Many people take it for granted that Ahri Group is an e-commerce company, or at least Taobao is an e-commerce company.

This perception is not true.

Ahri is essentially a data company that provides data services;

Taobao is just a C2C platform, and it doesn't sell any products itself. It only provides an opportunity for buyers and sellers to find the customers and sources they want, and provides data search services.

That's all.

If you really want to say "a company that does e-commerce", Tmall and JD.com are more suitable for this title.

From May 2003 to January 2005, Taobao had just been established for 20 months.

Different from the impression of Taobao that was prosperous and boiling oil in the illusion of later generations, Taobao in early 2005 was still in a stage of labor struggle.

In the first year and a half, most of the business that could be developed was launched.

However, just as love enters a brief refractory period after 18 months of dopamine ferventness. The development of Taobao, after the end of the initial brutal expansion, has also entered an embarrassing situation of slowing down the stacking of quantitative changes. If you don't make some transformation adjustments, the future prospects will be very confused.

The mature markets that initially sold electronic products and standardized products began to become saturated; The market for new non-standard products has not yet matured. Domestic netizens, in the early 2005 time window, have not yet developed the habit of buying non-standard products on the Internet.

In these days, people buy things online, and they want to be cheap. If the products offered by online merchants cannot prove that their prices are cheaper than all physical stores in the country, online things cannot be sold. It is precisely because of this that all products are not conducive to accurate price comparison. It's still bleak online.

In the field of selling books, Dangdang went earlier than Taobao, and Taobao couldn't sell books at all. Even in the future, and Dangdang will snatch the book online shopping market, and it will be JD.com's turn.

In the field of selling electronic products, more professional and single special online shopping and consulting channels such as "Zhongguancun Online" have begun to rise. Netizens who buy these professional products are also beginning to tend to find more professional online merchants.

At the 2004 Taobao year-end summary meeting, Ma Feng, the boss of Ahri Group, asked a question to all the senior management:

How can we pull users who buy products with more ambiguous search criteria to the Internet?

"Who are the people who buy things on our website now? Basically, they are all professional netizens, all men, and they are all people who know a lot about computers! What will these people buy? You will only buy CPUs, memory modules, graphics cards, and mobile phones; will only buy books; What do these products have in common? It's all standardized!

Any CPU, memory module, mobile phone. As long as the specific model is right, no matter which one you buy from, it is exactly the same. Buy a book at random, and as long as the title matches the author, the content will be exactly the same. There is no difference in quality between these products, it is purely a price war, and customers are only in the subdivided product field of the price war. Only then do you think of e-commerce!

After two years of online shopping, what have we done? It's still just a matter of making 'customers who pursue standardized products think of buying online'! But those women who want to buy what they like, and buy whatever they like. Still not bird our online shopping. They still can't see the comparative advantage of online shopping and don't trust us!

Can't we think of a way to attract women to the Internet as well? There is no doubt that women are more likely to buy and buy than men, and if you don't catch women, there will be no tomorrow on Taobao! There is no tomorrow for Ahri Group! I would like to ask for the attention of all of us. Take it seriously; Stop being stereotyped from the perspective of a technician or engineer! Everyone should work together to find new growth points. ”

Ma Feng's words are actually flawed, but after all, they represent the mainstream. For example, strictly speaking, in 04 and 05, it was not that there were no women buying things online. It's just that women buy more brand-name cosmetics, because cosmetics have clear models and don't need fuzzy searches.

Zhou Lixin is now only a middle-level technical cadre on Taobao.com, and he is not qualified to participate in the strategic meetings held by ordinary big bosses looking for high-level executives. However, he can attend this annual meeting, which all middle-level people have the opportunity to attend.

This is the first time Zhou Lixin has listened to Boss Ma talk about a detailed issue and a question about Taobao in a targeted manner.

In addition, Zhou Lixin is Gu Mojie's cousin, and when Gu Mojie promotes "similar to Google, or even more unique image deep search technology", Zhou Lixin often gets information and is familiar with it.

Under the blending of the two environments, Zhou Lixin formed a set of mysterious matchmaking plans in his heart, and after perfecting it, he deliberately handed it over to Boss Ma directly.

Here, I have to thank the Ahri Group for its smooth speech. Any brainstorming by middle-level cadres may go directly to heaven.

……

Two days later, the heart of Qiantang High-tech Zone was the headquarters of Ahri Group, one of the three giants of BAT in later generations.

In the president's office, behind the large desk, sat a small, strange-looking man.

It's a pity that Gu Mojie was only at the end of 2012 before he was reborn, so he naturally didn't play a Blizzard Warcraft peripheral card game called "Hearthstone" in the later life. Otherwise, if he had been reborn two years later and had played Hearthstone, he would have been amazed at the appearance of the man across the table.

Isn't this the shape of the 1 Troublesome God Card "Leprosy Gnome" on "Hearthstone"? Except that the skin color is not as green as that of the goblins.

This man who resembles a "leper dwarf" is the head of the Ahri Group, the boss of Ma Fengma.

If Baidu Boss Li is a representative of the domestic Internet leaders who are known for being handsome, then Ma Feng is the other extreme, a representative known for his strange appearance.

