If you’re used to thinking of high-flying, high-flying ceos, Zhang Yiming may come as a surprise. For the founder of an $11bn company, he is too young and quiet — even sweet. Colleagues told Caijing that the CEO’s most intense expressions of emotion were “How did this happen?”
Zhang yiming is certainly one of the two or three luckiest of the millions of Founder startups in Today’s China. The three companies he and two friends founded, along with Meituan-Dianping and Didi, are considered the most likely winning alliance to challenge BAT, China’s Internet ruler. All three companies are less than six years old and are valued at more than $10 billion.
One reason for its rapid success was that it was a “simple, reliable” technology-driven company. The classic example of such a company in the past was Baidu, which tended to focus too much on honing technical details to provide a superb product experience, and too little on the values taken for granted by the industry. Because of these characteristics, they also share a common destiny — they are always pushed or forced by public opinion to take a position on certain topics: what is the relationship between technology and humanity, responsibility and values?
Toutiao is at such a moment — the company has become the largest media channel in China today, serving 150 million users every month, and nearly 70 million people spend 76 minutes watching news and videos on toutiao every day. But Zhang insists toutiao does not and does not need a traditional editor in chief. He says his biggest taboo is putting values first, and he thinks non-interference is probably his best management of content today.
Zhang yiming believes that “lack of restraint” is more harmful — most elites think they are right when the reality is that most people in the world are unable to see the reality. The choice of “non-interference” is to overcome human weakness. Instead of pushing ahead on his values, he said, “delayed gratification” gives him more freedom.
Given that he is only in his early thirties, it is hard to say how he will change in the future: will he have more and stronger views of the world a few years from now? Will he still insist that values do not interfere with the content? Recently, Caijing magazine did an interview with him, and the topic began.
In addition to these questions, we also made some comparisons between him and his good friend Wang Xing. In the final quick answer session, we asked some of the same questions to these two ceos with similar background, similar age and even from Longyan, Fujian province, and their answers formed an interesting contrast of thinking.
Success and vulgar
Caijing: There are many aggregator apps or websites that appeared earlier than Toutiao. Why did you become the only one to succeed?
Zhang Yiming: Some of them are too difficult to use and the threshold is so high that only geeks end up using them. Others don’t “penetrate”, subscribe, select categories, etc., they think too complicated. Why haven’t we made such a product? Because we always believe that the efficiency of information is more important than the presentation of information.
In the earliest days of Toutiao, there were no channels, no personalization or even no pictures. Our judgment at that time was — mobile Internet, high-frequency applications, the main product is unique; And to create content specifically for mobile, rather than taking over magazine content, which we did as a headline.
Caijing: When did you realize that headlines have so much potential energy?
Zhang Yiming: In physics, the transition of energy from high position to position is called potential energy, and we did not jump down.
Caijing: Is vulgarity one reason for Toutiao’s success?
Zhang Yiming: I think this is biased. Really not so, although there are still Low content, but we certainly pay more attention to it than peers. And we never actively push vulgar content. We have been cracking down on vulgarity and clickbait, and now “particularly vulgarity” is gone.
We did have a period of time when we didn’t deal well with new users, because new users didn’t personalize, so they opened up the main news stream to vulgar content. And personalized recommendation models are complicated, not just because you like them, but because someone in your neighborhood happens to like them. So we started a “cold start anti-sleaze problem,”
Caijing: So you are saying that the “particularly vulgar” ones have disappeared and the “relatively vulgar” ones remain?
Zhang Yiming: First, you really can’t do it completely, there are always leaks. Second, it has a border, a little edge, not to get rid of all. I think the bottom line is that headlines don’t profit from vulgarity. In fact, vulgarity hurts our business.
Caijing: Your competitors say some of your content is like drugs. The user may be tempted by the title, but it doesn’t mean he needs and likes the content.
Yiming Zhang: We don’t know if you clicked because of temptation or interest because there weren’t enough user signals included. We’re now trying to distinguish between the two by deeper user behavior recognition, such as “click-and-action” — how long you stay on content, whether you bookmark it, whether you share it.
