Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies
Chapter 2 Boy: The Pony Webmaster Who Likes Astronomy
Chapter 2 Boy: The Pony Webmaster Who Likes Astronomy
I see the storm and I am as excited as the sea.
— Rilke (Austrian poet), "Flags"
The Internet represents a new civilization and culture, and its characteristics are: [-]. Special admiration for small things; [-]. The underground economy does not follow the rules; [-]. Disrespect for authority and health... The best way to predict the future Just create it.
— Nicholas Negroponte (Professor of New Media in the United States), "Digital Survival"
The boy who saw Halley's comet
On April 1986, 4, after a lapse of 11 years, Halley's Comet reappeared in the sky above the earth on time, dragging its gorgeous and mysterious long tail.On that early spring night, countless teenagers from all over the world looked up at the starry sky.
In Shenzhen, a rising seaside city in southern China, a 15-year-old middle school student named Ma Huateng claimed to be the first person in his school to see Halley's Comet. "It appeared in the southwest of the Big Dipper, and it's not as bright as expected, so it's not easy to find with the naked eye." Many years later, he told me this way.Ma Huateng was a member of the Shenzhen Middle School Astronomy Interest Group, which was the only extracurricular interest group he participated in.
Apart from his special interest in astronomy, the reason why Ma was able to find Halley's Comet is that he has more advanced "weapons" than other students.On his 14th birthday, he asked his family for a quasi-professional, 80mm astronomical telescope, which would cost his father nearly four months' salary. "He insisted on it at the time. We refused to buy it, it was too expensive, and it cost more than 4 yuan. He wrote a diary, saying that we killed a scientist's dream. His mother read this diary in his schoolbag one day, and we both After discussing it, I still bought it for him." Father Ma Chenshu recalled later.
After finding Halley's Comet, Ma Huateng took photos, wrote an observation report excitedly, and posted it to Beijing. As a result, he won the third prize in the observation competition and received a bonus of 40 yuan. This is the first time Ma Huateng has earned. a sum of money.Since then, the hobby of astronomy has been retained, he told me, "the only magazine that has been subscribed to since middle school is "Astronomy Lover". In 2004, the birthday present given to him by colleagues in the board of directors was an exquisite telescope model.
Comets are commonly known as "broom stars", which are weird things.As early as 613 BC, the book "Spring and Autumn" recorded that "a star entered the Big Dipper", which was the first definite record of Halley's Comet by human beings.In the prophecies of the Han people and many other peoples, Halley's Comet appeared between the vulvas of the constellations, heralding that the era of order reconstruction is coming.
Ma Huateng's generation of Chinese grew up in an era of tension and drastic changes.
On October 1971, 10, he was born in Basuo Port, Dongfang City, Hainan Island. His parents were employees of the Port Authority of Basuo Port.In the column of birthplace in the household registration booklet, according to the usual practice, "Chaoyang County, Guangdong Province (former name)" was filled in with my father.He has a sister who is 29 years older.
Just one month before Ma Huateng was born, on September 1971, 9, Lin Biao and his wife fled the country and died in a plane crash in Mongolia.This scandal is a turning point in China's contemporary political history, and it almost heralds the coming to an end of a closed era.A year later, diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America began to normalize, ending 13 years of hostility between the two superpowers representing the ancient East and the emerging West.When Ma Huateng was 22 years old, Mao Zedong left the world on September 5, 1976; two years later, 9-year-old Deng Xiaoping won the actual leadership, thus opening the curtain of reform and opening up.
In order to attract foreign investment, the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping chose Guangdong Province, which is far away from Beijing and has a tradition of opening up, as the frontier window of opening up. In January 1979, more than 1 acres of wasteland at the southernmost tip of Nantou Peninsula in Baoan County (formerly known as) and facing Hong Kong across the shore was selected as the first industrial zone that could attract investment. This is the famous Shekou in the future. industrial area.In March of the same year, Bao'an County was renamed Shenzhen. In August 1000, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen were established by the State Council as the four special zones. Stimulated by various preferential policies, a large amount of national investment and international capital were directed to these southern regions.In this way, the engine of economic recovery was forcibly started, and the whole society moved towards opening up halfway.
Ma Huateng spent his childhood in Basuogang, the westernmost tip of Hainan Island, where the majority of residents are Miao.Ma Huateng still remembers that there were many Miao people with tattoos on their faces in the small town. They carried huge bamboo baskets and squatted silently under the rain-dropping eaves.A person’s childhood is most likely to be attracted by unreachable mysteries. The night sky of the South China Sea harbor is particularly clear and deep, full of stars, which can always arouse people’s infinite curiosity and imagination, and make people feel their own insignificance.
In order to cultivate his son's interest in science, the Ma family subscribed to popular science magazines such as "We Love Science".When he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, Ma Huateng read an article in it about how to make astronomical telescopes with various lenses, so he pestered his mother to buy a set of lenses and came back to make a simple telescope. The first work in .
The characteristics of the telescope are: the larger the focal length, the smaller the field of view, and the farther you can see.Facing the unknown fog in the distance, it is difficult for people to get rid of short-sightedness, and only by zooming out and focusing their sight on one point can they see a certain part of the truth clearly.Many years later, I chatted with Ma Huateng about his hobby, and he suddenly said: "Is the Internet like an uncertain galaxy that is exploding?"
Ma Huateng and three middle school classmates
The Chaoshan people to which Ma Huateng's family belongs are a very special branch in China's business pedigree.
Chaoshan is located in the southeast, far away from the Central Plains. The land is narrow and there are few fields. They make a living by fishing and farming. The people have a tradition of sailing to make a living since ancient times. They are rare marine tribes.During the Tang and Song dynasties, Chaoshan people were the most active trading group in Nanyang, and they were also one of the first Han people to accept Christianity.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the imperial court adopted a policy of banning the sea, and Chaoshan people were forced to make a living and still ventured abroad. "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" records: "The Chaozhou people are good at business, the son of the sky, and go abroad alone, and have no long-term possessions other than leather pillows and quilts. Employed for a few years, a little bit of independent business, after a few more years, almost all of them will become overseas giants." Compared with the Shanxi and Huizhou merchants in the Central Plains, the Chaoshan merchants have a weaker sense of official business. Patriarchal" is a distinct personality.In modern times, Chaoshan people have formed a great commercial power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and many rich people from Chaoshan origin have emerged. The most famous one is Li Ka-shing, the richest Chinese man.
In 1984, 13-year-old Ma Huateng moved from Hainan Island to Shenzhen with his parents.
At this time, Shenzhen has become the most concerned and controversial specimen city in China.At the beginning of this year, Deng Xiaoping quietly inspected Shenzhen and wrote an inscription: "Shenzhen's development and experience prove that our policy of establishing a special economic zone is correct." In October, Beijing held a grand military parade for the 10th anniversary of the founding of New China. They all decorated a float to participate in the review. When the Shenzhen float slowly passed Tiananmen Square, the two lines of big characters on it made many Chinese feel very dazzling and unbelievable-"Time is money, efficiency is life".This sentence originally came from a placard at the gate of the Shekou Industrial Zone government. Later, it was defined as the spirit of the city of Shenzhen.In Chinese history, this is the first time that time and money have been so nakedly equated.It goes against both the 35-year-old Confucian tradition and the pre-reform ideology.It is presented in front of the people of the whole country in such a ceremonial way, announcing the official arrival of a strange and fresh era in which everything can be quantified with material.
For young Ma Huateng, whether it is China's economic revival, the rise of Shenzhen, or the business connections of the Chaoshan ethnic group, they are all memories wrapped in his life, and they will slowly penetrate into this person's body and soul, and eventually Constructed into a unique destiny body.
Ma Huateng was transferred to Shenzhen Middle School in the second year of junior high school.At that time, he was only 1.4 meters eleven, which was considered short among 13-year-old children, so he sat in the first row of the class.There is a classmate named Xu Chenye in the same row, who just moved from Tianjin with his parents who work in the education system.
That year, inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s talks in the south, many new immigrants came from all over the country. The first grade of Shenzhen Middle School originally recruited eight classes of students, but later had to expand the enrollment by two classes.Students in these two classes speak mostly Mandarin, while those in the first eight classes speak Cantonese — what they refer to as “vernaculars” — and are also home to Tencent’s other two founders: Zhang Zhidong and Chen Yidan.Zhang Zhidong is a native of Shenzhen, while Chen Yidan's family came to Shenzhen in 1981. His father was from Tianxin Town, Shantou City, Guangdong Province, and later became the branch president of a bank.
Ma Huateng was always in the top three in junior high school.Xu Chenye, Zhang Zhidong, and Chen Yidan all studied "Olympic Mathematics", and only Ma Huateng joined the astronomy interest group.After entering high school, Ma Huateng, Xu Chenye and Chen Yidan were assigned to the same class.In the second year of high school, the school divided classes again. Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye were still together, while Chen Yidan and Zhang Zhidong were in another class.
Chen Yidan recalled his relationship with Ma Huateng at that time: in high school, they recited pi together and competed with each other.At recess, they stood face to face in the corridor and began to recite in turn. Today you recite two more digits than me, and tomorrow I recite two digits more than you. Later, everyone can recite up to 100 decimal places.They also once collected stamps together and helped each other buy stamps.
Gao Jialing is Ma Huateng's high school head teacher. In the memory of this mathematics teacher, Ma Huateng is a good student who studies hard: "I have a good relationship with my classmates, I am very good at uniting people, I have never missed a class, and my homework is always very good. It looks tidy. However, the deeper impression is gone."
