The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 166 Self-help Actions of Internet Companies in Cold Winter (6K)

If it were the peak of the Internet bubble, the investors behind a company like Nvidia would not even think about selling it.

The cold winter of the Internet definitely affects not only Internet companies in Silicon Valley, but also companies in the communications industry and the traditional computer industry.

Everyone is a grasshopper on the same line, and no one can be alone.

The market value of Cisco, the giant in the communications industry, plummeted as a result of the bursting of the bubble.

The reason for this was much earlier than 2000. After the American Telecommunications Act came into effect in 1996, the government formulated business policies and tax laws that were conducive to the expansion of communication companies, which led to the growth of capacity in the communication industry far exceeding the growth in demand.

Last year, the American 4G spectrum auction was held again. The original auction winner was unable to pay the final transaction price of up to US$10 billion, while the price of the second auction was only US$2.8 million.

The 4G spectrum auction event was dug up by Bloomberg, and it is considered to be the prelude to the bursting of the communication industry bubble.

There is almost no time difference when the cold wind from the other side of the ocean blows to Huaguo. Not only the mainland is severely affected, but Internet-related companies in emerging markets such as Xiangjiang, Neon, and Korea are also severely affected.

For a while, the whole world is hot and cold.

Originally, investors can tolerate that you do not pursue revenue and profits, and focus on making good products to win users.

Anyway, investors and entrepreneurs are thinking of going public on NASDAQ or Xiangjiang Market, making money first and then discussing whether they can make a profit.

Now that Internet companies are a trap, this has become a consensus, and it is almost impossible to go to the secondary market to cut leeks.

Huaguo's current top Internet companies, Sohu, Netease and Sina, want to go public on Nasdaq, and Nasdaq has clearly shown an unwelcome attitude.

Among them, Sina is the most questioned. Of the three major portals in Huaguo, only Sina has no investment from Zhou Xin behind it. Even Zhou Xin is not optimistic about Sina. How can they convince investors in the US stock market?
As for Netease and Sohu, the road to listing is equally difficult. Originally, they were listed before the dot-com bubble burst. Now that they want to go public, the sponsor in charge of the listing gave a suggestion: Can Newman help them design a product? As a pre-launch gimmick.

In order to go public, NetEase took a step back and chose to list on the Hong Kong stock market, which is a full 2020 years earlier than the original landing on the Hong Kong stock market in 20.However, it is still unclear whether NetEase will succeed in listing on the Hong Kong stock market.

Sohu, which is in charge of Zhang Chaoyang, insisted on listing on NASDAQ, and the entire Sohu executive team conducted intensive roadshows.

From Johannesburg in South Africa, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Paris in France and Berlin in Germany, Sohu's executive team is doing road shows almost every day except for airplanes.

Their roadshow publicity policy is also very clear: "We are the Sohu and Quora of Huaguo."

Goldman Sachs, the largest shareholder of Ali’s angel round financing, is in contact with emerging investment, and they hope to transfer all their shares in Ali to emerging investment at a suitable price.

At the Internet Conference, Zhou Xin had a good chat with Jack Ma, and expressed his willingness to buy Ali's shares from Goldman Sachs at a certain premium.

After listening to Zhou Xin's understanding of e-commerce, Cai Chongxin was determined to facilitate this matter. Under his mediation, Goldman Sachs, Xinxing Investment and Ali are conducting three-party negotiations.

At that time, the decline of the Nasdaq index was already obvious, but Goldman Sachs still hoped to obtain a sufficient premium. They acquired 500% of Ali's shares at a price of US$46.7 million.

In other words, Goldman Sachs valued Ali at around US$1000 million.

Under the leadership of Wu Shiqiang, Xinxing Investment is willing to buy 20% of the shares from Goldman Sachs at a premium of 20%.

Goldman Sachs has been reluctant, they want a 50% premium.

For venture capital, the general pursuit is dozens of times the return, and the same is true for Goldman Sachs.If it wasn't for the insistence of Ali's founder team, Goldman Sachs Asia would not want to sell Ali's shares.

After several rounds of tripartite negotiations, neither Goldman Sachs nor Emerging Capital was willing to budge.At the end of the first quarter, the Internet collapsed completely, and Goldman Sachs said that you can buy it if you want, or at a premium of 20.00%, you have to buy all the shares in my hand.

When Wu Shiqiang sent an email to Zhou Xin for 600% of Alibaba's shares worth US$46.7 million, Zhou Xin only replied with one word: buy.

After the completion of this transaction, the excitement brought to Zhou Xin is not as good as the acquisition of Nvidia.

However, Xinxing Investment successfully became the major shareholder behind Ali and Tencent, which gave Zhou Xin the pride of being the hero of the world.

