It seems like a metaphor. Huang Zheng founded Pinduoduo, traversed the jungle, and sought the essence of collaboration in the field of agricultural products. Today, Huang Zheng has shed his heavy burden, returned to the starting point, never lowering his head, looking forward, and embarking on a new journey of dream seeking.

On this journey, looking up at the stars, Huang Zheng ultimately left Pinduoduo like a knight, returned to his origin, and moved forward again...

His labels include academic star at Zhejiang University, disciple of Duan Yongping, post-80s billionaire, and leader of the new e-commerce era. On the other hand, his qualities and personality that he showcases to the outside world are low-key, humble, rational, and pragmatic.

Huang Zheng has not made a public appearance for a long time.

Searching for his photos online, the most frequently appearing one is still that of the young Huang Zheng expressing his views at a forum. But this does not hinder the public, especially e-commerce enthusiasts, from maintaining long-term interest in him and Pinduoduo.

Some consumers worship Pinduoduo as a god because of its affordability; others swear never to use it, believing its quality is poor. Suppliers, on the other hand, consider it an excellent platform because sales volume speaks for itself, but the "only refund" policy deters many merchants.

Behind the controversies and glory, an undeniable fact remains: Pinduoduo's user base and market value have repeatedly hit new highs, even surpassing Alibaba, entering the "Pinduoduo era".

As the "catfish" and "disruptor" of e-commerce, Huang Zheng was once commented on like this: "He returns to the origin with an 'ordinary mind', chooses the right things, and then uses 'doing one's duty' to do things correctly."

Indeed, when Huang Zheng spoke with the media on a few rare occasions, the two words he often used were "doing one's duty." To a certain extent, "doing one's duty" represents a commitment to long-termism and the practice of prudence. Unlike the previous generation of entrepreneurs, Huang Zheng is not enthusiastic about inspirational life stories, and he shows a calm and detached attitude towards Pinduoduo's success.

When reaching the peak, Huang Zheng chose to descend and climb again, somewhat reminiscent of "making a big fuss and quietly leaving."

What is the view from the top of life? Ten years have passed like a dream, and no one can fully describe it.

Looking back, Huang Zheng guided Pinduoduo through thorns and jungles amidst controversy, reaching the pinnacle; looking closer, Pinduoduo and Huang Zheng were like two parallel worlds that miraculously coupled and then returned to their respective timelines. This young man from Zhejiang wrote his life script in an alternative way.

Regarding Pinduoduo, he once said, "I often feel incredible too."

But what is even more incredible is the changing times.

Perhaps, looking at how Huang Zheng alone seeks the next peak at this moment can bring different insights.

 An Opportunity Once in Two Decades

When we talk about Huang Zheng and Pinduoduo, we are actually discussing a kind of "untimely" success, tinged with drama.

Huang Zheng rarely faces the media, and even when he does, he speaks in a bland manner, rarely saying anything that arouses public discussion, unlike those business tycoons who naturally attract attention. People pay attention to him more because he is the founder of Pinduoduo.

Born in 1980 in an ordinary family in Hangzhou, Huang Zheng's parents worked in a factory and had limited education. However, Huang Zheng was a standard academic star, entering Hangzhou Foreign Language School at age 12 and later being guaranteed admission to the mixed class at Zhejiang University to major in computer science, a testament to his exceptional intelligence.

Overall, Huang Zheng's middle school and university years were fortunate and fulfilling. His innate excellence pushed him to delve deeply into his studies, but there were also regrets. Huang Zheng wasted too much time trying to be a good student, losing out on rebellious, mischievous, and youthful moments, something he gradually realized many years later.

Fate is indeed a strange thing.

One afternoon in 2001, Huang Zheng returned to his dormitory after class and found a stranger looking for him on MSN, claiming to be Ding Lei, the founder of NetEase, who needed help with a technical issue. At that time, NetEase, which had been established for four years, was already listed on NASDAQ.

