Dialogue with He Yi: Binance never forgot the original intention
Dovey Wan from Primitive Ventures wrote one twitter,“If compare Binance with NASDAQ horizontally, Binance’s profits in the first quarter of 2018 is 200 million USD and the number is almost the same with NASDAQ’s 209 million USD. However, Binance has 200 employees, while NASDAQ has 4500 employees. Binance has been only established for 8 months, but NASDAQ has a history of 47 years. ”
In 1996, the browser’s overlord Netscape occupied 85% of the market. In 1999, Microsoft IE won the first prize with revolutionary free and preinstall mode and became a new ruler. The wheel of history is rolling forward and always shows people in a more amazing manner.
In July 2017, Binance exchange went online, only three months later, it surpassed the three exchange giants Huobi, OKEx and BTCC. Afterwards, Binance stood at the forefront of the tide. One year later, the profits rivaled Deutsche Bank and Nasdaq, which was more like kind of declaration from the new world.
Allen , the founder of BlockArk has invited He Yi, the co-founder of Binance to join this 70-minute dialogue. He Yi presented Binance and the story behind this young team.
1.“I am lucky enough to make the right decisions most of the time.”
In July 14, 2017, Binance went online. In that summer, the sun was scorching hot. Huobi，BTCC and OKEx are very influential, and Li Xiaolai is well deserved the top in the cryptocurrency market with “ ICO.INFO+INB+Yunbi”. CZ Zhao Changpeng established Binance exchange with his technical team as well as He Yi’s marketing team.
Where does Binance team come from? In fact, such a start-up team that emerged in the “94 event” has followed the two founders very early. He Yi said her team members have always followed here from OKCOIN to Yixia technology and Binance. All these people are from different places and they gave up some high-level titles but followed He Yi to join Binance.
“I am lucky enough to make the right decisions most of the time.” He Yi is quite particular with her goals, if she decided to work on something, it must be done properly. During the dialogue with He Yi, the word “detail” has been always mentioned. As the old saying goes, “Little strokes fell great oaks”, He Yi is always trying to keep the details, which becomes the initial drive of this team.
2.Jobs — — the first principle of management
He Yi has mentioned in one of the interviews “I like Steven Jobs and also agree with what he said “ we don’t need to care about his self-esteem for the talents.” As a controversial figure, Steve Jobs invented the first PC Lisa with a graphical interface for his pursuit of the product, and was once kicked out of Apple for his uncompromising personality.
“In fact, it is subtraction.” When it comes to Jobs’s views, either aesthetically or managerially, throughout his life, Jobs has followed his “first principle” — subtraction and return to its roots.
“The first principle” was originally proposed by Elon Musk in an interview — “to look at the world from a physical point of view, that is to say, to look away from the surface of things, to see the inner essence, and then to move up from the essence of the layer by layer.”
From He Yi’s perspective, management is the same, not very complicated. The first principle of management is, in the final analysis, to do what one should do in his own hands.
“In fact, my management and communication are very simple and direct.” She said. Well done is good. It is not good to do well. It is entirely judged by the matter itself.
When asked what Zhao Changpeng was like, she smiled and said that Changpeng was actually a gentle manager, taking care of other people’s feelings, so more often, she is more like a “bad guy”.
3. Excellent as their male colleagues
“90% of the blockchain practitioners are males. “A blockchain industry report wrote. But in Binance, no matter it’s the exchange, Binance Labs, or BABI finance, we can see a lot of excellent female leaders.
“Many times when we talk about females, there are some preconceived notions.”said by He Yi. For example, people may think that females should get married and work as housewives. Or at the work, female has worse logic thinking abilities, so they are not suitable with programming jobs. He Yi said,“In the era of information technology, more and more females are choosing the way they want to live.” She felt that, most of the time, the family, education, growth environment, will shape her perception of the world. But if these so-called stereotypes can be broken, such as “women don’t have the potential to make big achievements in technology or finance,” everyone can try something that interests them.
“In fact, it’s not really about recruiting males or females.” He Yi said that when Binance wants to hire somebody, the concern is three points: his/her value on blockchain, can really do a good job of what to do, and enough integrity. “Block chain is a special industry, close to money, honest people can stay long enough.”
Gong Zizheng wrote in “The poetry of the Qing Dynasty” that “send down talents of more kinds than one.” Either she nor I feel that this is a good fit for today’s theme — that one’s educational background, graduation school, or family factors should not be the framework that binds one’s career aspirations.
