After “begging” to survive in the circle of friends, Lily.com Lianchuang Mu Yan talks about the lost ten years

Unlike Mu Yan, who looked tired and sleepy in this interview, in the memory of this former employee, Mu Yan was once an energetic boss with too many ideas to keep up with. He likes movies and television, and often plays guest roles. Sometimes he will film at night, go to the company for meetings as usual in the morning, and continue working in the afternoon. He has the unique aura of a successful entrepreneur. “When you sit there, you feel like you are facing a dozen people.”

That was 2014, an era when the entire mobile Internet industry was in high spirits, and perhaps Mu Yan’s best era as well. This former employee remembered that at that time, he could see news every day about who had received financing and whose user base had reached tens of millions. A project whose name was unknown yesterday might raise tens of millions of dollars the next day. They feel that they are changing something, “although they don’t know what.” Mu Yan would suddenly come up with an impromptu idea while chatting until late at night, and ask everyone to go on a business trip the next day to do user research in different cities. They would book tickets and hotels that night, not to mention the budget. Mu Yan would leave a message, “Look at the flowers.”

The former employee said that he was willing to share with us because he just wanted to tell everyone that in recent years, many entrepreneurs have faced pressure and even “fallen” due to poor management. Mu Yan has only been noticed by everyone. “For those who have come into contact with him, he is a very pure individual and is very good to the people around him.”

Throughout the meeting, we and Mu Yan traveled back and forth between the glory of the past and the embarrassment of the present. One second, we were talking about well-known entrepreneurs who had known each other since we were young, but now they are completely different; the next second, we followed Mu Yan to a nearby convenience store and bought a pack of Liqun for 19 yuan. His WeChat change showed 0 yuan, and an orange warning of “another *yuan has been frozen by the authority and cannot be used.” Mu Yan said that on the first day he started tipping, he received more than 10,000 yuan, and someone even gave him a new iPhone 18. Later, he transferred the money he received to a friend, so the money was not frozen. Today’s living expenses come from here, and he can still complete the payment through a bank card bound to it that has not been frozen.

He was very open, but there were always inconsistencies in his narrative. For example, when talking about the whereabouts of his wealth in the past, he initially said that he bought a lot of houses with the money; after further questioning, he said that he only looked at a lot of houses and did not buy them. As for the reasons behind this restriction on consumption and freezing of bank cards, he said that it involved another project in the early years, but he could not produce relevant legal documents. We have never gotten a complete and clear answer as to how much money he has left and what money he can use.

▲ Mu Yan appears in variety shows. Picture/Network

What can be confirmed is that the relationships that continue to this day do not allow him to easily return to his past life. According to Mu Yan, he is currently doing some FARelated work. In 2022, I was busy matchmaking for the project for more than half a year. I only completed one order and made hundreds of thousands of yuan.

The above-mentioned former employee also said that he met Mu Yan recently and talked with him about the AIGC entrepreneurial project. Mu Yan is as enthusiastic and willing to help matchmaking as ever, but when it comes to how to do business, the difference between the two also emerges – Mu Yan still plans a large business, and will consider how much money is needed to expand the entire market. I run a small studio myself, and all I want to do is complete the business at hand first. Therefore, the former employee feels that he still respects Mu Yan and is willing to listen to his experience, but from a practical business perspective, if the former eldest brother wants to turn over, he must recognize the reality. That era has passed.

Mu Yan himself admitted that the founder of Baihe.com is still famous, “but it cannot be monetized at present.” Nowadays, he is more willing to use “luck” to explain the ups and downs, and reflects on the past that he struggled too much and wasted resources and time. He said that sometimes, you should put money in the bank and wait for your “big luck” to come again, instead of messing around. “When luck comes, you will have abundant resources. As long as you work harder, you will be able to achieve good results. Just rest and recuperate during the minor luck cycle.” Otherwise, you will “enter a drunken state and do everything wrong.”

