Wang Jianjun's Three Cross - boundary Moves: A law undergraduate who doesn't teach himself programming can't be a good Chief Growth Officer | Becoming a Chief Officer
36Kr "Career Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
Can liberal arts students really reap the benefits of tech entrepreneurship? At least according to Wang Jianjun's experience, this path can lead to success.
Wang Jianjun is the Chief Growth Officer of WeddingNote. In his 13 - year career, he has experienced two entrepreneurial endeavors. During the peak of the "Internet + Real Estate" era, he worked at Lianjia and Beike, starting from the front - line and rising to management positions. He also led the marketing team at a top - tier Internet company.
The past year was special for Wang Jianjun. After a decade, he finally made another career transition: moving out of the real estate sector and into a brand - new business field full of daily challenges and achievements. Also, he turned 35.
Being a liberal arts student has never limited Wang Jianjun's career development. He experienced two career transitions 10 years ago. The first was in 2012 when he started a local portal website while still studying law. To seize the first entrepreneurial opportunity in his life, he self - taught computer programming and UI/UX design. The second was when he resigned from the CEO position of a startup and joined the booming "Internet + Real Estate" industry as a front - line employee.
For a career cross - over person, the most important thing is not the barriers between disciplines, but the courage to "start from scratch".
During his college entrepreneurship, Wang Jianjun brought the company's revenue to the million - level. However, as the team grew to nearly 100 people, personnel management became his weak point. After seeing no improvement from attending "CEO training courses" across the country, he decided to learn from a listed company.
Later, he spent a total of 7 years at Fang.com, Lianjia, and Beike. Starting from having nothing and being unable to promote projects, he established systems and achieved a win - win situation between product R & D and growth. In this process, he witnessed the prosperity of the "Internet + Real Estate" industry and its return to rationality.
Zuo Hui, the former chairman of Beike Group, once said, "Previously, entrepreneurs mainly focused on taking a company from 0 to 10 points. The development of a company requires talents who can take it from 10 points to 40 points, or even 70 points." Wang Jianjun is good at building from 0 to 1, and he learned to grow from 1 to 40 at Beike.
Now, he hopes to lead WeddingNote to reach the "70 - point" and "100 - point" milestones.
When "Career Bonus" first met him, his eyes were bloodshot, indicating the high - intensity of his work. Different from the public's perception of "marketers", there was no trace of slickness or shrewdness in him. We noticed that physical fatigue did not dampen his enthusiasm and sincerity in speech. "A person becomes stubborn and conceited when they stop growing, regardless of age." A sense of dissatisfaction drives him to constantly pursue growth and swim across new "rivers" one after another.
36Kr "Career Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
2012 - Entrepreneurship in Sophomore Year, CEO
In 2010, Wang Jianjun missed out on The Chinese University of Hong Kong by one point and entered the Law Department of Hexi University.
He didn't want to fall behind his high - school peers, so he worked even harder in college. He completed most of his professional courses in two years and attended all the computer science courses as an auditor in his spare time.
Wang Jianjun has been interested in computers since he was 7. Instead of just playing games, he was more curious about how games were made. During his college years, the booming development of the Chinese Internet convinced him of the future value of learning programming.
"The teacher noticed I wasn't from the major, but my answers were okay." In a computer science class in the second semester of his sophomore year, the teacher called on Wang Jianjun, and his answers impressed the teacher. Coincidentally, the teacher had many entrepreneurial projects outside school and invited Wang Jianjun to work on a portal website together. Wang Jianjun readily agreed, borrowed relevant programming books from the teacher, and spent nearly a year in the library teaching himself front - end and back - end programming.
Acquiring programming skills inspired Wang Jianjun's entrepreneurial idea. Based on the project given by the teacher, he hoped the local portal website could generate profits from traffic. To improve the UI/UE of the website, he also learned on his own by asking for advice on forums.
After the website was built, attracting new users became a new problem. Instead of the conventional flyer - distributing method, Wang Jianjun came up with a creative idea: he stamped on small advertisements posted on the street with "Already included in xxx website. Welcome to visit for more information". This method was both creative and cost - effective, and the user channels were very targeted.
