lot, which is difficult to imagine. Internal friction is more fierce than tiger, and finally Thunder Game is naturally yellow. "This kind of myopia and stupidity, like the air, pervades every corner," said a former employee, who was not alone in his opinion.
Zou Shenglong is like driving a fighter plane. He is constantly strengthening the wings and engines to show off how fast his plane is. But the most critical part - the pilot was ignored. This is the most critical part. If the pilot hangs up, the whole plane will crash even if it is firm. "We should focus on the main contradictions." This is an important conclusion reached by the revolutionary predecessors who have gone through complex struggles.
During Zou's reign, Xunlei lost dozens of products, including videos, videos, games, finance, pictures, browsers, software stores, etc. Now, each is a new commercial outlet. But every time because of budget, manpower and traffic, Xunlei missed it.
According to media reports, the period from 2008 to 2010 was the best period for Xunlei's commercial growth. In 2009, Xunlei realized full profit and missed this listing node. Later, Zou Shenglong expressed regret.
In 2011, Xunlei, which had been established for 9 years, officially submitted its application for IPO of US stocks for the first time. The same group of Sina Sohu NetEase has been listed in the United States for 3-4 years. At the roadshow in February 2011, the capital market valued Xunlei at $2 billion. "Sean (Zou's English name) and the senior executives were very happy at that time," recalled a former employee who had left. However, human calculation is not as good as natural calculation. In June 2011, a financial fraud scandal broke out in Southeast Rongtong, a popular Chinese concept stock with a market value of $1.4 billion. It took only 137 days to turn the stock into waste paper. Then came the Alipay VIE incident, and Chinese companies became poison in the US capital market.
Reluctantly, Xunlei reduced its valuation to 916 million dollars and planned to raise 112.5 million dollars. However, due to several copyright lawsuits, the listing was postponed. "We had made money at that time. The profit in the first quarter of 2011 was 58.12 million yuan (RMB), and Youku's net loss in the first quarter was 49.6 million yuan (RMB). But Youku's market value at that time was 3.5 billion dollars, and we were not worth a billion dollars!?" Although nearly 10 years had passed, the former employee was still indignant when talking about the experience of his old employer, but this was business.
"Choice is more important than hard work." Years later, Cheng Hao, the co-founder of Xunlei, sighed. Zou Shenglong of the failed capital market did not expect that the delay would be three years. In history, people are often unable to recognize history. In the past three years, China's Internet has undergone earth shaking changes. According to Xinhuanet, in 2011, global smartphone shipments exceeded personal computers for the first time. By June 2014, China's mobile Internet users had reached 527 million, accounting for 83.4% of Internet users.
The PC era has ended, and the era of mobile Internet has come. This is a milestone node of the era and the Internet industry. In the process of waiting for the opportunity, mobile Internet companies such as Vipshop took the lead in listing. Only Xunlei who is good at PC download is left. Shareholders are more and more anxious and the capital market is more and more indifferent.
Thunder Army Era of Xunlei
At this time, because of the investor Liu Qin, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, who entered the Hurun Global Rich List for the first time, offered an olive branch. At that time, he was valued at 28 billion yuan. Boss Lei, who is proud of himself, has successfully invested in mobile Internet star projects such as Lakala, UC, Good Doctor and YY. Strong financial resources, the magic of turning stone into gold in the capital market, and the potential of tens of millions of Xiaomi mobile phones in mobile Internet are what Xunlei urgently needs.
Investors are never living Lei Feng. Investment is based on economic accounts. Lei Jun's Xiaomi investment in Xunlei is a cost-effective business. On the one hand, it can help supplement and optimize his own ecology, and on the other hand, it may win rich economic returns in the future. In short, it can help existing businesses to make money, and may also make money alone in the future.
In March 2014, it was said in the official investment announcement that "Xiaomi invested nearly 200 million dollars in Xunlei, and was authorized to accelerate the business of Xunlei Cloud, which was fully embedded in Xiaomi's mobile phones, televisions, boxes and other products."
