news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

author i yang wenjing

report i pedaily

the baton handover scene takes place.

this week, huya group announced a leadership succession plan - li ting, the current company director and chief operating officer (coo), will replace li xueling as chairman of the board and chief executive officer (ceo), and the appointment will take effect immediately.

speaking of li xueling, he should be one of the representatives of china's southern internet. in the past 20 years, he worked as a reporter for china youth daily, and as an editor at sohu and netease. finally, he led the team to establish the well-known yy ​​in guangzhou, creating a rare new species in china's internet. until recent years, he and huya group have focused on overseas.

i wonder where li xueling will go next?

li xueling farewell

a female ceo born in the 1980s officially took charge

"the board and i believe now is the best time for a leadership transition," li xueling said in the announcement.

he was generous in praising the new ceo li ting:

“ms. li’s outstanding contributions and strategic vision make her the ideal leader for our next phase of growth. as coo, she has successfully led our business through various challenges. her deep understanding of our past and future direction, combined with her recent board experience, ensures a smooth transition.”

who is li ting?

public information shows that li ting graduated from south china university of technology in 2006 and then joined tencent as a product manager. in 2011, li ting joined huya, and has served as chief operating officer since 2016, and joined the board of directors in november 2023.

as the coo of joyy group, li ting has appeared in public many times. one detail is that in many previous interviews, li ting often appeared and was interviewed at the same time as li xueling; li ting is also an indispensable role in joyy group's financial reports and public activities.

in the 13 years since joining huya, li ting has led the construction of the ecosystem of yy's overall platform products. huya group has continued to break revenue records, and this post-80s female general has made an indelible contribution to this.

in addition, li ting led the development of yy value-added membership and yy dating projects. in 2016, the industry widely circulated that after the "hundred groups war", the "thousands of live broadcast wars" had begun, and li ting was in the middle of it. a year later, yy broke through the siege and became one of the only 20 or so top live broadcast platforms left.

since then, joyy group has gradually shifted its focus to the overseas market. yy is one of the first live streaming platforms to propose an overseas strategy. li ting led the implementation of yy's "going overseas" strategy and further promoted joyy group to develop into a global social media platform. today, after huya and yy were sold to tencent and baidu, the overseas business bigo has become the pillar of joyy group.

regarding this succession, li ting also emphasized the overseas expansion: "we have been committed to achieving globalization through localization and continuously expanding our global influence."

with li xueling stepping down, the legendary journey of a generation of internet people has come to an end.

the entrepreneurial history of a generation of southern school leaders

the year li xueling decided to start his own business, the internet world was full of new stories.

it was the turbulent year of 2005. taobao won its first victory in the war with ebay. robin li rejected google's acquisition and led baidu to enter the nasdaq. zhang xiaolong came to tencent. liu qiangdong decided to close offline stores and transform jd.com into an e-commerce company. tudou.com, 58.com, and xiaonei.com (renren.com) were born one after another.

this year, netease's content director li xueling left and rented a house in junlin garden, tianhe district, guangzhou with several old colleagues. they created gougou.com and duowan.com, the latter of which later became the household name yy.

this is the first time that li xueling appeared in the army of internet entrepreneurs.

after graduating from renmin university in 1997, the 24-year-old li xueling joined china youth daily as a reporter. during this period, li xueling and photojournalist chai jijun worked together to create photo.com, the predecessor of visual china. after leaving the newspaper, li xueling first founded the "fox nao nao" column at sohu, and then joined netease as content director for several years.

when li xueling decided to start a business in 2005, lei jun invested the first sum of money in him. half a year later, li xueling sold gogou.com to xunlei and started to focus on the game website "duowan.com". it was not until 2008 that the game voice platform yy was born.