After the website's traffic increased and generated considerable advertising revenue, large - scale promotion and new - user acquisition were put on the agenda. Wang Jianjun approached the owners of several local Internet cafes with high traffic. He promised to replace their mouse pads for free on the condition that "the default navigation website of the computers should be changed to his portal website" or "the website address should be placed on the computer homepage".
In case of cooperation difficulties, Wang Jianjun would offer more incentives: besides replacing mouse pads, he would also replace mice for free and provide maintenance services. For most Internet cafe owners, this was almost an irresistible offer. This aggressive promotion method brought 90,000 daily active users to his website.
He started an Internet local website as a sophomore and earned nearly a million a year as a junior. Before graduating from college, Wang Jianjun was already the CEO of a profitable company in Zhangye, Gansu.
However, what outsiders didn't know was that two years after graduation, organizational problems caused by the company's expansion became the biggest headache for this young CEO.
As the website grew, the team expanded to over 100 people, and Wang Jianjun had to spend more energy on management. He signed up for CEO training courses and traveled around. Once, after returning from a "CEO training course" on a business trip, he faintly noticed that several salespeople in the company were secretly contacting the editorial team, planning to "go solo". At first, he didn't take it seriously. It wasn't until a salesperson left and took more than 20 people with him that he realized the seriousness of the problem.
In 2015, feeling extremely exhausted, Wang Jianjun decided to leave.
As the founder, Wang Jianjun received more than 700,000 yuan when he left. In 2016, this amount was enough to buy a decent house in a fourth - or fifth - tier city.
But Wang Jianjun didn't.
On the day he left, Wang Jianjun asked the finance department to distribute his 700,000 yuan to the more than 40 people who had started the business with him. "Thinking back to the early days of our entrepreneurship, it was really tough. I felt guilty about just walking away from my former colleagues."
In 2015, Wang Jianjun joined Fang.com, which had 20,000 employees at that time. He wanted to see how a listed company managed its business.
2015 - Fang.com, Search Marketing
Often, people are motivated by a sense of "dissatisfaction". Some are dissatisfied with material desires, while Wang Jianjun's "dissatisfaction" lies in not being content with his current abilities.
Selling the company, distributing the money, moving to a new city, and going from a company CEO to a front - line employee - Wang Jianjun gave himself a major career overhaul.
In 2015, at 25, Wang Jianjun joined Fang.com, a company with over 10,000 employees, to work on real - estate - related content + SEO [1]. Building portal websites was Wang Jianjun's forte. He increased the daily active users (DAU) from 0 to 120,000 in just 8 months.
The key to SEO is not only data but also content.
After taking over the "Knowledge Channel" project, Wang Jianjun first conducted a comprehensive survey on what kind of real - estate knowledge and encyclopedias users were most interested in. He then collected popular search terms based on user needs for SEO.
For each search term, an article was needed. With hundreds of thousands of search - worthy terms, hundreds of thousands of corresponding articles had to be produced.
In the early stage of the project, there were many directions to explore. Wang Jianjun recruited many part - time editors to verify different directions. However, due to a shortage of full - time staff, the internal team was not very enthusiastic about training the new part - time editors, which hindered the project's progress.
After much thought, Wang Jianjun came up with a "pyramid - style" management method for selecting talents from the outside. He started with part - time editors, screening out those with high - quality articles and patience to be in charge of training new part - time editors. Then, from the trained new editors, he selected those with potential to train the next batch. In addition, only editors who met the KPIs in terms of article quantity, quality, user experience, and plagiarism checks could get paid for their part - time work. Outstanding editors had the opportunity to become full - time employees.
Under the operation of the "pyramid" model, Wang Jianjun's "army of part - time editors" expanded to 500 people and became stable. The increase in DAU was a natural result.
One evening, Wang Jianjun's supervisor invited everyone to dinner and expressed his affirmation and development plans for the team members during the meal. However, dramatically, the next day, the supervisor resigned after arguing with the boss at a morning meeting.
Amid the sudden leadership change, Wang Jianjun received an offer from Lianjia.
Wang Jianjun also realized that he had fully realized his value at Fang.com. At that time, the "Internet + Real - World Industries" was booming. Wang Jianjun valued Lianjia's offline experience, so he left Fang.com and accepted the new offer.