What Lei Jun wants to build is an Internet ecological empire of Xiaomi. Xiaomi's products at that time included mobile phones, boxes, televisions, routers, etc., focusing on the hardware field. And Xunlei's accumulation of content, downloads, users, etc. can give Xiaomi extra points. What Xiaomi wants to do more is to link everything. Whether it is cloud or blockchain. Through these links, B end and C end. This will lay the foundation for Xiaomi to tell more good stories in the capital market in the future.
More importantly, Lei Jun realized that Xunlei's P2P technology is actually a gold mine to be explored.
Zou Shenglong was personally responsible for a new business of "Crystal Plan". He used Xunlei download technology to collect users' idle broadband resources and sell them to companies that needed bandwidth, such as video companies. This distributed CDN service. It is more than 50% cheaper than renting bandwidth from telecommunications. However, as with previous projects, the projects interfered by Zou Shenglong have made difficult progress.
In 2016, two years later, Lei Jun said at a press conference that when Zou Shenglong told him this story, "I thought it was a disruptive innovation for the whole cloud service market." "Zou Shenglong told me this story, and I was so excited that I didn't sleep well for several nights." In 2014, Dropbox, an American cloud service company, raised 250 million dollars, The valuation is up to 10 billion dollars! Later, the highest market value after listing was close to US $20 billion. Why is boss Lei not excited?
In April 2014, Xunlei completed its E-round financing of $310 million, including $200 million from Xiaomi and $90 million from Jinshan. In June, Xunlei was finally listed, with a market value of about $1 billion, and then fell to about $700 million. The financing before listing has already exceeded 500 million dollars, so some people describe Xunlei's listing as "bleeding".
According to common sense, listing is a highlight of an entrepreneur and a company, and it is reasonable to drink and celebrate. But when Xunlei was listed, it was covered with a layer of pathos. In Zou Shenglong I Know, Lin Jun said, "In the summer of 2014, Xunlei's IPO was successful. After its listing, Xunlei executives found a Chinese restaurant in New York to drink Maotai to celebrate. While drinking, Cheng Hao burst into tears." "At the celebration dinner, Cheng Hao was crying all the time, but he laughed while crying, and Zou Shenglong was laughing and laughing while crying."
After listing, the equity structure of Xunlei has become: Xiaomi 31.8%, Jinshan 13.0%, Zou Shenglong 9.5%, Cheng Hao 3.8%. Lei Jun Department accounted for 44.8%. His son, who had been raised hard, was taken away when he was an adult. Boss Zou, who has a strong desire for control, is in a mood you can imagine. This laid a hidden danger for the high-level internal strife of Xunlei later.
On August 16, 2014, after the launch of Xunlei, Xunlei Cloud acceleration products were integrated into the core of Xiaomi - MIUI system, and the accounts were connected with each other. Xunlei provides acceleration services for 70 million mobile end users of Xiaomi. In order to do a good job in this project, Xunlei sent a core technical team from Shenzhen to work in Beijing Xiaomi.
There are media comments, "Xunlei is not like an independent listed company, but more like a Xiaomi subsidiary on NASDAQ."
When studying the collapse of dynasties in China, historian Xu Zhuoyun summed up a rule: "In the process of aging of a group organization, there is no new blood. Only the old cadres and leaders of the organization continue to struggle, which weakens their resistance to the outside world and their ability to expand their economic base. The collapse of dynasties is a process of internal ossification." In fact, The same is true of companies.
After Xunlei was listed, there was no substantive breakthrough in the business level. The best path for tool product evolution is: tool platform ecology. According to the Internet industry valuation rule, the valuation of application level companies is generally $1 billion, that of platform level enterprises is about $10 billion, and that of ecosystem companies will reach $100 billion. WeChat, which was born in 2011, is the best example of completing the triple jump.
With the upgrading of network speed, the improvement of online video, and the launch of app stores, the demand for downloads in the era of mobile Internet is becoming less and less. The business model is still single, more than 50% of the income still comes from membership fees, the structure is single, and the capital market does not see potential. The share price fell from more than $16 to more than $3, which made shareholders very dissatisfied and internal employees very depressed. "When we called to invite job seekers, many of them were unwilling to come over and felt that our products were out of date." A former human resource who had left office still remembered. At that time, Zou Shenglong had all kinds of physical problems due to years of fatigue.
