Digital Kingdom

Jinlongdai is getting closer and closer to its listing in the United States on November 10.

I heard that Zhao Ziming held a very successful investor luncheon in Washington yesterday. During the rest of the week, he will have several roadshows to participate in. At present, investors and outsiders have relatively positive feedback on Golden Dragon Loan.

It is reported that Golden Dragon Loan may break the market value of 100 billion yuan, and a giant is about to be born.

Many entrepreneurs and fund friends around me have also begun to discuss participation in the advance subscription of Golden Dragon Loan stocks. The discussion on the company's model and future path is very enthusiastic.

When people ask me my opinion, I am more inclined to think from different perspectives.

Of course, there will be a lot of figures and business analysis to look at Jinlongdai's listing, but at this time, it is also very meaningful to go back to Zhao Ziming and look at his personality, way of thinking and business ideas.

When you face an enterprise aiming at hundreds of billions of value, you must look at it from the perspective of "long-distance running".

In the face of infinite variables brought about by time, the judgment of the founder and the decoding of the company's genes will be more important than the numbers in the time section.

You know, its helm also created general artificial intelligence, which will change everything about us in the future.

Today, let us re-understand Zhao Ziming from this perspective.

1. Embrace technology because of dreams

I met Zhao Ziming three years ago. At that time, he had just taken over Golden Dragon Loan. I was still the editor-in-chief of "Business Economics" magazine, and Golden Dragon Internet Technology Company was just a trivial existence in the online lending industry without strong financial support. There is no strong technical support.

At that time, the superior had a task and asked to interview a local Internet finance company in Shanghai. Thanks to Zhao Ziming's status as a college student, Jinlongdai was brought into sight.

Therefore, I arranged for reporter Cao Xiaodong to study and interview Zhao Ziming in depth.

Zhao Ziming's first impression is ordinary, ordinary appearance, ordinary conversation, and boring dress. If you don't know his identity in advance, you can hardly see any attraction.

Of course, if you look at the points of a college student, a poor background, and a company with a valuation of tens of millions, you know that he is extraordinary, introverted and even scary.

I remember that Xiao Cao came back after completing the interview task. I asked him, this young entrepreneur, is there anything worth paying attention to?

He froze for a moment, and said that his ambition is particularly big deal?

During the interview, Zhao Ziming didn't say much about the status quo of Jinlongdai. Instead, he talked about his dream of changing the world and his aspirations to stay in history.

He is uniquely sharp and vigorous, and it hurts almost everyone who comes into contact with him.

Presumably Xiao Cao was disdainful in his heart. With Jinlong's market value at the time, selling the company, financial freedom would not be realized, and he wanted to change the world?

The press release of "Business Economy" did not cause any sensation, so everyone put the matter aside.

Who can think of it as a proverb.

Today, three years later, Zhao Ziming has been in charge of a hundred billion empires, and the shadow of artificial intelligence behind it is looming. It is not an exaggeration to say that he wants to change the world.

A month ago, I ran into Zhao Ziming in Xiangjiang. The whole person was full of vigor and calmness. Compared with the past, the only thing that remains unchanged is dreams.

Of course, it is impossible to succeed with only dreams. Zhao Ziming has found a shortcut to realize his dreams, and that is the power of technology.

Zhao Ziming's continued curiosity about technology is related to the environment in which companies were facing internal and external troubles at the time.

At the beginning of Golden Dragon Loan, the external market was weak and the internal people were distracted. How to reduce costs and enhance competitiveness through technology is particularly important.

Zhao Ziming chose the most difficult path to do online risk control. Using AI technology-supported risk control judgment, he can track all online traces of borrowing users and present personal credit in a three-dimensional manner.

This is something that is standard in the industry. Zhao Ziming has always believed that whether its accuracy is really higher than that of its competitors directly determines the efficiency of capital burning and the value of market share in the long market game.