[1] SEO is an abbreviation for "Search Engine Optimization". It is a method and technology for improving a website's ranking in search engine results by optimizing its content and structure.
2016 - Lianjia.com, Senior Supervisor
In 2014, Lianjia decided to develop an Internet platform, separated "Lianjia Online" and renamed it Lianjia.com, with Peng Yongdong as the CEO. When Wang Jianjun joined in 2016, Lianjia.com was still a small company with only 60 employees.
From a listed company to a startup, Wang Jianjun was not short of the courage to start over. When he first joined Lianjia.com, although he held the title of senior supervisor in charge of user and traffic growth, he had no subordinates.
With no one to lead, he did everything himself. Building from 0 to 1, user research and traffic management were his strengths.
In Internet companies, the conflicts between "growth teams vs. product teams" and "product teams vs. technology teams" seem to be the norm. Lianjia, which was in the process of transformation, was no exception, and the conflicts were even more intense. Many people at that time thought that Lianjia's attempt at traffic acquisition was just an experiment and did not receive enough internal recognition and attention. And Wang Jianjun was in charge of exactly the traffic - related business, so he often encountered difficulties in his work.
There was a project that required him to communicate with the product team on behalf of the growth team to confirm requirements and then have the technology team implement them. However, the product managers at that time focused on the B - side and did not agree with the method of acquiring C - side traffic. The requirements put forward by the traffic team were often ignored.
When Wang Jianjun had a hard time at work, he couldn't help complaining to his family. However, his family was worried about him. He was alone in a strange city, still single, and his work was not going smoothly. His parents hoped he would "go home and take the civil - servant exam" and live a life that would make them feel at ease. But Wang Jianjun knew he was not suited for a job with a predictable future and didn't follow his parents' wishes. As a result, his parents tried to force him: his mother cried and made a fuss, and his father threatened to cut off the relationship.
Wang Jianjun endured this difficult situation for a year.
"I stood in the Lianjia office, looking out of the window, and even thought: Maybe jumping would be a relief."
Fortunately, this thought passed quickly. When he was 3 years old, he was in a car accident. He still vaguely remembered the overturned car and the desire to survive. In junior high school, he almost missed the chance of treatment due to an illness he endured silently. Under pressure, he has never been one to easily give in to death.
He chose to reduce communication with his family for a while, read self - healing books to relieve stress, put aside his emotions, and focus more on specific tasks and results.
Since he couldn't communicate with the product managers, Wang Jianjun bypassed them and tried to persuade the technology team. Treating other teams to meals became a regular thing for him. He explained principles, presented facts, and gave examples to persuade the technology team members to help him convince the product managers.
Even if his efforts didn't succeed at first, Wang Jianjun didn't give up. He invited his supervisor, the product manager's supervisor, and the product manager himself to a meeting and made a "bet": if he couldn't achieve certain performance within two months, he would never mention the requirements again.
Two weeks after the product was launched, 30% of the traffic target was achieved. In less than a month and a half, the target set in the "bet" was completed.
● During his time at Lianjia.com, Wang Jianjun trained the product and R & D teams.
Whenever a project achieved good results, Wang Jianjun was used to writing thank - you notes to everyone involved in the process. This small gesture also subtly promoted future collaborations.
Sharing some benefits is Wang Jianjun's secret to building good relationships between teams. The so - called "benefits" include not only money but also achievements, performance, and emotional value. On payday, Wang Jianjun always set aside a few thousand yuan to treat the product and technology teams to dinner to strengthen the relationships.
After some time, he became the person in the company's operation department with the best relationship with the technology team.
Bonus Person Profile
Zuo Hui (January 19, 1971 - May 20, 2021): Born in Weinan, Shaanxi, a graduate of Peking University's EMBA program, he was a well - known Chinese entrepreneur and the founder of Lianjia, Beike Zhaofang, and Ziroom. In 1992, he graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology (now Beijing University of Chemical Technology). In 2001, Zuo Hui founded Lianjia in Beijing, starting his entrepreneurial journey in the real - estate agency industry. Later, he founded Ziroom.com, Lianjia.com, and in 2018, he established Beike Zhaofang, promoting the digital transformation of the real - estate service industry. In 2020, Beike Zhaofang successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Zuo Hui became a leading figure in