He said he still believes that in 2026, he will enter the next decade of good luck. Telling his story in the “Ten Years of Bad Luck” is also to disenchant everyone, “Don’t think that Internet entrepreneurs are just like that. In fact, everyone is very ordinary.” He will feel “poor suddenly rich” when he has the first 10 million yuan; And these all lay the foundation for how an entrepreneur who received the dividends of the past era lost everything again.

The following is Mu Yan’s narration, which does not constitute investment advice, nor does it represent the views of Daily People:

1

This time I launched a reward in the circle of friends. The core purpose is actually very simple, which is to use an interesting way to not only get money but also deepen friendship. Just like some books say, how to build friendship is not to help others, but to let others help you, so that the relationship between the two of you will be closer.

After posting on Moments, many people contacted me, and some of them have developed quite well. For example, a small salesman from our company used to say he wanted to be an economist, but no one believed him. Now he has realized his dream and works in a securities company. There are also people who have stayed in universities as teachers and have been doing administrative work for many years, but they are still not used to it. Now they are returning to academics, which is equivalent to taking a detour. Every situation is different.

▲ Mu Yan initiated a reward in the circle of friends. Picture/Network

I took the initiative to ask these questions, because most people who contact me are too embarrassed to ask about my situation.

When my account was frozen, I was in Northeast China. I originally wanted to buy a bottle of drink, but the system prompted an insufficient balance. I also thought, there are obviously millions of dollars in the account, how could the balance be insufficient? I deposited another 100 yuan into the card, and it was no problem, but when I made any further purchases, it still showed an insufficient balance. Because I had been restricted in height before, I immediately understood that it was over and my bank card should have been frozen. Later, I contacted a lawyer to help me verify the situation, and bought a D train back to Beijing, where I took a sleeper berth for 8 hours.

Life after the height limit will definitely be affected. For example, when taking a taxi, I always take the cheapest special fare, but I have to wait a little longer. I discovered that this system will definitely send you a car as long as you wait for it. This is also a little trick. I definitely wouldn’t have done this when taking a taxi before. One of my classmates at Hupan University was a driver of Yidao. At that time, there was a subsidy war among online taxi-hailing companies. He called on us to do him a favor and support him, so I put 60,000 yuan into it.

In order to spend all my money, I spend all my money. Every time I take a taxi, I choose the most expensive one, either a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW. One time I drank too much in the car and fell asleep. The driver couldn’t wake me up, so he had to wait for the night bill. When I woke up, I saw it was 7 a.m., and I had spent 780 yuan on it. This was the time.

I completely agree with the height limit, but we cannot limit basic living expenses. For example, I can’t take the high-speed rail or subway now. I don’t think these are high-consumption items. One of my buddies joked with me, saying, look, I am now restricted from taking the high-speed rail, and I have to ask my driver to drive my Maybach wherever I go.

Later I thought, this is also an opportunity to reconnect with everyone. I define myself as a connector, just like when I started my business before, whether it was connecting relationships between men and women through Baihe.com, or connecting some business opportunities. This time I chatted with many people again. Two days ago, a director called me and mentioned what he was doing. I happened to know someone, and we talked for half an hour, and we ended up with three projects, large and small.

Everyone is willing to chat with me. On the one hand, the project itself is worth talking about, and on the other hand, there is indeed friendship. There was a project about optical modules before, and I found a junior fellow student. I could feel that he was not interested in this type of project, but because we were both from Tsinghua University, he was still willing to spare an hour to communicate.

▲ Mu Yan studied at Tsinghua University. Picture/Network

Connecting with business opportunities is also my source of income. At present, my living expenses mainly depend on deposits, and some are project income. The commission for successful connection is usually 2 to 5 points. But the actual success rate is actually not high. Because I want to make a list so much, I will push out projects in a peppery way. There are some projects that I don’t really agree with in my heart, but I also try to help connect them.

You can see that I am a relatively experienced Internet entrepreneur. I am willing to give face and at least have a meeting to chat. This way, the base for docking is very large, but there are very few projects that are truly reliable and can be implemented, so the success rate is naturally low. For example, in 2022, I was busy for more than half a year and only completed one project. It was a track that I was completely unfamiliar with. In the end, I made hundreds of thousands of yuan.

