In the long-distance competition between China's new energy vehicle forces, there is a stage winner!
Recently, Li Auto announced its financial report. Last year, it achieved revenue of 123.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 173.5%; net profit reached 11.81 billion yuan (a net loss of 2.03 billion yuan in 2022).Achieved full-year profit for the first time.
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Li Auto, which was founded less than nine years ago, has become China's first new force with annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan.
“The significant growth in scale, the continuous deepening of research and development, and the continuous improvement of operating efficiency will drive us to achieve the best financial performance in history in 2023, and also lay a solid foundation for 2024.” Li Xiang, chairman of Li Auto, said.
The automobile industry is one of the most watched competitive fields in the Chinese market, and various automobile companies are competing for supremacy in this huge emerging industry. It turned out that as the competition deepened, the group of heroes had arranged their seats, and the smoke cleared for a time. However, with the entry of Tesla, new energy vehicles have become a new arena where thousands of horses are competing.
Among them, NIO was founded by Li Bin in 2014, Li Auto was founded by Li Xiang in 2015, and Xpeng Motors was founded by He Xiaopeng in 2017. Because of their founders’ forward-looking vision and perseverance and perseverance, they have started their own businesses many times. The passion for innovation and the driving force of being an outsider in the automobile but being fully committed to it attracted the attention of the world. As a result, the “Wei Xiaoli” phenomenon of new energy vehicles emerged and became a fresh “new force in car manufacturing.”
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These three people are similar in age and are all entrepreneurs born in the 1970s or early 1980s. They all have successful experience in taking their companies public or selling them to giants for exit. They all have the passion to not quit after their success and to continue fighting in the world. After ten years of fighting, who is the leader, and who is temporarily lagging behind or showing signs of fatigue?
At present, Li Xiang is the temporary leader in this long-distance competition of new energy vehicles.
Who is Li Xiang and how did he transcend?
serial entrepreneur
Li Xiang was born in 1981 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. When he was born, his parents wanted to study at the Central Academy of Drama, so they had to leave him with his family in the countryside. He returned to the city to study at the age of seven. In the first year of junior high school, the school opened a semester of computer classes. Li Xiang saw a computer for the first time, and he has been inseparable from computers ever since.
At that time, his family was not wealthy and could not afford a computer, so Li wanted to devote his passion to computer books and magazines. He spent all his pocket money and went to newsstands just to buy the latest magazines. It wasn't until his freshman year in high school that he got his first computer, which cost him 8,000 yuan, which was his father's salary for several months.
With a computer, he thinks about computer-related things all day long. Not only think about it, but also write it. The first article writes about installation experience, how to use different hardware to get the best effect. 5,000 words, published in professional media, fee 500 yuan.
From then on, Li Xiang began to output a large number of manuscripts. While he was still a middle school student, he was already the main writer for major IT media such as “Computer News” and “Computer World” at that time. It is said that the general remuneration rate at that time was 60 yuan per thousand words, but he could get 300 yuan.
In 1997 and 1998, with the emergence of commercial websites such as Sohu and Sina, the Internet industry began to rise. Li Xiang built his own personal website “Graphics Card Home” to publish his own articles on computer graphics cards.
At that time, Li Xiang was already in his third year of high school, which was the time when his studies were the heaviest. But in order to make a good website, he got up early in the morning to check information on the Internet, wrote articles and updated the website before going to school. After school in the afternoon, I ran to the Computer City and borrowed the latest products from familiar merchants to take home for review.
The personal website quickly gained traffic, and advertisers also came looking for it.It is said that before the college entrance examination, Li Xiang had earned 100,000 yuan by selling advertisements.
At this time, the college entrance examination was approaching, but Li didn't want to take the college entrance examination. His parents, who were majoring in art, respected his interests and hobbies. In addition, Li Xiang was financially independent. So, like Han Han, who also gave up college, Li Xiang began a life path that was completely different from that of his Chinese peers.
Entrepreneurs who succeed in starting a business are always exciting and long, and they always have to go through various trials and temptations during this period, otherwise it will be another sad story. Li Xiang's next experience can be summarized into two parts: Paopao.com and Autohome. This is also the business experience he must go through before establishing Ideal Car.
The predecessor of Paopao.com was “Graphics Card Home”. The reason is simple. What Li Xiang knows best is graphics cards, and computers also have other hardware. The business content of Paopao.com has logically expanded from graphics cards to the evaluation of all computer hardware. Paopao grew into the top three content websites in the computer industry at that time, but it was preceded by two other giants: PConline and ZOL.
Li Xiang judged that it was almost impossible to surpass the top two. For him, if he cannot be the first in the industry, he would rather not do it. Li Xiang examined other industries, focusing on real estate, tourism and automobiles. He analyzed that to build a real estate website, you need to build teams across the country to expand offline real estate resources; to build a tourism website, you need a strong middle-end system such as a customer service center, as well as a ground team to maintain local resources. This requires an open-minded and versatile personality, which is not suitable for him.
