第一章 拼多多是谁？从一封邮件到千亿电商帝国

2015年夏末的上海徐汇区，一栋没有挂牌的普通写字楼里，36岁的黄峥点开了一封来自导师段永平的邮件。邮件里没有复杂的商业计划书，也没有诱人的融资条款，只有一句再简单不过的问话：“你之前做的那个拼团买水果的事，能不能放大做？”

In the late summer of 2015, in an unmarked ordinary office building in Xuhui District, Shanghai, 36-year-old Huang Zheng opened an email from his mentor Duan Yongping. The email contained no complicated business plan, no tempting financing terms, only one simple question: "The group-buying fruit project you did before, can it be scaled up?"

这封邮件，成了后来万亿电商帝国拼多多的起点。但如果你回到2015年的中国互联网圈，问任何一个人“电商行业还有没有新机会”，得到的答案几乎都是“不可能”。当时的电商市场，是阿里巴巴和京东的“双寡头时代”：阿里系的淘宝、天猫加起来占据75%以上的市场份额，号称“万能淘宝”，从衣服到家电无所不包；京东则牢牢把控3C数码、高端家电的赛道，靠着“正品+自营物流”的标签，拿下了20%左右的高端市场份额。两家巨头缠斗了十年，已经把线上零售的几乎所有场景都覆盖了个遍：你想买便宜货去淘宝，想买好货去京东，想买奢侈品去天猫国际，想买生鲜去京东到家，普通用户根本没有第三个选择。

所谓的“双寡头垄断”，用大白话解释就是整个市场只有两个玩家说了算，就像你上学的时候班里只有两个班长，所有活动都得他俩点头才行。当时的电商行业就是如此：阿里和京东就是那两个“班长”，其他小玩家要么被收购，要么在夹缝里勉强生存，根本掀不起什么浪花。根据艾瑞咨询2015年的统计数据显示，当时中国网络零售市场规模突破3.8万亿，其中阿里占比76%，京东占比20%，剩下的所有电商平台加起来，份额还不到4%。所有人都觉得，电商的格局已经定死了，就像十几年前的PC互联网时代，搜索引擎只有百度一家独大一样，不可能有新的机会。

但黄峥不这么认为。这个1979年出生于浙江金华的年轻人，从创业的第一天起，就习惯用逆向思维看问题：所有人都觉得高端市场有利润，他就去做下沉市场；所有人都觉得电商是“人找货”的模式，他就想试试“货找人”；所有人都觉得社交和电商是两回事，他就想把两者绑在一起。这种“反共识”的思维，后来成了拼多多最核心的竞争力，也是它能从阿里京东的夹缝里杀出来的根本原因。

要理解拼多多的崛起，首先得搞清楚黄峥这个人。他并不是那种“辍学创业”的草莽英雄，也不是那种“含着金汤匙出生”的富二代，他的履历几乎踩中了中国互联网过去20年所有的红利节点：1998年，他从浙江大学竺可桢学院计算机系毕业，拿到了全额奖学金去美国威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校读硕士；2002年，他加入谷歌中国，是谷歌最早的一批中国工程师，参与了中国最早的搜索引擎商业化项目；2004年，他跟随李开复回国组建谷歌中国，成了谷歌中国的第6号员工，那时候谷歌中国的办公室还在北京建国门外的京广中心，月薪就有几万块，是同龄人里的顶尖收入；2006年，他离开谷歌创业，做了乐其电商，专门帮宝洁、联合利华、三星这些国际品牌做淘宝、京东的店铺代运营，只用了5年时间，就把乐其做成了国内最大的电商代运营公司之一，年营收超过10亿，赚到了第一桶金。

这段经历非常重要：在谷歌的几年，他学会了最先进的互联网技术和产品思维；做乐其的几年，他摸透了电商行业的所有规则，从供应链到运营到用户，他比绝大多数电商从业者都懂。更重要的是，他手里攒下了一支能打硬仗的团队：技术负责人陈磊是他谷歌时期的同事，后来成了拼多多的CEO；运营负责人赵佳臻是他乐其时期的旧将，后来成了拼多多的联合创始人；供应链、产品、市场的核心成员，几乎全是乐其电商的老班底。这支团队从2010年就开始一起共事，磨合了5年，彼此信任，执行力极强，是拼多多早期能快速试错、快速迭代的核心基础。

> [!TIP] > 小知识：什么是电商代运营？ > 简单来说，就是品牌方自己不负责电商平台的店铺运营、客服、发货、营销，把这些事外包给专业的代运营公司来做，付给代运营公司服务费或者销售额提成。乐其电商就是国内最早做电商代运营的公司之一，巅峰时期帮几十个国际品牌运营了几百个天猫、京东店铺，黄峥就是在这段时间里，摸透了整个电商行业的上下游逻辑。

In the late summer of 2015, in an unmarked ordinary office building in Xuhui District, Shanghai, 36-year-old Huang Zheng opened an email from his mentor Duan Yongping. The email contained no complicated business plan, no tempting financing terms, only one simple question: "The group-buying fruit project you did before, can it be scaled up?"

This email became the starting point of Pinduoduo, the trillion-dollar e-commerce empire that followed. But if you went back to China's internet circle in 2015 and asked anyone "are there new opportunities in the e-commerce industry", the answer you got was almost always "impossible". At that time, the e-commerce market was in the "duopoly era" of Alibaba and JD.com: Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall combined accounted for more than 75% of the market share, claiming to be a "versatile Taobao" where you could buy everything from clothes to home appliances; JD.com firmly controlled the 3C digital and high-end home appliance track, with its label of "authentic goods + self-operated logistics", taking about 20% of the high-end market share. The two giants had been fighting for ten years, and had covered almost all scenarios of online retail: if you wanted to buy cheap goods, go to Taobao; if you wanted to buy good goods, go to JD.com; if you wanted to buy luxury goods, go to Tmall Global; if you wanted to buy fresh food, go to JD Daojia. Ordinary users had no third choice.