2. Achievement of career is nothing more than persistence

In the interview three years ago, Zhao Ziming talked about a company that shocked him deeply-XCOR, a private aerospace company.

As a head-to-head research on delivery vehicles, it needs strong research and development capabilities, and the complexity of the delivery vehicles it studies is much greater than that of the world-famous SpaceX.

Zhao Ziming said that he was shocked by the founder of XCOR, who burned himself for dreams and threw himself into an unknown battle without hesitation. He has been persevering for more than ten years and moved people.

Research on the space shuttle, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) gave up, but this group of entrepreneurs have been insisting on it since 15 years ago.

Although he has not succeeded until today, he still struggles forward hard.

This spirit and persistence shocked the entire American technology industry.

Zhao Ziming said: You will find that they firmly believe in the power of technology and believe that technology may not only change a certain business field, but the entire world.

I have always felt that Zhao Ziming is a "technologist". He believes from his bones that the efficiency improvement brought by technology and the continuous evolution brought about by free market competition can change the world, and he will usually get good business returns from it. .

This mode of thinking can help us better understand his behavioral logic and different business ideas.

Many people have asked Zhao Ziming why he chose P2P, a notorious industry?

Last year, Zhao Ziming responded to Song Ziqiang of Caijing on this issue.

He said that too many people only pay attention to the surface instead of the core. They only want to believe what they believe, and don't care about its essence.

The online lending industry is mixed, not to say that there is no merit in nature. He is willing to be a spoiler and challenger, injecting a clear stream into the market, correcting the source, and ultimately changing the ecology of the entire industry.

Of course, we know that he has not yet succeeded. Today, the reputation of online loan sharks is widely circulated, and news of fraud and violence occurs from time to time.

But we must remember that when we worship heroes and admire success, we must not forget that these successful heroes are only representatives of a large number of people who have not actually succeeded and are still struggling. They are just the spire.

Those who have not succeeded yet and are still struggling are still heroes and still worthy of admiration.

Zhao Ziming's efforts to this end are more touching than the huge wealth he has earned today.

Fame and fortune are what everyone pursues, but what can truly change the world and enhance social well-being is ideal and purity.

3. Positive and optimistic, change the world

A book highly recommended by Zhao Ziming, "From 0 to 1" by the famous investor Peter Thiel, believes that pessimistic or optimistic views on the future will directly affect our behavior and ultimately determine the direction of history.

Only very optimistic people firmly believe that the future will get better and better, and then make arduous efforts under such a firm and optimistic premise, regardless of the difficulties they face and the probability of success.

If people are purely rational animals, it is impossible for anyone to start a business, and the success rate of starting a business is not even 1%.

Almost all entrepreneurship is a long march.Don’t just stare at the special cases of star companies that have been listed for three to five years. Even they have experienced countless failures. Entrepreneurship is a process of constant trial and error, and constantly discovering which way will not work, if there is no optimism It’s impossible to persist until the end.

Don't interpret this as a very imaginary and spiritual thing. This is a fundamental difference in business thinking, and it will bring about a big difference in methodology.

The Internet environment in China is no longer the rash of BAT's rise. Any new company that wants to obtain traffic and rise quickly will consume much more energy than BAT in the past.

At this time, the importance of mentality has become more and more prominent.

If you don't have an optimistic attitude, just think about the difficulties and you will shrink.

In the past few years, the Chinese technology circle, which has experienced large and small outlets such as group buying and O2O, once formed some thinking inertia and "entrepreneurial stereotypes": find a large enough market, take enough money, and quickly burn a head or monopoly Type companies, and then go public or fall into the giant system.

Both entrepreneurs and investors recognize this routine.

For Zhao Ziming, he has to go against the trend and return to the essence of business. The mentality determines everything.

He said, "Usually, in this industry, the value of technology is not reflected in the short-term, but in the long run, most people underestimate the value of technology in it, work hard and stick to it."

Jinlongdai has gone through two financings, with valuations ranging from tens of millions to tens of billions. It is this positive and optimistic attitude and the concept of technology first that are at work.