In high school, Ma Huateng's stature suddenly increased. Many years later, Xu Chenye was still a little bit aggrieved when he talked about it: "He used to be in the same row as me, but he grew taller and taller, and sat further back." On the other hand, Zhang Zhidong has grown into a strong boy, and his classmates nicknamed him "Winter Melon".
Ma Huateng and his contemporaries belong to a generation ruled by anxiety, whose life, like their country, has been developing in a great, "uncertain prosperity".When he was in middle school, one of the most popular words on campus was "Time waits for no one". The teachers warned young people in an extremely eager tone that today is a once-in-a-century era, and opportunities are like loaches in the river. They can be seen everywhere. Not easy to catch.
Virus expert in the computer room of the university
1989 was the year Ma Huateng was admitted to university.There was a political turmoil in China in June of that year.The college entrance examination was held as scheduled from July 6 to 7, but there was restlessness in the air, and almost all parents hoped that their children would stay with them.So that year, most of the first choice of Shenzhen college entrance examination candidates filled in Shenzhen University.Ma Huateng's college entrance examination score was 7 points (out of 9 points), more than 739 points higher than the key line. According to this score, he could have entered Tsinghua University in Beijing or Fudan University in Shanghai.
Because Shenzhen University did not have the astronomy department that Ma Huateng was most interested in, he settled for the next best thing and entered the computer major of the Department of Electronic Engineering.Xu Chenye and Zhang Zhidong joined him in this major.Xu Chenye also shared the same dormitory with him.There were 36 students in this class. Except for one recommended student, Zhang Zhidong had the highest test score, and Ma Huateng ranked third.
According to Hu Qingbin, who taught computer assembly language courses, recalled: "Ma Huateng's class is the best class in the history of Shenzhen University, and the source of students is particularly good. No one in their class has ever failed a subject-this is before and after Shenzhen University. They have never appeared again. Ma Huateng and others are excellent and have a good foundation. I am not surprised that they have made such a career later. Even if they don’t start Tencent, they will become excellent talents.”
Huang Shunzhen is Ma Huateng’s head teacher at the university, and the course he taught is computer operating system. From the transcripts that have survived to this day, it can be seen that Ma Huateng’s test score in that class was 86 points. Teacher Huang gave an overall score of 88 points, while Zhang Zhidong’s overall score was 92 points. The highest score is [-] points.Huang Shunzhen described two details: "As the class teacher, I have to go to the dormitory once a week to inspect. Every time I go, I will see Ma Huateng reading a book or doing computer operations. He and Zhang Zhidong and other students have good family conditions, and they are assigned by themselves. Computer. While other people are gathering to chat or do other things. Once, Ma Huateng handed in the computer experiment report, and when writing his own name, he got a little creative. He used software to design a A pentium-shaped font looks very beautiful, and then the word 'Huateng' is handwritten on the back. Science and engineering students rarely have such creativity, which impresses me until now."
Xu Chenye, who shared the same dormitory with Ma Huateng, recalled: "I was with him at that time, and we usually memorized English vocabulary. We ran together in the morning and ran around the campus. For a while, he suddenly became interested in qigong."
Shenzhen University is a university established in 1983 with little tradition. It is located on the Nanshan Peninsula. There are a lot of lychee trees planted on the campus, so it is also called "Lychee Garden".At that time, there were farmland and several scattered farmhouses outside the campus.When they were running, Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye would never have expected that after more than 20 years, they would have the opportunity to build a 39-storey Tencent Building on the north side of the campus. From the office on the top floor, they could overlook the campus every day and reminisce about their lost youth.
Another classmate of theirs, Chen Yidan, was admitted to the Department of Chemistry.During college, Chen Yidan became very active. He ran for the chairman of the student union of the chemistry department and was also the deputy director of the student union committee.At the graduation ceremony, he was selected as the valedictorian speaker. "He spoke very passionately, as if graduation means going to the front line." Ma Huateng said.
Since the second year of university, Ma Huateng has devoted a lot of energy to the study of C language.This is a high-level programming language designed and invented by Dennis Rachel of the United States in 1972. It has the advantages of strong drawing ability, good portability, and strong data processing ability. It is the most popular and most used programming language in the world. One of the broadest programming languages.C language is obviously superior to other high-level languages when operating systems and systems use programs and need to operate hardware.Ma Huateng said to me in the future: "We ultimately rely on C to conquer the world." He also said: "Technically, my algorithm is not too strong, which requires people with strong mathematics. But I am relatively strong in application, that is, I know how to realize a product." Compared with Ma Huateng, his classmate, "Winter Melon" Zhang Zhidong is more proficient in algorithms.
Ma Huateng's talent in computers soon became apparent.
In college, for all young people learning to program, the public computer room is the best place to compete in technology.They often write a virus program in a computer to lock the hard disk so that others cannot start it, but they can open it arbitrarily, or another expert can decipher the program designed by others. cool thing.In the memory of the students, Ma Huateng is a master at writing virus programs: "He often locks the hard disk of the computer in the computer room, and even the administrator cannot open it. Later, whenever such a situation occurs, Ma Huateng must be the first one to be killed. Call past 'suspects'."
In addition to C language programming, Ma Huateng's other technical strength is the programming of graphical interfaces.
Computers at that time used DOS programs, and Microsoft Windows had not yet entered the country. Ma Huateng was able to create a Windows-like graphical interface under the DOS system. "At that time, few people in China made such an attempt. I found some basic elements in the book, and then continued to build on them, forming my own graphical interface technology."
In the fourth grade of university, students have to go to a company for graduation internship.Ma Huateng went to Shenzhen Liming Computer Network Co., Ltd., which was the computer company with the highest technological level in southern China at that time.Founded in 1990, it is the first enterprise named after "Computer Network" in China.In the history of China's network development, it has four outstanding records: the earliest computer network communication system integration company, the first company to apply digital data network and frame relay technology, the first company to realize integrated transmission of images, voice and data on asynchronous transmission network Application company, and the pioneer of China's securities computer network.It used to be the largest computer network design and main construction unit in China. The computer automatic matching network trading systems of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges were designed and completed by it. In the mid-4s, China's stock market was in full swing and became a huge game field for wealth fusion, and Liming Network Company also made a lot of money as a result.
Here, 22-year-old Ma Huateng made the first real product in his life.
This is a stock market analysis system with a graphical interface. Ma Huateng has added technical analysis, functional algorithms, and even a set of Chinese character input methods.He brought out all his strengths in C language and graphical interface.In order to analyze the psychological game process between buyers and sellers of stocks, he also learned the knowledge of neurons in order to predict the future direction of stocks.This is a very practical stock analysis software, users can visually see the fluctuations of the stock market, and carry out band analysis.
During the stock boom at that time, countless stock trading software appeared across the country, all of which claimed to be "crystal balls" that could see the future, and Ma Huateng's product was one of them.However, because of its very unique and graphic design, it is still eye-catching even in Liming Network, where programmers gather.The company found the intern and offered to buy his software.Ma Huateng gritted his teeth, and carefully offered a price of 5 yuan, which was equivalent to three years' salary of a college graduate at that time. Unexpectedly, the other party agreed without a counter-offer.
In this way, Ma Huateng's college career ended in a software transaction.In the past 4 years, he has not served as a student cadre, nor has he run for any association position.Among Yunyun's students, he is just a good-looking, quiet, good-looking science student who occasionally likes to make trouble in the computer room.There is nothing to suggest that he possessed any superior talent for administration or public affairs.
The "Little Horse" in Run Xun Company
In September 1993, Ma Huateng and his classmates went their separate ways.
Zhang Zhidong was admitted to the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou as a graduate student, where he will continue to hone his algorithm skills.Xu Chenye first worked for half a year, and then went to Nanjing University to study computer application as a graduate student. After graduation, he joined the Shenzhen Telecom Data Communication Bureau.Chen Yidan was assigned to the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, and at the same time he was studying for a master's degree in economic law at the Law School of Nanjing University.Ma Huateng went to Shenzhen Runxun Communication Group Co., Ltd. as a software engineer.
Ma Huateng's job hunting experience is very simple: one day in March 1993, when he was an intern at Liming Network Company, he went to a computer bookstore in Huaqiangbei to search for books, and happened to meet a classmate majoring in radio, who had been hired by Run Xun.The classmate told Ma Huateng that Runxun was recruiting software engineers, and they could try it out.Ma Huateng passed by, and he showed the recruiter the stock market analysis system he designed, and he was notified to hire the next day.
At that time, Runxun was a new company that had only been established for one year, but it was in an explosive growth industry - paging station service.The pager is the receiver of the called user in the wireless paging system. After receiving the signal, it will sound or vibrate and display relevant information.It is small in size and can be distinguished from the waist.Pagers entered China in 1983, and around 1990, they almost reached the point of "everyone has one machine".Its popularity means that China at that time has actually entered the era of instant messaging.For quite a long time, the service fee of the paging station has been high. The network access fee is 100 yuan, the service fee of the digital machine is 180 yuan a year, and the Chinese character machine is 600 yuan a year.This is an extremely profitable industry.
Before 1990, the paging industry was almost monopolized by state-owned telecommunications companies, and it was gradually opened to private use later.The two founders of Run Xun have a solid background in the telecommunications industry.First, they creatively launched the cross-border paging service between the mainland and Hong Kong, and quickly gained a firm foothold in the Shenzhen market; later, they took the lead in launching a series of services such as national satellite networking and secretary stations, and the company quickly grew into the largest in southern China. Paging station service business.At its peak, the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and entered the Hang Seng Index, with an annual turnover of 20 billion yuan and a gross profit of more than 30%.