4.Mission & Value
When it comes to culture, Binance is undoubtedly a unique exchange, whether from the high return on investment rate, or the pragmatic style, we can easily find this.
He Yi said, “ The first part of corporate culture is mission, and it means something you need to strive for all the life.” If we look at the development of the industry as a whole, the Internet will solve the problem of free flow of information. Before the advent of the Internet, we wrote letters, chatted with the village aunt, and obtained information from various media.But only after the advent of the Internet did we know, oh, the world is like this, that each of us is free to choose the information we want. But when the era of information explosion comes, a lot of valuable information is not available, but users are more difficult to choose. The advent of blockchains provides the first opportunity for free circulation of value.
Look at Africa, there are dense population and vast landscape. However, more than 80% of the users do not have bank accounts, a huge amount of foreign exchange each year, service fee loss more than 15%, the continent seems to be split from the world.
“Therefore, for Binance, our mission is to realize the free circulation of value.”
“The second part of culture is vision.”Vision refers to short-term goals that can be achieved. When the Binance was first established, its vision was very simple to become the top in the blockchain world. With the passage of time, the blockchain market has also changed from bull to bear. Now, Binance hopes to build a blockchain world and provide more fair use scenarios for ordinary users. To put it bluntly, we hope that in the next three to five years, blockchain technology will be used by more people around the world. He Yi adds that with fewer than 30 million users worldwide, there is still a hundred times more room for users to grow if they are to become a revolutionary industry.
The Slogan of Binance — — “Exchange the World” should be the vision.
“The last part is about values.” He said that the written expression of values is to provide a fair use scenario. To make it easier to be understood, it means to protect normal investors. For any department, when making behavior decisions, the first principle it considers is, does it provide fairness to users, does it protect users? Finally, he adds that “preserving investors” may be considered a joke in the cryptocurrency industry, but the differences between the exchanges on this front will gradually become apparent over time. Statistics from the media UP Finance in January to March 2018 show that on Binance, the rate for token price which is under their ICO price is 11.7% during this period, while the other two exchanges were more than 80% over the same period.
5. Never forget the vision at beginning.
When the tide ebb, people will know who is swimming naked.
The bear market came unexpectedly, and the hot money disappeared. Less than one year, Binance has become the top leader in the cryptocurrency industry, and its profits is almost the same with NASDAQ. For this young winner, Binance will keep his original vision and growing up through the bear and bull market.
“Losing your first heart falls into two categories,” said He Yi. “One is that you are very hard and stretched, so you lose your first heart.” After issuing BNB last year, currency security suffered 94 of the cold wave. In the autumn of life and death, Qian An still chose to refund money at the market price (about 4–5 times the issue price). It has been a year since that time, and this “feat” is still rare.
“The second kind is that when you make a lot of money, you lose your goal and forget the way to come.” She said, after working on Binance, life has not changed much in the past. It is still very simple. Netscape has more than 90% browser share, but ultimately because it can not subvert itself, will eventually be subverted by Microsoft. He Yi clearly realized that the cyclical industry’s profits, for the vast waves of the industry as a whole, is only a small ripple. The world of blockchains has just been opened, and the way for Binance to stay is still long.
“It’s not the same pleasure for anyone with a high ambition to enjoy a luxurious life after earning a little money as it is for you to exchange the word with the money.”
6.Write in the end
In September 20th, the Meituan group went public in Hongkong. Liang Ning published “The Break and Beginning of the Meituan group”, he said Lashou is the 2VC model, Wowo Tuan is the merger-driven model, and the Meituan group is the user value-driven model. In the past eight years, from having no first-mover advantage to becoming the top five Internet companies in China, the first principle of the Meituan group is always to provide the best user experience.
As He Yi said, “Your values may be laughed at, but over time, the gap will gradually emerge.” Binance was born in the era of the giant separatist regime, from black horses to unicorns, wearing drops of water and stones out of luck, but not coincidence. Whether it is a “no-restriction” or the “first principle” of Binance, all the time it conveys that this young exchange has not forgotten the way to come.
My interview with He Yi lasted nearly 70 minutes. At the end of the interview, He Yi said, “The world of blockchain is still very, very early, to what extent, everything is just beginning.”
We’re lucky because if standing five years later and looking back now, maybe we’re witnessing the rise of Amazon and Google. And the bear market now is quite short period for the blockchain industry.
