Jiang Xiaopeng, a paranoid Northeastern, entered the SaaS industry in 2006 and has never left. He has been doing it for 14 years. From Wolf Smoke to Wanwang to Ali, closely following the SaaS business. In 2013, due to the adjustment of Ali's strategy, Jiang Xiaopeng left with Ali's halo, but returned to a small SaaS project, which surprised countless peers.
In the years of no doubt, Jiang Xiaopeng's life and work are SaaS apart from SaaS. He has the typical characteristics of the post-80s generation, and he has always finished. However, he is very aware that SaaS is hopeless in China, but he just stayed on this trip. We chatted with him about 14 years of SaaS life.
01. After 6 years of wind and rain, paper clips changed villas
When did China have SaaS? 2004 was a critical year for the development of the industry. Salesforce was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange. On the first day, it was on the front page of the news because its stock rose by more than 55%.
Also in this year, the first batch of companies doing SaaS services were born in China, imitating Salesforce's model operations. But most companies are just short-lived.
And those who survived this big wave were wolves. This is a story of a paper clip for a villa, and it is also the beginning of Jiang Xiaopeng's accidental entry into SaaS. Wolf Smoke was established in 2005. In the early days of the SaaS industry, they aimed at one thing and built a website.
Jiang Xiaopeng still remembers the difficult time after entering Wolf Smoke in 2006, a company that started as a SaaS company. In two years, Jiang Xiaopeng has achieved the highest level of this business, and the market has reached the upper limit. "You can only show customers one by one to prove that this thing is very useful. Let’s talk about founder Lu Zhong (former vice president of Microsoft) and The technical strength of Wang Zhigang (one of the founders of Sina) can gain the trust of customers."
However, this sales method cannot bring more growth to Wolf Smoke. The founder chose to merge with Wanwang in stock swap in 2008 to continue this business. At the same time, Lu Zhong also introduced cooperation with Ali, focusing on the sale of IaaS (basic hardware such as servers). In the end, this small SaaS company ended up being acquired by Ali, completing the feat of changing paper clips for villas.
The merger is destined to be painful. Wolfsmoke was annexed, and his business manager was labelled a "loser". What followed was a salary cut, and the 10,000 salary was directly cut to 2,160 yuan. Today, 12 years later, he still clearly remembers this insulting figure. Sales in the industry were just cheap labor, and there was no concept of business at that time. In less than a month, all the business managers of the original Wolfsmoke team resigned and left. Only Jiang Xiaopeng remained at Wanwang.
In the face of such a fierce environment, 25-year-old Jiang Xiaopeng had no rebuttal except for grievances. He is too aware of the bottleneck of SaaS products, but still does not believe that they can only come here. After the violent collision of the company's merger, the more Jiang Xiaopeng was not convinced, the more he would grit his teeth in this business to make a performance.
In Wanwang's later years, the situation of being discriminated against and suppressed did not weaken but increased. He occasionally hid in the office alone and cried. The feeling he still remembers today. After experiencing the darkening moment, he understands one thing, he must do it well and do it beautifully.
Being better than others is Jiang Xiaopeng's natural nature, and this nature comes from the natural weakness of a Northeast boy who is 165 in height. The natural weakness when his consciousness was sprouting, and the inexplicable discrimination after he first entered the society, made him deeply realize that the world has no respect for him if he does bad things.
With his own strength, he led 20 people and achieved a performance higher than that of Wanwang's first-level branch. Subsequently, the strength of the Wolfsmoke team was also proved. In the year that Alibaba acquired Wanwang, the public prospectus for the listing stated that Lu Zhong was the founder of Wanwang, and the original team of Wanwang was also under the command of Jiang Xiaopeng.
But unfortunately, after entering Ali, the original Wolfsmoke’s SaaS site building business only occupied a small proportion, and this business shrank to 8%. After entering Ali, Jiang Xiaopeng's weekly work centered around flying to Hangzhou on Friday, starting various meetings at Ali headquarters on Monday, and flying back to Beijing on Saturday. This kind of life is also slightly boring.
02. The big factory left and made a small project: SaaS entrepreneurship
What Jiang Xiaopeng encountered again was the disrespect from the senior executives after the merger-without telling him, he directly cut off the SaaS website construction business. At that time, Ali’s strategy was: “A company of this magnitude only needs to do well in IaaS and PaaS, and the underlying logic is important.” Jiang Xiaopeng resolutely submitted the resignation application in the face of adjustment.