Ma Huateng worked in this legendary company until the end of 1998, witnessing the whole process of its rise and fall.When he first joined the company, he wrote software programs for the paging system in the R&D department, with a monthly salary of 1100 yuan. Later, he transferred to the business department and participated in the construction of paging stations in various places. From the development of the paging system to the installation of transmitters, he was responsible for software writing and network Realized, the monthly salary has gradually risen to more than 8000 yuan.
In the highly hierarchical Run Xun, Ma Huateng's highest position is supervisor, and above him are executive director, general manager, deputy general manager, department vice president, director, senior manager, manager and senior executive.Colleagues had a very low impression of him. They called him "Little Horse", one of hundreds of "Little Horses".
Of course, this is only part of the truth.In another virtual world, there lives a restless and ambitious Ma Huateng.
When he just graduated, Ma Huateng wanted to start a business in Huaqiangbei. His earliest idea was to help customers install computers.At that time, China had two major distribution centers for computer accessories, Zhongguancun in Beijing in the north and Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen in the south.Ma Huateng has assembled all early generations of computers from 8086, 286, 386 to 486, etc. According to the wages, he can earn 50 yuan for installing one computer, and installing two computers a day, the income is already higher than the salary of Run Xun.However, he quickly dismissed this idea: "Because I found out that the people who installed machines in Huaqiangbei were all junior high school students from the countryside. They are much more familiar with the market of accessories than you, and they are also diligent in their hands and feet. They can't beat them. "
Later, he and several friends developed a stock quote receiving system, "It is to use a pager to receive the stock quotes in the airwaves, after receiving them, use a single-board computer to realize transcoding, and connect them to the computer through a serial port." .Ma Huateng named it "Shaba Card" and sold it in the Huaqiangbei market. The initial price was 8000 yuan, then it was reduced to 6000 yuan, and then it was 4000 yuan. "The cost was 1000 yuan. set".After making a little money, the business died down.
Until the end of 1994, Ma Huateng was suddenly attracted by a new thing called Huiduo.com.
Horse stationmaster in Huiduo.com
Huiduo.com, formerly known as FidoNet in English, is sometimes translated as "huiduowang". It was born in the United States in 1984. It is a BBS (electronic bulletin board) website building program that connects through telephone lines and forwards letters in a point-to-point manner. , is an alternative communication network built by technology enthusiasts.Different from the later Internet, Huiduo.com does not support online communication, and a telephone line can only be used by one person. After uploading content, users must quickly get down, otherwise others will not be able to access it.
In 1991, Luo Yi, a Taiwanese who settled in Beijing, opened Huiduo.com's first site in China - the "Great Wall" station. The FidoNet station group in China was called CFido.In the beginning, almost all the people on Huiduo.com were Chinese students returning home from overseas. Gradually, domestic technology enthusiasts also found here. Some of them set up their own sites in various cities. The sites are connected into a network, becoming the cradle of China's first generation of Internet users.
Ma Huateng knew about this new thing through Rising. "Rising makes anti-virus software. It has an electronic bulletin board that you can dial up with a modem to download updated software. That's where I learned about Huiduo.com." Ma Huateng was quickly attracted by Huiduo.com Attracted so much that it's unstoppable. "It's really amazing. After dialing up through the modem, there will be a human-machine interface, with menus and discussion areas, where you can meet people like you from all over the world. We have never met, but You can show each other the latest software, exchange experience in encryption and decryption, and share your insights on the life of the program."
In May 2011, Ma Huateng, who is already the chairman of the board of directors of Tencent, participated in the 5th China Internet Webmaster Annual Conference as a "15-year old webmaster". Passion: "At that time, all of us computer software programmers thought that all the programming was done locally. When I passed the remote platform for the first time and saw the words spit out on the screen, I was very excited, and it felt like opening a door. Like a new door, I think it was the beginning of the Internet at the time."
After playing for nearly half a year, Ma Huateng, who was in high spirits, decided to build a site by himself. In February 1995, he opened the Shenzhen station of Huiduo.com and named it ponysoft. It is 2/655, 101 is the area code of China, and 655 is the station number of "Mazhan".
When "Mazhan" was founded, there were less than 10 Huiduo websites nationwide, including two in Beijing, one in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, with a total of about 100 active users, including many Internet users in China in the future. Famous figures in history.Among these stations, "Mazhan" may be the most luxurious one: Ma Huateng installed 4 telephone lines at home and equipped with 8 computers, that is to say, it can accept transmission applications from 4 users at the same time.At that time, the initial installation of domestic telephones was very expensive, costing 8000 yuan a set.Ma Huateng's older sister works at a telephone company and applied for a half-price discount, but the purchase and use of equipment still cost Ma Huateng nearly 5 yuan, which is equivalent to investing all the income from selling stock market software.
From buying a telescope worth 700 yuan to spending 5 yuan to build a multi-site, we can vaguely read some of Ma Huateng’s nature: this seemingly quiet and weak southern scholar actually has a kind of decisive talent that dares to be willing to take risks and invest in it. It comes from The traditional nature of Chaoshan people.
The establishment of "Mazhan" made Ma Huateng's life suddenly busy and enriched.His mother Huang Huiqing recalled: "In those two years, he spent days and nights on the Internet, receiving letters and sending replies. He was extremely busy. Sometimes he would write a note to me when he was on a business trip. Teach me that once a netizen calls and says that the network is unavailable, follow the steps on the note to troubleshoot."
In that year, Ma Huateng also served as the correspondent of "Computer World" in Shenzhen. He wrote a report "BBS and Huiduo Network", which briefly described the development status of Huiduo Network in China, and also reported the development of Huiduo Network in 11 countries across the country. The site's address and phone number are published.Driven by Ma Huateng and others, Huiduo.com has more and more sites: in early 1996, Qiu Bojun set up a "West Line" site in Zhuhai; in May of the same year, Lei Jun established a "West Point" site in Beijing.
Ma Huateng, who is not sociable and shy to express in real life, is a very active person in the virtual world.A Huiduo.com netizen named Li Zonghua recalled: "He is simply a chatterbox on the Internet, always chattering and discussing a technical issue with you repeatedly. He values the opinions of every 'Mazhan' user and will keep writing Mail, never bored."
Zhang Xiaolong, the senior vice president of Tencent and the "father of WeChat", became famous earlier than Ma Huateng. He was regarded as the best programmer in the south because he independently wrote Foxmail (launched in January 1997 - editor's note).He recalled to me the first time he knew the details of Ma Huateng: "Once, I suddenly received an email from a user who raised a question about the design of Foxmail. This is a very subtle error, which is difficult for outsiders to observe. .I was a little surprised when he said his name was Pony and he was running a site."
Ma Huateng will be called "China's No. [-] Product Manager" in the future. His product awareness and understanding of user experience were first formed during the "Mazhan" period.
China's first batch of Internet people
Huiduo.com, which Ma Huateng is addicted to, is not the Internet in the true sense. It is just a prototype in the early stage of the information revolution. Obviously, it has not become the mainstream model. The situation rushed away in an unfamiliar direction.All that is hard will melt away.
In 1994, when Ma Huateng came into contact with Huiduo.com, in the distant United States, two gifted teenagers bit through the hard "eggshell" of the Internet economy with their fearless teeth.
A 28.8K high-speed modem was developed, which can transmit 3KB files per second. Mark Anderson, who was also born in 1971 like Ma Huateng, developed the UNIX version of the Mosaic web browser. At the same time, the Windows system of personal computers also Maturing day by day, these technological breakthroughs are enough to detonate a network revolution.
Just in April 1994, Jerry Yang, a Chinese-American student at Stanford University, invented the earliest website search software. He gave up his upcoming doctorate and established Yahoo in a trailer. The English name is "Yahoo!".An unprecedented era of online business has arrived.In September of the same year, Nicholas Negroponte, a professor of new media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote "Digital Survival". Elements will change" "Computing is no longer just about computers, it determines our survival" point of view.He believes that with the maturity of Internet technology, the material world suddenly turns to virtuality. Through electronic flow, knowledge, information, and commodity manufacturing and sales may realize a completely different way of existence from the past.
From 1995 to 1996, the Internet world entered a dizzying seismic period.
In May 1995, the American company Sun Microsystems developed Java program technology, which greatly improved the image and voice performance of the World Wide Web.On August 5 of the same year, Netscape Communications, which was co-founded by Mark Anderson, was listed on NASDAQ at an issue price of $8 per share, and the closing price on that day reached $9 per share, with a market value of $28 billion. The Wall Street Journal commented that it took Netscape only "about a minute" to achieve what General Motors took 58.5 years to achieve.Netscape's performance in the browser market seriously threatened Microsoft's industry status.
On April 1996, 4, Jerry Yang's Yahoo was listed on Nasdaq. Within a day, the stock price soared from US$12 to US$13, making him a new giant with a market value of US$43 million.Yahoo has established a search-based portal model, which has profoundly influenced the technology and business application trends of the Internet.
In the East, whether it is the rise of Mark Anderson, Jerry Yang, or Negroponte's prophecy, it sounds so far away.However, the attempt to the Internet economy has quietly started, and the distance between China and the world is so close that we know each other by breath.
On May 1994, 5, the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences set up the first web server in China and launched China's first set of web pages. In addition to introducing China's high-tech development, there is also a column called "Tour in China".In September of the same year, the General Administration of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of China and the Department of Commerce of the United States signed an agreement on the Internet between China and the United States.The agreement stipulates that China Telecom will open two 15K dedicated lines through Sprint, one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai.The construction of China's public computer Internet started from this point.
