Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies
Chapter 3 Beginning: An Unclear Departure
Chapter 3 Beginning: An Unclear Departure
To redouble all the strength to charge forward, do not look back.This way, you'll be able to see things you couldn't otherwise see.
——Tadao Ando (Japanese architect)
In those years of starting a business, we never thought about the future, and we were all worried about surviving tomorrow.
——Ma Huateng
Founding date: November 1998, 11
Most people's entrepreneurship is a continuation of past experience, and Ma Huateng is no exception.He excitedly described to Zhang Zhidong the main product of the company he was about to start: connecting the newly emerging Internet with the very popular pager, developing a software system that can receive calls from the Internet in the pager, and receive news and e-mails. mail etc.Ma Huateng called this system "wireless network paging system", and its sales targets are paging stations all over the country.
This idea seems to be a good idea. It is not only related to Runxun's major, but also has the shadow of the stock card he developed before, and seems to be inspired by Ding Lei's "selling the system".Ma Huateng has been immersed in the field of paging services for 5 years, while Zhang Zhidong is a master of integrated systems, so their cooperation is a "natural match".Of course, later facts proved that these sound analyzes are very unreliable.
Zhang Zhidong was moved by Ma Huateng, and he was planning to leave Liming Internet Company at that time.He has an aunt in the United States, according to the arrangement of the family, he will go abroad to join his aunt.Ma Huateng's invitation gave him another choice, and he was indeed very interested in the products Ma Huateng described. "None of us had the idea of getting rich at that time, but we wanted to do something that we liked and had value." He told me later.He was even faster than Ma Huateng when it came to resigning: "I left Liming first, and then he made up his mind to leave Runxun."
In the next few months, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong began to look for business partners.First, Zhang Zhidong found Chen Yidan, they have been getting closer, and they used to travel together.Chen Yidan's job at the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau is very stable, and he got married early two years ago and lived a happy life. However, he was quite moved to hear that he could start a business with his good friend.When he went home to discuss with his wife, his concern at the time was: what would happen to the family's financial resources in case of failure.At this time, his wife said: "It's okay, I still have a job." Chen Yidan said to me later: "To this day, I am still deeply grateful for this sentence from my wife." As for Xu Chenye, who is in the same class, he works in the Shenzhen Telecommunications and Data Communication Bureau, so of course he has more professional advantages.
When these four students sat together, you looked at me and I looked at you, and found a problem: none of them was engaged in sales.
At this time, the "fifth person" Zeng Liqing appeared.
Zeng Liqing was born in January 1970, nearly two years older than Ma Huateng, but graduated in the same year.He studied communication at Xidian University, and worked in Shenzhen Telecom Data Communication Bureau after graduation.Zeng Liqing is tall, cheerful, and eloquent. His personality is completely different from Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong.At a young age, he has a record: he once persuaded a real estate developer in Shenzhen to invest 1 million yuan to build the country's first broadband community by himself.He is very popular in the telecommunications bureau, and he is the marketing manager of Longmai Company, a subsidiary of the bureau.Just in 120, the Telecommunications Bureau rectified the "tertiary industry", and Longmai was facing the fate of being abolished. Zeng Liqing was uncertain about the future, and happened to come into contact with Ma Huateng who was looking for sales professionals everywhere.
Zeng Liqing recalled: "The first time I met Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong about the establishment of the company was in the small office of Longmai Company. After closing the door, we simply divided the work, and Ma Huateng was in charge of strategy and products. Zhang Zhidong is in charge of technology, and I am in charge of the market.”
The new company to be established will have a registered capital of 50 yuan.When the company went to register, neither Ma Huateng nor Zhang Zhidong had completed the resignation procedures, so the name of the chairman was Ma Huateng's mother, Huang Huiqing, even though she had never been to the company.