The more so, the more sober Zhou Xin became. He knew that he had already taken too much, and that ability and responsibility were equal.

He needs to show the corresponding value, the value that can't be done without me.

In the entrepreneurial process of Internet companies, it is not uncommon for founders to be kicked out. Investment institutions are generally not kicked out, but their equity will continue to be diluted.

Whether in Alibaba or Tencent, the shareholding ratio of emerging investment is already close to 50.00%, so the founders of these two companies cannot accept the right to give priority to follow-up investment in emerging investment.

Even both Cai Chongxin and Zeng Liqing have already thought about it in their hearts. After the honeymoon period of cooperation with Xinxing Investment is over, they should persuade the boss to dilute the equity of Xinxing Investment in the subsequent financing process.

Of course, maybe Jack Ma and Pony Ma had the same idea long ago, but they didn't tell them.

"Enterprise QQ is a matter of life and death for Tencent. Enterprise QQ has been launched in Guangdong Telecom today. Backstage engineers must keep an eye on bugs." Pony Ma's face was full of seriousness.

Due to the lack of payment methods for QQ Show, the product was quickly produced, but it has not yet been officially launched.

At the moment, qq lacks the ability to push locally, or Tencent has not yet realized the importance of pushing locally.

Compared with QQ Show, the progress of enterprise QQ is much faster.

At the end of December, Pony Ma and Zhou Xin finished chatting, returned to Pengcheng after the Internet Conference, and started the development process of enterprise QQ.

After receiving $220 million from Zhou Xin, they can expand server and broadband resources, and more development engineers can focus on development instead of hardware operation and maintenance.

In just two weeks, the enterprise qq started internal testing.

In February, the code encryption and localization deployment were improved, and Tencent used its own internal resources to find Guangdong Telecom as the first pilot company.

In the millennium, China Mobile, China Railcom, and China Unicom are all younger brothers, and China Telecom is the well-deserved giant in the communications industry.

The giant here refers to the number of employees. According to the "2001 Statistical Bulletin on Communication Industry Development" released by the Comprehensive Planning Department of the Ministry of Information Industry in 2000, China Telecom has 40 employees nationwide, while China Mobile has only 11.

Guangdong Telecom also has more than [-] employees. For such a large organization, they welcome all methods that are conducive to management.

Tencent itself is also a well-known Internet company in Pengcheng, so enterprise qq successfully broke into China Telecom with a price of 100 million yuan for localized deployment.

Subsequent annual maintenance costs are 10 yuan.

In other words, this is not a one-off deal, and Tencent will continue to provide optimization and iteration services in the future.

It is not expensive for telecom, and the average cost per employee is only about [-] yuan. I bought an email system from outside for more than this price.

For Tencent, this is a historic first step. For the first time, they have achieved profitability through the qq product.

Moreover, telecom means a model project. If they do well in Guangdong Telecom, it means that they can copy this set of successful experiences to telecom companies in other provinces, and to companies such as China Mobile and China Unicom.

"Mr. Zhang, we think enterprise qq fits our management style very well. Congratulations on finding a profitable way to qq.

We hope to acquire enterprise qq, not just localized deployment, we hope to acquire the source code of enterprise qq. "The person in charge of Guangdong Telecom approached Zhang Zhidong and expressed his hope to acquire enterprise QQ.

We must know that when Tencent had no money and wanted to sell QQ, it not only turned to Zhongbei Paging, but also turned to Guangdong Telecom.

At that time, Guangdong Telecom was unwilling to acquire QQ because they did not understand the value of QQ.

But now is different.

The localized deployment of enterprise QQ realizes large file transfer, self-built groups, local check-in, organizational structure address book, etc., and a large number of customized development needs according to the needs of enterprises make enterprise QQ very easy to use.

According to the internal statistics of Guangdong Telecom, employees used to contact each other through telephone, email and directly going to the office.

Since the establishment of enterprise QQ, the usage rate of mailboxes has plummeted. One month later, none of the tens of thousands of employees in the province use mailboxes anymore.

Everyone has developed the habit of opening QQ first after arriving at the company.

It won't work if you don't open it, you have to punch in.

The unique advantages of telecommunications allow them to transfer large files between companies in different cities.

The success of enterprise QQ made the leader of Guangdong Telecom think about buying enterprise QQ directly. In his opinion, the deployment of 100 million yuan is too worthwhile.

If Guangdong Telecom purchased enterprise QQ, and then promoted it to other provinces, and even the telecom head office, this would be his achievements.

Naturally, the request was declined by Tencent. They can get the data, so why can't Tencent get the data?
The localized deployment of enterprise qq is correct, but the operation and maintenance is still done for them by Tencent. Tencent can see from the background data how successful this software is.