Jiang Xiaopeng felt: "Your own child, no matter how important it is, you must grow up with it."
In this way, he came out and started the company Yunmeng Networks, doing all he can to do SaaS. In a blink of an eye, it is 2020. 14 years have passed. Jiang Xiaopeng, who has never given up on SaaS, has really seen this market clearly.
Even if there are already SaaS listed companies-Youzan, Jiang Xiaopeng is not optimistic about the status of SaaS in China. Youzan is also facing the same problem. Its customers can only stay in: primary e-commerce. After all, big platforms such as Taobao, JD, and Pinduoduo have accounted for more than 90% of the e-commerce market.
The Chinese people's reliance on the platform far exceeds the recognition of Youzan. Youzan can't be Salesforce, the ceiling is too obvious, unless it has another stove. The Chinese people's excessive trust in the platform directly leads to the bottleneck of the business of companies such as Youzan. The American habit is to value the brand rather than the platform, which contributed to the growth of Salesforce.
During the epidemic, many SaaS tools were on fire, including a batch of online office enterprise service software represented by Dingding and Graphite Documents. But the dilemma is also well known in the industry, that is, not making money. This makes the SaaS tools represented by Dingding and Graphite in an embarrassing situation.
Take Dingding as an example, it is still at a loss so far. Once paid, it means the loss of a large number of customers. Not to mention SaaS tools such as graphite files and ink knives that are small in size and do not have a big owner. According to data from Qimai, the weekly downloads of graphite and ink knives in the IOS system are not even more than 10,000, which is far from the Dingding level, and there is no need to make a profit.
In addition to such online office SaaS tools, there are also SaaS systems that provide services to enterprises, such as financial management systems and website building systems. For example, the SaaS system he provided to Alibaba Cloud for building a website has seen rapid performance during this epidemic. But it still can't overwhelm a saying in the industry, "Use SaaS if you have no money, and customize if you have money." The essence behind this is not whether the company has money or not, but the trust of society.
For start-ups, saving money is a must, and they often choose SaaS without hesitation. Once they grow up, they will no longer choose such SaaS services. Customized services are the generally trusted way. In China, top companies either develop their own or find giants such as Chinasoft, Neusoft, and Pactera to provide customized software services. This is China's national conditions, even if this is not in line with the marginal cost-effectiveness, large companies are still willing to pay for it.
Jiang Xiaopeng has seen all this very clearly during his 14 years in SaaS. When a friend asked him about his SaaS business, he would just say bluntly and couldn't do it. "For SaaS companies, small and medium-sized enterprises will either grow bigger without SaaS, or they will lose customers, and they will live and die every day." After Wolf Smoke, Wanwang, and then to Ali, he insisted on this business, "SMEs are just users. , Not the customer."
Jiang Xiaopeng's resume made him lucky to have Alibaba Cloud customers who were dismissive of SaaS development, and later China Unicom. "If you find the right customer, you will find the following."
Today, the stock market is changing, and the media habitually talk about the future of SaaS, in order to prove that the future of SaaS is bright and bright. But ignore the rough seas.
Jiang Xiaopeng has been facing life and death several times along the way, from Wolf Smoke to Wanwang to Ali and then to Yunmeng. If it were not for a single profit model focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises, Yunmeng would have long been dead.
After seeing all this, he is still willing to work in this industry, "SaaS technology is good, SaaS is a historical trend, but SaaS entrepreneurship is too difficult."
03. Only by surviving can we strive for change
In Jiang Xiaopeng's eyes, there are many ways to play on SaaS. Just as he said, products outside the trust mechanism are even more terrible. He frankly admitted that the current sales management system currently in use by the company is somewhat inadequate. "If you have time later, develop one yourself."
Jiang Xiaopeng believes that SaaS products are mostly not done well, and he is not satisfied even with his own projects. Recently, he is eager to combine AI intelligence with the station building system.
Looking back on his 14-year SaaS career, he felt that he was wrong at the beginning. Right now, he finally figured out one thing that technology has to solve is the repetitive problem, "SaaS, the site building system, still needs to reduce human hands. The mouse drag and drop site building is outdated." Technology updates should not be a selling point. Service, technology should truly serve efficiency.
At the same time, he also re-layout the company's products, "do a good job of SaaS, and at the same time go back to full customization." As far as possible to meet the common needs and personalized needs, this has become the key to breaking the game. In jargon, it is SaaS+PaaS, which not only preserves SaaS, but also caters to the PaaS demand of the market.
