Thread by @JoshuaTai0427

Liu Qiang Dong, the founder of $JD, have one of the most incredible stories of all Chinese entrepreneurs. Despite a very poor upbringing, Liu defeated all odds through his hard work, dedication, and a heart to do the right thing.

Here is Liu’s and $JD’s unbelievable story 👇👇

1. Liu was born in 1974, in a small village of Suqian, Jiangsu province. When Liu was young, his family was very poor. Liu said that the best food that he had when he was young was ‘pig oil’.

2. Whenever Liu have a chance to eat ‘pig oil’ rice in rare occasions, after Liu finishes the ‘pig oil’ rice, Liu will always pour water into the empty rice bowl 3-5 times more to enjoy the left over ‘pig oil’ flavor until there’s not even one drop of ‘pig oil’ left.

3. In 1984, when Liu was 10, Liu saw a lightbulb and electricity for the first time in his life. (FYI lightbulb was invented in 1879!). Liu and his friends were so amazed, and they were looking at it all night long.

4. When Liu was a teenager, Liu saved really hard and eventually Liu had $50 RMB. Liu decided to go on a road trip to Nanjing with his $50 RMB to see the world. Liu was shocked by the world outside his small village.

5. During Liu’s trip, he realized the gap between him and kids who are grown up in the cities. Liu was still wearing old fashion countryside oversized shirts, shorts and sandals and teens from the cities were already dressing in fashionable t shirts and sneakers.

5.1 Moreover, the way children from cities speak and act is just much more educated and gentler than Liu. Liu was amazed and promised himself that he must go to Beijing or Shanghai to study in the future.

6. After his trip, Liu knew that the only way out of his situation was through education. Liu studied very hard, and he scored the highest point in the Chinese National College Entrance Examination (known in Chinese as the ‘High Test’) in all of Suqian.

7. Liu was able to go to China’s top two university, Peking University or Q inghua University in Beijing. However, Liu decided to go to Renmin university of China, because he dreamed of being a politician, so that he can bring a better life for the people living in his village.

8. When Liu departed for Renmin University, everyone in the village farewelled Liu. Going to a university was a very big accomplishment in China in 1990s. As a way of wishing Liu luck, all 76 elders of the village each gave Liu a boiled egg and the village crowd raised $500.

9. And yes, if you are wondering, Liu only ate boiled eggs for the first couple of weeks of his semester because he wanted to save money. All this showed Liu’s grit, which is vital to $JD’s later success.

10. Although Liu’s dream was to become a politician, Liu didn’t end up pursuing a career in politics, because during Liu’s school election, despite Liu doing every possible right thing, Liu was not elected because the opponent ‘bribe’ the election committee.

11. During Liu’s study, Liu worked many part time jobs because he didn’t want to ask for one cent from his family. Liu also spent a lot of time coding and writing programs for others. Liu’s experience with coding directly set the foundation of $JD’s tech focus in the future.

12. In Liu’s final year, he ran a small restaurant. However, the restaurant failed because of Liu’s management failures, which allowed some workers to fraud Liu. As a result, Liu was not only bankrupted, but lost all his father and auntie’s lifetime savings,

12.1 and accumulated a debt of 160k RMB (a huge amount at that time).

13. After Liu graduated with a huge debt, Liu started working in a Japanese health product enterprise, learning the correct way towards business management. This experience laid a firm foundation for Liu for his successful management style when running $JD.

14. However, after only one year of working, Liu’s grandma had a serious disease. Liu’s family does not have the money to buy his grandma any medicine. Because of this, Liu decided to start $JD multimedia, as his salary was not enough.

15.Liu only had one goal when he started $JD multimedia: to make enough money and allow his grandma to have enough medicine to eat.

16. An interest fact: $JD was named after Liu and his first girlfriend, Gong Xiaojing. Gon Xiaojing was vital to $JD’s early success, as her family have some money and political relationships.

16.1 Liu and Xiaojing later broke up in 2003, but Xiaojing was still very important to Liu. Liu even invited Xiaojing to $JD’s listing day in NASDAQ in 2014.

17. In $JD's early years, $JD was selling DVDs at Zhongguancun, China first high-tech development area. The one thing that Liu adhered to was that $JD will never sell piracy DVDs (if you know 2000 China, you will know that such decision is far from normal).

18. Liu had said that people who sold piracy DVDs enjoyed a net profit margin 10x of what $JD was earning. Despite the money, Liu never wanted to sell piracy DVDs. In 2003, $JD had 12 physical stores and was experiencing small success.

19. Soon later, $JD faced their biggest crisis in 2003, when China experiences the SARS disease crisis. During SARS, $JD multimedia failed to sell any DVDs as no one is shopping physically because of fearing SARS.

