Gu Yongqiang: The vision for the next decade is to surpass New York

On the evening of January 29, Gu Yongqiang, Chairman and CEO of Heyi Group (Youku Tudou), said in a speech at the company's annual meeting that Heyi Group's vision for the next decade is to "surpass New York."

On the evening of January 29, Gu Yongqiang, Chairman and CEO of Heyi Group (Youku Tudou), said in a speech at the company's annual meeting that Heyi Group's vision for the next decade is to "surpass New York."

Gu Yongqiang believes that New York represents the world's leading industries in culture, finance, drama, advertising, etc. The goal is to surpass New York. In essence, it is to strive for the opportunity for China's culture to enter the world. New York's abbreviation "NY" also represents "Netflix" and "YouTube", the global cultural and entertainment industry's leaders in the fields of paid users, access time and self-channel ecosystem.

The following is a transcript of Gu Yongqiang's speech:

Why is the theme of our annual meeting this year "Beyond New York", an American city?

In fact, everyone knows that New York is the largest city in the United States. Whether it is finance, fashion, culture, drama, advertising, it is the center of the United States and even the world. When it comes to Wall Street, Bainaohui, Times Square, Anderson Avenue, all of these are the pinnacle of the United States and the world.

In fact, the city of New York has a deep connection with the development of unity and needs to go back to 2005 more than ten years ago. Turi is in Central Park, New York. At that time, my wife was studying film production at New York University. I came to Beijing in 1994. After more than ten years of working in a startup company, I closed doors and accompanied me in 2005. We rented a small apartment on 57th Street. In the early days, I was very hard at the company and didn't have much time. During my accompanying reading period, I made up for many classes and watched many movies, dramas, and variety shows that I couldn't see during working hours. I also play websites such as Myspace and YouTube that are not online. At that time, we spent a lot of time walking and thinking about the future of the world, the Internet in China, the future of the Internet, and the future of individuals, and thinking about personal goals and dreams. The most basic ideas and ideas for unity come from here. Therefore, the starting point of unity has such a relationship with New York.

From 2011 to 2015, the industry has undergone significant changes. Whether it is the development of mobile Internet or the Internet TV we have built, to truly seeing the development of China's capital market in China. These new changes have a great impact on our strategy. So we can see that in 2015, the biggest thing we did was to announce the return of privatization five years after listing in New York. Whether we are returning from name to "unity" or company, we decided to return to China from New York, decided to privatize, and we came back from New York.

In fact, privatization is a new starting point for unity and a starting point worth exciting. After privatization, we can no longer consider the financial constraints of each quarterly report and consider longer-term industrial development. When we move from a single-screen to multi-screen era and look forward to moving from multi-screen to full-screen and no screen, when virtual and reality are integrated, online to offline, and content and channel models are integrated. Many new models require great efforts and investment. When we discover the rise trend of the cultural and entertainment industry in the next decade, we see huge opportunities here. Privatization is an important starting point for us to control development in the next decade.

2015 is our tenth year, and 2016 is our new decade. Let's first take a look at one of our goals for 2016. At the beginning of the year, both the quarterly meeting and the joint innovation meeting focused on discussing the "three major battles" in 2016. Today is a good opportunity for all students from all over the country to be in sync with everyone here.

First, during the 8848 Campaign, user access time increased. We have reached a time when video continues to be used in mainstream. We not only look at visiting users, we also pursue user activity, loyalty and access time. This is the standard in the industry around the world, from UV to UTS. The summit during visit time was our first battle. In 2016, both content reserves, including joint production, copyright, and self-channel reserves were very rich, leading the industry, and there was also a lot of good news about the layout of channels. Including cooperation plans, terminal channels, etc.

Second, during the Huaihai Campaign, paying users increased. Our pursuit of going from visiting users to active users to real paying users is a qualitative change. Luo Zhenyu said a point in his New Year's speech: When your users pay one yuan, they have an emotional relationship with you, which is a higher connection. Whether it is members, laifang, or games, they have achieved good results in 2015. Against the background of good growth, the rapid growth of our paying users is one of our three major battles in 2016.

Third, the Pirate Campaign is the self-channel ecosystem we mentioned in 806. Opportunities in the self-channel era, whether they are industry enthusiasts, practitioners or entrepreneurs, can see their own opportunities. Piracy means plunder and subversion. We believe that the ecology of the channel will subvert the content production industry. In the next ten years, China culture and world culture will change as a result.

These are our top three battles of 2016. So what does this have to do with New York? In the new decade, we have a higher development vision to share with you.

We used to say that unity is Netflix+YouTube, you can see that Netflix is the world's leading paying user, and in terms of access time and self-channel ecology, YouTube is the world's leading, you can see that "NY" is the first letter of the two companies, but also the abbreviation of New York. Through calculations by our data team, in the next five to ten years, we have a chance to surpass "NY" in terms of paid users and access time. To put it more bluntly, we have a chance within five years.