Ding Lei had a technical problem he couldn't figure out and stumbled upon an article by Huang Zheng online, so he sought his help. After the problem was perfectly resolved, Ding Lei introduced Huang Zheng to Duan Yongping, feeling that this young man was different. It was later that Huang Zheng officially became Duan Yongping's fourth disciple.

When he was about to graduate in 2004, Huang Zheng had two choices: he could join Microsoft, a major company at the time, or Google, a smaller company. To the surprise of his classmates, Huang Zheng chose the latter.

He didn't choose to stay at Microsoft because after comparison, he felt he could see what his future would be like in ten years at Microsoft. Additionally, his mentor Duan Yongping advised him, "Compared to that, Google is a growing startup, which is beneficial for your future entrepreneurship. It's worth checking out."

So, after graduating from his master's program, Huang Zheng went directly to Google to work as a coder and product manager.

During his three years at Google, Huang Zheng witnessed the company's explosive growth. However, what brought him even greater gains than "financial freedom" was the enrichment of his cognition.

At that time, Google placed great importance on ideology and encouraged grassroots innovation. Google's "do no evil" culture was deeply ingrained in its DNA, putting mission and values before profit, which was merely a byproduct of doing the right things. As a result, most of Google's acquisitions were successful.

Moreover, Huang Zheng later recalled seeing the side effects of sudden wealth among his Google colleagues.

Suddenly having a lot of money, many people lost their motivation to work and began searching for new joys and careers, but those things were not necessarily what they were good at or enjoyed.

This somewhat influenced Huang Zheng's view of money. Among the executives of listed companies, he was undoubtedly the most unique one. He didn't buy cars, houses, or hire assistants. Occasionally, he would carry a backpack and take the subway to work, looking no different from an ordinary programmer.

For a long time, this programmer's image was so low-key that it was blurred.

It was only after leaving Google for several years that Huang Zheng deeply realized how rare it was to have the opportunity to join such a company at that time. "From a probabilistic perspective, it's already very lucky for a person to encounter such an opportunity once in a lifetime, at least once every ten to twenty years."

This experience quickly enlightened Huang Zheng.

 Joining the Table, Going All In

The development of China's Internet business ecosystem is like a table.

As time passes and market potential continues to be unleashed, naturally, people will try to join the table and get a share of the pie in various ways, such as imitation and replication.

But Huang Zheng had his own ideas.

In 2006, Huang Zheng returned to China to work, coinciding with Duan Yongping's opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffett for $620,000, bringing along his novice disciple Huang Zheng.

People are curious about how much impact that meal had on him and what secrets Buffett told him. Huang Zheng said that what Buffett talked about was simple enough for his mother to understand, but "the greatest significance of this meal was that it made me realize the power of 'doing one's duty,' which is simplicity and common sense."

As the meal ended, the invisible gears of fate began to quietly accelerate.

Less than a year after the highly anticipated lunch, Huang Zheng grew tired of life at Google, where he had to report trivial matters to the founder. The last straw was when he had to go to headquarters to sign off on a decision to change the font color and size of Chinese characters in search results, after which he resolutely resigned.

In 2007, Huang Zheng decided to return to China to start his own business. At the same time, BBK Electronics was also exploring e-commerce platforms through the Internet. Appreciating talent, Duan Yongping unhesitatingly allocated a piece of BBK's e-commerce business to Huang Zheng to support his entrepreneurial endeavors.

Soon, Huang Zheng founded Ouku, a B2C e-commerce website selling electronics. At the time, only Duan Yongping invested in him, and other brands were unwilling to cooperate with this small company.

Relying on resource accumulation, Ouku achieved an annual turnover of several hundred million yuan. In the early stages, Huang Zheng met Liu Qiangdong twice and, after detailed discussions, felt that with so many domestic e-commerce brands, something had to be done to avoid a drawn-out battle with large e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com in the future.

Therefore, Huang Zheng resolutely sold Ouku and led his core team to establish Leqi, an e-commerce service company, with the implication of "finding joy in it."

