Wang Boyan: To Live Is to Exist Toward Death

For the second episode of our podcast Signal and Noise, we invited Boyan Wang, founder of BeBeBus.

He's the founder of a premium maternal and infant brand, a serial entrepreneur, and a product person who has taken the "user perspective" to its extreme. Six years ago, the brand was just getting started. Today, BeBeBus has grown into a top player in the maternal and infant industry: annual revenue approaching 2 billion RMB, with over 2 million online members.

On June 26, the international department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued an overseas issuance and listing filing notice for BUTONG GROUP, marking BeBeBus's parent company as poised for a Hong Kong IPO and a bigger international stage.

At a time when his company's valuation was skyrocketing, he suddenly lost his cognitive abilities, was hospitalized in critical condition, and for a time could no longer recognize words or people. But this sudden "hard drive reboot" allowed him to relearn the meaning of "being alive."

He didn't choose to become someone else. He chose to become more truly himself.

After listening to this episode, may you too find your own faith and direction on that road called "living."

If you have any reflections you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment and connect with us. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that we found particularly inspiring, shared here in article form.

Enjoy.

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Boyan Wang: We're taught from childhood to only take on what we can handle — match your abilities to your ambitions, spend only what you have. Sounds perfectly sensible, right? But I think this is the most toxic tumor, the most poisonous鸡汤, limiting your ceiling.

Why? Your goals aren't determined by your abilities, resources, actions, or even your environment. They're determined by your understanding of the world.

Your world is only as big as your worldview. Based on this worldview — which you can understand as your grasp of an ecosystem — you derive your own life goal, the one worth fighting for your entire life. Whatever that goal is, your worldview changes at each stage, and so does your definition of life goals. There's no need to say, once I've set it, I can never change it.

Oasis Capital: Because you have a worldview, you have a position. From that position comes an identity. And from that identity come your goals.

Boyan Wang: With identity comes your values. When we face conflicts or competing interests in what we do, we know how to choose, what our criteria are. And that more effectively lets us focus on that goal.

Boyan Wang: To this day, I've never had a pitch deck for any of my funding rounds.

I think pitch decks rigidify your thinking, set limits on you, and lock you into following a fixed plan. When you don't have a deck, the more you talk, the more transparent and clear things become.

Oasis Capital: If someone else were telling this story, they might say that period was agonizing, that they suffered, that they did the same thing a thousand times, repeated the same pitch to a thousand people. We've seen plenty of entrepreneurs who are actually doing fine, but after meeting 50 investors, they don't want to continue — it's too draining.

But in how you just described it, there was no drain. On the contrary, you were nourished, because you saw it as a thousand people giving you input, helping you rethink a problem through. A single shift in mindset changes everything.

Boyan Wang: Where else do you get the chance to meet with a thousand people, at least elite professionals, and see them all? When you meet that many sharp minds, their feedback is essentially nourishing you. From their perspective, they raise questions that may not have seemed important to you before — but why do they ask? What haven't you thought about? After being asked by a thousand people, you become at ease. When someone later asks something you've never considered, you close the loop.

It's because you've been asked enough times, and you've earnestly thought through each question, constantly reviewing and summarizing, never treating any answer or idea as final.

Boyan Wang: I think the reason we struggle to make many decisions is because we have options.

Why do I say we should live as if facing death? When tomorrow you have no choice, you find many decisions aren't hard at all. When you don't get to make a decision twice — only once — that problem disappears. You flip your approach: you seek the floor, not the ceiling. How do I decide so that everything stays above passing grade, then rely on others and the team to hit 70, 80, 90 — better, excellent.

Where do we easily get trapped? When we have options, we want it all in one go, we want an excellent, outstanding result. And it backfires, ending up below passing.

Oasis Capital: So before this, if you were standing at the point of "not dying" to look at "living." After going through this, you really have to "live facing death" — you really stand at that point of "death" to look, stand at the bottom line to see all future possibilities.

Once you realize this, all choices become simpler.

Boyan Wang: I think human death has three nodes. The first is biological death — you stop breathing. The second I call the end of the funeral, which means your identity in this world has been erased. Your bank account is closed, your ID canceled, the death certificate issued — your identity in this world is wiped away. What's the third death? It's when the last person who remembers you dies.

For over 90% of ordinary people in this world, after three generations, you basically leave no trace behind. So what's the meaning of living, the meaning of life? Since the final outcome seems unchangeable no matter what you do, I think you need to find a faith.

Because if the meaning of life is just physical survival, then there's no meaning. And life is but a brief century — so how do you actually live?

Actually, once you've faced death, you may feel your body is still here but your spirit and soul are gone — and then life is given back to you, you have to live again. I'll put it absolutely: you find nothing matters anymore.

Oasis Capital: So if a person doesn't truly believe, the meaning of life is essentially just desire. Now that you have belief, you believe in creation — what do you think the meaning of life is?

Boyan Wang: Ultimately, the meaning of life is to live in the present, do good without asking about the future — that's the meaning of life. Because you don't know if you'll be alive tomorrow. When you recognize its value and meaning, you have no regrets. This reminds me of when I went to Yamdrok Lake in Tibet in the first half of 2022, and I suddenly wrote a little poem.

The gist was: vast sky, boundless sea — it was the feeling in that environment. What is true freedom? Boundless earth, towering mountains, vast seas. I said once I depart, no one can bind me, not even myself — no responsibilities, neither to company nor family, just enjoying life, with enough savings to get by. But when the heart harbors regrets, how can one achieve true freedom?

True freedom isn't financial freedom, time freedom, or social freedom — it's a heart without regrets. When you have regrets in your heart, it's hard to be free. I said my江湖 isn't ahead of me, it's behind me. So your causes aren't finished, they produce today's effects, so you still have regrets — let them all come, I won't hide or avoid. Live freely, die freely. That was my realization at the time.

When you calmly face all good and bad, let it all come, I won't hide or avoid, and you keep living as if facing death — then you have no regrets in your heart. That's true freedom.

Oasis Capital: For young entrepreneurs today, those just starting out, what advice would you give them to avoid internal friction? And for many young colleagues today — very young, with few opportunities.

Boyan Wang: For small entrepreneurs, grassroots entrepreneurs, recent graduates starting out — I think the first thing to think about is this: survive.

Sometimes we think "surviving" is shameful, but it's not shameful at all, because dying is shameful. To survive, you need tolerance. I think the compromises and accommodations you make in the moment don't mean you've abandoned your grand ambitions inside.

But you need to recognize, I call this process playing pool. Others sink it in one shot every time; you could say I use all my strength, calibrate every posture, and find that after five shots I'm farther from the pocket. But I aim toward that goal, each time getting closer to the pocket, and maybe on the third shot it really goes in. For entrepreneurs: one, survive; two, certainty over uncertainty. Survive first, rather than trying to force a miracle.