In today’s Chinese business community, the two most powerful business gangs are Guangdong businessmen and Zhejiang businessmen. Almost these two places have the most people on the annual rich list. For example, in the 2020 Hurun Report, there are 4 Zhejiang businessmen and 4 Guangdong businessmen in the top ten. However, comparing these two merchants, Guangdong merchants lost to Zhejiang merchants in one aspect, that is, the number of “China’s richest man”, Zhejiang merchants can be said to be far ahead.
Over the past 20 years, China has produced many of the richest people, but according to the geographical division, Zhejiang merchants are the most. There was Ding Lei of NetEase at first, Zong Qinghou, who became the richest man three times, and then Jack Ma, who was the richest man in China four times. Today, the new richest man is born, he is the founder of Nongfu Spring, Zhong Suansui, but he is still from Zhejiang. In fact, there is another Zhejiang businessman who hopes to become the richest man, but he himself gave up. He is the founder of Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng. He was once the second richest man in China and chased the richest man, but he took the initiative to give up 13.9% of the richest man. The share price dropped from 43.3% to 29.4%.
Judging from the current situation, it seems that Zhejiang merchants and Cantonese merchants will continue to maintain the “two-horse battle for hegemony” situation, but in fact there is a merchant gang that is rising rapidly and may give birth to the next richest man in China, which is Fujian merchants.
Recently, Hu Run said in an interview that the next richest man is likely to be Zhang Yiming. He thinks that after Kuaishou’s listing, the market value exceeds RMB 1 trillion, and Douyin is at least twice its value. After the listing, it is likely to rise again. It is possible to reach 2 to 3 trillion yuan. Zhang Yiming holds 15% of Douyin’s shares. , It is not difficult to become the richest man.
In fact, according to foreign media reports, the valuation of ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin, is approaching US$400 billion. Zhang Yiming holds a quarter of Bytedance’s equity, which will be worth $100 billion. According to the 2021 Forbes Global Rich List released some time ago, this value can enter the world’s top five, which is the highest record ever. In the “2021 Hurun Global Self-made U40 Rich List”, Zhang Yiming ranked first in China with a net worth of 350 billion.
Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 and is only 38 years old now. He grew up in a business unit family, but his father later went to sea to start a business. Zhang Yiming’s feeling is not good at words, even a little restrained and shy. But in fact, he is a very ambitious and challenging person. After graduating from university, he worked briefly at Microsoft, and then he continued to start a business until he founded Bytedance in 2012.
ByteDance launched its first product, Toutiao, a news information aggregation platform. Different from traditional news apps, Toutiao uses algorithms to recommend information based on each person’s interests, as well as accurately recommend advertising information. As a result, Toutiao has developed rapidly, gaining 300 million monthly active users under the noses of portal giants such as Tencent.
Another King Fried product of ByteDance is Douyin. Short videos have become the fastest growing track of the Internet. The largest one is undoubtedly Douyin. Statistics show that as of March this year, Douyin’s daily active users have reached 610 million. In the social field, Tencent has always occupied a dominant position through QQ and WeChat. Now Douyin is attacking, quickly grabbing user time and becoming a strong competitor of Tencent.
In the past two or two years, the “to-teng war” has continued to erupt. Tencent launched its own short video app Weishi, and has invested in Douyin’s competitor Kuaishou. In addition, Douyin was blocked on WeChat. ByteDance is not to be outdone, and its products are not allowed to display information such as WeChat signals. However, Tencent has been unable to stop the development of Bytedance, and can only let it grow into a super giant.
It is understood that Bytedance’s revenue in 2020 has reached 240 billion yuan, with a profit of about 45 billion yuan, of which advertising revenue is 183 billion yuan. And Tencent’s revenue in 2020 is 482.064 billion yuan, which means that the beating of bytes after just over 8 years of establishment has reached half of Tencent’s revenue.
In addition to competing with Tencent, Bytedance is increasing its competitiveness with Alibaba. Its e-commerce business will increase from 170 billion yuan last year to 600 billion yuan in 2021. In addition, Alibaba has always been the company with the highest advertising revenue. Now ByteDance wants to increase its advertising revenue to 260 billion yuan, which will undoubtedly compete with Ali.
Zhang Yiming’s ambitions are far more than that. He has extended the tentacles of Bytedance to industries such as gaming, finance, online education, office software, etc. From all indications, Bytedance’s goal is directed at China’s largest Internet company, surpassing Ali and Tencent.
In China’s Internet industry, there are two big mountains, Ali and Tencent, and emerging companies generally choose to stand on one side. But Zhang Yiming was the only one who insisted. ByteDance did not have Ali and Tencent in the 9 rounds of financing. He just blazed a trail from the two giants. Zhang Yiming does not want to be attached to these two companies, he wants to be his own giant.
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