At that time, Huang Zheng set the direction to only operate on behalf of foreign clients. Benefiting from the experience accumulated at Ouku, the new company developed very smoothly. Three years later, Leqi's annual profit exceeded ten million yuan.

An episode worth mentioning is that when Leqi was expanding its business, the head of a brand asked for a bribe, which Huang Zheng firmly refused, resulting in a 60% loss in turnover. "Just starting a business, if I had done that, it wouldn't have been scalable," Huang Zheng said. "Integrity will become the core competitiveness of enterprises in China. The longer a company that values integrity operates, the higher its barriers will be."

At the time, agency operations were mostly about copying and pasting, which was not "sexy" enough for Huang Zheng. He wanted to have some fun, especially since his good friend Ding Lei had relied on games to pull NetEase back from the brink of bankruptcy to a peak of over 20% annual return on capital. Soon, he split off a small team to establish Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on games, to explore the intricacies of the gaming business.

When asked why he started an e-commerce agency and a gaming company, Huang Zheng replied, "Because I haven't evolved to the point where I can do things that don't make money. In the future, I hope to do scientific research that doesn't make money, but not making money in business, I believe, is immoral. One should follow the logic of business to be a dutiful merchant."

From game agency to online game and mobile game development, profitability soon surpassed that of Leqi. Regardless, this gaming business seemed very "sexy."

However, at this time, Huang Zheng's health took a turn for the worse.

In 2013, Huang Zheng rested at home for nearly a year due to a sudden ear infection. With this rare "leisure" time, he began to seriously consider his life direction: should he continue to start businesses or invest? "I'm only 33 years old, and it seems a bit early to invest. Deep down, I have some ambition and vaguely feel that the current opportunity might allow me to accomplish something more fulfilling," Huang Zheng recalled.

During that time, he frequently went to and from the hospital and found the process of seeking medical treatment "too painful," so he considered starting a hospital. However, after research, he discovered that "a good hospital is far less reliable than eating well." At the same time, WeChat began to see a significant number of micro-merchants, and the scale was considerable. Huang Zheng found that the micro-merchant chaos had not established a standardized business model.

Therefore, he planned to start a large social e-commerce company. When Huang Zheng shared this idea with Duan Yongping, Duan unhesitatingly invested and endorsed him, believing in Huang Zheng's abilities and his own judgment. This time, Huang Zheng glimpsed another possibility from the intersection of e-commerce, gaming, and social networking: e-commerce + social networking + consumer experience.

After the annual meeting at the end of the year, he dragged his tired body home and watched the Spring Festival Gala to relax and boost his mood.

This relaxation ultimately pushed open a door for him.

At that time, WeChat and the Spring Festival Gala came together: during the 2015 Spring Festival Gala, the nation shook their phones a total of 11 billion times, propelling WeChat's user base to a new level and filling WeChat Wallets with spare change. There was definitely something to be done here.

Nine months later, Huang Zheng returned to Leqi to hold a meeting with employees, where he was visibly excited.

The logic behind Pinhuoduo was not complicated: posting group-buying information on China's largest social platform for people to share, attracting enough people to place orders through social fission, and then using these orders to negotiate prices with fruit supply channels.

This was also the underlying logic behind the later "cut a price" feature, which remained effective even after being blocked by WeChat thousands of times.

When the idea was presented, employees found it incredible, but he resolutely decided to officially join the table, go all in, and found the new platform "Pinhuoduo."

In May 2015, Huang Zheng urgently reassigned the head of business development to focus specifically on the operations of Pinhaohuo. Huang told him that this might be his last entrepreneurial venture.

Huang Zheng considered that from the Spring Festival Gala, the way information spreads on the Internet has changed, and it has become easier for people to connect with each other. Whoever can harness the relationships between people to trigger communication can open up a new world.

Ultimately, he came up with the model of social networking + e-commerce + group buying. Pinhuoduo tells you about a cost-effective and delicious fruit. If you gather three or five people, you can buy it.