When registering the company name, it was decided to use "Xun" as the suffix, indicating that it was related to "communication", but some twists and turns occurred in the choice of the prefix.Ma Huateng recalled: "The first name I came up with was Wangxun, which means network communication. It is the most direct and simplest. The second choice is Xircom, the third is Feixun, and the fourth name is Tencent. My father ran the industrial and commercial registration for me. He came back and said that the first few could not be registered, and only 'Tencent' was fine. I thought it would be too personal to have my name, and it was not good. But my father said, that's it Let’s go, or else you won’t be able to register. So it’s called Tencent.” Later, some people speculated that “Teng” was taken from Ma Huateng’s name, and “Xun” was related to “Run Xun”, which is also an inseparable explanation.
The company's English name Tencent was inspired by Lucent (Lucent). "At that time, left-right symmetry was emphasized, and Tencent was very symmetrical."Dividing this word is Ten Cent ([-] cents). It may be "God's will" that Tencent will achieve great success with the profit model of micro-settlement in the future.
Let's talk about the office space.Tencent's first office is in an old building facing south in Huaqiangbei SEG Science and Technology Pioneer Park.Ma Huateng recalled: "I knew a Hong Kong businessman named Tao Fa who was in the pager business. He always wanted to lure me to do it. I said I wanted to start my own business. He happened to have a vacant office in the Science and Technology Park. Lend it to me for a few months.” The office was on the fourth floor, covering an area of more than 30 square meters. There was a pair of gaudy large ceramic vases at the door, and a rotating crystal colored vase used in dance halls hung on the top of the room. lamp.Chen Yidan bought a few desks from the Xiangjiang Furniture Market, and the room was full with five or six people squeezed together.
A few months later, Hong Kong people wanted to take back the house. Ma Huateng found a new office on the second floor of the second east building next to it. This time it was about 100 square meters and divided into two rooms. Workspace.When I was writing this book, the office was empty, but it was still preserved. There were some old photos pasted on the peeling walls, dusty desks and chairs piled up in the corners, and old , The memory that has never been dissipated.
Zhang Zhidong recalled a detail: one day, he and Ma Huateng imagined the future of Tencent in the office. The multi-square-meter office is full.
The founding date of Tencent was determined to be November 1998, 11, but in fact, there was no "official" day. From the Spring Festival in 11 to the beginning of the next year, Ma Huateng and his entrepreneurial partners were busy Day after day was spent.Life is like a big river, the so-called "source" is the product marked by the latecomers.
The Unmissable "Internet Generation"
Now let us go back and see what was happening in the Internet world when Tencent was born.
In the Internet history of China and even the world, the two years from 1998 to 1999 were a mysterious period. If you miss this period, you will also miss a generation.
Let's look at the United States first--
On November 1998, 11, America Online acquired Netscape for US$24 billion. The browser battle between Netscape and Microsoft entered a fierce stage. Bill Gates very strongly compared Windows 42 and IE browsers. Bundled sales have achieved miraculous results.Microsoft also announced Windows 95 this year, introducing the web page design ideas in the browser into Windows, making Windows more vivid and practical, and truly becoming an Internet-oriented desktop system.This year, Microsoft's stock price soared 98%. At the same time, it was severely accused of unfair competition. The U.S. District Court in Washington opened a court hearing to hear the case that the Department of Justice and 72 state governments sued Microsoft for violating the federal antitrust law.
In 1998, after Jobs returned to Apple, he launched the minimalist iMac computer. Apple turned losses into profits and achieved victory in the hardware industry.But there is no sign that it will become the new ruler. At this time, the world belongs to software and the Internet, and Jobs is just a "returned bad boy".
In 1998, the most sought-after Internet hero in the United States was the young Chinese-American Jerry Yang. He appeared on the covers of "Time" and "Business Week" and was also listed in "Forbes" magazine's "10 High-Tech Billionaires" list with A net worth of $16 billion jumps to No. 1973.Yahoo's business began to enter China, and Jerry Yang even considered selling website advertisements in China.Of course, it was also in this year that he made the stupidest decision in his life: Two Stanford alumni born in 100 came to find Jerry Yang, wanting to sell one of his search technologies to Yahoo, Jerry Yang turned them down gracefully. On September 9th, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were forced to work alone in a garage in suburban California. They named the company Google.
in China--
Inspired by the "Miracle of Jerry Yang", China's Internet pioneers almost simultaneously found a path to growth.