When I can’t meet or chat with anyone, I watch live broadcasts. I like to watch live broadcasts and listen to other people’s life stories on it. I am level 54 on Douyin, level 42 on my video account, and I once bought 2,000 rockets at once on Momo.

Because I like chatting with others. For example, yesterday, I wanted to make an appointment with a senior film and television producer, but he had to spend the whole day with his son and couldn’t make an appointment. Everyone is usually very busy and it is difficult to make an appointment at a suitable time. But anchors are different. Their job is to chat with people. After the chat, I will give a reward. The amount of the reward depends on my financial situation at the time. When I have no money, I will only reward 10 yuan. I will tell them directly that I have no money today. I am a top brother who does not pretend.

2

In fact, in a startup company, if the founder does not pay himself a high salary, to be honest, there is not much money. Your company is not listed, the equity has not been realized, and no one wants your equity. Essentially, you are not as good as a part-time worker. At that time, working as a middle-level employee in a large factory could earn 2 million yuan.

Until 2012, I only had a savings of more than 100,000 yuan, which was quite poor. The fundamental reason was that as founders, we paid ourselves a salary of more than 20,000 yuan a month, which was not enough to save. Later, a friend called me and asked me to use this deposit to buy Bitcoin. I didn’t understand it at all and invested without any brain. In the end, he sold it when he asked me to sell it, and I made about 1.5 million yuan. My wife was very happy at that time. It increased 10 times in one year. We felt that it was a very successful investment.

I also thought about finding a class. From 2014 to 2015, when the sharing economy was at its peak, I applied for a job at a company that made shared maps. I thought at that time that if I got the job, I would quit my job at Baihe.com. The result was also unsuccessful.

For people like us, jobs are hard to find. Because many people think that you are an entrepreneur, it means that you are unstable and unstable. Also, looking at the entire Internet industry, my experience is not very competitive. For example, during our peak period, we spent 700 million yuan on advertising a year, but if you were a middle-level person in a large factory, your annual budget might be 3 billion yuan. In other words, it is difficult for CEOs of small and medium-sized companies to find jobs because their experience is limited and they are not as good as the middle managers of large companies.

During these years at Baihe.com, I only had a short period of financial freedom. For example, in 2014, we had an internal cash-out. I probably cashed out more than 10 million yuan at that time. According to my consumption level, I can be regarded as having financial freedom.

▲ Mu Yan spoke on behalf of Baihe.com many times when he was at Baihe.com. Picture/Weibo@百合网

That’s how the poor suddenly become rich. Just a typical example. I like to get massages, the kind where I use essential oils on my back. Several times, more than once, I opened the home page of my China Merchants Bank App, showed it to my massage technician, and asked him: “Look, how much money does my brother have?” It was very childish.

Later, I used the more than 10 million yuan to speculate in stocks with leverage, and it went back to zero. It must have been a coincidence at that time. When I got this money, I didn’t buy a house. I happened to have a friend who was good at playing in the secondary market. Then I caught up with the bull market. I had more than 10 million yuan in cash, so I went in the direction of stock trading.

That feeling was a bit magical. I remember one morning, someone called me and said, “Mr. Mu, this part of you has returned to zero.” I said, right? He’s right, because that’s what leverage is. At the time, I thought, Oh my God, it’s a bit unreal that so much money is gone. The key point is that when I was trading in stocks, I did not use leverage at first, and I flipped more than 10 million yuan into 25 million yuan. But I had an obsession with “a small goal”. I thought, if I add 25 million yuan and triple leverage, I can turn it into 100 million yuan, which seems to be a milestone.

A lot of interesting things happened here. Just two days before the stock market crashed, my wife told me that she felt something was wrong and that she had to sell her stocks. I didn’t listen because I asked several Tsinghua alumni, all of whom were involved in private equity, and they all thought that we could wait a little longer and don’t worry. The day before the crash, the owner of a film and television company I invested in called me in a taxi. Because he wanted me to continue investing in him, he was very concerned about my money and reminded me to sell the stock.