Consumption is one of the measures of life. "Consumers regain the initiative in information dissemination and cede part of the profit to themselves, equivalent to buying advertisements from consumers. This model has inherent advantages."

Pinhuoduo's 30% cost advantage comes from consumers doing something that helps save costs for Pinhuoduo. In the past, there was a lack of communication scenarios, but now, communication scenarios have been constructed, which can not only attract new users but also stimulate consumption among old users.

After its official launch, with enhanced backend operational capabilities, Pinhuoduo began to develop rapidly. However, Huang Zheng still underestimated the power of social networking.

Just two months after operation, with the help of a lychee group buy, daily orders exceeded 200,000, directly overwhelming the weak supply chain. Huang Zheng led a large group of Leqi colleagues to the warehouse in Jiaxing, but they couldn't stop the lychees from spoiling.

According to those present at the time, Huang Zheng and his team were exhausted in the warehouse, eating boxed meals while summarizing the situation. Many people had never seen such a big scene before and teared up as they talked.

However, Huang Zheng remained calm and told everyone, "Our model is right!"

A few months later, Pinhuoduo's user base exceeded ten million.

As Pinhaohuo was rapidly developing, another "Pin" company, Pinduoduo, which was incubated by Huang Zheng's gaming company, officially launched in September 2015. Although both operated on group buying models, they had fundamental differences: Pinduoduo adopted a supplier onboarding model and utilized third-party logistics, functioning as an e-commerce platform, whereas Pinhaohuo was self-operated and built its own supply chain.

Huang Zheng wiped the sweat off his brow as he walked out of Pinhaohuo's warehouse and headed toward a new battlefield. The landscape of domestic e-commerce began to change from that point on.

Welcome to the Era of Cost-Effectiveness

If the early Pinhaohuo focused on social e-commerce group buying for fruits, then Pinduoduo emerged as a comprehensive social e-commerce platform.

Initially, Huang Zheng introduced the concept of group purchasing, leveraging private traffic from social scenarios. When someone you never contacted on WeChat suddenly asked you to help them out in a group purchase, you realized how powerful this model could be.

After its launch, Pinduoduo didn't advertise initially but relied solely on viral growth among WeChat users. Within a year, it exceeded a million daily orders and had a monthly GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of over 1 billion yuan.

A widely circulated notion is that "Pinduoduo's success lies in capturing the downgraded consumer market." Huang Zheng disagrees with the term "consumption downgrade." In his view, Pinduoduo attracts people who seek high cost-effectiveness. These consumers might buy a Hermès bag but also purchase a box of mangoes for 9.9 yuan. It's not about their purchasing power.

Huang Zheng was initially inspired by his mother for this multifaceted consumer psychology. Although his mother didn't lack money, she still cared about saving one or two yuan when buying groceries or tissues. At the same time, she was willing to buy a high-end new Apple phone.

This was Huang Zheng's starting point for founding Pinduoduo: whether rich or poor, everyone appreciates a good deal.

Later, Huang Zheng pondered Pinduoduo's true positioning. Low prices were merely a way to attract users during its growth phase. The core of Pinduoduo wasn't about being cheap but about satisfying users' desire to feel like they're getting a good deal. Pinduoduo's mission is to offer more value and more fun, allowing consumers to buy more affordable items and enjoy the process. Therefore, "the core competitiveness of Pinduoduo is something that people within the Fifth Ring Road can't understand."

In the early days of his startup, Huang Zheng was quite humble, acknowledging that his team was "20 years behind Alibaba." However, he saw an opportunity to create a different kind of Alibaba under new forms of traffic distribution and user interaction.

Now, Pinduoduo has rapidly risen to become a giant. Even people within the Fifth Ring Road have gradually become Pinduoduo users, forcing Alibaba and JD.com to charge headfirst into the same battlefield.

A closer look at Pinduoduo's innovative model reveals four main aspects:

1. A Combination of Costco and Disney:** On the supply side, the C2M (Consumer-to-Manufacturer) model drastically compresses the supply chain, eliminating intermediary stages. On the consumer side, users are grouped, shopping while socializing and participating in group purchases.