The so-called "duopoly", explained in plain language, means that only two players in the entire market have the final say, just like when you were in school, there were only two class monitors, and all activities had to be approved by them. The e-commerce industry was the same at that time: Alibaba and JD.com were the two "class monitors", other small players were either acquired or barely survived in the cracks, and could not make any waves.

黄峥收到邮件的当天下午，就把乐其电商的核心管理层叫到了徐汇区那间不到100平的小会议室里。十几个人挤在狭小的空间里，投影仪投着段永平的邮件内容，黄峥把玩着手里的钢笔，开口第一句话是：“乐其的代运营业务先放一放，我们all in这个拼团的事。”

Huang Zheng called the core management of Leqi E-commerce to a small conference room of less than 100 square meters in Xuhui District that afternoon. More than a dozen people crammed into the narrow space, with the projector displaying Duan Yongping's email. Huang Zheng played with the pen in his hand and said the first sentence: "Put the agency operation business of Leqi on hold first, and let's all in on this group buying thing."

在场的所有人都知道黄峥说的“拼团的事”是什么——过去三个月，黄峥偷偷让技术团队在微信公众号里搭了一个极简的拼团工具，专门做产地直采的水果团购，规则简单到粗暴：3人成团，每人只需分享链接到2个微信群邀请好友助力，就能享受比市场价低40%的拼团价，凑不齐人数就得按原价购买。这个连独立APP都没有的小工具，第一个月就卖了10万斤山东栖霞红富士，日订单悄悄破了万，很多下单的用户在后台留言：“比我在县城集市上买的还便宜，还不用跑大老远。”

Everyone present knew what Huang Zheng meant by the "group buying thing" — in the past three months, Huang Zheng had secretly asked the technical team to build an extremely simple group buying tool on the WeChat official account, specializing in direct-purchased fruit group buying. The rules were simple to the point of being crude: 3 people form a group, each person only needs to share the link to 2 WeChat groups to invite friends to help, and they can enjoy a group buying price 40% lower than the market price; if they can't gather enough people, they have to pay the original price. This small tool that didn't even have an independent APP sold 100,000 jin of Qixia Red Fuji apples from Shandong in the first month, and daily orders quietly broke 10,000. Many users who placed orders left messages in the backend: "It's cheaper than what I buy at the county town market, and I don't have to travel a long way."

“这个事能跑通，说明我们找到了一个阿里和京东都没碰过的市场。”黄峥敲了敲桌子，“他们的核心用户是一二线城市的中产，看不起十几块几十块的小生意，但是中国有近10亿人生活在三四线城市和农村，这些人从来没有被电商真正服务过，这就是我们的机会。”

"This thing works, which means we found a market that Alibaba and JD.com haven't touched," Huang Zheng knocked on the table. "Their core users are the middle class in first and second-tier cities, who look down on small businesses of a dozen or dozens of yuan. But there are nearly 1 billion people living in third and fourth-tier cities and rural areas in China, who have never been truly served by e-commerce. This is our opportunity."

> [!TIP] > 小知识：什么是“拼团”？ > 拼团是一种电商促销玩法，核心逻辑是“以量换价”：用户想要享受低价，就需要邀请其他人一起购买，达到平台规定的人数门槛后，所有人都能按低价成交，凑不齐人数则拼团失败，用户要么按原价购买，要么退款。这种玩法最早在2010年左右的团购网站出现过，但黄峥把它和社交工具结合，放大了裂变效应。

> [!TIP] > Side Note: What is "Group Buying"? > Group buying is an e-commerce promotion model, with the core logic of "lowering prices through volume": if users want to enjoy a low price, they need to invite others to buy together. After reaching the number threshold set by the platform, everyone can buy at a low price. If the number of people is not enough, the group buying fails, and users can either buy at the original price or get a refund. This model first appeared on group buying websites around 2010, but Huang Zheng combined it with social tools to amplify the fission effect.

2015年9月，黄峥正式从乐其电商拆分出拼团业务，注册成立了杭州昊超电子商务有限公司，最初的名字叫“拼好货”——这个名字是团队内部投票选出来的，直白到几乎没有任何互联网公司的“文艺感”，黄峥的解释是：“我们的用户大多是不太熟悉互联网的中老年人、宝妈、县城居民，名字越直白，他们越容易记住，‘拼好货’就是拼着买就是好货，好懂。”后来因为“拼好货”的商标被其他公司抢注，团队才临时改名叫“拼多多”，黄峥说这个名字的意思是“拼着买，更便宜”，同样直白，没有多余的修饰。

In September 2015, Huang Zheng officially spun off the group buying business from Leqi E-commerce, and registered Hangzhou Haochao E-commerce Co., Ltd. The original name was "Pinhaohuo" (Good Goods Group Buying) — this name was chosen by an internal team vote, so straightforward that it almost had no "artistic sense" of an internet company. Huang Zheng's explanation was: "Our users are mostly middle-aged and elderly people, moms, and county residents who are not very familiar with the internet. The more straightforward the name is, the easier it is for them to remember. 'Pinhaohuo' means group buying is good goods, easy to understand." Later, because the trademark of "Pinhaohuo" was preempted by other companies, the team temporarily changed the name to "Pinduoduo". Huang Zheng said the meaning of this name is "buy together, cheaper", equally straightforward, without extra decoration.

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