But I didn’t listen to what these two people said, and I just believed in the judgment of the science students in Tsinghua University. As a result, on the morning of the third day, everything exploded, and everything fell to the limit, which was terrible. Under this situation, I did have the idea of ​​jumping off the building once or twice. The pressure was too much.

▲ Picture / “The Storm Chaser”

The money was gone and I still owed money, so I borrowed money everywhere. At that time, I found a senior executive from Jiayuan, and we were always at odds with each other. But he was very loyal and said to Mu Yan, I will give you 200,000 yuan directly, and you don’t have to pay it back. He is a really smart person, because if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. There are two situations. If you repay it, you think the matter is over, but the person who lent you the money will feel that you still owe me a favor; if you don’t repay it, this will cause tension and damage to the friendship. Neither is good. Of course, I later returned the 200,000 yuan to him. The amount was indeed relatively large and I felt it was inappropriate.

This time I posted a reward on WeChat Moments because of the inspiration from this incident. Including my wife, I went to borrow money from a Lianchuang company in Meituan, but he refused to lend me money. His principle is also very simple, it is “to help the urgent but not the poor”. What is emergency? You are sick and need an operation soon. I can lend it to you. The poor are like me. Suddenly you are in debt, but no one forces you to pay it back now, right? So he didn’t borrow it either.

Later, I officially left Baihe.com, and some equity was still in the employee stock ownership platform, so I sold the remaining equity. In fact, I don’t have much money. My equity is the smallest among the three founders. I cashed out in the early stage and there is not much equity left. I used the money to make some projects, investing in two film and television companies, and a British bulldog training base, but the money was gone again.

To this day, the biggest label on me is still the co-founder of Baihe.com. At present, this fame and influence have not diminished with the passage of time, but it cannot be realized. If you are as influential as an A-list celebrity, you can make money through endorsements. But you don’t have that level. The only way to realize cash is to raise funds, but it doesn’t go well in practice.

I think the essence of telling my story is to disenchant everyone. Don’t think that Internet entrepreneurs are just like that. In fact, everyone is very ordinary. A small website like ours is just a small player in the Internet industry. At its peak, the revenue was only over 2 billion yuan a year, which is too small for an Internet giant. Later, we had multiple rounds of financing and our equity was diluted, so we didn’t have much money when we cashed out. After getting the money, I invested randomly. The first time was discounted in the secondary market, and the second time was discounted in the primary market.

▲ Mu Yan. Picture / “It must be you”

3

I literally lived through the whole internet wave. I have known those big guys for a long time. I remember that in 2001, when I was still studying for a Ph.D. in the United States, I was very optimistic about Alibaba, so I sent a resume to apply for a sales position, which later became Alibaba Tiejun. But they sent me an email back, saying that I was overqualified and would confiscate it. I later thought, if I had stayed, maybe I would be Qian Jiawei. And at this level, I have a master’s degree from Tsinghua University and understand technology, so I might continue to rise, and maybe I would be Wu Yongming.

Thinking of this, I have regrets, because the most powerful thing about Ali is that he can cultivate an ordinary person into a very powerful person, so maybe I will be more powerful than I am now. But what did you think about it later? In fact, it is unlikely that there will be a second choice in life.

I think the most important thing now is to seize the opportunity and not mess around. Tian Fanjiang, the other founder of Baihe.com, and I are standard science students. We didn’t believe in fate before. It was not until the end of 2009 that someone gave us a clue. He said congratulations, you will have a huge publicity opportunity in April next year, which can increase your visibility 10 times without spending any money.

We all found it strange and couldn’t understand it. By 2010, Jiangsu Satellite TV started to produce a program called “If You Are the One”. They wanted to cooperate with us for free and asked us to find some members to appear on the program. Each member’s brand would be exposed in front of the camera. Just this one program really increased our search volume by 10 times. We began to think that life might really have a script.