To put it simply, in just one month, the amount of data stored in the system exceeded 1T.

You should know that most of them are text data, and there are very few picture data and video data.

The success of enterprise qq in Guangdong Telecom made Pony Ma decide to promote the business aggressively.

"pony, judging from the data of Guangdong Telecom, enterprise QQ is undoubtedly a successful product.

From the perspective of enterprise management, it can greatly improve the management efficiency among employees of large enterprises, and it is also beneficial for managers to directly control the enterprise.

However, I think there are a few issues that need to be paid attention to at this stage. The first is that enterprise QQ is easy to be copied, especially as you mentioned that your only current customer is Guangdong Telecom. What if China Telecom develops similar software by itself?
Being imitated is the fate that the Internet industry cannot escape. QQ was born by referring to ICQ, and its innovation cannot escape the fate of being imitated by other companies.

The second question is how to further optimize the enterprise QQ. Now it is only a phased victory. As long as it is software, its optimization will have no end.

In my opinion, you need to find more added value for enterprise QQ. Guangdong Telecom is a good observation sample. You are their supplier now, and you are also responsible for the operation and maintenance of enterprise QQ. Then you You can take this opportunity to chat more with the middle-level and bottom-level employees of Guangdong Telecom.

Further dig out the real needs from users.This is also the best way to avoid being killed by latecomers. "

Pony Ma sends an email to Zhou Xin almost every day, and Zhou Xin will respond to his messages according to the situation, and usually he will reply to an email after accumulating to a certain extent.

"Newman, your concern is very reasonable. Guangdong Telecom recently wanted to acquire enterprise QQ. After being rejected by us, they seem to have started a similar development project internally. They want to make products similar to enterprise QQ, and they are currently conducting internal argument.

We recently talked with two customers, one is Hutchison Whampoa of Xiangjiang, they have a lot of business in Xiangjiang and Guangdong Province, and the other is Pengcheng Foreign Trade Corporation, their needs will be more complicated.

Pengcheng Foreign Trade Corporation hopes to open the enterprise QQ to all foreign trade small and medium-sized enterprises. They deploy enterprise QQ in their computer room, and then sell it to Pengcheng foreign trade small and medium-sized enterprises in the form of selling services. .

After their information technology department heard about Guangdong Telecom, they went to Guangdong Telecom to conduct several exchanges around the enterprise QQ, and also saw the enterprise QQ of Guangdong Telecom.

After seeing it, they hope that we can give them more autonomy to open their address book.

We are now building a directory based on the structure of the other company during localization deployment, and then the company can only add employees or transfer employees, and department changes need to be modified in the background.

The Foreign Trade Corporation hopes to give them this part of autonomy, and they can add subsidiaries below.

For example, if Company A wants to use enterprise QQ, they need to pay a certain fee, and the Foreign Trade Corporation will give them permission, and then they can be added to the foreign trade corporation's address book as a department.

These small and medium-sized companies are willing to pay this money just to contact a person in charge of the Foreign Trade Corporation.

For the information technology department of the Foreign Trade Corporation, they are equivalent to generating income for the company.So they are very urgent for enterprise qq.

I have thought about the two issues you mentioned to me last time, and it is inevitable and unnecessary to be borrowed.

Those who would rather develop enterprise QQ by themselves than directly buy finished products from Tencent must be large enterprises, and they must be large enterprises with strong development capabilities. These enterprises are only a small part of Tencent's target customers.

Most of them are companies like Hutchison Whampoa and Foreign Trade Corporation that don't have too many developers and need to rely on suppliers to meet their internal Internet service needs.

Tencent's target customers are these companies. We only need to make products better than other companies, and we are not afraid of any challenges.

In addition, Tencent intends to think about how to optimize enterprise QQ to meet the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The case of the Foreign Trade Corporation made me realize that the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises are equally important. There are limited large companies in Huaguo, and the needs of this part are also limited.

In addition, Hutchison Whampoa made me realize that Xiangjiang is also a huge market, and enterprise QQ needs to enter the Xiangjiang market.

American will be a bigger market. I plan to enter the Silicon Valley market with enterprise QQ in the second half of this year after fully training my team in mainland China and Hong Kong. "

After Zhou Xin received a letter from Pony Ma, he felt that the other party had a lot of resources.Hutchison Whampoa may be because of Yingke Capital.The founder of Yingke Capital is the son of Li Jiacheng, and it couldn’t be easier for Tencent to give such a small order of 100 million yuan.

Not to mention the enterprise qq product, which is indeed the only one in China now.Unlike DingTalk, Feishu, and Enterprise WeChat, which all seized the enterprise office market later, only enterprise QQ on the market can meet user needs.

But it is not so easy to talk about the Foreign Trade Corporation. The predecessor of the Foreign Trade Corporation was the Foreign Trade Bureau of Pengcheng.