I don’t see a problem with vulgarity per se. The magazines you see at the airport are one thing, and the ones you see at the train station are quite another. Many people blame it for proving their elegance.
Caijing: Will the content be transferred from railway stations to airports in the future?
Yiming Zhang: I want the distribution of content to match the distribution of requirements. People at airports read about airports, and people at train stations read about train stations. If the contents of the train station were shown to people at the airport before, it was a technical problem.
Responsibility and restraint
Caijing: Does Toutiao have values?
Zhang Yiming: All enterprises should have a sense of social responsibility. We should do things that are beneficial to society rather than harmful.
The difference between enterprises and the media is that the media should have values. It should educate people and disseminate ideas, which we do not advocate. Because we are not media, we are more concerned with the throughput and multiplicity of information. We take corporate social responsibility, but we don’t want to educate our users. The world is diverse, and I can’t accurately judge whether this is good or bad, elegant or vulgar. I may have my judgment, but I don’t want to impose it on the headlines. If I’m not convincing people in real life, why am I convincing people through my platform?
Caijing: The media has values, and you are the largest media aggregation platform.
Zhang Yiming: If you are a post office, you do not agree with the values of XX Times, but can the post office not publish XX Times? Most people think his values are mainstream values, and they tend to focus on values rather than facts. That’s what I’m against. At the same time, we really shouldn’t get into the fray, and I don’t have the ability to.
If you have to ask me what the values of Toutiao are, I think they are – to improve the efficiency of distribution, to meet the information needs of users, this is the most important.
Caijing: Do you have your own views on society, business, politics and culture?
Zhang Yiming: I have my own opinion, but I will not impose my opinion on the headlines.
Caijing: Do your opinions and ideas have nothing to do with the algorithms and rules of tiao?
Zhang Yiming: I am me, the product is the product.
Why is it the CEO’s job to add his preferences to the product? The CEO’s responsibility is to create benefits for the company, provide salaries to employees, and provide products and services to society — that’s the goal of the company, and I want to do what best serves that goal. The values of the company may not be my values, nor are they affected by my values, which are rationally determined by me according to the vision of the company.
Caijing: Toutiao had a very profitable business related to health care, but you decided to shut it down. Is it also values interfering with the product?
Zhang Yiming: We do not do medical advertising because of the poor service or illegal operation of many private hospitals, and it is difficult for us to distinguish and check. This has less to do with my personal beliefs about good and evil, and more to do with the short term and “delayed gratification” of business development.
We believe traffic is important, but so is trust in traffic. If your traffic is poor, your business conversion rate will be low. The problem is long and slow. So pushing a questionable, low-quality AD is killing the goose that lays the golden egg. At the same time, we are different from Baidu, we do not split traffic by keywords, but by advertising space plus user duration, we do not sell this position to medical advertisers can also sell to others. So there’s less pressure on us not to do medical advertising.
We fight against vulgarity is also for this purpose, because vulgarity will directly lead to our advertising no one believe. It just happens to fit in with our idea of good and evil.
Caijing: Toutiao is one of the most powerful media platforms in this era. More than 70 million people spend 76 minutes on toutiao every day. If you can use content to guide your users correctly, why not?
Zhang Yiming: I am restrained, and I think the platform’s responsibility is also restrained. Because you don’t know when you’re right, most of the time you do more damage if you don’t control yourself. At the same time, we should strive to improve our ability, because basically people who can do no evil are capable people.
First of all, our content is to meet the diversity, to meet the dissemination of public events and issues, to meet the needs of some people, such as high-knowledge members. At the same time, we require that the content should not have a negative impact on low-end users, so we resolutely resist false, fraud, bloody, violent and deliberate headlines.
What’s wrong with gossip, entertainment, jokes and so on? Throughout history, elites have tried to get the masses to have high spiritual aspirations, but society as a whole has never achieved this goal. The old media elite didn’t realize this, and they thought that what they specifically wanted to direct was particularly important. But most strong claims have historically yielded little value.