Of course, you can also say that we have seized the dividend period of traditional media. For example, when Baihe.com was first established in the 2000s, several programs came to interview us. Then Sina came to us for cooperation, and then several major dating programs. These key resources all found us on their own initiative. The same goes for being on “It Must Be You”. The show crew approached me proactively, so I agreed. I thought I could expose the company and make myself famous without spending any money. At that time, most people had never experienced intensive exposure in the media, and they were quite happy and in a particularly high-spirited state.

▲ Mu Yan participated in “It’s You” at that time. Picture / “It must be you”

The same is true for other businesses. In 2014, in addition to working at Baihe.com, I also started a company called Here App, a mobile dating application based on location. The financing was extremely smooth at that time, and several million yuan was quickly raised.

But in the next few years, the situation was no longer like this. I felt that my good luck cycle had passed, and I encountered various difficulties, such as this app that I failed to develop.

Around 2017, I left Baihe.com and officially started my second business. At that time, everyone was very active and engaged in various projects. I’m also excited because you’re back at a new starting point, full of dreams. I remember that I recruited a group of people. In order to recruit an H5 page engineer, I personally went to host his wedding, just to impress him and make him willing to leave Baidu and join me. Later, he failed to start a business, so I felt very sorry for him.

One of the difficulties we encountered at that time was that it was difficult to raise funds. I thought maybe I lacked some charlatanism. At the beginning of the 21st century, during the first few years when I started my business, the identity of Tsinghua Computer Science Department was very useful and had a great halo. Under the same conditions, if you are from Tsinghua University, others will think that you have good skills, and that you are more reliable and down-to-earth. This is essentially a stereotype. Today, this halo is even greater, because entrepreneurship has become purely technology-driven. As long as you can master the technology, everything will be fine.

But when I started my business for the second time, the market was more like wild growth. Many entrepreneurial projects had no core technology and relied on an idea to expand the user base, promote it on the ground, and secure various resources and government relations. But I don’t belong to this type. Many times, without knowing anything about my background, others would call me Teacher Mu Yan, but call others Mr. Li or Mr. Zhang. I would quarrel and bicker with many people, but that is not considered quackery, it can only be considered a quarrel between scholars.

At that time, I was working on marriage-related projects, and I wanted to increase my success rate through socializing with acquaintances, but overall I was still not very focused. Maybe it’s because I’m an Aquarius. I have more creative ideas but poor execution. This is an obvious shortcoming. It is easy to move east and west and explore many branches. This has something to do with the era I experienced. It was really reckless. There were too many entrepreneurial opportunities and it was too easy, but I lacked some experience. Just like in the 1980s, anyone who was brave could make money.

I also invested in some self-media projects. At the time, I thought those projects were pretty good, but they didn’t work out in the end. Just like the failure of many angel investors who have made some money, whatever they do, they fail to do anything. At that time, I didn’t have any standards for project investment. I just relied on my feeling and my hands were very loose. I remember one time in Changsha, when I was having dinner, a man came over who I didn’t even know. He talked about his project and I said he’s a good guy. Please give me your bank account number. I paid 200,000 yuan on the spot.

You can say that it was wrong for me to invest this way, but I personally felt that at that time, I just didn’t have the right time, place, and people. It was like I was in a drunken state, and I didn’t do anything wrong. I feel now that when good luck comes, you will have abundant resources. As long as you work hard, you can achieve good results. During the 10 years of good luck, you can just rest and recuperate.

The hottest thing about entrepreneurship right now is AI, and many of them are from Tsinghua University. In 2023, I also worked on AI-related projects. At that time, I said that the large models I made were among the first in the country. I admit it’s a bit of an exaggeration. This is a necessary quality for an entrepreneur. Dare to brag and try your best to make your boast come true.

In fact, I don’t know much about technology, so I found a young genius. I was live broadcasting at the time, and a kid who dropped out of Imperial College sent me a message and recommended a project. When he told me about this project, he was by the lake. The sun was shining down and the lake surface was particularly beautiful. I suddenly had an intuition and naively thought that this project could be successful. Later it turned out that intuition was also wrong.

