After 13 Years of Struggle and Founder's Departure, Lagou Finally Collapses
苦撑13年，创始人离职出走，拉勾终究还是倒下了…
Lagou has collapsed.
I believe many of you came across this news a few days ago. When I first saw it, I too let out a sigh.
Why did I feel such a sense of melancholy?
The reason is simple.
I clearly remember Lagou starting to gain popularity around the time I graduated from university. As an early user, I actually submitted my resume through it.
Even later, when I was looking for jobs during campus recruitment after graduating with my master's degree, Lagou genuinely accompanied me for a long time.
From its official launch in 2013 to its quiet collapse today, over 13 years, this company, once hailed as an internet recruitment unicorn, has now drawn a close to its own story in a near-silent and unspoken manner.
Out of curiosity, I specifically checked the current status of the platform.
First, the official website is still accessible and opens smoothly.
However, a quick glance reveals that the website appears to be largely unmaintained.
Upon entering, the popular job postings on the homepage seem to have not been updated for a long time, and user interview reviews are mostly six months old.
I even tried to log in to take a look, but for some reason, after several attempts, the verification code never arrived, so I gave up.
Furthermore, Lagou-related apps are no longer searchable in major app stores.
Lagou's official social media accounts, including Weibo and WeChat official accounts, haven't been updated for over a year, and its corporate qualifications have not passed annual review.
Lagou officially launched in 2013, founded by Xu Dandan, a post-80s entrepreneur.
Speaking of which, this guy's experience is quite remarkable.
During university, he started various campus businesses and made them thrive. After graduation, he changed jobs three times in five years, working in both the internet and finance industries.
Before officially founding Lagou, he also opened the 3W Cafe on Zhongguancun Entrepreneurship Street, which gathered numerous internet entrepreneurs, product managers, designers, programmers, and more.
From its inception, Lagou's positioning was a talent recruitment platform focused on the internet industry.
Slogans like "Internet professionals looking for a job, go to Lagou" and "Dedicated to internet talent recruitment" were all used by Lagou in its promotions. And I remember they even had Luo Yonghao endorse them.
Back then, Lagou's promotional posters could be seen on many subway platforms, bus stops, outdoor billboards, and indoor elevators.
No redundant job information, only light and precise vertical internet positions; no vague salary ranges, HRs directly stated monthly salaries in XXK ranges; no cumbersome application process, resumes went directly with one click, and feedback was quick…
While these designs by Lagou might not seem remarkable today, they were a breath of fresh air in the recruitment market at the time. Because at that time, there were already two very famous products dominating a large share of the market: Zhaopin and 51job.
But they both adopted a broad market approach, with numerous and comprehensive job postings, cluttered and disorganized information, and much of it difficult to verify. Resumes often sank without a trace.
With Lagou's new designs, many programmers, designers, product managers, and operations specialists flocked to the platform. In just a few years, Lagou gathered tens of thousands of internet companies, covering almost all internet startups and major tech firms, and served tens of millions of job seekers, becoming a benchmark for job hunting and career changes in the industry.
At the same time, funding announcements followed one after another: Series A $5 million, Series B $25 million, Series C 220 million RMB… Its valuation once soared to $150 million, making it a unicorn in this niche vertical market.
The turning point appeared in 2017.
In that year, Lagou accepted a $120 million strategic investment from veteran recruitment giant 51job, which acquired a 60% stake in Lagou, becoming the absolute controlling shareholder.
Although Lagou officially stated at the time that the company would maintain independent operations and that the two businesses would not overlap, the gears of fate had already quietly begun to turn.
After the acquisition, Lagou seemed to gradually lose the agility and sharp edge of its early startup days. With the strategic intervention of its parent company and the penetration of traditional human resources models, this internet platform, once known for being small and fast, began to slow down, and many of its rhythms were gradually constrained.
Furthermore, its original focused vertical niche gradually saw its advantages erode under the impact of emerging platforms like BOSS Zhipin, with their industry-wide coverage and direct chat models.
More fatally, internal strategy also wavered, attempting to bet on IT education and then on headhunting services, trying to build a new business ecosystem. However, due to heavy investment and slow returns, it gradually sank into a quagmire.
As for what happened later, I believe everyone is aware: the arrival of the pandemic, the slowdown in internet growth, the gradual fading of dividends, and Lagou's ability to generate revenue was progressively suppressed and weakened.
In 2023, Lagou's founder, Xu Dandan, announced his official departure from Lagou, and the company was fully taken over and operated by its major shareholder, 51job.
At this point, the era belonging to Lagou had essentially come to a complete end.
To think that back then, when Lagou was just acquired, the market had high expectations for it to go public. What happened? Forget about going public, it struggled to even preserve itself, ultimately ending in decline and collapse.
Looking back at Lagou's peak moments, they were undoubtedly the three to four years from 2013 to 2016, which also coincided with the period of extremely rapid development of mobile internet in China.
Think about it, what was the situation around 2013? At that time, the wave of mobile internet was just beginning to surge. That year, 4G licenses were officially issued, internet finance officially emerged, the WeChat ecosystem began to rise, domestic smartphone manufacturers collectively rose, and mobile internet users surpassed PC users for the first time…
So, looking back, Lagou precisely caught this wave of the era's trend.
In the ruins of Lagou's collapse today, we see a microcosm of an era, and it also confirms the cruelty of the "era's trend" theory: catching a dividend can lead to rapid rise, but if one cannot quickly identify differentiation, build a core moat, and adapt to changes, there's always a risk of falling when the wind stops.
Just like many people who experienced the explosive upward trend of the internet market often mistakenly attribute the era's dividends to their own capabilities, unaware that these were simply generous returns bestowed by the era itself.
What do you all think?
Note: This article has been included in the GitHub open-source repository 'Road to Coding' https://github.com/rd2coding/Road2Coding, which contains my compiled self-study routes + knowledge point summaries for 6 major programming directions (roles), interview key points, my resume, several hardcore PDF notes, as well as programmer life and insights. Feel free to star it.