Lei Jun, as a major shareholder, increasingly feels that the existing team capacity of Xunlei is too weak, the internal management is chaotic, and the staff turnover is serious. It is difficult for both technical and commercial capabilities to be an important task. For the development of the company and the return of shareholders' investment, decisions must be made. Chen Lei, who came from Tencent Cloud, took over as CEO in July 2017 after serving as CTO for two years, and Xiaomi Wang Chuan served as chairman. Zou Shenglong retired. Zou Shenglong left the company he founded completely this time, but he still kept the shares. Chen Lei's time has come.
Chen Lei's Era of Xunlei
In the United States, it has become normal for professional managers to take over the company. In 2001, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google hired Eric Schmidt as their chairman and CEO, and the founders completely handed over their power. Schmidt has been Google's CEO for 10 years, leading Google to go public and become the world's largest search engine.
Professional managers in China have always been an awkward role in enterprises. They are not real when they are stable, but they look forward and backward when they do things. If something happens, they will be blamed. A typical example is Shanda Chen Tianqiao, who also introduced many senior executives such as Tang Jun before. However, only from 2010 to 2012, there were 22 directors and CEOs of Shanda Department who left their jobs and handed over the throne of the king of games to Tencent.
There are few cases that have been reported as good stories, such as UC. When He Xiaopeng and Liang Jiegang started their business as UC, they handed Liu Qin their business cards, which were printed with deputy general managers. They knew their technical background, were not good at management, and had been waiting for stronger people to join. Later, I found Yu Yongfu to join the company as CEO. Later, UC was sold to Ali for 5 billion dollars, and the entrepreneur He Xiaopeng, the later manager Yu Yongfu, and the investor Liu Qin won three wins.
Tang Jun, who was the president of Shanda, once sighed, "There are differences between professional managers and entrepreneurs: the former is always at the point where the interests of the company are balanced with their own interests; the latter always puts themselves in the interests of the company." "Obedience is the first ethics of professional managers."
However, Chen Lei does not want to be a submissive person.
At the end of 2014, when Chen Lei joined Xunlei as CTO, his predecessor was Li Jinbo. He began a series of reforms to prepare for the future. He formed a new company, OneThing Technology, and served as CEO himself. Xunlei has missed the mobile Internet, and it is almost impossible to turn over the old business. The downloaded Thunderbolt was brilliant in the PC Internet era and shelved in the mobile Internet era, just like a cavalry force. In the cold weapon era, it was a big killer, rampaging and invincible. But in the era of fast moving armored vehicles, cavalry became a symbol of entertainment and etiquette.
The core business of Netheart is cloud computing and blockchain business. Chen Lei intends to open an office with Xunlei. Except for a few employees of Xunlei, most of them are recruited from outside. The culture of OneThing emphasizes the flat organizational structure and inclusive atmosphere.
According to a person from OneThing, "Chen Lei has repeatedly said that Xunlei has a long history, too many problems, chaotic management, and poor advertising and transformation." Xunlei's technical team has been slow to respond and inefficient in many times of cooperation. Even during major national level meetings, when violations occurred, the relevant departments completely prohibited the download function of Xunlei, which was restored after several public relations.
For Chen Lei, who has a technical background and has been developing smoothly, he does not want to be bound by the burden of history. In many people's eyes, history is used to break. But history is often repeated. Chen Lei with technical background and Zou Shenglong with technical background. They all have the same attitude of doing a lot.
Chen Lei revived the "Crystal Plan" before Xunlei when he took office, and upgraded it to the hardware of AliCloud after launching the moneyball. Users who bought hardware sold idle bandwidth and storage, Xunlei paid cash for purchase, and then sold bandwidth to customers. But in this case, the more the player sells, the more Xunlei loses. So the sales volume of hardware has not been open.
Finally, Chen Lei found the key of digital currency and blockchain technology. At that time, Bitcoin had exceeded 10000 dollars. He changed the cash subsidy to a virtual currency called "playing guest currency". Use virtual currency to attract users and exchange idle bandwidth, which solves the problem of high cost. Develop more users and finally form a distributed network with hundreds of millions of nodes, which may subvert the traditional CDN business model.