These seemingly inconspicuous measures at the time were later regarded as having the significance of "Genesis". They meant that a network model with more technical and commercial prospects than Huiduo.com was emerging.
In April 1995, Ma Huateng received a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang named Ding Lei in Shenzhen.Ding Lei's figure is about the same as that of Ma Huateng, about 4 meters. What's more, they were both born in October 1.8.Different from Ma Huateng's handsome appearance, Ding Lei has a pair of small mouse-like eyes and a cynical face.
As the head of Huiduo.com's Shenzhen station, Ma Huateng is obliged to receive Huiduo.com netizens who drifted south to Shenzhen.At this time, Ding Lei is just a confused jobless youth.He graduated from Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology, majoring in Microwave Communication and minoring in Computer.This is a technical genius with a passion for computers and superhuman intuition, and he planned to start a computer company of his own from the very beginning.In the college classmate record, some classmates left him a message, "I hope Ding Lei will realize his wish of owning his own computer company as soon as possible."After graduating from university, Ding Lei returned to his hometown Ningbo to work as an engineer in the telecommunications bureau. In the computer room, he became one of the first 100 users of Huiduo.com.Unlike Ma Huateng, he did not open his own site, but used the free line resources of the telecommunications bureau to become a "repeater" to help netizens from all over the world exchange envelopes.It was also at that time that he got to know Ma Huateng from Shenzhen.
By the spring of 1995, Ding Lei finally could no longer bear the dull and boring life, and he decided to "fire himself".This idea was strongly opposed by his family, but he made up his mind to go, "This is the first time I have fired myself, but whether I have the courage to take this step will be a watershed in my life."He ran to the south where the heat wave was rolling alone, wandered around, and visited a few netizens who were very familiar on the Internet but had never met in person. He wanted to see what they looked like and what strange thoughts they had.In Shenzhen, he met the Xiaoma stationmaster who was also anxious and lost his direction.In May of this year, Ding Lei joined the Guangzhou branch of Sybase, an American database software company, as a technical support engineer.
While Ma Huateng and Ding Lei, who were originally technicians, looked at each other blankly in the south, some people who seemed to have no professional relationship with the information industry hurriedly opened up a new world.
In April of that year, a 4-year-old university foreign language teacher named Ma Yun founded the "China Yellow Pages" website in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It was officially launched in May, claiming to be the first online Chinese business information site.Ma Yun wants to create an Internet business model oriented to enterprise services. The way to make money is to encourage enterprises to post their business information online.
In May, Zhang Shuxin, who studied applied chemistry, and her husband founded Yinghaiwei Company in Beijing. Her "Yinghaiwei Time and Space" claimed to be the only domestic network based on public information services and open to ordinary families. "When you enter Yinghaiwei Time and Space, you can read E-newspapers, go to the Internet coffee shop to chat with friends who have not met, go to the Internet forum to speak freely, and you can go to the Internet at any time.”In the green period of China's Internet, Ying Haiwei played the role of an enlightener and leader, and it was the first Internet company that formed a public brand effect.Zhang Shuxin erected the first billboard in China's Internet industry at the corner of the southern end of Baiyi Road (now known as Zhongguancun Street—editor's note) in Zhongguancun, "How far are Chinese from the information superhighway—5 meters to the north" , it is regarded as a road sign by many people.
In July, Zhang Chaoyang, who had already received a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, met Negroponte from the same school, and was immediately fascinated by the Internet.He decided to give up his ideal of being a "Li Zhengdao-style physicist" and devote himself to the more exciting "digital life".With the help of Negroponte, Zhang Chaoyang raised US$7 million and returned to Beijing at the end of the year to start a project called China Online.
It has been proved in the future that Ma Yun and others are on the right path, although they will encounter various setbacks, and not everyone has come to the end of success.
After entering 1996, with the great success of the Chinese youth Jerry Yang in the United States, the Yahoo model has become the object that Chinese Internet entrepreneurs are vying to imitate.
Just one month after Yahoo went public, in May 1996, Wang Zhidong, who invented the "Chinese Star" Chinese character input method, opened the Sitong Lifang website (www.srsnet.com).And Zhang Chaoyang, who has been troubled by not being able to find a website model, decided to copy Yahoo completely. He hired someone to develop a Chinese search engine and named it "Sohu", which looks like Yahoo's "cousin".
"Let's start a business together"
From the second half of 1996, Ma Huateng, Neixiu Xijing, who never walked around much with his classmates, often hang out with Zhang Zhidong.
Among the several founders of Tencent, Zhang Zhidong is the only Baoan native who calls himself an "indigenous".The ancestors of the Zhang family worked and studied in the countryside. When he was born, the family still had more than one mu of land, where they planted peanuts and sugar cane. "At that time, Shenzhen was just a few small fishing villages, very poor and quiet. We rolled barefoot on the sand every day. Bicycle rings or cigarette shakers".His father was the first college student in his family. He was admitted to Tsinghua University and studied engineering physics. After graduation, he was first assigned to Wuhan and then transferred back to Guangzhou.His mother was a teacher and had three children, the first two being sons and the third being a daughter.Zhang Zhidong was ranked second. He had an older brother and a younger sister. He was a child who was cared for since he was a child.Li Haixiang, one of the earliest programmers recruited by Tencent, once lived in Zhang Zhidong’s home for two months. He “revealed” and said: “Zhang Zhidong not only can’t cook, he can’t even use the washing machine at home. Once, his sister went on a trip, and the two of us lived like homeless children for several days.” Zhang Zhidong’s father had always wanted to transfer his family from the countryside to Guangzhou, but failed, so he simply returned to Guangzhou. Arrived at home.
In college, Zhang Zhidong and Ma Huateng were in the same class, but the relationship was not very close. "I'm not in the same dormitory with him. He's in 701, and I'm in 725, a few rooms away in the corridor." Recalling Ma Huateng at that time, Zhang Zhidong's impression was: "His perseverance is quite good, and he often walks around in the morning. It took a long time to run around the school, and I also ran for a while, but I couldn’t hold on.” Zhang Zhidong doesn’t like sports, he is obsessed with Go and chess.
After graduating from his undergraduate degree, Zhang Zhidong went to South China University of Technology to study as a graduate student, which is the best engineering university in southern China.Among several founders, Zhang Zhidong's computer algorithm technology is the best.He is not tall, with a simple and honest appearance, even a little dull, which fits well with the nickname of "Winter Melon".He's always there smiling, but inside he's tough and sensitive.Perhaps because of his relatively better family background, Zhang Zhidong didn’t have much demand for material things since he was a child. Even after Tencent went public and became a billionaire, he still drove a not-so-luxury Bora for a long time.
In September 1996, after finishing his postgraduate studies, Zhang Zhidong returned to Shenzhen and joined Liming Network Company, where Ma Huateng had practiced.He was assigned to a small project team dedicated to serving telecommunications companies, and was responsible for providing network services to a paging station.It was at that time that he met Ma Huateng, a classmate who had not been in touch with him for three years.
This is a very dramatic situation: Zhang Zhidong found that one of the company's servers often crashed inexplicably. After analysis, it should be hacked.He investigated the source through some abnormal access logs, and quickly tracked down the Runxun Company whose IP address was from Luohu District.In his memory, the only Runxun person he knew was Ma Huateng, and this classmate was a well-known virus expert in the computer room when he was in college.So, he picked up the phone and called Ma Huateng.
"Is this what you did?" He asked directly in a calm tone.
A familiar chuckle came from the other end of the phone: "I'm just here to test your level."
Ma Huateng proposed to meet, and the appointment was at the Mingdian Cafe near Liming Network Company. This is a very famous gathering place for programmers in Huaqiangbei area. The lights are dim and the voices are full of people. Astringent dream.In this way, the old classmates came together again. In the next year or so, they often met and chatted on weekends. All kinds of news in the Internet world made them smell the breath of a storm. I was as excited as my two reeds.
For Ma Huateng at this time, although Zhang Shuxin, Wang Zhidong, Zhang Chaoyang and others in the north made him quite envious, what really stimulated him was the Huiduo netizen who had just received him not long ago, from Ningbo. peer.
After Ding Lei worked in Sybase for a year, he switched to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) called Feijie, where he used the Firebird program to set up a BBS system based on the public Internet, and bid farewell to the relatively small Huiduo. Net, also bid farewell to Ma Huateng.At this time, he noticed a new Internet trend: In July 1996, American Jack Smith launched the free e-mail system Hotmail; It runs on the Microsoft Windows platform.Ding Lei is keenly aware that e-mail will be a promising basic Internet service.He used all his savings of 7 yuan to quietly register NetEase, a company with only three employees. Then, together with Chen Leihua, a second-year student at South China University of Technology, he developed the first free Chinese e-mail system.
This invention made Ding Lei the first real money entrepreneur in China's Internet industry. He sold the mailbox system to Feihua.com, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Telecom, for 119 million yuan. After that, telecom companies all over the country The websites he opened—mostly called "information ports" at that time, such as Beijing Information Port and Chengdu Information Port—purchased from him one after another.With sets selling for $10 apiece, Ding quickly became a famed millionaire.
Ding Lei’s story made Xiao Ma’s webmaster unable to sit still any longer. He recalled to me: “When I was at Runxun, I also thought of developing an email system, but it was too late and no one supported me. I was the only one. I’m doing it. Ding Lei came up with it and established a company. It should be said that I was influenced by him, and I felt that the Internet seemed to have a chance to start a business, so I wanted to do something.”
One day after the Spring Festival in 1998, Ma Huateng asked Zhang Zhidong to chat. In a coffee shop near the Jinwei Building where Runxun Company was located, he suddenly said to Zhang Zhidong: "Let's start a business together."
