Huang Zheng resigned as CEO and chairman of Pinduoduo within 9 months. Why?

17 In March, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the fourth quarter of last year, with revenue of 26.547 billion yuan, up by 146% year-on-year, and annual revenue of 594.9438+0 billion yuan, up by 97% year-on-year.

At the same time, Huang Zheng, the founder of the company, also issued the 20021annual letter to shareholders, which was the last letter to shareholders issued by Huang Zheng as the chairman of Pinduoduo. Because he announced that he would resign as the chairman of the company and be replaced by the current CEO Chen Lei. On July 1 last year, Huang Zheng just announced his resignation as CEO of the company, which means that he resigned as CEO and chairman of the company in less than nine months.

In the shareholder letter, Huang Zheng even thought that his withdrawal would help the company to transform into a more mature institution. In addition, he also revealed his future plan, "I want to do some research in the fields of food science and life science".

Previously, Huang Zheng had fulfilled the promise when the company went public, and contributed 2.37% of the shares of the founding team of the company to set up the "Star Charity Fund", which also started scientific research cooperation with his alma mater, Zhejiang University.

Huang Zheng announced his retirement at this time, and many media described it as "coming back", thinking that Huang Zheng, 4 1 year-old, was too young to step down at this time. Indeed, many domestic entrepreneurs are in their sixties and seventies, even in their eighties, and have not left the management line of the company. Of course there are exceptions. Duan Yongping, regarded as a mentor by Huang Zheng, retired from the front-line management of the company at the age of 40 and settled in the United States.

So today, some netizens praised Huang Zheng and said, "It's really different from people who have been to Duan Yongping." .

In fact, when Huang Zheng was interviewed by Caijing on 20 18, he also showed a mentality of wanting to engage in scientific research:

Can we think that Huang Zheng's pursuit of life is not a successful entrepreneur, but an "inventor" who has contributed to society?

In Huang Zheng's view, he is engaged in scientific research. On the one hand, he dreamed of becoming a scientist when he was a child. On the other hand, he saw that "the increasingly fierce and even alienated competition in the industry made me realize that this traditional competition with scale and efficiency as the main direction has its inevitable problems". Huang Zheng wants to try the high-quality development of Pinduoduo 10 years later.

Huang Zheng takes 10 years as the cycle to think about some problems, which may also be related to Duan Yongping.

On March 2 this year, Duan Yongping shared a story on his personal account:

Huang Zheng once helped Duan Yongping invest. It is not surprising that two people have similar logical thinking.

Duan Yongping is really optimistic about Huang Zheng. He once said that he would be surprised if Huang Zheng didn't succeed in starting a business. In addition, when someone asked Duan Yongping, "Besides reading the company's annual report, the company's official website, reading the company's biography and experiencing the company's products, what other ways can further deepen the research?" Duan Yongping said that Huang Zheng had asked similar questions. At that time, Huang Zheng said to Duan Yongping, "No matter how you look at the company, you always feel embarrassed." Duan Yongping's advice to Huang Zheng is to visit a company and do it yourself.

Therefore, Huang Zheng returned to China to start a business.

According to this logic, Huang Zheng's entrepreneurship in China in recent years may be his way of understanding the operation of a company. And his ultimate goal is not to start a company as the boss himself.

From this perspective, it seems that we can understand the fact that Huang Zheng resigned as an executive in Pinduoduo.

Huang Zheng really has a higher pursuit, or wants to pursue greater social value and self-realization. He is a man who really wants to change the world. Starting a company has become a channel for him to understand the whole society. Of course, entrepreneurship has also brought him great wealth, so he has more capital to realize his dreams.

Of course, both Benjamin Franklin and Duan Yongping had a profound influence on Huang Zheng's choice today.

We also look forward to Huang Zheng's next appearance, which will bring us lower-level innovation and make more contributions to social progress.