Under the hype of the currency circle, this kind of customer coin, which was originally used to motivate users, has increased by more than 100 times. Play off Cloud JD to book more than 10 million units. The original 399 yuan per set of gamer cloud, second-hand are fried to 3000 yuan. "At that time, we played with cloud devices, and the highest daily water flow exceeded 100 million." A core member of OneThing who participated in the project revealed that everyone was shocked by the development speed at that time. Stimulated by blockchain related concepts, Xunlei stock has been hovering around $3 for a long time, and has soared since October 2017, reaching a maximum of $27 within two months. The increase was as high as 900%.
Chen Lei's reform goes beyond that. At the same time of developing new business, Xunlei began to shrink its old business. On November 28, 2017, Xunlei announced that Xunlei officially revoked the brand and trademark authorization of Xunlei big data, Xunlei finance, Xunlei easy loan, Xunlei small games, Xunlei love transactions and other businesses, and stopped using Xunlei trademarks.
One of the actual controllers of Xunlei Big Data is Yu Fei. She was the senior vice president of Xunlei, responsible for legal affairs, government relations and administrative affairs. He accompanied Zou Shenglong to the United States to ring the bell. According to Hu Jie, CEO of Xunlei Big Data, "Zou Shenglong, the founder and former CEO of Xunlei, is supportive of Xunlei's financial sector business." Yu Fei also stressed many times in his statement that "Xunlei Big Data is directly under Zou Shenglong's command."
Chen Lei's restrictive measures have directly impacted the vested interest groups. Xunlei big data started to fight back, accusing the playing of guest currency is a fraud, violating national policies, and releasing digital currency to circle money. According to the announcement of Xunlei later, Yu Fei organized people to go to the company to interfere with the normal work in addition to constantly reporting to the relevant departments. After many seesaw public relations battles, the two sides finally calmed down under the regulation of shareholders. However, the Xunlei brand suffered a great loss of vitality, and the blockchain business was also impacted by interviews with relevant departments. The stock price also fell from $27 to about $3 again. In this battle of internal friction, there was no winner.
On the surface, this is a dispute about the right to use the Xunlei brand, but behind it is the battle between old and new Xunlei people for control. Zou Shenglong, as the representative of the old Xunlei people, is a flow thinking, using online loans and other ways to cash in existing users, and has obtained stable income. The new Xunlei people, represented by Chen Lei and Lei Jun, are technically minded. To engage in cloud computing and blockchain, others need to shrink. The old resentment and the new conflict of interests completely triggered the war. From this point of view, Zou Shenglong has always stood back.
Zou Shenglong may not be a good manager, but his love for Xunlei cannot be questioned. After the listing, his shares were diluted to 9.5%, but even after his resignation, he has not sold shares on a large scale to cash in. But until today, according to the shareholding list, he still holds 7.15% of the shares. Maybe he has been waiting for something.
Zou Shenglong is a super economical person. Be mean to others and yourself. Lin Jun, who is familiar with him, said that after he went public, he still drove an old car, and he only got the same salary as the director. In this regard, he and Lei Jun coincide. Lei Jun is famous for saving money and diligence in the industry. Xiaomi's leaders and employees always travel in economy class, including Lei Jun himself. It is said that Xiaomi executives are most afraid of going abroad with Lei Jun, because it is particularly uncomfortable to travel in economy class for more than ten hours.
Apple, on the other hand, advocates to buy first-class tickets for its employees, with an annual air fare of 150 million dollars. Because good rest is good. Chen Lei has the same philosophy as Apple. Executives can take business class when they are on business trips. Millions of highly paid talents can be introduced, and only those who have talent can do things. At present, OneThing has about 500 employees, 70% of whom are technology research and development. Their main businesses are Thundercloud, Thunderchain, etc., including other new businesses. According to the estimate of the outgoing employees of OneThing, "the overall annual cost is more than 100 million yuan." I don't know how Lei Jun and Zou Shenglong feel when they see these financial statements.