(End of this chapter)
I see the storm and I am as excited as the sea.
— Rilke (Austrian poet), "Flags"
The Internet represents a new civilization and culture, and its characteristics are: [-]. Special admiration for small things; [-]. The underground economy does not follow the rules; [-]. Disrespect for authority and health... The best way to predict the future Just create it.
— Nicholas Negroponte (Professor of New Media in the United States), "Digital Survival"
The boy who saw Halley's comet
On April 1986, 4, after a lapse of 11 years, Halley's Comet reappeared in the sky above the earth on time, dragging its gorgeous and mysterious long tail.On that early spring night, countless teenagers from all over the world looked up at the starry sky.
In Shenzhen, a rising seaside city in southern China, a 15-year-old middle school student named Ma Huateng claimed to be the first person in his school to see Halley's Comet. "It appeared in the southwest of the Big Dipper, and it's not as bright as expected, so it's not easy to find with the naked eye." Many years later, he told me this way.Ma Huateng was a member of the Shenzhen Middle School Astronomy Interest Group, which was the only extracurricular interest group he participated in.
Apart from his special interest in astronomy, the reason why Ma was able to find Halley's Comet is that he has more advanced "weapons" than other students.On his 14th birthday, he asked his family for a quasi-professional, 80mm astronomical telescope, which would cost his father nearly four months' salary. "He insisted on it at the time. We refused to buy it, it was too expensive, and it cost more than 4 yuan. He wrote a diary, saying that we killed a scientist's dream. His mother read this diary in his schoolbag one day, and we both After discussing it, I still bought it for him." Father Ma Chenshu recalled later.
After finding Halley's Comet, Ma Huateng took photos, wrote an observation report excitedly, and posted it to Beijing. As a result, he won the third prize in the observation competition and received a bonus of 40 yuan. This is the first time Ma Huateng has earned. a sum of money.Since then, the hobby of astronomy has been retained, he told me, "the only magazine that has been subscribed to since middle school is "Astronomy Lover". In 2004, the birthday present given to him by colleagues in the board of directors was an exquisite telescope model.
Comets are commonly known as "broom stars", which are weird things.As early as 613 BC, the book "Spring and Autumn" recorded that "a star entered the Big Dipper", which was the first definite record of Halley's Comet by human beings.In the prophecies of the Han people and many other peoples, Halley's Comet appeared between the vulvas of the constellations, heralding that the era of order reconstruction is coming.
Ma Huateng's generation of Chinese grew up in an era of tension and drastic changes.
On October 1971, 10, he was born in Basuo Port, Dongfang City, Hainan Island. His parents were employees of the Port Authority of Basuo Port.In the column of birthplace in the household registration booklet, according to the usual practice, "Chaoyang County, Guangdong Province (former name)" was filled in with my father.He has a sister who is 29 years older.
Just one month before Ma Huateng was born, on September 1971, 9, Lin Biao and his wife fled the country and died in a plane crash in Mongolia.This scandal is a turning point in China's contemporary political history, and it almost heralds the coming to an end of a closed era.A year later, diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America began to normalize, ending 13 years of hostility between the two superpowers representing the ancient East and the emerging West.When Ma Huateng was 22 years old, Mao Zedong left the world on September 5, 1976; two years later, 9-year-old Deng Xiaoping won the actual leadership, thus opening the curtain of reform and opening up.
In order to attract foreign investment, the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping chose Guangdong Province, which is far away from Beijing and has a tradition of opening up, as the frontier window of opening up. In January 1979, more than 1 acres of wasteland at the southernmost tip of Nantou Peninsula in Baoan County (formerly known as) and facing Hong Kong across the shore was selected as the first industrial zone that could attract investment. This is the famous Shekou in the future. industrial area.In March of the same year, Bao'an County was renamed Shenzhen. In August 1000, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen were established by the State Council as the four special zones. Stimulated by various preferential policies, a large amount of national investment and international capital were directed to these southern regions.In this way, the engine of economic recovery was forcibly started, and the whole society moved towards opening up halfway.
Ma Huateng spent his childhood in Basuogang, the westernmost tip of Hainan Island, where the majority of residents are Miao.Ma Huateng still remembers that there were many Miao people with tattoos on their faces in the small town. They carried huge bamboo baskets and squatted silently under the rain-dropping eaves.A person’s childhood is most likely to be attracted by unreachable mysteries. The night sky of the South China Sea harbor is particularly clear and deep, full of stars, which can always arouse people’s infinite curiosity and imagination, and make people feel their own insignificance.
In order to cultivate his son's interest in science, the Ma family subscribed to popular science magazines such as "We Love Science".When he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, Ma Huateng read an article in it about how to make astronomical telescopes with various lenses, so he pestered his mother to buy a set of lenses and came back to make a simple telescope. The first work in .
The characteristics of the telescope are: the larger the focal length, the smaller the field of view, and the farther you can see.Facing the unknown fog in the distance, it is difficult for people to get rid of short-sightedness, and only by zooming out and focusing their sight on one point can they see a certain part of the truth clearly.Many years later, I chatted with Ma Huateng about his hobby, and he suddenly said: "Is the Internet like an uncertain galaxy that is exploding?"
Ma Huateng and three middle school classmates
The Chaoshan people to which Ma Huateng's family belongs are a very special branch in China's business pedigree.
Chaoshan is located in the southeast, far away from the Central Plains. The land is narrow and there are few fields. They make a living by fishing and farming. The people have a tradition of sailing to make a living since ancient times. They are rare marine tribes.During the Tang and Song dynasties, Chaoshan people were the most active trading group in Nanyang, and they were also one of the first Han people to accept Christianity.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the imperial court adopted a policy of banning the sea, and Chaoshan people were forced to make a living and still ventured abroad. "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" records: "The Chaozhou people are good at business, the son of the sky, and go abroad alone, and have no long-term possessions other than leather pillows and quilts. Employed for a few years, a little bit of independent business, after a few more years, almost all of them will become overseas giants." Compared with the Shanxi and Huizhou merchants in the Central Plains, the Chaoshan merchants have a weaker sense of official business. Patriarchal" is a distinct personality.In modern times, Chaoshan people have formed a great commercial power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and many rich people from Chaoshan origin have emerged. The most famous one is Li Ka-shing, the richest Chinese man.
In 1984, 13-year-old Ma Huateng moved from Hainan Island to Shenzhen with his parents.
At this time, Shenzhen has become the most concerned and controversial specimen city in China.At the beginning of this year, Deng Xiaoping quietly inspected Shenzhen and wrote an inscription: "Shenzhen's development and experience prove that our policy of establishing a special economic zone is correct." In October, Beijing held a grand military parade for the 10th anniversary of the founding of New China. They all decorated a float to participate in the review. When the Shenzhen float slowly passed Tiananmen Square, the two lines of big characters on it made many Chinese feel very dazzling and unbelievable-"Time is money, efficiency is life".This sentence originally came from a placard at the gate of the Shekou Industrial Zone government. Later, it was defined as the spirit of the city of Shenzhen.In Chinese history, this is the first time that time and money have been so nakedly equated.It goes against both the 35-year-old Confucian tradition and the pre-reform ideology.It is presented in front of the people of the whole country in such a ceremonial way, announcing the official arrival of a strange and fresh era in which everything can be quantified with material.
For young Ma Huateng, whether it is China's economic revival, the rise of Shenzhen, or the business connections of the Chaoshan ethnic group, they are all memories wrapped in his life, and they will slowly penetrate into this person's body and soul, and eventually Constructed into a unique destiny body.
Ma Huateng was transferred to Shenzhen Middle School in the second year of junior high school.At that time, he was only 1.4 meters eleven, which was considered short among 13-year-old children, so he sat in the first row of the class.There is a classmate named Xu Chenye in the same row, who just moved from Tianjin with his parents who work in the education system.
That year, inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s talks in the south, many new immigrants came from all over the country. The first grade of Shenzhen Middle School originally recruited eight classes of students, but later had to expand the enrollment by two classes.Students in these two classes speak mostly Mandarin, while those in the first eight classes speak Cantonese — what they refer to as “vernaculars” — and are also home to Tencent’s other two founders: Zhang Zhidong and Chen Yidan.Zhang Zhidong is a native of Shenzhen, while Chen Yidan's family came to Shenzhen in 1981. His father was from Tianxin Town, Shantou City, Guangdong Province, and later became the branch president of a bank.
Ma Huateng was always in the top three in junior high school.Xu Chenye, Zhang Zhidong, and Chen Yidan all studied "Olympic Mathematics", and only Ma Huateng joined the astronomy interest group.After entering high school, Ma Huateng, Xu Chenye and Chen Yidan were assigned to the same class.In the second year of high school, the school divided classes again. Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye were still together, while Chen Yidan and Zhang Zhidong were in another class.
Chen Yidan recalled his relationship with Ma Huateng at that time: in high school, they recited pi together and competed with each other.At recess, they stood face to face in the corridor and began to recite in turn. Today you recite two more digits than me, and tomorrow I recite two digits more than you. Later, everyone can recite up to 100 decimal places.They also once collected stamps together and helped each other buy stamps.
Gao Jialing is Ma Huateng's high school head teacher. In the memory of this mathematics teacher, Ma Huateng is a good student who studies hard: "I have a good relationship with my classmates, I am very good at uniting people, I have never missed a class, and my homework is always very good. It looks tidy. However, the deeper impression is gone."
