At the recent "Feishu Future Unlimited and Doubao Work Launch Conference," ByteDance co-founder and CEO Liang Rubo delivered a keynote address, setting the stage for the company's strategic direction. Liang revealed that ByteDance selects an annual theme to guide its efforts for the year, and for this year, the company has chosen "Climbing to New Heights." He observed that over the past five decades, the IT sector has witnessed only four major technological peaks—PC, Web, Mobile, and now AI—with the height of the AI summit substantially exceeding the previous three.
Liang emphasized the rarity of these industry-defining peaks, which historically emerge every 15 to 20 years. He cited Google's success in capitalizing on the Web peak and its subsequent capture of the Mobile opportunity through Android, illustrating that conquering one peak increases the likelihood of succeeding at the next. Conversely, he pointed to Microsoft's dominance during the PC era but its failure to reach the top during the Web and Mobile waves. "This shows that even if you conquer a previous peak, you can still fall when a new one appears. My message to the team is mainly to emphasize a sense of crisis," Liang stated.
During his speech, Liang also shared a personal anecdote about the global launch of Feishu in April 2019, recalling a social media post he had published at the time: "This is the product I've been holding back the longest at ByteDance." He explained the product's journey, noting that while their To C products typically take three months from concept to launch, Feishu required three years. "We have always believed that an office collaboration system is crucial for a company. After trying free, paid, open-source, and closed-source solutions, we even felt this matter was limiting our company's development. That's why we finally made the decision to start the Feishu project in 2016," he said.
Liang pointed out that office collaboration is a fundamental need, serving as a core application since the PC era. It has been reinvented with every technological shift, and this time the transformation is even more profound. From Office to Office 365 to Teams, the office software category has thrived through three previous technological changes, maintaining a position even more stable than Windows. "Feishu boarded the train during the Mobile era, and I hope that in the AI era, Feishu can fully seize its own opportunity," he stated.
"By the end of last year, the Agent capabilities of large models began to enter a usable stage, and the deployment of AI in productivity scenarios has significantly accelerated. Doubao Work is a productivity Agent product. Furthermore, Agents do not exist in isolation; they need to collaborate with people, their environment, and other Agents. As Agent capabilities are closely tied to model performance, the Agent, the model, and the collaboration environment need to be tightly integrated. That's why, two months ago, we consolidated the strengths of Doubao, Feishu, and Volcano Engine to focus more sharply on creating high-quality work and productivity products," Liang concluded.