Zhang Yiming: He started his business five times under the age of 40 and is worth nearly 100 billion. Do you know his story?

In today's Internet age where there are so many mobile software, there are very few software that have caused a long-lasting national craze like TikTok.

Such success is inseparable from the unique and novel entrepreneurial ideas of the founder. As the founder, Zhang Yiming is such an innovator who dares to venture and do things.

Having a preference for new things, he always applies his ideas to practice in a timely manner. Even if there are many failures and numerous bumps in the road to work and entrepreneurship, he can turn these into wealth and create his own software. world.

Potential influence of family atmosphere

Zhang Yiming was born in 1983, and his parents are ordinary workers in public institutions. Unlike ordinary parents who strictly control their children, Zhang Yiming's parents have always adopted a relaxed education style.

It is also in a relaxed and unrestrained environment that allows Zhang Yiming to personally try out various new things and find his own path of struggle in life.

This is indeed the case for Zhang Yiming after entering the society. He personally tried a variety of professions. Despite difficulties and failures, these unique life experiences accumulated valuable wealth for Zhang Yiming.

When I was a child, my parents’ conversations always mentioned the success of their friends’ businesses. These intentional or unintentional conversations aroused little Zhang Yiming's curiosity and planted a tenacious seed in his heart.

Zhang Yiming also realized early on that he wanted to make something valuable, and some illusory dreams did not exist for him.

While studying at school, he clearly discovered what he liked and what he was tired of. In the chemistry experiment class, he found that he preferred innovative things and paid great attention to the experience of eating new things.

The seed in Zhang Yiming's heart that his parents had accidentally abandoned began to grow.

Zhang Yiming’s life path has always been his own choice. Therefore, when choosing a university major, Zhang Yiming wanted a major that could see changes quickly. In this way, he entered the microelectronics major.

While studying, his in-depth understanding gave him some other ideas, and then he switched to studying software engineering. Zhang Yiming's parents were not very involved in his choices, but the family atmosphere subtly influenced Zhang Yiming's every choice.

Four jobs in three years

After graduating from college in 2005, a senior fellow student admired Zhang Yiming’s ability and invited him to start a business together. Although the senior brother's ideas had not been implemented concretely at that time, there were only some simple concepts.

But it was such a simple conversation that moved him, and he thought this was something he wanted to understand and learn. In this way, he started his first job in his career, but the market positioning of the product was wrong and the company failed to continue to develop.

In 2006, Zhang Yiming joined Kuxun, a travel search website.

In this company, Zhang Yiming is the first engineer. He is fully responsible for the search research and development of Kuxun. He has ideas and can always dig out some points that ordinary people tend to overlook. In just one year, he became technical director.

He not only relies on his excellent strength, but more importantly, he is good at observation and can discover something that can innovate.

Working at Kuxun can be said to be like a duck to water. As a senior manager, he had to manage dozens of people. However, the two professions of technology and management are not completely connected.

He found that he wanted to learn the management methods of large companies, so he decided to leave Kuxun even though he had achieved good results.

In 2008, he joined Microsoft, but this work experience was very short. The reason for his departure was simple. He felt that the work he did every day was very far away from the users, and there was no clear goal and direction.

After leaving Microsoft in 2008, Zhang Yiming joined Fanfou Ventures with technology as his major. The main direction of responsibility is similar to the previous work, such as search, message distribution, hot word mining, etc.

But this team co-founded with fellow Wang Xing*** did not survive long, and was shut down not long after.

In just three years after graduation, Zhang Yiming had four jobs.

Continuous Entrepreneurship, Continuous Failure

Zhang Yiming, who has always been loyal to innovation, has carried out many entrepreneurial ventures after entering the society. The honors and successes he has achieved now actually come from countless experiences. Frustration and failure.

In 2009, Zhang Yiming started his first independent business and founded the vertical real estate search engine "Jiujiufang". During this period, Zhang Yiming began to get involved in new fields and began to study mobile opening.

Zhang Yiming discovered many opportunities through his work experience in mobile development at "Jiujiufang". Even after becoming the CEO of the company, he still chose to resign in 2012.

Until then, Zhang Yiming’s achievements had not been seen by the public. Giving up and failing again and again may be that he was paving the way for future success.

Afterwards, Zhang Yiming began to prepare for the establishment of "Today's Toutiao". After discovering the rapid development trend of the mobile Internet, he established the "ByteDance" company. The company's development direction was quickly recognized by the market, and Zhang Yiming's results also appeared among the crowd.

"Today's Toutiao" is Zhang Yiming's fifth entrepreneurial venture. Since 2005, he has experienced four entrepreneurial ventures, but he did not choose to go to the end.

Some are because they cannot meet the needs of the market, and some are because they don’t get what they want. But the consecutive failures did not defeat him. "Today's Toutiao" became Zhang Yiming's business card to show himself.

Inevitable success

After trying and challenging, you will eventually usher in your own world. This is exactly Zhang Yiming's experience. The "Today's Toutiao" founded by him was quickly widely used in the market, and the number of registered users increased sharply in a short period of time.

Other applications owned by "ByteDance" occupy a large share of the software market. These application software appear more or less in people's lives. “TikTok”, which has caused a nationwide craze, is also a software owned by “ByteDance”.

"ByteDance", established in 2012, was valued at US$75 billion in 2018 and was later selected as the "2019 Forbes China's Most Innovative Companies List".

And its market is not limited to the domestic market. In 2020, a TikTok European business center was established in London. Since then, the company's market value has continued to grow, now reaching 530 billion yuan.

The success of an enterprise is inseparable from the outstanding abilities of its founders. In 2013, Zhang Yiming was selected as one of Forbes' "China's 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30" and was named a business elite by Fortune. .

It can be said that he perfectly interprets the term "young talent". His outstanding achievements have made him one of the most watched young leaders in the domestic Internet industry.

He has been selected into the Forbes Global Billionaires List and the Hurun Self-Made Rich List many times. In 2020, he ranked 89th on the "Hurun Global Top 100 Entrepreneurs" with a wealth of 95 billion yuan.

These successes are all expected for Zhang Yiming, an adventurer who has experienced countless adventures.

Failure in life will not only bring sadness and discouragement, every experience is unique. Discover what you want and like from it. These are the precious treasures in continuing your life.

Zhang Yiming is like this. He changed 4 jobs in three years and failed to start his own business 4 times in a row. However, he was able to objectively analyze the reasons for giving up every time. Zhang Yiming seized the opportunity, and his success was inevitable.

These experiences are his wealth, and his pursuit of interests and yearning made him ultimately successful.