Today, Alibaba Zhang Yong issued a shareholder letter for the first time as chairman of the board of directors. There are three key words in it, revealing an "Alibaba under the water." Under the surface, this company is no longer an e-commerce company, or even an Internet company, but a new species that cannot be defined by any of these single labels.
Compared with the past, Ali is indeed much older, but compared with the future, 20-year-old is just entering adulthood. For the future, Ali has unlimited possibilities and is full of imagination.
01. Certainty amid uncertainty
"The greatest certainty facing the future is the general trend of the entire economy and social life moving toward digitalization."
In the shareholder letter, Zhang Yong emphasized the impact of the global pandemic of the new coronavirus on the entire world. brings strong uncertainty," but we always believe that among all high uncertainties, there will always be some high degrees of certainty. The greatest certainty for the future Qualitatively, it is the general trend of the entire economy and social life being fully digitized. "Over the past 20 years, Alibaba has been preparing for the arrival of the digital economy and the era," Zhang Yong wrote in the letter, benefiting from China. With the rapid evolution of the Internet and digital economy, Alibaba has shared the same destiny with society during its 20 years of development. It not only builds a new business world on the Internet, but also strives to help various industries in the real economy fully embrace digitalization and realize the success of both. Integrate innovation. He wrote, "We have gone from being the 'water, electricity and coal' of global e-commerce to becoming the infrastructure for all walks of life to go digital."
Looking at the technology companies with the highest market capitalization in the world today, they all provide huge imagination in two aspects , firstly, it continues to invest in basic and cutting-edge technologies; secondly, based on these technical capabilities, it has generated strong B-side service capabilities, and then outputs a complete set of digital solutions.
This is exactly what Alibaba has done in the past 20 years.
first looks at technological innovation. For a long time in the past, the company relied on IOE (IBM minicomputers, Oracle databases, EMC storage devices), but the cost of IOE investment and operation and maintenance was extremely high. In 2009, Alibaba became the first company in China to decide to go to IOE. Ten years later, de-IOE has truly been implemented in the Internet, finance and other industries. The spiritual core of de-IOE - an IT architecture that is open, independent and innovative, and adapts to the times and customer development needs, has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In the same year of 2009, Alibaba Cloud engineers wrote the first line of code for Feitian, starting Alibaba's lonely journey of independently developing cloud computing in China. The subsequent story is well known. When it comes to investing in the future, Alibaba cannot be avoided.
Let’s look at to B’s service capabilities. For Alibaba, this B has been a small and medium-sized enterprise from the first day. Alibaba’s core business model is a platform, which means that Alibaba needs to deal with multilateral relationships between buyers, sellers and platforms from the beginning. This is a set of highly complex relationships, and in the process of handling this set of relationships , Alibaba has formed the ability to systematically serve small and medium-sized enterprises, step by step based on information flow, capital flow and logistics to build the underlying system to support small and medium-sized enterprises doing business - digital business infrastructure, and form a solution for enterprise digitalization, Alibaba Commercial operating systems. These "deep innovations" that are hard to see under the water, while transforming into supporting the development capabilities of small and medium-sized enterprises, have also unknowingly become Ali's deepest moat.
The epidemic has undoubtedly given people a deeper understanding of the capabilities of this infrastructure. Alibaba makes full use of digital infrastructure such as commerce, finance, logistics, and cloud computing to participate in the global fight against the epidemic, protect people's livelihood, and restore the economy. Public information shows that Alibaba has relaunched the "Spring Thunder Plan" to help small and medium-sized enterprises after 11 years, using digital methods to help small and medium-sized enterprises find opportunities in crisis. For example, Taobao and Online Merchant Bank launched a free "0 account period" service to help small and medium-sized enterprises quickly receive payment, resolving urgent needs when capital circulation is difficult.
Going alone goes fast, but working together goes far. This is the path Alibaba chose from the beginning.
02. Customer value is the origin of all innovations
"Only innovations that truly start from zero to one, from scratch, and continue to create value for customers can withstand the test of history"
In the past period of time, Alibaba suddenly encountered a wave of concentrated pessimism. Visible innovations were decreasing and competition was falling into competition on all fronts. Some netizens even jokingly said, "Just looking at the analysis and comments, has Alibaba been beaten to death by Meituan and and Pinduoduo ?" "?", and some people said " Tencent pushed Alibaba to the edge of the cliff."
