Chen Zhou's "self-examination book"

With two employees broke up things spread to the Internet, Renren and its founder Chen Zhou was put on the "headlines."

At the end of June, Du Ren, vice president of Renren Group for investment affairs, sent a fiery resignation letter to relevant people both inside and outside the company. Subsequently, Yang Muhan, director of campus expansion business and Chen Zhou boat upset, within a month, "the four executives quit" and other news have also been exposed.

The reporter of China Business newspaper contacted Wang Lu (a pseudonym), an insider, who disclosed that there have been more recent changes in personnel but that everyone is different. According to its disclosure, Yang Muhan do not want to be stumped with Chen, and now are not willing to take the initiative to contact the media. Du Yue was emotionally excited when he resigned, but later he did not want to talk more about the matter. She told reporters that there is indeed a problem of ever-changing business for all, with some internal chaos.

Chen Yizhou, in an exclusive interview with this reporter, said on media reports: "Recently, some media reports were seriously inaccurate, but this is the objective status quo of the Internet in China. The more simple things are, the more simple things are No one believes, but a basic objective and objective things can be well-prepared by people with all kinds of stories. "

In an interview with reporters, Chen Yizhou frank company has many deficiencies in its development and management. However, he always maintains his view on the "headline" issue. "We will not sidestep the issue but write down a few causal relationships that happen to happen in a week , And even pushing people back to confirm the default conclusion is not an objective fact of fact. "The two parties to the dispute stand firm and unwavering. In the meantime, voices of doubts are raised against everyone. As a veteran of the Internet in China, since the IPO in May 2011, it seems that business development is not optimistic. Both stock prices and market capitalization have plunged. Chen Zhou in the end to take everyone to what direction?

Reflection

"After the listing, several lines of business development is not smooth, the company moved this year, Chen led us to reflect with a few weeks, reprisal." An internal staff Li Yi (a pseudonym) told reporters.

By the end of March this year, Renren moved to the new office address. When moving is the end of the first quarter. At that time, all executives were well aware of the unsatisfactory operating results in the first quarter. In a few weeks after his move, Chen repeatedly convened executive meetings, replied to the performance of the past few years, and even unsuccessfully digged into a project because of management issues, team problems or others.

After listing, many people are crazy business expansion. At the beginning of the expansion, it is very difficult to find the problem, but after a period of time it will be found that the foundation is not solid. The most typical is the game business. Last year, all-man game department layoffs in November, in the industry uproar. The game is the best cash-flow business recognized by the Internet community, so everyone starts investing in the game after it goes public. The initial expansion of the game business, twenty or thirty game projects at the same time, the results of the product is not refined, can not be completed on schedule and other issues arise.

After the incident, Chen Zhou said in an internal e-mail: "We must admit that the all-human gaming business must slow down the pace of expansion, focusing on game operations and product research and development, rather than on all sides, which will increase the sustainability of positive To cash flow capabilities, and the ultimate goal is to be listed on an independent. "

Chen Yizhou believes that this is the company's current control and execution also have a great relationship, "in the implementation, we can not take every step to take a solid, is not that we have the right in every project Priority? "After the ups and downs, everyone's game business has drastically streamlined, trying to take the quality route, usually only two or three projects at the same time, rather than the large shop.

On the line of business to do one by one reflection, Chen Zhou raised two main issues: First, the impulse to expand, too fast, not focused. The second is the lack of control and execution. Wang Lu said in an interview with reporters that Chen Yazhou was very keen on the market situation and emerging opportunities. However, the team's overall execution was not well matched. At the same time, past business investment was too diversified and distracted, resulting in some business failures .

Variety

Everyone moved to a new office building by the end of March this year. Chen Yizhou packaged goods in the old office, watching a lot of coupons and trophies feeling a lot, decided to throw them all away. "We mention the slogan RE-START, why? That is, we have to forget the aura, what a monopoly, we returned to a large loft factory, with the entrepreneurial spirit of the company forging every inch of bone "Said Chen Zhou.