Jiang Xiaopeng has never been a person with a desire to change the world. "You said how much you love the field of SaaS, nor is it." After entering this business by mistake, he didn't want to change. For him, the important thing is not the industry, but the ability to achieve the best and become the industry standard.
That year, this set of SaaS sales specifications and the full refund of unsatisfactory e-commerce were all from his initiative. When this entire set of businesses was acquired by Ali, his goal was half achieved. Every time he talked about 14 years ago, he said: "Even QQ's online pages were copied from us." He wanted to continue the pride of the industry leader. Now the remaining half is completely AI intelligence.
In Jiang Xiaopeng's view, their team pioneered the visualized operation of the product presentation and the SaaS-based website building system, and latecomers only started to enter the industry after a lapse of 5 years. Now, in his opinion, as long as the product is to the extreme, it will naturally wait for the hope of SaaS, whether it is success or the industry powerhouse, everything will come naturally.
At the moment, the reason why SaaS products such as Graphite Document have no way out is actually not related to SaaS, but more of a product problem. There was WPS before and Microsoft afterwards. The only highlight of collaborative work was also quickly learned by competitors. The upper limit of the document product is already visible to the naked eye.
If you want to use SaaS to leverage the market, then don't forget that the pivot is products and services. Huawei can rely on persistence to tie the world with communication technology. Its leverage is communication technology and its fulcrum is service. The same is true for SaaS. It takes a kind of almost crazy persistence, coupled with the powerful lever of SaaS, and the ultimate products and services as the fulcrum, in order to pry the Chinese market.
04 People who don’t know how to give up have no wisdom
Recently, people often ask, is the SaaS industry really so powerful? Jiang Xiaopeng, the leader of the SaaS website project, said in a private chat with friends: “SaaS is hopeless in China.”
In the past few years, Lu Zhong, who is kind to him, has also approached him several times and asked him to give up SaaS. From payment projects to the later Internet of Things, he even took his company to do things for him. He did, but the big brother Lu Zhong hopes that he can follow him. After all, the future is not in a small SaaS, but in the Internet of Things.
Today, Lu Zhong has left the position of vice president of Alibaba Group and has become the founding partner of Zhonghai Investment. He once brought investors with tens of billions of assets to persuade Jiang Xiaopeng round after round, but Jiang Xiaopeng refused. Looking back at these 14 years, this is a career that has been obsessed with the SaaS field and has been perfectly mismatched with tens of billions of assets.
In a team building activity in 2007, after he led the team to the second place, he chose to give up when faced with a chance to fight again in the draw. Being pointed out by Lu Zhong as "a mentality of seeking stability" and his later refusal also made Lu Zhong feel that this young man didn't know when to give up and had no wisdom.
After all, Lu Zhong, who was the first to do this, and Wang Zhigang, the technical genius, have now left the scene one by one, because they know too well that SaaS is too difficult. But Jiang Xiaopeng still firmly believes that "his child must be taken to the end, and he has not done it yet."
Back in time on the day when we were discussing things in Shanghai, at 10 o'clock in the evening, it rained heavily on Shili Yangchang, and my partner decided to take a taxi back to the hotel. Jiang Xiaopeng looked at the number of steps on the watch. It didn't reach 10,000 steps. He borrowed an umbrella and walked in the heavy rain, completing the remaining 7,000 steps.
At that moment, he seemed to see that the boy who was seeking security was gone. The boy who thought that being a bank manager at 40 would be enough, and now walking on the road of life at 39, thinking that SaaS is a lever that can disrupt Chinese society. . Do it to the extreme and survive tough times, and you will surely stand out again.
Face the difficulties, unless you are the chosen one. Is Jiang Xiaopeng's obsession with SaaS right or wrong? People who don't know how to give up have no wisdom.
But Zhang Dai also clearly pointed out in the "Four Books Yu" that if you don't know what you can't do, it's a fool; if you know what you can't do and don't do it, so are a wise man; if you know what you can't do, do it as a saint.
In China, those who move against the direction of the times against the tide of technology are saints. It is precisely these people who are changing the direction of the tide of the times.
Some pictures are from the Internet, and infringements are deleted
I hope that today's sharing will be helpful to your SaaS entrepreneurship. If you have any questions about cloud computing and website building, you can privately trust me. I am Bei Ke, a master's degree in CS (Computer Science) from Cornell University, and a serial entrepreneur. I am currently working in the Alibaba Cloud website construction technology research and development team as a senior algorithm engineer and incubating AI intelligent website construction tools. Welcome to follow.