From the perspective of Jinlong's business, it is not simply pursuing market scale. When other online loan companies are desperately attracting users to invest, Zhao Ziming went the other way, constantly compressing microfinance business and vigorously promoting other businesses.

Jinlong's geek thinking, technical strength and strong execution power not only build the cornerstone of the development towards a smart future, but also allow smart to be applied to the entire industry, empower more businesses, and make China's online lending continue to be smart and upgraded .

More fundamentally, technology has become a key element for the development of Internet companies in the intelligent era, and technology is undoubtedly the basis for the future development of King Long.

Jinlongdai launched cloud risk control services at low prices. Starting from rectifying the online lending industry, it built a personal credit investigation system to help build a credit society. He used practical actions to practice his ideals and change society bit by bit.

4. Thinking while walking, practice everywhere.

Zhao Ziming's personal assets exceeded tens of billions when Jinlongdai's Series B financing, he was less than 26 years old at that time.

For a young man, if there is no strong heart, huge wealth is definitely not a good thing. The life of a drunken and sensual life can easily ruin a genius.

But all of this does not exist for Zhao Ziming. Every time Zhao Ziming's news is related to company development and corporate dynamics.

Not to mention the luxurious and corrupt life, even the basic personal enjoyment is very little.

When Golden Dragon Loan was on the right track, Zhao Ziming took over the brilliant company. When the "Jianghu" game dominated the world, Zhao Ziming acquired Magic Feiyue. When Magic Mirror 2.0 created a new era, Zhao Ziming integrated the digital group and launched Xiaozhi Robot .

He step by step, never stopped, creating unimaginable achievements.

Maybe Zhao Ziming's life is like this, always fighting and running forward.

Moving from one starting point to another, there is no success and no stagnation.

For Zhao Ziming, change is the eternal theme, and there is an inexhaustible motivation to move forward. Today's self is different from yesterday, and he cannot look at himself today with the eyes of yesterday.

When you think that online lending is his entire career, you suddenly realize that this is just his starting point.When you think that making games is cross-border, the listing of Magic Mirror indicates that the hardware field is also his ambition.

Zhao Ziming once told me that my life is very long. I think as I walk, there is no end to struggle, and what I enjoy is the process.

Today, I understand that what Zhao Ziming is chasing is not wealth, or even simply for his career. Perhaps in his view, life is a practice.

Entrepreneurship is practice, and crossover is practice.

The ability to cross the catastrophe is the core competitiveness. Zhao Ziming has been in business for many years and has been through the catastrophe for many years. The more and more he is stronger, this is the entrepreneurial story of "continuously crossing the catastrophe, not in love in the past, indulging forward, and never ending". In a more complex entrepreneurial ecosystem, split the mountains and build your own story.

Entrepreneurship is like this, and life is not like this. How can there be so many glories, and more of them are not repeated failures.

However, when you fall, you have to fall forward. Every time you hit a stick, you will jump higher next time. May we all engrave this sentence in our hearts: the important thing is not going up or down, the key is to keep going forward. .

Five, conclusion

Great companies are always born in great times, and brand-new species always resonate with the brand-new era.

Today's China has entered a golden age of entrepreneurs and has produced a number of new economy companies that are leading the world.

As an aboriginal of the Internet (who has been exposed to the Internet since he was a child), Zhao Ziming is lucky. In such a soil and environment, he has created an all-round company that is rare in the world, and software, hardware and Internet services go hand in hand.

Of course, his ambitions don't stop there, he came into being in the new era, and may even want to personally push the era forward.

This young man who founded Golden Dragon Loan, brilliant games, and magical leaps is very different from the nearly perfect entrepreneurs of the previous era... But in this era, if he gives him a stage, maybe he can change the world.

It took Zhao Ziming 3 years to confirm the introduction of our cover report, and let him write the rest of the story.

Shi Feike on October 28, 2015 in Nanluoguxiang.