The new office is open, the partition of the desk is destroyed, and graffiti and geeks are painted on the corporate floors. Upstairs next to the company has a 10-meter-high signal tower, a colorful neon light every night, the United States was 80 years of science fiction film feeling, like "ET Alien" in the old garage. In fact, from the company after the listing, the psychological changes of employees and managers more or less some changes, Chen would like to take the opportunity to move to motivate everyone to return to entrepreneurship.

Everyone company (3.41,0.00,0.00%) obvious changes: First, focus, the business has done a certain degree of contraction, to return to their own areas of strength, in the field of deep plowing. The second is to do small, encourage small teams to fight.

At Renren, large teams are fighting during their rapid expansion, now they all break up into small groups of several people and encourage more innovation outside of work, all of which are Google (584.73, 2.39,0.41%), Amazon (337.49,4.64,1.39%) management.

"The mistake the company used to be was a human-to-sea tactic. In any organization, there are only a handful of truly creative and productive people and collectives, and not everyone has the overall combat effectiveness but how many of them can survive Idea team. "Chen Zhou said. Everyone wants to set up a "tall," regular army after going public, but finds that it is not suitable for the Internet and now returns to a more guerrilla state.

Chen Yi Zhou himself is changing. A reporter interviewed him a year ago, he said he was the largest product manager. Many Internet Gangster proud of "product manager" positioning. However, after the company chose to refocus on the young people, Chen said in an interview with reporters not long ago: "I am old and I certainly will not work as a product manager and must let the young people do it."

This change reveals that he is getting more and more empowered to delegate power to young people to give full play. In the past, if he is not optimistic about the project he will stop decisively. But now he really started to let go, and some small team to make fun products, even if he is not optimistic, he issued his own complaints, will encourage everyone to try.

set off

Everyone listed, with Renren, everyone games, Jingwei network, glutinous rice network and other services, the system was hailed as the Facebook (ZXGT + Zynga (3.19, -0.01, -0.31 %) + Linkedin + Groupon's fit. Today, glutinous rice net sold to Baidu (191.2,1.24,0.65%), games and latitude and longitude business after many adjustments, all network from the social focus of all mankind to young people in this group.

The concept of listing no longer exists, what is the future of everyone? "The Internet is changing rapidly around the world, and the Internet in China is even more fiercely competitive, dark, monopolistic and unconventional. We do not care what the original cocoon shell is and what we care about is how to fly lighter Where did you fly? "Answered Chen Zhou.

Last November, everyone released the 2014 strategy, proposing to refocus young people. At that conference, Chen's team on the stage repeatedly emphasized the phrase "focus," which he said "focused, the most underrated manager's trait," and over the past few years he himself underestimated this trait. To re-start, we need to forget "Facebook in China", forget the ambition of "social all mankind" and return to young people groups. In June of this year, everyone and a large number of advertising companies, technology companies and major brand advertisers manufacturers launched a "young alliance", the alliance will be aimed at young people, depth of marketing value.

Focus clearly makes everyone's position narrowed, then how can you derive a big business? Chen Zhou told reporters: Everyone is no longer a single platform, but to the depth of development. The first layer is still the core of all network, cohesion and service to young people, this is still the traditional Internet advertising business. The second layer through all network insight into young people what just need to be currently not been met, everyone will do in the related field of investment, and this is quite related to the investment business just to get better growth through the use of people platform for nutrients .

That is to say, the future is still the foundation of all network, on the one hand to find new trends in young people to invest in related fields, on the other hand the use of this young platform for the accumulation of incubation, incubation of new business investment.

Chen Zhizhou Zhou is an investment expert, this evaluation for the heart of Chen Yi Zhou social platform is not a "commendatory", how much some unswerving means. However, Chen is not afraid of others saying that he is trading stocks: "We just eat this bowl of rice in the community. Chinaren is like Mop, so is Renren. We believe this is our DNA. Therefore, we must persist, even stumbling, or Before we reach our goal, we need to try our best to stock up enough food for our business transformation and innovation, so it is a particularly simple purpose to invest in another company, Cash flow remained stable. "

Starting from Chinaren, Chen Zhou has been a community developer for more than a decade. He also realized that the value of the community is evolving. Now it is no longer as simple as an advertising platform. Therefore, he hopes to re-establish his career and tap into the social field of young people. Much deeper value. Moving, restarting, everyone can "all down", once again a successful business?