In fact, taking Huawei as an example, it means that China is leading in mobile phones. Five or six years ago, it was difficult to imagine how many improvements its mobile phones could have. It can be seen that five or six years may bring great opportunities. Another example is actually Alibaba. In fact, its competitors are Amazon and eBay. Now, it has surpassed these companies. It is entirely possible for a China company to surpass the world's leading companies and become the world's number one in the second decade. Silicon Valley and China are two places that can produce successful consecutive businesses, so our new goal in the next ten years is to surpass New York and NY. Do we all have confidence? Yes!

Doing what you like with people you like. Ten years ago, when I thought about this sentence, there were some Silicon Valley plots that were quite idealistic. But now, when China is developing from a developing country to a developed country, we are not only the first among netizens, but also the world leader and the world innovation. This also determines that we will go global in the new decade. When we go to all parts of the world, our opponents "NY" are already globalizing, and Netflix is making efforts in various places, and even plans to enter China. It is already a global war.

For such a great goal, in addition to the three major battles of the main business, we also need to innovate in the industry, and the management also has some ideas. In 806(August 6 last year), we mentioned cultural and entertainment entrepreneurship platforms. At that time, we might not have much idea of the details, but we continued to refine and expand this goal. Today, I would like to share with you that in 2016, we will do one venture capital.

There are four parts here. The first one is internal entrepreneurship. In fact, we have already started to work hard in 2014 and 2015. Whether it is Heyi Pictures, Cloud Entertainment, or Heyi Culture, they are all here. After privatization, our capital operation here is more likely. The second is strategic investment. Our investment part is very low-key, but in 2015, we have invested in more than ten or twenty companies, all related to our industrial chain, including a virtual reality company we also invested in in the United States. In terms of strategic investment, we will join hands with Ali to make more arrangements. Third, we have been investing in venture capital funds since 2015. This year, we will start to make some venture capital funds in which we are venture capital partners. I believe they will be implemented in the first half of the year. This is also part of it. Fourth, the incubators we have already started to release, including those released in January and Alibaba Baichuan, will have some venture capital incubation plans for PGC, Apps, including VR\AR fields. We will have some more mechanisms and small teams and partners to promote the group's exploration of innovation.

So looking at the new structure of our Unity Group in 2016, there are three major parts. In addition to the recently announced Youku Tudou BG, which is our main business, and then the Unity Venture Capital BG we just released, there is also the drive and development of product technology, sales innovation and marketing and other platforms, called Platform BG. In 2016, we will enter the architecture of BG and BU, decentralize the organization of more than 3000 people, and more small and medium-sized organizations will appear.

Whether it is the three major battles or beyond New York, we are constantly emphasizing execution. Only by maintaining our passion and having some new requirements. The first is to start a business for the second time and clear our mentality. We cannot have the mentality of a boss, but a mentality of learning and humility to face more competitors. Second, to win battles, we need to be guided by military exploits. Since 2013, we have mentioned must-win battles. These will be a very important part of our culture. Those who can win in wars are fought out by our cadres little by little. This is everyone's opportunity, and those who win will be future CEOs. At the same time, we must adhere to positive energy. At last year's annual meeting, when the whole process was most serious, I was talking about clean government and anti-corruption.

In the past six months, the anti-corruption team has begun to launch anti-corruption activities. We have also found some problems. I am very sad about many things. Recently, I have been making some very difficult decisions. They are all people who have made great contributions to the company and are very uncomfortable. But in this case, the law is the bottom line. If you really have a problem, it is actually harming the interests of every classmate. This is absolutely not allowed. If there are still such a classmate here, we will ask him to get off the bus. In the next ten years of great development, we will never allow such a situation. Although it is painful to make some decisions, we will make them. In the past ten years, we have been cleaning up our problems.

What we require is an execution of self-drive, cooperation and responsibility. In the past, we often said that "cooperation comes first, one person". Under the new goal, we have added self-drive and responsibility. The first is self-driving. Whether you can self-driving, the first is to be responsible for yourself and whether you can drive yourself. Responsibility is the most organizational commitment. We will reward you highly for being able to achieve such execution. In the future, an important thing for the management team is to cultivate young people and find entrepreneurial CEOs. In the past, it was difficult for us to have some particularly attractive incentive methods under the conditions of a listed company, but this year we have successfully done some in the Lai Feng business. In the future, we will make obviously radical plans in the industry to motivate the team.

Having said so much, this is actually a spirit of starting again, starting a second venture. From a small company that is naked and talks about business direction in a hot pot restaurant, to a real company with a size of a thousand people that has the opportunity to work in culture and entertainment. Ten years have been more brilliant. In the second decade, we have been in such a good field, with such a good opportunity for privatization, and whether everyone is self-driving, whether they cooperate, and whether they can take responsibility are all a kind of tempering, and these are all fruitful.

Editor: vian