I don’t feel like I haven’t kept up with the times. I definitely don’t have any regrets, but I feel a little envious. Just like a company where I work as FA, the performance is very good. They are born in the 300s, but they were born in this era. What do you have to complain about? I have experienced at least two cycles in these years, the Internet cycle and the mobile Internet cycle. In fact, in the first cycle, everyone was very superstitious about genius boys, but in the end, most of them were out of luck, and only 10% of them could escape. I think that in 2027, these large model companies will encounter difficulties of varying degrees.

Having seen so many waves, the most important lesson I’ve learned is to surf like it. When the waves pick up, swim as hard as you can, and your wealth will increase rapidly at that time. But when you are weak, just lower your head and wait for the wave to pass by you. When I think about starting a business for the second time, the ideal situation is actually to keep a low profile, save money in the bank, and take classes at Hupan University seriously.

▲ Mu Yan’s frozen account. Picture / Provided by Narrator

Editor’s note: After the reward in Moments, Mu Yan accepted interviews from many media. But when it comes to the reasons for height restrictions and bank card freezes, there has been no conclusion. Mu Yan said in an interview with Jiemian News on October 28 that the asset freeze was related to a court in a county in Hubei. However, on October 29, the Intermediate People’s Court of Yichang City, Hubei Province responded to Jiemian News that Mu Yan only had one litigation case in Hubei jurisdiction and no preservation measures were taken. Therefore, on the day of our meeting on November 2, in addition to chatting about our experiences over the years, we also asked Mu Yan to confirm the matter again.

Q&A

Daily People: What is the reason why the bank card was frozen this time?

慕巖：Let me take this opportunity to clarify that this time my height was restricted and my bank card was frozen because of a project in the early years. The enforcement court was not the Chaoyang Court mentioned on the Internet, nor was it because of the No. 1 Matchmaker project. I did have a height limit because of this project, but that time was resolved in 2022. I paid back about hundreds of thousands of yuan at that time. The person who sued me felt that it was not easy for me, so they went to lift my height limit.

Daily Figure: You said before that the execution party was a court in Hubei, but Yichang Intermediate People’s Law responded to Jiemian News and they mentioned that there is no situation where your bank card will be frozen.

慕巖：It’s not the Yichang court, it’s a small county-level court in another place. I haven’t revealed too many details. I only found out about this when I received the EMS document from them. There was their signature at the end of the document.

Daily Figure: However, the Yichang Court stated that the fact that “there is only one litigation case in Hubei’s jurisdiction and no preservation measures have been taken” has been verified by the national online system.

慕巖：This material is relatively rough in production and may not have been entered into the system yet.

Daily People: Is there any substantive material to prove your statement?

慕巖：I can’t take it out. This is a bit dramatic. As soon as I got this material, a project came to me to talk about it. I took the file with me, and the file ended up there. Later, someone from that company called me and told me that I didn’t have anything with me. I didn’t want to touch the file at that time, so I asked them to handle it for me.

Daily People: Did you take pictures at that time?

慕巖：No. Now you ask me to get evidence, but I don’t have any.

Daily People: So what are you going to do next?

慕巖：I communicated with the court, and they said they would clear the case by the end of the year and clear this up.

Daily Personality: Many people feel about this incident as seeing the decline of a star entrepreneur and feeling that you are now at a low point in your life.

慕巖：But really not. My real low point should be during the epidemic. At that time, I had no direction at all. I drank alcohol every day, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and drank a pound of liquor a day by myself. The mentality is to escape reality and feel that starting a business is difficult.

Daily People: Will this make you regret leaving Lily.com?

慕巖：I regret it every time I want to lie down. Because you feel very comfortable when you stay there. You don’t have to do much work every day. The team has already done all your work. But I don’t regret it now, because I was lucky enough to find a new project that is a big model for the next generation, and I can continue to start a business.

▲ Mu Yan is being interviewed. Picture / Douyin@Shuangye·Shuangchao

The article is original for Daily People

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