It is precisely because of this that they are so confident. As long as they have enterprise QQ, these small and medium-sized enterprises in Pengcheng will rush to join.

They deploy only 100 million, and the charges from small and medium-sized enterprises are at least tens of millions.

Zhou Xin was a little surprised that Guangdong Telecom responded so quickly. When he replied, he didn't know that Telecom had mentioned the acquisition of QQ, a company.

He just remembered that during the cooperation between QQ and China Mobile, China Mobile wanted to acquire Mobile QQ, but after being rejected, China Mobile said it would make a product called Fetion.

Fetion and China Mobile qq merged, and the combined product was called Fetion qq, and Fetion needed to occupy 70% of the shares.

Tencent refused again, and after the refusal, China Mobile launched Fetion alone.

I also remember this incident, so Zhou Xin estimated that the urine of telecommunications is similar to that of mobile, and sooner or later he can't help but want to acquire it. If the acquisition fails, he can make similar products by himself.

It's just that I didn't expect it to be so fast, and I planned to do it myself after a short time.

Therefore, the cold winter of the Internet is only the cold winter of the capital market, and the progress of computer-related technologies still exists. From individuals to enterprises, their information needs will only become more and more vigorous.

"We needed a different game to excite players, and Flamingo hasn't had a voice in the gaming world for a long time.

This is the first online game of Flamingo, and it is also the game that has been made by the most people and the longest time since our establishment. Do you have confidence? "

Zhou Xin is well-known to the outside world as a product manager, and many people will ignore his role as a game producer.

Especially after quora, when everyone mentions Newman, they are all the best product managers.

But for Stephen and Ashley, the identity of Zhou Xin's game producer will always come first.

With two successful games, Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies, Flamingo is a well-known game developer in the industry.Players often ask Riot Games when the sequel will be released in the Flamingo section.

If it were any other game company, "Angry Birds 2" would have been released long ago.

After the fist game was launched, Stephen and Ashley were not angry with Zhou Xin for spinning off the fist game and listing it separately, and felt resentful in their hearts.

After quora was sold at a high price of 700 billion, this dissatisfaction has almost dissipated.

In addition, the flamingo has allowed them to realize the freedom of wealth, and the two put all their energy on game production.

"Yes, Newman, your idea is fantastic, it's the perfect game mechanic.

It is completely different from mainstream gunfight and RPG games, our game is a completely different type. "Ashley looked extra excited.

Because they will take this game to participate in the E5 exhibition held on May 11th at the Los Angeles Convention Center this year.

E3 is also the most well-known exhibition in the gaming industry.

Riot Games participated last year, and this year Riot Games is one of the organizers. A lot of negotiations with game developers will also be held at E3.

"This should also belong to a kind of tower defense game, which is a variant of the tower defense game." Johnson said.

"Yes, we have innovated in many places, not just the game.

Both the game content and the way of charging are completely different from the previous online games. " Zhou Xin said.

Nowadays, the charging methods of online games are basically based on the duration charging system, that is to say, how long you play and how much you charge.

A few of them adopt the method of monthly card fee, buy a monthly card, and play unlimited games within this month.

As for item charging, free players are the NPCs of paying players, and this kind of gameplay will have to be explored by game companies in Huaguo.

"I still think hourly charging is a better model," Johnson said.

"Duration charges are not acceptable to all players.

Our game is a PVP game, and we need enough players to support our ladder system.

So what we need are players. If the player base is large enough, there will naturally be enough paying users.

This has been proven in quora.

If Quora charged all users from the very beginning, then it would definitely not be able to develop today, and there would be no charging project like Quora Gold Selection. "

Ashley agrees: "We've devised a very sophisticated system where the number of players really matters.

From May to September in the ladder score competition, the final 5 players will be invited to the scene to hold the competition.

The final winners then share the entire prize pool in proportion.

I agree with Newman on this. "

"Don't think about it so much. Compared with the free model, the duration payment is just a small profit."

Zhou Xin is very satisfied with the status quo of Flamingo. He only needs to put forward his ideas in general, and they can implement his ideas well.

Although the final effect is different from the game in his memory, there is no difference in gameplay.

There are even new designs that catch his eye.

As for why this game is made, it is mainly for Silicon Valley and Wall Street to see the spending power of players.

Riot Games will be used as the log-in device for this game, and 30.00% of the water will be pumped to set the rules for the online games that will use the Riot Games channel in the future.

　The Ravens are back to 6K!I've been drowsy writing for the past few days.

　　Then recommend a book to a friend:

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　　Traveling to the overhead world of the Ming Empire and New Rome, Shang Luo recited a spell to the endless magic machine:
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(End of this chapter)