A few elites pursue efficiency and self-awareness. They live in reality. But most people need to revolve around something. Whether it’s religion, fiction, romance or today’s headlines, users need something to indulge in. I don’t see much difference between beating Texas and drinking wine and watching gossip and videos.
Caijing: Then why does Toutiao have the function of “Toutiao looking for people”?
Zhang Yiming: I admit that it is better to see others happy than sad.
| Human nature and machine
Caijing: What kind of humanity have you seen in these years of making headlines?
Zhang Yiming: I read in the headlines a while ago that one third of the people do not want to bring back the missing. Most of them are elderly people. This news is still shocking to me. The world is not such a good place. My pet hate is a phrase called “the brilliance of humanity”, and it is often used carelessly.
Caijing: Do you think you love humanity more or less when you read the headlines every day?
Zhang Yiming: WHETHER I love human beings or not, the film has a bigger impact on me than today’s headlines. There was a BBC documentary called The Universe, which had a big impact on me. It made me feel that human beings are very small. Many of your questions don’t matter between celestial bodies.
Caijing: Is Toutiao a technology company or a media company?
Yiming Zhang: We’re not a media company because we don’t create content and we don’t express opinions.
We are a technology company, but contrary to popular belief, we were founded to solve a problem (information distribution problem), and understanding the problem is more important than how to solve it. You recognize a problem, the size and significance of the problem, and that in itself is half the answer.
Caijing: Does Toutiao need an editor in chief?
Zhang Yiming: Before, a colleague manually pushed a news about Samsung’s new product launch. I asked him why he pushed this news. His response: How could we not have such important news? He thinks the news is important, but does it really matter to the general public? Most people would assume that what they think is right is right, and it is because I know this tendency that we must strive to restrain it.
If the headline has an editor, he will inevitably choose what he likes, and what we do is we don’t choose.
Caijing: Baidu and Toutiao are both companies founded with pure technology ideas. Some people think that pure technology companies are only machine-oriented, and the algorithm of the machine decides everything.
Zhang Yiming: I don’t want to emphasize pure machine, because pure machine is not important. Our purpose is to meet the needs of users, the machine can more effectively meet with the machine to meet, the machine can not be satisfied with human, I am not stubborn or not attached.
Caijing: You mentioned that the content of Toutiao is determined by algorithms and “not by human intervention”, but algorithms actually use human behavior to influence machines.
Zhang Yiming: We don’t deny that we are interfering with content. If we violate laws and regulations, we must intervene, but we do not interfere with user preferences, and we do not interfere with the diversity of content tolerated by society and law.
Caijing: Do you think toutiao’s algorithm should guide or cater to human nature?
Zhang Yiming: I don’t think algorithms should be linked with human nature. It’s like Halley’s Comet flying past, and people say what’s the point? Will there be an earthquake or a plague? It has nothing to do with that. It’s the same when we do technology — we don’t talk about simulating human nature, we don’t talk about channeling human nature. You intellectuals have given us too many profound propositions.
Competition and low flying
Caijing: Some people think Toutiao is the biggest challenger to Baidu in the future. What do you think?
Zhang Yiming: I am not baidu again, why should tube this problem? We mainly look forward, forward, not left or right.
Caijing: Baidu’s efforts in the content field this year will pose a threat to toutiao?
Zhang Yiming: Baidu’s entry into the industry has definitely had an impact on us. But will this “impact” make headlines fail? I don’t think so. Our daily active users are about 2/3 of mobile Baidu’s, and our users often stay longer. At the same time, I don’t think Baidu has any advantages that we don’t have.
Caijing: For example, technological advantages.
Zhang Yiming: technical advantage is technical talent, why can’t we have the same or better technical talent? A lot of it depends on efficiency, it depends on how well you understand things, how well you judge people, and how effectively you translate that understanding into organizational effectiveness, and I don’t think we lose on those things.