"it was born very naturally." in an interview, li xueling told the story of yy. at that time, everyone in the office was playing games, but it was inconvenient to communicate in real time after get off work. li xueling realized that "this is an opportunity that can create a great demand." yy was born.

how to make money with products? li xueling, who was a journalist, did not want to sell advertisements. he wanted to change the media business model.at this time, a yy user came up with an idea. because there were many people singing on the platform, the team started a yy singer ranking based on user suggestions, and ranked the singers through monthly user voting. soon after, it was discovered that someone was selling his voting rights on taobao for 2.5 yuan per vote.

so the team decided to sell voting rights themselves, at 1 yuan per vote. that year, this small idea brought yy 4 million yuan in revenue. later, "voting" gradually evolved into flowers, sports cars, rockets... this is the earliest form of live broadcast rewards, which has been used to this day.

after that, yy changed its name to joyy times (later joyy group) and went public on the nasdaq in 2012. in the same year, yy game live broadcast was launched, and later renamed "huya live"; two years later, bigo, which specializes in overseas markets, was established.

after many twists and turns, the past glory gradually faded away. huanju sold huya live to tencent in april 2020, and sold yy live to baidu in november. since then, li xueling has personally managed bigo and made every effort to expand overseas markets.

now, nearly 20 years have passed since li xueling started his business, and the internet industry has undergone tremendous changes.

the next stage: the era of large-scale overseas expansion?

after completing the handover, where will li xueling go?

before leaving office, li xueling was most concerned about going overseas. he was one of the first chinese internet founders to make a high-profile overseas expansion plan. at the yy annual ceremony in january 2019, li xueling said that the core strategy of that year would focus on two things: the first was artificial intelligence, and the second was globalization.

in march of this year, joyy group completed the full acquisition of bigo, an overseas video social platform. the platform was founded by li xueling in 2014 and has experienced five years of independent development. at the beginning of its creation, "bigo" was given a deeper meaning - before i get old. li xueling explained, "i hope to create a new, interesting and valuable international product before i get old."

after the acquisition, li xueling also sent an internal letter to the company's employees, proposing to make yy the world's leading video social media platform company. it was reported that li xueling almost never participated in yy activities and did not even send employee letters, but he was very concerned about bigo's activities and often appeared in bigo's singapore office.

with the successive sales of yy and huya, overseas business has become the core business of joyy group, and was once regarded by industry insiders as the only platform that can compete with tiktok. and li xueling has since been deeply tied to overseas expansion.

"yy has become highly globalized, cultivating a vibrant and engaging user community around the world. with strong localized operations and continued innovation, we are poised to further diversify our revenue streams and seize new growth opportunities. i will continue to serve as a member of the board of directors, supporting the team while exploring new long-term prospects." this paragraph in the announcement is impressive.

in fact, we are not unfamiliar with such a scene.

looking back to 2023, mihoyo founder cai haoyu resigned from the position of legal representative and chairman. at that time, mihoyo responded to the investment community: in order to adapt to the company's future development needs, mihoyo founder cai haoyu will invest more energy in the research and application of cutting-edge technologies, the development of new projects, and the connection of domestic and overseas r&d resources.

since then, cai haoyu has appeared more frequently in overseas news, such as the latest one in which he spoke overseas. prior to this, with the game "genshin impact", mihoyo had already established a firm foothold in the domestic gaming industry and became one of the most successful gaming companies going overseas in recent years.

today, going global has become a standard for the new generation of chinese founders. they grew up in an era of global cultural integration and are witnessing chinese companies going overseas.

looking back at 2023, it is considered a turning point for chinese companies to go global:

china's "four little dragons going global" e-commerce companies are expanding against the trend and reshaping the overseas e-commerce landscape; electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells have become the "new three" exports; consumer brands such as catering, retail, electronics, and smart hardware have also come overseas to find growth points... "go overseas and do a big job" has become the slogan of many chinese companies.

“in 2024, going overseas is a decisive opportunity.”i remember that jixun fu, managing partner of qiyuan capital, mentioned at the qingke annual meeting that he went overseas many times in 2023 and found that overseas supply chains basically have the need to connect with china, which will bring many structural opportunities.

an investor told the investment community that many years ago, venture capital institutions considered going overseas as a special track, but now when looking at projects, "going overseas" is no longer a separate issue, because it has become a corporate goal to a certain extent. "now when talking to entrepreneurs, the first thing to see is whether they have ambitions to go global. this is crucial."

everyone is convinced that chinese entrepreneurs will one day conquer the world.