2. Granular Operations:** The homepage features a product stream with fewer SKUs, higher order volumes, and shorter bursts of activity. Factories focus more on inventory depth, concentrating resources to create "explosive" products.

3. Product Finds User, Understands User Better:** Distributed AI leverages the product stream model to connect scattered demands through social group buying. A vast "distributed" intelligent system provides more suitable products based on the preferences of different consumer groups.

4. Flexible Supply Chain:** Platform data empowers factories to improve inventory turnover rates. Data guides suppliers to provide "explosive" products that better understand consumer needs, allowing them to adjust production capacity in advance.

An investor once analyzed, "Pinduoduo has constructed a new retail channel that connects incremental traffic with an incremental supply chain."

Incremental traffic refers not only to the penetration into lower-tier markets but also to the additional decision-making loops in consumer behavior. While shopping efficiency is important, psychological factors such as conversation topics, comparisons, identity, conformity, and reciprocity are equally critical. Social traffic better encapsulates these diverse scenarios.

Incremental supply chains refer to the trend of fragmented consumer categories and segmented consumer brands. A group of mid-sized manufacturers with local supply chain advantages but lacking substantial market budgets can receive several times the previous order volume due to Pinduoduo's Costco-like traffic distribution logic. This allows them to achieve economies of scale at various stages, sharing the reduced costs among manufacturers, consumers, and the platform, thus offering consumers higher cost-effectiveness.

Huang Zheng has stated that Pinduoduo prioritizes users over merchants. More importantly than the attitude are the "stringent" terms that help Pinduoduo identify the strongest supply chains to survive in an intensely competitive environment.

Looking at the domestic e-commerce market, what exactly is Pinduoduo?

Huang Zheng calmly explains, "Pinduoduo will become a 'new space' that merges the virtual online world with the physical reality. In this space, material consumption and spiritual consumption are organically combined. Users can buy their desired products at the best prices and gain joy in the process."

The joy of the process is Huang Zheng's greatest "zen."

Going Against the Grain

A harsh truth: Success has little to do with ability and effort.

If success doesn’t rely on effort, then what does it rely on?

Huang Zheng’s answer is: People. Who you are, who you want to become, and who you will meet.

Pinduoduo’s biggest innovation undoubtedly lies in its examination and understanding of "people."

If we carefully review the operational methods of past e-commerce companies, we can find that users were often digitized in the commercial context. They might be clicks, traffic, or GMV, but few people paid attention to their deeper behaviors and needs.

From the front-end perspective, Pinduoduo's approach makes users the nodes of information flow, creating a brand-new traffic strategy through group buying, rapidly forming a colossal entity. However, the cognitive logic behind this is entirely different. It can be said that it stems from a deeper and more diverse understanding of users' social behaviors and shopping needs.

In a word, Pinduoduo’s rise can be summarized by a reverse logic business model, three major industry backgrounds, and opportunities, all of which it has fortunately seized.

Huang Zheng once revealed his original idea for Pinduoduo in his public WeChat account in an article titled "Turning Capitalism Upside Down," which discussed insurance and compound interest.

Huang wrote that insurance is the ultimate creation of capitalism. Ordinary people with weak risk-resistance pay money to buy risk-resistance resources from wealthy people with strong risk-resistance, while the wealthy continuously compound their money. This entire structure leads to the continuous transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

He hopes to turn capitalism upside down by creating a reverse insurance product, allowing ordinary people to sell risk-resistance capabilities to the wealthy and profit from it.

He provided an example where 1,000 people approach a clothing factory, willing to collectively purchase 1,000 down jackets with a 10% deposit. The factory would be willing to offer a 30% discount because the most scarce resource here is the certainty of consumption. As long as the order is placed smoothly, costs can be squeezed out of the supply chain.