Caijing: I heard that you paid twice as much as Baidu to recruit technical talents from Baidu.
Zhang Yiming: No, no. Most of the top algorithm engineers are still at Baidu.
Caijing: Toutiao’s revenue in 2015 is more than 1 billion yuan, and this year it is expected to reach 6 billion yuan. Baidu’s advertising revenue in 2015 is about 60 billion yuan. When will toutiao’s advertising revenue surpass Baidu’s?
Zhang Yiming: No prediction. But we hope to reach 20% of the Chinese advertising market in three or four years.
Caijing: When did you have such a plan?
Zhang Yiming: At the beginning of last year. When the company is too small, it does not count the market, but it started to count the market at the beginning of last year, when it rose rapidly.
Caijing: Baidu is connected with advertising and website, toutiao is connected with advertising and content, different connection mode which has more commercial value?
Zhang Yiming: Website is a backward form of information organization, it is not a healthy ecology, at the same time, the form of website content organization is very bad, in fact, through the way of index is chaotic. For example, we fight against vulgarity. If an author keeps producing vulgar content, we can directly punish the author. Websites cannot do this.
Caijing: Will Toutiao set up a bidding ranking system similar to Baidu phoenix Nest?
Yiming Zhang: We have similar ones now. We think advertising needs to be more content oriented, and at the same time, we want advertising to be more beneficial to users. But now our efficiency is not as good as Phoenix Nest, Baidu has more than 1000 people in the advertising recommendation system, we only have dozens.
Caijing: You have a revenue of more than 6 billion yuan this year. Baidu made a profit when its revenue was 6 billion yuan. Why is Toutiao still losing money?
Zhang Yiming: copyright expenditure is very big, talent expenditure is also big, and the currency is devalued. We can be profitable, but for big industries, low-flying startups should be the norm.
Caijing: Besides advertising, what other sources of income are there?
Zhang Yiming: Based on advertising. We also made tens of millions of dollars in revenue this year, and we made machine learning capabilities available to the world.
Caijing: Is it possible that The Wei Zexi incident will happen in Toutiao?
Zhang Yiming: I think it’s a question of whether a company should have higher standards than the law when it meets the law. Wei Zecxi incident really does not happen in the headlines, first of all, we do not do medical advertising now. At the same time, we will avoid mistakes in every link.
Caijing: How do you view the competition with Tencent News?
Zhang Yiming: the main fear of others and we burn money.
Caijing: You just said there is no one who can threaten the headlines.
Zhang Yiming: I don’t think it’s a threat to our survival, but you still don’t want people to trip you up.
Caijing: If Baidu and Tencent start to spend money on content on a large scale, how much impact will it have on you?
Zhang Yiming: Accompany burn bai. You can do it as long as you get to the front, but the key is to improve your system efficiency.
Caijing: What are the differences between Toutiao’s business strategies and those of other giants?
Zhang Yiming: Baidu’s business strategy is to pay more attention to the profit within three years. They are oriented to advertising cash, while Tencent is oriented to user hours. They care more about whether users are playing on Tencent’s plate.
Toutiao is biased towards Tencent, plus a bit of Huawei. Huawei pays attention to the bottom and infrastructure. I find that the more powerful the company is, the more it goes to the bottom, the more it goes to the infrastructure of the whole society, and the upper layer can be vacated, like operating systems, chips, clouds.
Management and grayscale
Caijing: According to a survey conducted by Boss Zhipin, the no.1 employer among college students majoring in computer science is not BAT, but Toutiao.
Zhang Yiming: We attach importance to technology, and one of the manifestations of the importance is salary. I have always believed that the core of a company’s competition is ROI (input-output ratio) rather than cost. Few industry-leading companies control labor costs to achieve leadership. Companies should have a good ROI, and this ROI should be achieved by enabling employees to achieve good ROI.
Caijing: Your colleagues said that when you held a competition for programmers in your university, the first prize went to a chemistry student. You were so obsessed with him that you created Toutiao and deliberately recruited him.