In high school, Ma Huateng's stature suddenly increased. Many years later, Xu Chenye was still a little bit aggrieved when he talked about it: "He used to be in the same row as me, but he grew taller and taller, and sat further back." On the other hand, Zhang Zhidong has grown into a strong boy, and his classmates nicknamed him "Winter Melon".
Ma Huateng and his contemporaries belong to a generation ruled by anxiety, whose life, like their country, has been developing in a great, "uncertain prosperity".When he was in middle school, one of the most popular words on campus was "Time waits for no one". The teachers warned young people in an extremely eager tone that today is a once-in-a-century era, and opportunities are like loaches in the river. They can be seen everywhere. Not easy to catch.
Virus expert in the computer room of the university
1989 was the year Ma Huateng was admitted to university.There was a political turmoil in China in June of that year.The college entrance examination was held as scheduled from July 6 to 7, but there was restlessness in the air, and almost all parents hoped that their children would stay with them.So that year, most of the first choice of Shenzhen college entrance examination candidates filled in Shenzhen University.Ma Huateng's college entrance examination score was 7 points (out of 9 points), more than 739 points higher than the key line. According to this score, he could have entered Tsinghua University in Beijing or Fudan University in Shanghai.
Because Shenzhen University did not have the astronomy department that Ma Huateng was most interested in, he settled for the next best thing and entered the computer major of the Department of Electronic Engineering.Xu Chenye and Zhang Zhidong joined him in this major.Xu Chenye also shared the same dormitory with him.There were 36 students in this class. Except for one recommended student, Zhang Zhidong had the highest test score, and Ma Huateng ranked third.
According to Hu Qingbin, who taught computer assembly language courses, recalled: "Ma Huateng's class is the best class in the history of Shenzhen University, and the source of students is particularly good. No one in their class has ever failed a subject-this is before and after Shenzhen University. They have never appeared again. Ma Huateng and others are excellent and have a good foundation. I am not surprised that they have made such a career later. Even if they don’t start Tencent, they will become excellent talents.”
Huang Shunzhen is Ma Huateng’s head teacher at the university, and the course he taught is computer operating system. From the transcripts that have survived to this day, it can be seen that Ma Huateng’s test score in that class was 86 points. Teacher Huang gave an overall score of 88 points, while Zhang Zhidong’s overall score was 92 points. The highest score is [-] points.Huang Shunzhen described two details: "As the class teacher, I have to go to the dormitory once a week to inspect. Every time I go, I will see Ma Huateng reading a book or doing computer operations. He and Zhang Zhidong and other students have good family conditions, and they are assigned by themselves. Computer. While other people are gathering to chat or do other things. Once, Ma Huateng handed in the computer experiment report, and when writing his own name, he got a little creative. He used software to design a A pentium-shaped font looks very beautiful, and then the word 'Huateng' is handwritten on the back. Science and engineering students rarely have such creativity, which impresses me until now."
Xu Chenye, who shared the same dormitory with Ma Huateng, recalled: "I was with him at that time, and we usually memorized English vocabulary. We ran together in the morning and ran around the campus. For a while, he suddenly became interested in qigong."
Shenzhen University is a university established in 1983 with little tradition. It is located on the Nanshan Peninsula. There are a lot of lychee trees planted on the campus, so it is also called "Lychee Garden".At that time, there were farmland and several scattered farmhouses outside the campus.When they were running, Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye would never have expected that after more than 20 years, they would have the opportunity to build a 39-storey Tencent Building on the north side of the campus. From the office on the top floor, they could overlook the campus every day and reminisce about their lost youth.
Another classmate of theirs, Chen Yidan, was admitted to the Department of Chemistry.During college, Chen Yidan became very active. He ran for the chairman of the student union of the chemistry department and was also the deputy director of the student union committee.At the graduation ceremony, he was selected as the valedictorian speaker. "He spoke very passionately, as if graduation means going to the front line." Ma Huateng said.
Since the second year of university, Ma Huateng has devoted a lot of energy to the study of C language.This is a high-level programming language designed and invented by Dennis Rachel of the United States in 1972. It has the advantages of strong drawing ability, good portability, and strong data processing ability. It is the most popular and most used programming language in the world. One of the broadest programming languages.C language is obviously superior to other high-level languages when operating systems and systems use programs and need to operate hardware.Ma Huateng said to me in the future: "We ultimately rely on C to conquer the world." He also said: "Technically, my algorithm is not too strong, which requires people with strong mathematics. But I am relatively strong in application, that is, I know how to realize a product." Compared with Ma Huateng, his classmate, "Winter Melon" Zhang Zhidong is more proficient in algorithms.
Ma Huateng's talent in computers soon became apparent.
In college, for all young people learning to program, the public computer room is the best place to compete in technology.They often write a virus program in a computer to lock the hard disk so that others cannot start it, but they can open it arbitrarily, or another expert can decipher the program designed by others. cool thing.In the memory of the students, Ma Huateng is a master at writing virus programs: "He often locks the hard disk of the computer in the computer room, and even the administrator cannot open it. Later, whenever such a situation occurs, Ma Huateng must be the first one to be killed. Call past 'suspects'."
In addition to C language programming, Ma Huateng's other technical strength is the programming of graphical interfaces.
Computers at that time used DOS programs, and Microsoft Windows had not yet entered the country. Ma Huateng was able to create a Windows-like graphical interface under the DOS system. "At that time, few people in China made such an attempt. I found some basic elements in the book, and then continued to build on them, forming my own graphical interface technology."
In the fourth grade of university, students have to go to a company for graduation internship.Ma Huateng went to Shenzhen Liming Computer Network Co., Ltd., which was the computer company with the highest technological level in southern China at that time.Founded in 1990, it is the first enterprise named after "Computer Network" in China.In the history of China's network development, it has four outstanding records: the earliest computer network communication system integration company, the first company to apply digital data network and frame relay technology, the first company to realize integrated transmission of images, voice and data on asynchronous transmission network Application company, and the pioneer of China's securities computer network.It used to be the largest computer network design and main construction unit in China. The computer automatic matching network trading systems of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges were designed and completed by it. In the mid-4s, China's stock market was in full swing and became a huge game field for wealth fusion, and Liming Network Company also made a lot of money as a result.
Here, 22-year-old Ma Huateng made the first real product in his life.
This is a stock market analysis system with a graphical interface. Ma Huateng has added technical analysis, functional algorithms, and even a set of Chinese character input methods.He brought out all his strengths in C language and graphical interface.In order to analyze the psychological game process between buyers and sellers of stocks, he also learned the knowledge of neurons in order to predict the future direction of stocks.This is a very practical stock analysis software, users can visually see the fluctuations of the stock market, and carry out band analysis.
During the stock boom at that time, countless stock trading software appeared across the country, all of which claimed to be "crystal balls" that could see the future, and Ma Huateng's product was one of them.However, because of its very unique and graphic design, it is still eye-catching even in Liming Network, where programmers gather.The company found the intern and offered to buy his software.Ma Huateng gritted his teeth, and carefully offered a price of 5 yuan, which was equivalent to three years' salary of a college graduate at that time. Unexpectedly, the other party agreed without a counter-offer.
In this way, Ma Huateng's college career ended in a software transaction.In the past 4 years, he has not served as a student cadre, nor has he run for any association position.Among Yunyun's students, he is just a good-looking, quiet, good-looking science student who occasionally likes to make trouble in the computer room.There is nothing to suggest that he possessed any superior talent for administration or public affairs.
The "Little Horse" in Run Xun Company
In September 1993, Ma Huateng and his classmates went their separate ways.
Zhang Zhidong was admitted to the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou as a graduate student, where he will continue to hone his algorithm skills.Xu Chenye first worked for half a year, and then went to Nanjing University to study computer application as a graduate student. After graduation, he joined the Shenzhen Telecom Data Communication Bureau.Chen Yidan was assigned to the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, and at the same time he was studying for a master's degree in economic law at the Law School of Nanjing University.Ma Huateng went to Shenzhen Runxun Communication Group Co., Ltd. as a software engineer.
Ma Huateng's job hunting experience is very simple: one day in March 1993, when he was an intern at Liming Network Company, he went to a computer bookstore in Huaqiangbei to search for books, and happened to meet a classmate majoring in radio, who had been hired by Run Xun.The classmate told Ma Huateng that Runxun was recruiting software engineers, and they could try it out.Ma Huateng passed by, and he showed the recruiter the stock market analysis system he designed, and he was notified to hire the next day.
At that time, Runxun was a new company that had only been established for one year, but it was in an explosive growth industry - paging station service.The pager is the receiver of the called user in the wireless paging system. After receiving the signal, it will sound or vibrate and display relevant information.It is small in size and can be distinguished from the waist.Pagers entered China in 1983, and around 1990, they almost reached the point of "everyone has one machine".Its popularity means that China at that time has actually entered the era of instant messaging.For quite a long time, the service fee of the paging station has been high. The network access fee is 100 yuan, the service fee of the digital machine is 180 yuan a year, and the Chinese character machine is 600 yuan a year.This is an extremely profitable industry.
Before 1990, the paging industry was almost monopolized by state-owned telecommunications companies, and it was gradually opened to private use later.The two founders of Run Xun have a solid background in the telecommunications industry.First, they creatively launched the cross-border paging service between the mainland and Hong Kong, and quickly gained a firm foothold in the Shenzhen market; later, they took the lead in launching a series of services such as national satellite networking and secretary stations, and the company quickly grew into the largest in southern China. Paging station service business.At its peak, the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and entered the Hang Seng Index, with an annual turnover of 20 billion yuan and a gross profit of more than 30%.