The underlying logic of this plan is that the clothing factory is willing to forgo some profit to buy an "insurance" called "you will accept the product and pay for it" from consumers. In this relationship, the clothing factory, representing the wealthy, is willing to share some wealth with the buyers, i.e., ordinary people, to ensure a certain business deal, thus achieving the reverse.

His article ends abruptly here, but his steps did not stop.

In the E-commerce World: New Rules by Pinduoduo

In the e-commerce world, the old game of spending money on ads has changed. Now, the rules set by Pinduoduo are about who offers the lowest prices, and whoever does that locks in the most consumers and gets the best traffic allocation.

In reality, throughout its development, Pinduoduo has been constantly searching for direction, trying to ensure that this reverse logic remains fresh and relevant in the grand era, always maintaining its core principles.

For instance, during Pinduoduo's second significant stage from 2019 to 2020, supply-side structural reforms gave rise to new consumerism. Consumers became more rational, and Pinduoduo hit the mark with its Hundred Billion Yuan Subsidies, catering to users' desire for high-quality and affordable products. JD.com even replicated the Hundred Billion Yuan Subsidies model to enter this ecosystem.

"I have analyzed that in the entire e-commerce market, today’s successful methods might not work tomorrow, but people's needs still exist and will become further amplified. Secondly, the older generation will eventually age, and the younger generation, or those of us gradually entering middle age, will reach that point. So, what I need to do is to calmly stick to my duties."

The advantages of the "group buying model" are evident. Pinduoduo fought its way out of the competitive e-commerce market and perfected this model to the extreme.

In 2018, Pinduoduo went public on Nasdaq. However, Huang Zheng did not appear at the bell-ringing ceremony in the U.S.

As a science-oriented programmer, he felt that going public was no big deal. Pinduoduo just gained a stock ticker, and the market value was just a string of numbers. "I have a market value above me, but does that change a person? Actually, nothing has changed."

For a while, as he was on the verge of becoming the richest man, Huang Zheng became increasingly anxious. He announced his resignation as CEO and voluntarily reduced his shares from 43.3% to 29.4%, donating shares worth approximately 109.5 billion yuan.

This money was partly distributed to the team to improve the partnership system, partly allocated to angel investors, and partly used to establish a charitable foundation.

After all these actions, his personal wealth ranking finally dropped.

Moreover, when Pinduoduo went public, it had the right to raise the price by 20%, but Huang Zheng insisted on setting the price at 19 dollars.

Huang Zheng said, "Everyone can earn money together. Trying to take every bit of profit right now doesn't quite align with our values."

Can Huang Zheng Be Defined as an Industrialist?

By conventional standards, Huang Zheng's business journey lacks the rough-and-tumble experiences of navigating the market or the hands-on involvement in factories. However, Pinduoduo's trajectory has been set quite high.

But Huang Zheng never bothers to explain: "People can say whatever they want. As long as we do our work earnestly, that's enough."

Embarking on a "Dream Quest," Looking Up at the "Starry Sky"

Apart from Okbuy, which was sold off and faded into obscurity, almost all of Huang Zheng's core companies are still operating well, maintaining strategic focus in established arenas like e-commerce, gaming, and cross-border e-commerce.

This can hardly be summed up with the word "luck."

Over the past decade, Huang Zheng has rarely spoken out proactively or appeared at public events. In contrast, among his contemporaries in the internet industry, Zhou Hongyi frequently shows up at every event of interest, regardless of his preference; Lei Jun has become a top star, with product launches serving as his stage.

Compared to them, Huang Zheng appears less sociable.

In this new era, everyone's emotions are interconnected. During this time, Pinduoduo remains the same Pinduoduo, but Huang Zheng's life has undergone some changes.

Once, after reading Bertrand Russell's *The Conquest of Happiness*, Huang Zheng summarized a few points on his public WeChat account: First, one should have the courage to face trials, use common sense to make rational judgments, and let rational thoughts guide actions. Second, shift the interest in achieving an infinitely perfect self to an interest in external objective matters. Third, learn to let go of things that cannot be changed or conquered.