Zhang Yiming: I see a person will think he has what advantage. Even a random person you see on the side of the road, attending an alumni meeting, visiting other companies, or even the hotel manager you see while staying at a hotel. I tend to look on the bright side of things or people I don’t know.
Caijing: What kind of people will be reappointed?
Zhang Yiming: I prefer real people, can also be said to be serious people. I used to be conservative. Now I’m bold. As long as it doesn’t cause any big problems to the system, I’m willing to try.
Caijing: Some people say you are kind but not powerful.
Zhang Yiming: I am not suitable for palm soldier, but see the direction is more important than tube things. I’m not good at pushing things to the extreme, like pushing the company toward maximum operational efficiency, or pushing it to the edge. But more important to the company is the exploration and judgment of what is important.
Caijing: Toutiao had 1,500 employees last year and will have 3,000 this year. It is said that the sales team may reach 10,000 people next year. How do you manage 10,000 headlines?
Zhang Yiming: Ten thousand at most. I estimate the actual number to be over 7,000. For sales and business management, this stage is not the most important. A good company should first continue to expand and then increase the depth of cash. I hope to control the sales team within 5000-6000 people through the improvement of commercial products, rather than the tens of thousands of people in Baidu.
Caijing: In the corporate management rules of Toutiao, you emphasize corruption and honesty very much. Has Toutiao ever fired an employee for corruption?
Zhang Yiming: Three or four have been dismissed this year. None have pursued criminal responsibility.
Caijing: What do you cannot tolerate in company management?
Zhang Yiming: Can not tolerate long-term damage to the system. I have defined three levels of damage to the company caused by inefficiency of honesty: the first level is direct loss of interests; The second is the negative consequences of these decisions; The third layer is the loss of centripetal force of the team when the clean atmosphere deteriorates. And the third level is one THAT I absolutely cannot tolerate.
Caijing: What are the characteristics of Toutiao’s management structure and principles?
Zhang Yiming: Weakening organizational structure, formalization, flexible adjustment. Be serious and unambiguous on key issues. Most companies are unprincipled on big issues and unreasonable on small ones — that’s not what I want in the headlines.
Caijing: How to understand the gray scale of management?
Zhang Yiming: Gray scale is not fuzzy, but there is gradient and excessive. Gray scale is regular and directional. I deal with a lot of things, a lot of people, only after I think about it and then re-measure it.
I often have complaints from other companies that someone is not a good fit, but the boss is concerned about this person’s feelings and then transferred to xx department. But asking a hundred people to report to one wrong person is a huge injustice to a hundred people. In this matter, clear is — the post should be allocated according to the principle of ability matching, and gray is — can not be dismissed directly, consider reasonable, such as the generous treatment.
Caijing: Toutiao has entered the field of short videos and new products such as Toutiao Q&A. What is the business expansion logic of Toutiao?
Yiming Zhang: Business boundary is my main thinking point now, I basically based on the Coase theorem, plus some organizational and system perspective thinking. We have a principle — try not to do what others have done well, not better than others, except for business defense critical points.
The world is dynamic and moving forward. If you stop to do what others have already done, you and the other person will be pulled down by the trend of The Times, because the world is not just you and your opponent.
Caijing: How do you think about the boundary of the company?
Zhang Yiming: can the company diversify, should not enter upstream and downstream, should not do industrial funds, what is the significance of equity investment? Internationalization is also a key direction for our future. Recently I was wondering why countries are big and small.
Caijing: I heard toutiao likes to use “double test” in its internal decision-making.
Yiming Zhang: Take the name for example. Most teams have a good name and say, “That’s a good name. Cheers!” And I would say, let’s do another AB test. Even if you’re 99.9 percent right, what does it matter?
Caijing: If Toutiao is overtaken by its rivals one day, what do you think might be the reason?
Zhang Yiming: The order is — competition, changes in the policy environment, my own problems. The T in BAT is still very strong, we haven’t escaped gravity yet.