So, I finally decided to make a car website.In 2005, “Auto Home” was officially launched. From then on, Li Xiang gradually transformed into a car person.
As Li Xiang hoped, Autohome later unified the world and became China's largest online provider of automotive content. Investigating the reasons, there are several main reasons for its success:
First, focusAt that time, the comprehensive portal website also had a car channel, but the car channel was just a side dish for the portal, while it was a rich meal in the vertical field;
The second is to be closer to users, for example, when content is updated at eight o’clock in the evening, he believes that car-buying users generally go to work during the day and surf the Internet at night. Other peers use p-pictures provided by the manufacturer, but his pictures are taken on-site by store sweeps and editors. They are taken from all angles and show the real car condition with the original pictures.
In 2013, Yiqijuechen Autohome was listed in the United States. Its market value once exceeded 10 billion U.S. dollars, and the latest data is still 3.2 billion U.S. dollars.
However, the current Autohome has nothing to do with Li Xiang. In 2015, Li Xiang retired from business and started a series of entrepreneurships, establishing his own new energy brand car “Ideal”.
In July 2020, five years after its founding, Li Auto was listed on Nasdaq.
What did Li want to do right?
A high school graduate from an ordinary urban middle-class family does not have the resources to protect himself from the “second generation rich” or “second generation officials”, and does not have the blessing of connections from a prestigious school. He starts from scratch and, with his own efforts, becomes a businessman before the age of 40. Two U.S. listed companies were created. How did this seemingly low-key young entrepreneur do it?
Management scholars and market observers have analyzed Li Xiang’s victory from various angles. Generally speaking, they can be summarized as follows:Long-term vision, user proximity, leadership, and personal learning abilities.
Take a long-term view. Li Xiang's early entrepreneurship, from writing articles to setting up a website, was originally a conventional path based on local conditions and personal talents. The computer industry itself is also a big market, but it can turn into the broader automotive industry. And when Musk opened up Tesla's underlying technology and promoted industry symbiosis, he decisively jumped into electric vehicles, a new track that attracted worldwide attention.
This kind of vertical leap-forward entrepreneurship that can operate in different periods, environments, and fields requires a long-term vision, rational decision-making with a stable mind, and long-term persistence.
Close to users. When he makes computer reviews, he starts out by helping users make their purchase easier; when he makes a car home, he also aims to help potential users who want to buy cars by providing comprehensive one-stop services from information to test drives and purchases; when making ideal cars, he was the earliest This model is designed to provide urban users with convenient electric driving travel, so it is designed to be compact. The first car that came out later focused on family needs, so it had a wide body and a more user-friendly interior design.
This original intention of serving users well has always been maintained by Li Xiangbao.
Personal learning ability. Heroes do not ask where they come from. A person who can accomplish great things does not necessarily need a diploma. But a high school graduate who has been in the business world for 20 years and is still making progress is indeed an anomaly.
As a person who used to be “very, very introverted, even a little autistic”, at first he liked to immerse himself in work. Even if he was in the same office, he would use QQ for notifications. “My personality is a bit arrogant and I always think I am right.” Therefore, during the Pao.com period when the company only had 30 or 40 people, half of the employees left overnight.
Li Xiang reflected afterwards that the responsibility lies with him, “Because I have been dealing with computers for a long time, I don't know how to communicate with people, and I don't know what others think. I just tell others my ideas and simply execute them.” From then on, he was forced to change his personality and approach, avoid being arbitrary, listen more and speak less.
In terms of business and management, he has also grown into an expert in many fields. He is also able to deal with investors and capital markets with ease. It is said that he has an advantage: when there is a problem, he takes the responsibility first and does not shirk the blame.
leadership. Li wanted to be generous and promote “wealth scattered and people gathered together”. Both Paopao.com and Autohome have a bunch of small shareholders. In order to invite Qin Zhi, the later CEO, to join Autohome, Li Xiang even considered: Even if he has more shares than me, I am willing. His focus is on getting things done, not how much money he makes.
In order to invite Telstra to invest, Li Xiang's equity was eventually diluted to single digits. Of course, this also laid the foundation for starting a business again in the future.
In addition to generosity, Li Xiang also has another commendable approach: trust and delegation of authority. From budgeting, to hiring, to work allocation, power is absolutely delegated and the person in charge makes the decision alone. It is said that after 2008, almost no one on his management team left.
Li Xiang believes: “Trust is 100% of leadership.” He summed up a formula:Human value = knowledge x wisdom x trust.
In addition, there is another special feature of Li Xiang's management: he attaches great importance to family and goes home to spend time with his family and children on weekends. Team members are basically the same. It is said that Li Xiang had 11 senior executives during his time at Autohome, no one got divorced in 10 years, and each family had an average of two children.