Ma Huateng worked in this legendary company until the end of 1998, witnessing the whole process of its rise and fall.When he first joined the company, he wrote software programs for the paging system in the R&D department, with a monthly salary of 1100 yuan. Later, he transferred to the business department and participated in the construction of paging stations in various places. From the development of the paging system to the installation of transmitters, he was responsible for software writing and network Realized, the monthly salary has gradually risen to more than 8000 yuan.
In the highly hierarchical Run Xun, Ma Huateng's highest position is supervisor, and above him are executive director, general manager, deputy general manager, department vice president, director, senior manager, manager and senior executive.Colleagues had a very low impression of him. They called him "Little Horse", one of hundreds of "Little Horses".
Of course, this is only part of the truth.In another virtual world, there lives a restless and ambitious Ma Huateng.
When he just graduated, Ma Huateng wanted to start a business in Huaqiangbei. His earliest idea was to help customers install computers.At that time, China had two major distribution centers for computer accessories, Zhongguancun in Beijing in the north and Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen in the south.Ma Huateng has assembled all early generations of computers from 8086, 286, 386 to 486, etc. According to the wages, he can earn 50 yuan for installing one computer, and installing two computers a day, the income is already higher than the salary of Run Xun.However, he quickly dismissed this idea: "Because I found out that the people who installed machines in Huaqiangbei were all junior high school students from the countryside. They are much more familiar with the market of accessories than you, and they are also diligent in their hands and feet. They can't beat them. "
Later, he and several friends developed a stock quote receiving system, "It is to use a pager to receive the stock quotes in the airwaves, after receiving them, use a single-board computer to realize transcoding, and connect them to the computer through a serial port." .Ma Huateng named it "Shaba Card" and sold it in the Huaqiangbei market. The initial price was 8000 yuan, then it was reduced to 6000 yuan, and then it was 4000 yuan. "The cost was 1000 yuan. set".After making a little money, the business died down.
Until the end of 1994, Ma Huateng was suddenly attracted by a new thing called Huiduo.com.
Horse stationmaster in Huiduo.com
Huiduo.com, formerly known as FidoNet in English, is sometimes translated as "huiduowang". It was born in the United States in 1984. It is a BBS (electronic bulletin board) website building program that connects through telephone lines and forwards letters in a point-to-point manner. , is an alternative communication network built by technology enthusiasts.Different from the later Internet, Huiduo.com does not support online communication, and a telephone line can only be used by one person. After uploading content, users must quickly get down, otherwise others will not be able to access it.
In 1991, Luo Yi, a Taiwanese who settled in Beijing, opened Huiduo.com's first site in China - the "Great Wall" station. The FidoNet station group in China was called CFido.In the beginning, almost all the people on Huiduo.com were Chinese students returning home from overseas. Gradually, domestic technology enthusiasts also found here. Some of them set up their own sites in various cities. The sites are connected into a network, becoming the cradle of China's first generation of Internet users.
Ma Huateng knew about this new thing through Rising. "Rising makes anti-virus software. It has an electronic bulletin board that you can dial up with a modem to download updated software. That's where I learned about Huiduo.com." Ma Huateng was quickly attracted by Huiduo.com Attracted so much that it's unstoppable. "It's really amazing. After dialing up through the modem, there will be a human-machine interface, with menus and discussion areas, where you can meet people like you from all over the world. We have never met, but You can show each other the latest software, exchange experience in encryption and decryption, and share your insights on the life of the program."
In May 2011, Ma Huateng, who is already the chairman of the board of directors of Tencent, participated in the 5th China Internet Webmaster Annual Conference as a "15-year old webmaster". Passion: "At that time, all of us computer software programmers thought that all the programming was done locally. When I passed the remote platform for the first time and saw the words spit out on the screen, I was very excited, and it felt like opening a door. Like a new door, I think it was the beginning of the Internet at the time."
After playing for nearly half a year, Ma Huateng, who was in high spirits, decided to build a site by himself. In February 1995, he opened the Shenzhen station of Huiduo.com and named it ponysoft. It is 2/655, 101 is the area code of China, and 655 is the station number of "Mazhan".
When "Mazhan" was founded, there were less than 10 Huiduo websites nationwide, including two in Beijing, one in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, with a total of about 100 active users, including many Internet users in China in the future. Famous figures in history.Among these stations, "Mazhan" may be the most luxurious one: Ma Huateng installed 4 telephone lines at home and equipped with 8 computers, that is to say, it can accept transmission applications from 4 users at the same time.At that time, the initial installation of domestic telephones was very expensive, costing 8000 yuan a set.Ma Huateng's older sister works at a telephone company and applied for a half-price discount, but the purchase and use of equipment still cost Ma Huateng nearly 5 yuan, which is equivalent to investing all the income from selling stock market software.
From buying a telescope worth 700 yuan to spending 5 yuan to build a multi-site, we can vaguely read some of Ma Huateng’s nature: this seemingly quiet and weak southern scholar actually has a kind of decisive talent that dares to be willing to take risks and invest in it. It comes from The traditional nature of Chaoshan people.
The establishment of "Mazhan" made Ma Huateng's life suddenly busy and enriched.His mother Huang Huiqing recalled: "In those two years, he spent days and nights on the Internet, receiving letters and sending replies. He was extremely busy. Sometimes he would write a note to me when he was on a business trip. Teach me that once a netizen calls and says that the network is unavailable, follow the steps on the note to troubleshoot."
In that year, Ma Huateng also served as the correspondent of "Computer World" in Shenzhen. He wrote a report "BBS and Huiduo Network", which briefly described the development status of Huiduo Network in China, and also reported the development of Huiduo Network in 11 countries across the country. The site's address and phone number are published.Driven by Ma Huateng and others, Huiduo.com has more and more sites: in early 1996, Qiu Bojun set up a "West Line" site in Zhuhai; in May of the same year, Lei Jun established a "West Point" site in Beijing.
Ma Huateng, who is not sociable and shy to express in real life, is a very active person in the virtual world.A Huiduo.com netizen named Li Zonghua recalled: "He is simply a chatterbox on the Internet, always chattering and discussing a technical issue with you repeatedly. He values the opinions of every 'Mazhan' user and will keep writing Mail, never bored."
Zhang Xiaolong, the senior vice president of Tencent and the "father of WeChat", became famous earlier than Ma Huateng. He was regarded as the best programmer in the south because he independently wrote Foxmail (launched in January 1997 - editor's note).He recalled to me the first time he knew the details of Ma Huateng: "Once, I suddenly received an email from a user who raised a question about the design of Foxmail. This is a very subtle error, which is difficult for outsiders to observe. .I was a little surprised when he said his name was Pony and he was running a site."
Ma Huateng will be called "China's No. [-] Product Manager" in the future. His product awareness and understanding of user experience were first formed during the "Mazhan" period.
China's first batch of Internet people
Huiduo.com, which Ma Huateng is addicted to, is not the Internet in the true sense. It is just a prototype in the early stage of the information revolution. Obviously, it has not become the mainstream model. The situation rushed away in an unfamiliar direction.All that is hard will melt away.
In 1994, when Ma Huateng came into contact with Huiduo.com, in the distant United States, two gifted teenagers bit through the hard "eggshell" of the Internet economy with their fearless teeth.
A 28.8K high-speed modem was developed, which can transmit 3KB files per second. Mark Anderson, who was also born in 1971 like Ma Huateng, developed the UNIX version of the Mosaic web browser. At the same time, the Windows system of personal computers also Maturing day by day, these technological breakthroughs are enough to detonate a network revolution.
Just in April 1994, Jerry Yang, a Chinese-American student at Stanford University, invented the earliest website search software. He gave up his upcoming doctorate and established Yahoo in a trailer. The English name is "Yahoo!".An unprecedented era of online business has arrived.In September of the same year, Nicholas Negroponte, a professor of new media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote "Digital Survival". Elements will change" "Computing is no longer just about computers, it determines our survival" point of view.He believes that with the maturity of Internet technology, the material world suddenly turns to virtuality. Through electronic flow, knowledge, information, and commodity manufacturing and sales may realize a completely different way of existence from the past.
From 1995 to 1996, the Internet world entered a dizzying seismic period.
In May 1995, the American company Sun Microsystems developed Java program technology, which greatly improved the image and voice performance of the World Wide Web.On August 5 of the same year, Netscape Communications, which was co-founded by Mark Anderson, was listed on NASDAQ at an issue price of $8 per share, and the closing price on that day reached $9 per share, with a market value of $28 billion. The Wall Street Journal commented that it took Netscape only "about a minute" to achieve what General Motors took 58.5 years to achieve.Netscape's performance in the browser market seriously threatened Microsoft's industry status.
On April 1996, 4, Jerry Yang's Yahoo was listed on Nasdaq. Within a day, the stock price soared from US$12 to US$13, making him a new giant with a market value of US$43 million.Yahoo has established a search-based portal model, which has profoundly influenced the technology and business application trends of the Internet.
In the East, whether it is the rise of Mark Anderson, Jerry Yang, or Negroponte's prophecy, it sounds so far away.However, the attempt to the Internet economy has quietly started, and the distance between China and the world is so close that we know each other by breath.
On May 1994, 5, the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences set up the first web server in China and launched China's first set of web pages. In addition to introducing China's high-tech development, there is also a column called "Tour in China".In September of the same year, the General Administration of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of China and the Department of Commerce of the United States signed an agreement on the Internet between China and the United States.The agreement stipulates that China Telecom will open two 15K dedicated lines through Sprint, one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai.The construction of China's public computer Internet started from this point.
These seemingly inconspicuous measures at the time were later regarded as having the significance of "Genesis". They meant that a network model with more technical and commercial prospects than Huiduo.com was emerging.