Although the salary is confidential, most employees of Xunlei feel that the salary is much lower than that of employees of OneThing. This has always been the heart knot of Xunlei employees. However, this was denied by the senior management of OneThing. At the end of 2019, OneThing moved from the old Shenzhen Weixin Software Park to Baidu Building, which can overlook the seascape of Shenzhen Bay. The rent naturally rose. These have more or less become the criticism of investors and shareholders.
At the same time, however, the crucial thing is that all revenue related data of Xunlei and OneThing are declining. According to Xunlei's 2019 annual financial report:
Total revenue was 181.3 million US dollars, down 21.9% from 2018
The revenue of cloud computing and IVAS was $84.1 million, down 31.3% from 2018.
Subscription revenue was $81.5 million, down 0.4% from 2018
Online advertising revenue was $15.6 million, down 43.7% from 2018.
The total profit was 88.8 million US dollars, down 29.7% from 2018. The gross profit margin was 44.5%, compared with 49.5% in the previous year
The net loss from continuing operations in fiscal year 2019 was $53.4 million, while the net loss in fiscal year 2018 was $40.8 million;
The total amount of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments held by Xunlei also declined for three consecutive years;
Even the CDN service outlet that Xunlei Netheart seized this time is not optimistic. Unfortunately, Xunlei met Ali and Tencent, who had grown into giants. According to the Forecast Report on Market Competition and Investment Prospects of China's Content Distribution Network (CDN) Industry released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, 39 companies, including Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Netsux Technology, and OneThing Technology, have obtained national CDN business qualifications. The three Alibaba Tencent Netsux companies account for more than 60% of the market. Chen Lei, who led Tencent Cloud, will lead Xunleyun against his old employer this time.
On the other hand, the price war in the market has entered a white hot stage. "In June 2015, the star domain CDN of Xunlei's OneThing Technology completely overturned the CDN to the transparent freezing point price at the price of 9999 yuan/G/month, which is only 1/4 of the mainstream price in the market, and triggered CDN manufacturers to follow the trend and reduce prices." But Tencent and other giants obviously will not wait to die, and it is no doubt that they will struggle with the giants in the price war. "At the Asia Pacific CDN Summit in 2016, Tencent Cloud proposed" Cloud+CDN ", and then 0.01 yuan Won the bid for Xiamen government extranet cloud service project. At the Yunqi Conference in March 2017, Alibaba Cloud announced that it had completed the integration of Youku CDN and video cloud services and teams, and announced that the price of CDN services would be reduced by 35%, with the lowest traffic unit price 0.17/GB 。” Basically, it's free.
The realization of blockchain has a long process from theory to technology research and development, product trial run and large-scale popularization. OneThing has invested a lot of time, manpower and capital in the blockchain, but the actual large-scale application and realization of the blockchain is far from promising.
If technology is not implemented, everything will be empty talk. Only when blockchain technology is integrated with enterprise applications and industry scenarios on a large scale can real value be generated. Good entrepreneurs need to balance technology research and development with enterprise profits. But technical experts will not consider these.
According to the previous publicity of Xunlei's public relations, "Xunlei Chain has reached more than 100 enterprises and institutions for docking and cooperation, and has completed more than 50 blockchain application projects for well-known enterprises including One Foundation, involving finance, copyright protection, traceability, public welfare, transportation, gene, supply chain, new retail and other subdivisions. In order to help more enterprises and developers make good use of the blockchain, Xunlei Chain has also launched 16 blockchain product solutions, covering six major fields, namely, finance, people's livelihood, justice, medical care, government affairs and industry, and has once again become an industry benchmark. "
However, the actual netizens privately admitted that "at present, the most practical and direct project of blockchain is the coin issuing ICO, but this path has been blocked by policies. The second is to apply it to financial related chains and fields to prevent accounting fraud." However, at this stage in China, many enterprises do not want too transparent accounts, Moreover, human and financial resources should be invested in technological transformation. The so-called transformation of blockchain to the real world is not just the demand of enterprises, but more the wishful thinking of technical enterprises.
