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Letter to All Employees: A Small Step for Pinduoduo

Over a decade ago, when we first started our online entrepreneurial journey, the logic of "controlling goods + traffic" was still the mainstream in the retail market. Through practical experience, we saw the future of "inclusiveness + people first." Five years ago, a failed major promotion during the Dragon Boat Festival instead made me even more confident in the "Pinduoduo" model, believing that it can effectively gather people's needs and will inevitably create different social value in the future.

Now, we see that the Internet is solving more than just efficiency problems. People's virtual and real worlds, online and offline, have become inextricably linked, and we believe that "Costco + Disney" is the inevitable future of the retail consumer market.

Over the past few years, Pinduoduo has experienced rapid development. The rapid expansion of the team, the high-speed growth of the business, and the dramatic changes in the external environment are all urging us to further upgrade our management team and corporate governance structure.

Just yesterday, we held a special board meeting and approved an iterative adjustment of the management team: from July 1, 2020, I will no longer serve as the CEO of the company. The company's co-founder and CTO, Chen Lei, will take over as CEO. At the same time, the company appointed Senior Vice President Zhu Jianchong as the company's Chief Legal Officer (General Counsel), and appointed Ma Jing as the company's Vice President of Finance. I will continue to serve as the Chairman of Pinduoduo.  

Along with this adjustment, I will follow the promise made during the IPO and formally establish the "Fanxing Charity Foundation," and together with the founding team, donate 113,548,920 shares of Pinduoduo listed company's common stock (approximately 2.37% of the company's total share capital) to promote social responsibility construction and scientific research. The charity fund is an irrevocable charity fund, managed by independent trustees, to ensure that all assets of the charity fund are used for public welfare purposes.

Pinduoduo will continue to establish and improve the partnership system. I will allocate 370,772,220 shares of Pinduoduo listed company's common stock (approximately 7.74% of the company's total share capital) under my personal name to the Pinduoduo partnership collective. Part of it can be used for long-term basic research and social welfare exploration without affecting the interests of Pinduoduo's existing shareholders, providing additional long-term impetus and batteries for the company; part of it can be used as supplementary incentives for future management.  

I hope that through this adjustment, the management can gradually hand over more management work and responsibilities to younger colleagues, so that the team can accelerate its growth and make Pinduoduo a better and stronger company that continues to be full of entrepreneurial vitality.  

After this adjustment, I will spend more time with the board of directors to formulate the company's medium and long-term strategy, study and improve the company's governance structure, including the partnership mechanism, and strive to promote Pinduoduo to a new level from the institutional level, and gradually become a publicly listed institution with international competitiveness.  

As I said in the shareholder letter before the IPO, Pinduoduo carries a unique social value. It is a public institution, not a tool to show personal ability, and there should not be too much personal color.

We will fulfill our commitments, strive to improve its organizational structure and "Benfen" culture, so that Pinduoduo can follow its own unique destiny and continue to grow and evolve.

Pinduoduo Chairman Huang Zheng

July 1, 2020