In this shareholder letter, it is not difficult to see Alibaba's attitude towards competition: "Alibaba's 20 years have been 20 years of change in competition. Competition has made us better, and competition has made us more creative. , competition makes us become wind-makers. "
If we extend the timeline, we can find that Alibaba's development in the past 20 years has been full of success. The course of competition: During the Spring Festival of 2014, WeChat launched WeChat red envelopes, and Alipay was "sneak-attacked" by WeChat Alipay; from 2015 to 2016, Tencent formed , JD.com, and other younger brothers to "besiege" Alibaba through investment and traffic tilt; Since 2018, traffic players have begun to enter the e-commerce track. Judging from the results of the first two rounds, despite the twists and turns, Alibaba's dominant position in the core field has not been shaken. On the contrary, it has "strengthened itself through war" and continued to evolve itself in business competition. Many app-based competitors even run on Alibaba Digital Commerce’s OS.
Just looking at Alibaba’s stock price, we can also see Alibaba’s confidence. As of the close of U.S. stocks on July 10, Eastern Time, Alibaba's market value had reached US$668.4 billion. In the past few days, the market value had exceeded US$700 billion, rising 20% in less than a week.
Alibaba’s attitude towards competition is based on its long-term confidence in innovation. In the author's opinion, these "local wars" have actually become Ali's sharpening stone. What Ali really cares about is, as Zhang Yong wrote in the shareholder letter: "Only those who truly go from zero to one, from nothing to something, and continue to Only innovation that creates value for customers can withstand the test of history."
So look at it. Alibaba’s business map, which emerged as an innovator 20 years ago, is still changing today and continues to create value for customers. Today’s indicator of new business still lies in whether it can anticipate and solve problems for customers in a forward-looking manner. , so you can stop chasing the excitement of the moment and concentrate on doing your own things well. In today's shareholder letter, Zhang Yong said, "The uniqueness of Alibaba is that we always stick to ourselves and always believe that customer value is the origin of all innovation." This echoes what he said in a previous exchange: "Many of our innovative businesses are persisting in obscurity. Because we believe in and see them, we are willing to persist." You must be patient and willing to pay, and this is the vision and mental state that we must have to face the future today. "No one can be creative and creative", this sentence in the shareholder letter, to a certain extent. It reveals Alibaba’s innovative methodology and values. Zhang Yong once said, "Our style of play is Build For Last. We need more strategic determination, we need more persistence, and we need to return to the essence of our customers more, instead of just looking at GMV scale and the number of orders." scale, this gives us more inspiration and confidence to truly use creative methods to create the future. "
's creation from 0 to 1 is to create trends rather than follow them. This is how Alibaba faces competition and challenges, large and small. The confidence of the time lies.
03, three major strategies
"Globalization is a long-term battle, domestic demand is the cornerstone battle, and cloud computing and big data are the battle of the future."
On September 10, 2019, Alibaba announced a five-year goal - serving China One billion consumers have achieved a consumption scale of RMB 10 trillion on the Alibaba platform, and based on this, we are moving towards globalization. By 2036, Alibaba hopes to serve 2 billion consumers around the world, create 100 million jobs, and help more than 10 million small and medium-sized enterprises make profits.
" To achieve these strategic goals in the future, we will continue to adhere to the three major strategies of 'globalization, domestic demand, and cloud computing and big data' - globalization is our long-term battle, domestic demand is our cornerstone battle, and cloud computing and big data This is our battle for the future," Zhang Yong wrote in the shareholder letter.
In 2019, Alibaba's core system achieved 100% cloud migration, successfully listed on the secondary market in Hong Kong, completed its journey home, and further laid out its global strategy. Last year, Dr. Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba Cloud, was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering for the first time as a representative of China's private enterprises. These are the phased results of Alibaba’s firm implementation of its three major strategies.
Today, in the three strategic sectors of globalization, domestic demand, and cloud computing and big data, we can clearly see that Alibaba's multiple businesses are working together and continuously integrating, which will strengthen the strategic integration of Alibaba's digital economy. It is not difficult to imagine that the advancement of these three strategies will inevitably be accompanied by the development and opening of more new capabilities.
Has the evolution of this new species of Ali come to an end? To use Alibaba’s words from last year’s Double 11, it’s exciting and has just begun.
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