In April 1995, Ma Huateng received a native of Ningbo, Zhejiang named Ding Lei in Shenzhen.Ding Lei's figure is about the same as that of Ma Huateng, about 4 meters. What's more, they were both born in October 1.8.Different from Ma Huateng's handsome appearance, Ding Lei has a pair of small mouse-like eyes and a cynical face.
As the head of Huiduo.com's Shenzhen station, Ma Huateng is obliged to receive Huiduo.com netizens who drifted south to Shenzhen.At this time, Ding Lei is just a confused jobless youth.He graduated from Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology, majoring in Microwave Communication and minoring in Computer.This is a technical genius with a passion for computers and superhuman intuition, and he planned to start a computer company of his own from the very beginning.In the college classmate record, some classmates left him a message, "I hope Ding Lei will realize his wish of owning his own computer company as soon as possible."After graduating from university, Ding Lei returned to his hometown Ningbo to work as an engineer in the telecommunications bureau. In the computer room, he became one of the first 100 users of Huiduo.com.Unlike Ma Huateng, he did not open his own site, but used the free line resources of the telecommunications bureau to become a "repeater" to help netizens from all over the world exchange envelopes.It was also at that time that he got to know Ma Huateng from Shenzhen.
By the spring of 1995, Ding Lei finally could no longer bear the dull and boring life, and he decided to "fire himself".This idea was strongly opposed by his family, but he made up his mind to go, "This is the first time I have fired myself, but whether I have the courage to take this step will be a watershed in my life."He ran to the south where the heat wave was rolling alone, wandered around, and visited a few netizens who were very familiar on the Internet but had never met in person. He wanted to see what they looked like and what strange thoughts they had.In Shenzhen, he met the Xiaoma stationmaster who was also anxious and lost his direction.In May of this year, Ding Lei joined the Guangzhou branch of Sybase, an American database software company, as a technical support engineer.
While Ma Huateng and Ding Lei, who were originally technicians, looked at each other blankly in the south, some people who seemed to have no professional relationship with the information industry hurriedly opened up a new world.
In April of that year, a 4-year-old university foreign language teacher named Ma Yun founded the "China Yellow Pages" website in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It was officially launched in May, claiming to be the first online Chinese business information site.Ma Yun wants to create an Internet business model oriented to enterprise services. The way to make money is to encourage enterprises to post their business information online.
In May, Zhang Shuxin, who studied applied chemistry, and her husband founded Yinghaiwei Company in Beijing. Her "Yinghaiwei Time and Space" claimed to be the only domestic network based on public information services and open to ordinary families. "When you enter Yinghaiwei Time and Space, you can read E-newspapers, go to the Internet coffee shop to chat with friends who have not met, go to the Internet forum to speak freely, and you can go to the Internet at any time.”In the green period of China's Internet, Ying Haiwei played the role of an enlightener and leader, and it was the first Internet company that formed a public brand effect.Zhang Shuxin erected the first billboard in China's Internet industry at the corner of the southern end of Baiyi Road (now known as Zhongguancun Street—editor's note) in Zhongguancun, "How far are Chinese from the information superhighway—5 meters to the north" , it is regarded as a road sign by many people.
In July, Zhang Chaoyang, who had already received a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, met Negroponte from the same school, and was immediately fascinated by the Internet.He decided to give up his ideal of being a "Li Zhengdao-style physicist" and devote himself to the more exciting "digital life".With the help of Negroponte, Zhang Chaoyang raised US$7 million and returned to Beijing at the end of the year to start a project called China Online.
It has been proved in the future that Ma Yun and others are on the right path, although they will encounter various setbacks, and not everyone has come to the end of success.
After entering 1996, with the great success of the Chinese youth Jerry Yang in the United States, the Yahoo model has become the object that Chinese Internet entrepreneurs are vying to imitate.
Just one month after Yahoo went public, in May 1996, Wang Zhidong, who invented the "Chinese Star" Chinese character input method, opened the Sitong Lifang website (www.srsnet.com).And Zhang Chaoyang, who has been troubled by not being able to find a website model, decided to copy Yahoo completely. He hired someone to develop a Chinese search engine and named it "Sohu", which looks like Yahoo's "cousin".
"Let's start a business together"
From the second half of 1996, Ma Huateng, Neixiu Xijing, who never walked around much with his classmates, often hang out with Zhang Zhidong.
Among the several founders of Tencent, Zhang Zhidong is the only Baoan native who calls himself an "indigenous".The ancestors of the Zhang family worked and studied in the countryside. When he was born, the family still had more than one mu of land, where they planted peanuts and sugar cane. "At that time, Shenzhen was just a few small fishing villages, very poor and quiet. We rolled barefoot on the sand every day. Bicycle rings or cigarette shakers".His father was the first college student in his family. He was admitted to Tsinghua University and studied engineering physics. After graduation, he was first assigned to Wuhan and then transferred back to Guangzhou.His mother was a teacher and had three children, the first two being sons and the third being a daughter.Zhang Zhidong was ranked second. He had an older brother and a younger sister. He was a child who was cared for since he was a child.Li Haixiang, one of the earliest programmers recruited by Tencent, once lived in Zhang Zhidong’s home for two months. He “revealed” and said: “Zhang Zhidong not only can’t cook, he can’t even use the washing machine at home. Once, his sister went on a trip, and the two of us lived like homeless children for several days.” Zhang Zhidong’s father had always wanted to transfer his family from the countryside to Guangzhou, but failed, so he simply returned to Guangzhou. Arrived at home.
In college, Zhang Zhidong and Ma Huateng were in the same class, but the relationship was not very close. "I'm not in the same dormitory with him. He's in 701, and I'm in 725, a few rooms away in the corridor." Recalling Ma Huateng at that time, Zhang Zhidong's impression was: "His perseverance is quite good, and he often walks around in the morning. It took a long time to run around the school, and I also ran for a while, but I couldn’t hold on.” Zhang Zhidong doesn’t like sports, he is obsessed with Go and chess.
After graduating from his undergraduate degree, Zhang Zhidong went to South China University of Technology to study as a graduate student, which is the best engineering university in southern China.Among several founders, Zhang Zhidong's computer algorithm technology is the best.He is not tall, with a simple and honest appearance, even a little dull, which fits well with the nickname of "Winter Melon".He's always there smiling, but inside he's tough and sensitive.Perhaps because of his relatively better family background, Zhang Zhidong didn’t have much demand for material things since he was a child. Even after Tencent went public and became a billionaire, he still drove a not-so-luxury Bora for a long time.
In September 1996, after finishing his postgraduate studies, Zhang Zhidong returned to Shenzhen and joined Liming Network Company, where Ma Huateng had practiced.He was assigned to a small project team dedicated to serving telecommunications companies, and was responsible for providing network services to a paging station.It was at that time that he met Ma Huateng, a classmate who had not been in touch with him for three years.
This is a very dramatic situation: Zhang Zhidong found that one of the company's servers often crashed inexplicably. After analysis, it should be hacked.He investigated the source through some abnormal access logs, and quickly tracked down the Runxun Company whose IP address was from Luohu District.In his memory, the only Runxun person he knew was Ma Huateng, and this classmate was a well-known virus expert in the computer room when he was in college.So, he picked up the phone and called Ma Huateng.
"Is this what you did?" He asked directly in a calm tone.
A familiar chuckle came from the other end of the phone: "I'm just here to test your level."
Ma Huateng proposed to meet, and the appointment was at the Mingdian Cafe near Liming Network Company. This is a very famous gathering place for programmers in Huaqiangbei area. The lights are dim and the voices are full of people. Astringent dream.In this way, the old classmates came together again. In the next year or so, they often met and chatted on weekends. All kinds of news in the Internet world made them smell the breath of a storm. I was as excited as my two reeds.
For Ma Huateng at this time, although Zhang Shuxin, Wang Zhidong, Zhang Chaoyang and others in the north made him quite envious, what really stimulated him was the Huiduo netizen who had just received him not long ago, from Ningbo. peer.
After Ding Lei worked in Sybase for a year, he switched to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) called Feijie, where he used the Firebird program to set up a BBS system based on the public Internet, and bid farewell to the relatively small Huiduo. Net, also bid farewell to Ma Huateng.At this time, he noticed a new Internet trend: In July 1996, American Jack Smith launched the free e-mail system Hotmail; It runs on the Microsoft Windows platform.Ding Lei is keenly aware that e-mail will be a promising basic Internet service.He used all his savings of 7 yuan to quietly register NetEase, a company with only three employees. Then, together with Chen Leihua, a second-year student at South China University of Technology, he developed the first free Chinese e-mail system.
This invention made Ding Lei the first real money entrepreneur in China's Internet industry. He sold the mailbox system to Feihua.com, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Telecom, for 119 million yuan. After that, telecom companies all over the country The websites he opened—mostly called "information ports" at that time, such as Beijing Information Port and Chengdu Information Port—purchased from him one after another.With sets selling for $10 apiece, Ding quickly became a famed millionaire.
Ding Lei’s story made Xiao Ma’s webmaster unable to sit still any longer. He recalled to me: “When I was at Runxun, I also thought of developing an email system, but it was too late and no one supported me. I was the only one. I’m doing it. Ding Lei came up with it and established a company. It should be said that I was influenced by him, and I felt that the Internet seemed to have a chance to start a business, so I wanted to do something.”
One day after the Spring Festival in 1998, Ma Huateng asked Zhang Zhidong to chat. In a coffee shop near the Jinwei Building where Runxun Company was located, he suddenly said to Zhang Zhidong: "Let's start a business together."
(End of this chapter)
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