Conservative and delayed gratification
Caijing: In your recent widely circulated article “Interviewed 2,000 College Students in 10 years”, you repeatedly encouraged young people to take risks.But you are a very conservative person yourself.
Zhang Yiming: lack what say what. I am conservative. For example, many companies spend money after spending, but I always set aside enough money.
The conservative nature of this is that I’m a big believer in delayed gratification. If you feel good about something, you can delay it a little longer. This will raise your bar and leave a buffer. Half of people’s problems in life are caused by this — no delayed gratification. The essence of delayed gratification is to overcome human weakness, and to overcome weakness is to have more freedom.
In the past, my investors suggested that you should promote it as soon as possible, but I felt that if you weren’t ready, you wouldn’t do it. The truth is, until your competitor makes a move, it’s your window. Huawei is a company that knows how to delay gratification. They put a lot of effort into r&d — these are not short-term things.
Caijing: Did you miss a lot of opportunities because you were conservative?
Zhang Yiming: Poor judgment does miss opportunities. For example, if Toutiao had spent a little more money in 2012 or 2013, it might have grown faster. I don’t like uncertainty, and it has something to do with my background as a programmer, because programs are deterministic, but the reality is that the CEO is the ultimate bearer of anxiety. Now I’m less conservative.
If the founder doesn’t make a decision at the right time because of his or her personal need to succeed, it’s a matter of delayed gratification. If it’s due to poor judgment, it’s a matter of skill.
Caijing: Before creating Toutiao, you were involved in four startups, but you never made it to the end.
Zhang Yiming: I realize very early, if start a business is not smooth, early death early to heaven, look forward to the line. My understanding of many things is that “it is not my fault”. In the past, I did not do well in the business, so I felt responsible for it. But in fact, there are timing problems, industry problems and so on.
If your decision is beneficial to the largest visible system (such as society), you should make better choices. I often see small entrepreneurial teams, and everyone is reluctant to leave. In fact, it would be better for them to disband early. Maybe you can create more value and redistribute the profits. For example, when I left Jiujiu, the investors of Jiujiu also invested in Toutiao, and now they are doing very well.
Caijing: But if the boss of the team leaves before the company dissolves, won’t he feel guilty?
Zhang Yiming: entrepreneurial success itself is a low probability event, buy lottery did not win there will be guilt? And I found a CEO for the team who I thought was a better fit than me. But now that I think about it, there was a week or two down.
Caijing: You are very realistic.
Zhang Yiming: Maybe compared with many people, yes.
Caijing: If Toutiao encounters big difficulties, or if you see a better trend, will you abandon it and turn around to develop new business? — just like the old days.
Yiming Zhang: I never said I would never sell the company, I said – we have a chance to build toutiao into a platform company, so I would not sell the company. I didn’t choose to embrace the titans, but I’m not.”In order toNo hugs, no hugs.”
With which company can make Toutiao a global success; Can facilitate the distribution of information in more places; I wouldn’t be averse to moving faster into machine learning applications in other areas, but I don’t think that opportunity exists right now.
Caijing: Have you thought about selling the company?
Zhang Yiming: Every time I have a choice, I will think about it, and I will choose not to sell the company every time. I think toutiao, as an independent platform, has great significance for me and my team beyond finance.
Caijing: How many times have you thought about selling the company?
Zhang Yiming: Three times. People always say that the king is defeated, but the public opinion is not natural, sell and do not sell there is a long transition. I have no objection to selling it if it produces greater good for more people. My choice depends on personal feelings and sense of responsibility, but more on reality.
Caijing: Would you accept losing control of the company?
Zhang Yiming: If the new person is very good, I am Open.
Reason and reality
Caijing: Wang Xing is your good friend. What are your similarities and differences with him?
Zhang Yiming: They are both curious and love information. He is more curious and more knowledgeable than I am. But I know more about technology than he does. Sometimes we don’t see things exactly the same way. I feel like he’s more systematic and I’m more flexible. He cares about everything, and I feel like I care less about things that aren’t important to me.