From this point of view, Zou Shenglong and Chen Lei are actually the same. They are both technical experts who try to change the company and business form through a technology, but they are not good at management and operation, and drag the whole company into a quagmire. Chen Lei is also a technical man. "The pattern is very big, but he doesn't engage in relationships. He insists on his own opinion." He is unwilling to deal with government people, and he is unwilling to eat, drink and take photos with officials. Public relations people have a headache about this.
When Chen Lei was the CEO of Xunlei and OneThing, OneThing and Xunlei had always worked separately in Nanshan, Shenzhen, and even the annual meeting was separate. He has been working in Cybercenter, and seldom goes to Xunlei. During his tenure, "the directors of OneThing Department and other management personnel were basically newly recruited, not the old ones. In Xunlei's side, the founder Zou Shenglong and Cheng Hao all left, and many old Xunlei people left."
Chen Lei's wife, Dong Lei, has been serving as the Senior Vice President of Xunlei Group and the Vice President of OneThing Technology, in charge of the two core departments of business market and human resources. Report to him directly. In the eyes of many Xunlei employees, this is inevitable. Several Xunlei employees said that they had doubts about the company's procurement, new office decoration and other economic issues, but there was no evidence of real hammer.
In the opinion of employees of OneThing, these accusations are pure slander. "President Dong has good economic conditions. He is a Christian and has his own belief. He will never do these things." But even his belief was complained about by the staff of Xunlei. At the annual meeting of Xunlei and Netheart, there must be a program, such as church choir recitation. "If we have the same belief, we will have more topics and get closer to leaders."
The era of Li Jinbo has come?
After six years of investment in Xunlei, shareholders gradually lost their patience. Lei Jun's bold overall consolidation and rectification of his own investment projects has actually become the norm. On October 10, 2010, Lei Jun, as an investor, promoted the safety merger of Jinshan under the leadership of Fu Sheng's Ke Niu and Wang Xin, and established a new company, "Jinshan Network", which is the future Cheetah Mobile Company, and finally listed independently in the United States. This time, Lei Jun brought together Xunlei and the rightmost.
Li Jinbo, who is now in charge of the company, has a technical background. He was previously in Beijing Baidu, and was invited by Zou Shenglong and Cheng Hao to join the company in Shenzhen. As the partner of Xunlei Technology, he has created the engineering technology system of Xunlei. Later, he went to Beijing to start his own business. He was the founder and CEO of the rightmost post 95 community product. In 2019, he completed the financing of 80 million dollars led by Xiaomi. He has a close relationship with Liu Qin and Lei Jun. In 2014, he left Xunlei to start his own business, and Chen Lei took over. Five years later, he started his business in Beijing and returned to Shenzhen to replace Chen Lei. The cycle of the world is unpredictable.
Most of the new board members have worked in Xunlei. Luo Weimin served as COO from 2006 to 2011. Duan Hui performed his duties in Xunlei from 2008 to 2015. According to the report of Leidi.com, "behind the major adjustment of Xunlei's management, Itui and its affiliated entities also reached an agreement with Xiaomi, Jinshan Software and Chenxing Capital, that is, each shareholder agreed to exchange their respective shares of Xunlei for shares of Itui." Itui is the rightmost capital control entity in the post 95 funny community.
According to people close to Xiaomi and on the right, Lei Jun, Li Jinbo, Liu Qin and Xunlei shareholders have reached an agreement on the exchange of interests. Lei Jun Department retreated and the old Xunlei Department began to take over. We contacted the new board member of Xunlei, but the other party declined to communicate because they were too busy recently.
After the completion of the transaction, Itui became the largest shareholder of Xunlei, and Li Jinbo completely controlled Xunlei. The era of Li Jinbo has begun. What kind of story can happen between the young rightmost and the middle-aged Xunlei? Continue the technology flow of cloud and blockchain? Or open a new community era? Everything is unknown.
The day when Li Jinbo succeeded Chen Lei was April 2. Five years ago, Netheart was established on April 1, and Chen Lei took office on April 2. No more, no less, just five years. "Just look at the future and see the past. When we realize that new people change old people," it seems that the trader behind Xunlei is really worried and doesn't want Chen Lei to stay one more day.