The existence of Ma Feng and Li Yanhong perfectly proves that a person's appearance has little to do with whether he can succeed in starting a business in the Internet industry.

Gu Mojie, who had just turned 20 years old, saw Ma Feng for the first time. This is the first time he has met such a heavyweight industry leader since he met Boss Li in the capital two years ago.

Of course, at this juncture in 2005, Ma Feng's status in the rivers and lakes was not as good as Boss Li's. After all, Baidu was already on the cusp of seeking to go public in 05. The domestic status is in full swing; Ahri's road to listing will remain dormant for several years.

While Gu Mojie was looking at Ma Feng, Ma Feng was also looking at Gu Mojie. Compared with Boss Li, Ma Feng is a deeper and more restrained person. He was older, started a business halfway, and had a hard time in his early years. These three attributes make Ma Feng not as fond of promoting juniors and contacting newcomers in the industry as Boss Li. In contrast, he prefers to let time test his collaborators and subordinates.

A newcomer, no matter how fast the rocket rises, in Ma Feng's eyes, he also needs to observe and observe more to see if the other party has stamina and strength, and then consider cooperation. A new employee, even if he or she performs well in a short period of time after being recruited. Ma Feng will also choose to allow a longer period of time to observe its sustainable development.

Of course, there are pros and cons to everything. Ma Feng's style, although it will make him unable to find out the future elite in the first place, can make him see people more accurately. At the same time, he can spread the stall larger, shotgun method, and cast a wide net to make the sample capacity of the simultaneous investigation larger. It is based on this that Erma is in terms of human resources and cooperation resources. It has not lagged behind Baidu.

Those are two very different styles of domination.

It is precisely because of this that Gu Mojie and Ma Feng are both in Qiantang City. The two companies are only two or three stops apart, but they haven't crossed paths for two years, until today.

"You're so young...... A ragged colt may make a good horse. Having created such a big family business with his bare hands in two years has not allowed venture capital to dilute his stake in the core company. This kind of person cannot be judged by common sense. It really deserves to be cultivated as a long-term partner. ”

After chatting with Gu Mojie a little politely, Ma Feng came to such a conclusion. It doesn't matter what the business is. Gu Mojie is a person who deserves to be handed over by him.

"Xiao Zhou recommended your 'application of deep algorithm in the field of graph search', saying that you can develop a service called 'find the same model' for my Taobao. Let's talk about your specific functional ideas, I don't want to look at the routine, I want to concretize the effect - if you stand in the position of an ordinary female consumer, what can your 'find the same model' provide them? ”

Gu Mojie cleared his throat. was ready to speak: "Mr. Ma ......"

Ma Feng interrupted him directly: "Don't call me Mr. Ma, I'm not used to it." Our Ahri Group is a very flat management structure, and every middle level here can directly meet the boss. YOU CAN JUST CALL ME JACK-MA, OR JUST CALL ME BY NAME - BY THE WAY, DO YOU HAVE AN ENGLISH NAME? ”

Gu Mojie was stunned: "No." ”

Ma Feng smiled slightly, as if he felt a little strange, a hipster who did the Internet didn't even have an English name.

"Then you can take one yourself. Gu Mojie...... And it's Capricorn, tsk. Jay Chou, who is the most popular now, also has a Jay in his name, and he is also a Capricorn. PEOPLE'S NAME IS JAY-CHOU, SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL CALL IT JAY-GU. Haha, just kidding. ”

Gu Mojie didn't care, and directly returned with a smile: "I don't care about the English name or something." JAY-GU IS JAY-GU, IT'S NOT BAD. ”

Ma Feng was a little dumbfounded, he didn't expect Gu Mojie to be so casual about his English name, but he was a prophecy.

The episode passed quickly, and Gu Mojie re-entered the state.

"JACK, YOU KNOW, I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL PRACTITIONERS IN THE FIELD OF DEEP LEARNING ALGORITHMS. I have accumulated in this area, and the cloud security cooperation between Google and me will have some phased results this year, and naturally there will be idle talents at the algorithm level, which are enough to devote themselves to the deep learning search of graphics. WHAT GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK CAN DO, GIVE ME SOME TIME, AND I CAN DO IT. ”

After saying the opening remarks, correcting his position and emphasizing his strength, Gu Mojie began to cut to the core topic.

"FACEBOOK CAN MAKE THE SAME PERSON'S FACE IN DIFFERENT PHOTOS ON THE INTERNET BE RECOGNIZED, AND I CAN MAKE THE SAME CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES IN DIFFERENT PHOTOS ON THE INTERNET BE RECOGNIZED. As long as I am given time, I can do more in the future, such as distinguishing decoration materials, craft toys through pictures, and all 'look at the appearance' of products. ”

Clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry...... These things that need to have pictures and truths on the appearance of the face are difficult to form a blowout on the e-commerce platform before the "find the same model" function with pictures as the medium in the real sense, especially before the user's consumption habits have been formed.

Intuition told Ma Feng that Gu Mojie had done this business. (To be continued.) )