Caijing: What are the “important” things in your eyes?
Zhang Yiming: it is the thing that can play effect.
Caijing: What are the things that work?
Zhang Yiming: Different stages are different. For example, when you are not well, health is important. For me, freedom, health, the growth of my company, the health of my family and friends, being able to help people more, thinking more clearly about the problems that bother me, and so on, are all utility.
Caijing: What is the most important in your life?
Zhang Yiming: I don’t know for sure. Most people don’t have the answer, but they think they have a good answer.
Caijing: What kind of company do you want to turn Jinri Toutiao into?
Zhang Yiming: Let’s not set boundaries. First, improve the efficiency of information distribution, to become the world’s largest information creation and distribution platform.
Caijing: What was the last time I lost my temper?
Zhang Yiming: I hardly get angry. Because what’s the point of being angry?
Caijing: Why is everything measured by utility?
Zhang Yiming: I don’t want to be angry again why angry? I don’t lose my temper, and I seldom get angry. But sometimes unhappy, unhappy mostly because of disappointment.
Caijing: What kind of power do you admire? Against what kind of forces?
Zhang Yiming: The four basic forces — universal gravitation, electromagnetic gravitation, weak interaction and strong interaction, simply speaking, are the forces of nature. The power against YY.
Caijing: What qualities do you admire most about yourself?
Zhang Yiming: delay satisfaction, and the biggest delay satisfaction, is thinking.
Caijing: What was your first impression of Beijing after graduating from university?
Zhang Yiming: In winter, I drove from the airport to the city by taxi. On both sides of the highway were large and neat poplars. I could see far from the plain.
Caijing: As the CEO of a company, what are your values?
Zhang Yiming: I’m not entirely sure. I hate formalization, I hate hypocrisy, because it doesn’t work. But I think experiences and facts are important to me, and it’s important that you have all kinds of experiences, all kinds of experiences. You can have freedom and the ability to help and influence others. My utility as a person is your experience and your impact on others.
Caijing: You said in the interview that you don’t like boredom and you want to do exciting things in life, but some people who have come into contact with you say that you are boring.
Zhang Yiming: They don’t see the interesting things about me, such as playing video games and driving cars. I like to have clear definitions and standards for the world, and if I can be concise, that’s even better.
Caijing: What’s your hobby?
Zhang Yiming: Reading or watching movies? I confess I don’t have a particularly strong hobby. I think a lot of hobbies come from control. If you seek control by playing games, you might as well control yourself. Such as reading books, reading difficult books, thinking difficult questions, working hard on business pursuits. If you spend your time playing live 3D live action games, why not start your own business out of the “quest for control”?
Caijing: What books have influenced you most?
Zhang Yiming: The Living Method, the Road Less Done, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Basic Biology have a great influence on me. I’ll read anything I think will help me. I also saw some such as “The World Moves With You” and “You Never Tried”.
Caijing: You watched a lot of chicken soup.
Zhang Yiming: cleanliness will not affect my curiosity.
Caijing: How do you view your weaknesses?
Zhang Yiming: drag. A lot of things are very slow, I’m late, often late.
Caijing: Did you do anything specifically to change yourself?
Zhang Yiming: Set goals.
Caijing: Use a few words to position yourself.
Zhang Yiming: I’m at 9th floor, Zhongjin International Plaza, Xuhui District, Shanghai.
Caijing: Is there anything you stick to?
Zhang Yiming: massage once a week?
Caijing: Most people who know you say you are extremely realistic, like a robot.
Zhang Yiming: I think it’s a big problem for people not facing to reality. The best way to predict the future is to create it, but only if you face reality.
Caijing: How to distinguish dreams from unrealistic?
Zhang Yiming: dream, is to do the dream. Most people don’t want to face reality. Reality is an abstract noun.
Caijing: What is your dream?
Zhang Yiming: Learn English well.