Beyond Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng hopes to eventually transition into a true researcher, akin to Benjamin Franklin, who left the business world at 40 to engage in scientific research. He believes that wholeheartedly engaging in non-profit research will contribute more to society.

Every company has its own DNA and tends to develop in its comfortable niche, amplifying its strengths.

But Huang Zheng is different. From a series of actions preceding his resignation, it’s clear that Huang Zheng’s desire to become a scientist, reduce capital involvement, and step down as CEO was a gradual process, not a sudden change.

He is a serial entrepreneur; how could someone who loves challenges be content to rest in a comfort zone? From another perspective, since founding Pinhaohuo, he seems to have been diligently searching for every piece of the puzzle to his grand dream. Now, with the dream taking a more concrete form, it's time for him to step aside and pursue it.

"If we want to ensure Pinduoduo's high-speed and high-quality development over the next 10 years, some explorations are now timely and necessary. As the founder, stepping out to explore the stones on the road a decade from now might make me a suitable candidate,"Huang Zheng said.

In March 2021, Huang Zheng, just over forty years old, announced his resignation as Chairman of Pinduoduo. That evening, Pinduoduo released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020, becoming the e-commerce platform with the largest user base in China.

What is Huang Zheng planning to do after stepping down?

Huang Zheng completely handed over Pinduoduo to his long-time colleague Chen Lei. He renounced both money and power, stepping away from the efficiency- and scale-driven business competition, and focusing instead on agriculture. The Starry Night Charitable Foundation, initiated and donated by Huang Zheng and the Pinduoduo team, signed a donation agreement with Zhejiang University Education Foundation to establish a science fund.

As early as July 2020, Huang Zheng, at the age of 40, announced his resignation as CEO of Pinduoduo in an open letter to all employees. In his letter to shareholders, he provided examples of the scientific fields he would commit to long-term after resigning as Chairman. The first batch of projects under the Starry Night Science Fund includes foundational research and frontier explorations in interdisciplinary areas such as computing and biology, healthcare, agriculture, and food.

The name "Starry Night" for the charitable foundation was perhaps inspired by a summer night when Huang Zheng, while walking, looked up at the starry sky and was reminded of a quote by Vincent van Gogh: "I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream."

Huang Zheng's frontier explorations are helping to build more dreams for Pinduoduo.

From the "last mile" to the "first mile," Pinduoduo's exploration of agriculture is continuously tracing back to the source. It collaborates deeply with top research institutions and academic experts both domestically and internationally, investing in areas such as scientific planting, agricultural IoT, unmanned greenhouses, and smart agriculture, aiming to assist in agricultural upgrades.

Although very busy, he seems to be happier.

Huang Zheng's ultimate pursuit is certainly not business in itself. While most businesspeople might agree that "business is the greatest charity," Huang Zheng, as a businessman, constantly reflects on this identity.

To him, being a businessman is merely a part of the process of becoming the person he aspires to be. Therefore, it's not difficult to understand why he believes he shouldn't possess so much wealth and instead wants to donate money to the arts. It's also not surprising that Huang Zheng hopes to eventually transition into a true scientist.

During his time as a student, he co-authored several papers on Data Mining published in top-tier journals—clearly, science is another form of ultimate artistry for him.

In the world of the internet, we've seen leaders who are both decisive and adaptable, as well as passionate and resilient dreamers. However, not every entrepreneur needs to be charismatic and compelling. What matters more is the entrepreneurial spirit—the ability of entrepreneurs to use their momentum to understand and change the times, and to inspire others. This is the legacy of the entrepreneurial era.

First, Ding Lei raised pigs; now, Huang Zheng grows vegetables. Ding Lei practices business, while Huang Zheng is cultivating the future.

Wang Xing of Meituan once wrote in his social media circle, "In the coming years, it will be fascinating to watch how the very smart Huang Zheng of Pinduoduo and Jiang Fan of Taobao/Tmall compete."

Now it seems, this battle has ended prematurely with Huang Zheng's withdrawal from the scene.