20. Liu sensing that he must do something, started to sell $JD’s DVDs online. However, initially, $JD experienced no success online. It was to the point where Liu felt that $JD was going to failed. Fortunately, Liu's reputation on never selling piracy DVDs came to rescue.

21.When Liu was feeling hopeless, the board manager of an online DVDs platform posted this online about $JD: Of all the years that $JD has been in Zhongguancun, $JD was the only one that has never sold a piracy DVD.

22. With the board manager’s post, $JD finally got some orders online. Even until now, $JD is the most trusted online Chinese E commerce platform that Chinese knows that there will never be a piracy product on $JD.

23. After the SARS crises, Liu made a bold decision. Liu decided that although $JD still earn 90% of its revenue offline, $JD is going to close all its physical store, and solely focus on online retail, because Liu sensed that the future will belongs to online retail.

24. In 2007, Liu made another critical decision for $JD. Liu decided that $JD was going to build $JD’s own fulfilment center and delivery fleet. This decision was highly controversial at that time as the business model was still unproven.

25. The drive for Liu to make this decision was that Liu believed that the three keys to retail shopping are customer experience, cost, and efficiency. With $JD's own logistics, $JD will be able to provide the best customer experience and control their cost all done efficiently.

26. Fast-forward to 2021, $JD’s logistics has already become one of $JD’s biggest moat. All Chinese know that if you urgently need something by tomorrow, $JD is always the way to go. When a customer orders a product before 11am on $JD, they can get the product on the same day.

26.1 If they order before 11pm on $JD, the product will be delivered tomorrow. (like Amazon Prime, but without the annual fees)

27. Soon after Liu’s decision in 2007, Liu and $JD faced their second biggest crisis in 2008. Because of the enormous costs needed to build fulfilment centers and creating a fleet, $JD faced a liquidity issue.

28. Liu and $JD struggled to get cash/investment because many (including Liu) do not believe that $JD will become profitable in a short period of time. Almost everyone doubted $JD’s ability to keep on investing and burning their cash to build fulfilment centers.

29. Liu shared that the hardest part in 2008 was that he would not be able to face his employees if $JD failed. Liu feared that outsiders will look down at $JD’s employees if $JD failed. Liu even played the scene where he needed to dismiss all $JD employees go home many times.

29.1 All these caused Liu to grow white hairs in a matter of months.

30. Fortunately, Liu and $JD successfully persist over the crises and in January 2009, $JD received a total of 21 million USD investment from Capitaltoday and others. After this funding, $JD under the lead of Liu, slowly became the $JD that we know today, and the rest is history.

31. After Liu’s success with $JD, Liu didn’t forget about his origin. Liu had brought $JD’s customer service center back to his hometown, Suqian. Liu also persuaded other companies such as xiaomi, Dangdang and other Chinese tech companies to set up their customer service

31.1 department in Suqian. Liu single handedly changed the fate of Suqian, achieving what Liu envisioned when he was young.

32. Whenever Liu goes back to Suqian, Liu always visit his high school teachers and school mates, providing support whenever they need it.

33.Liu repeatedly gave back to his community; one time Liu famously gave all elders over 60 years old in his hometown red pocket of 10k RMB. One elder said that even his own child had not ever given him 10k RMB, but Liu did. Everyone from Liu’s hometown is extremely proud of Liu

34. However, unfortunately, the story did not have the ‘perfect’ ending. In 2018, Liu was involved in a sex rape scandal in the US. Although charges were ultimately dropped, it indirectly proved that Liu has cheated on his wife. Liu faced heavy criticism in China.

35. Liu was forced to stepped down as $JD’s CEO and chairman and many of $JD's subsidiaries. Nevertheless, Liu still has over 79% of voting power in $JD, thus remaining as the person who controls $JD.

36.Putting the sex scandal aside, there is absolutely no denial that Liu was a very hardworking and successful CEO. Not only did Liu changed his own life, but he also didn’t forget about his hometown and changed many of their lives.

37.All $JD investors, I am glad that you all have a very hardworking and impressive founder in Liu!

38. END// I hope you have enjoyed this thread and learn a thing or two about Liu and $JD. If you like this thread, please consider liking and retweeting it, it really does help me out a lot!

39. Please also consider following me, as I will be posting a deep dive on $JD from a Chinese perspective soon. It will include some Chinese customer experience details and comparison that no annual reports will tell you about!

40.Thank you all for your support! I really appreciate you all 😊

Tagging some $JD bulls or people who may be interested in this thread about the story of $JD's founder and $JD! @mukund @LiviamCapital @jablamsky @paul_essen @RihardJarc @duckman1717 @nsheth12 @High5Sh0rty @daniel_toloko

@SlingshotCap @LSValue @Invesquotes @Innovestor_
Would really appreciate any comments and feedbacks from you all! Thank you very much 🙏🙏