In April 1998, Zhang Chaoyang's team took the lead in completing the development of the Chinese search system. He "cloned" a Chinese version for Sohu according to the Yahoo model. In October, Zhang Chaoyang was selected as one of the "4 Global Digital Heroes" by the US "Time" magazine, which made him the first national news figure in the Internet industry.
In August 1998, Wang Zhidong of Sitong Lifang came into contact with Huayuan Life Information Network, the largest Chinese website in North America, during his investigation in the United States. The two sides hit it off and quickly started merger negotiations. On December 8, Sina.com was established, declaring that it would "provide software, news, information and online services in an all-round way, and strive to become the world's largest Chinese website."
In Guangzhou, Ding Lei, who made his first pot of gold by selling e-mails, also made a genius decision to transform NetEase from a software sales company into a portal website.
So far, the "portal era" of China's Internet has arrived, and Sina, Netease and Sohu have emerged one after another, becoming the "Big Three" that will rule the next 10 years. On January 1999, 1, the "China Business Times" announced the top ten commercial websites in China at that time, namely Sina, 13 Electronic Post Office, Sohu, Netease, Guozhong.com, People's Daily website, Shanghai Hotline, ChinaByte, Capital Online and Yahoo China.From the types of selected websites, it can be seen that they are all news and information portal websites, and almost none of them have a profit model. The criteria for the selection agency is: "The number of visits is the most important, followed by content, and then aesthetics."
At the same time, some non-portal models have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, such as online games, e-commerce and professional search engines, none of which received the same attention as the "Big Three" at that time.
From 1998 to 1999, three people successively entered the field of online games. In June 1998, Bao Yueqiao, who developed the Sinicized Chinese platform system UCDOS, founded Lianzhong Games in Beijing, which quickly became the largest chess and card game website in China. In August 6, Zhu Jun, who dropped out of university after only two years of study, launched the entertainment community Gamenow in Shanghai, which was later renamed "Ninth City" ("Nine City" for short). In November, Chen Tianqiao, who was born in 1999 and graduated from Fudan University, took out 8 yuan of his savings to found Shanda Network in Shanghai, and began to operate a virtual community called "Internet Guigu".Online games will become the most profitable business in China's Internet industry in the future, but at the time they were "face-faced boys next to the protagonist", and they were not favored at all.
Attempts in the field of e-commerce also have their own merits. In June 1998, Liu Qiangdong founded Jingdong Company in Zhongguancun to act as an agent to sell optical and magnetic products, and later transformed into an e-commerce company. In March 6, Jack Ma founded Alibaba, a B1999B (Business to Business) website dedicated to small and medium-sized foreign trade companies, with only 3 yuan.A few months later, this unknown Chinese website became the most active e-commerce website in the world. Forbes sent reporters to Hangzhou and finally found this small company in a residential area called Lakeside Garden. In June, Ctrip, which aimed at the tourism industry, was born. Its four founders were the most prominent entrepreneurs at that time: Shen Nanpeng was the president of Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific, Liang Jianzhang was the consulting director of Oracle China, and Ji Qi founded In a technology company, Fan Min is the general manager of Shanghai Travel Agency. In November, Li Guoqing, who had been a self-employed bookseller for many years, and his returnee wife Yu Yu jointly founded Dangdang.com, which is engaged in online book sales. Its model is completely copied from the American Amazon website.
In the field of search, Baidu and 3721 appeared. In October 1998, Zhou Hongyi, a software engineer of Beijing Founder Group, developed a software that supports users to find the website they want to reach through Chinese. He founded Guofeng Internet Software in his hut. The company, the company's website name is 10, which is taken from the proverb "No matter what 3721 21", it means doing its own thing.Zhou Hongyi, born in 1970, will become one of Ma Huateng's most difficult enemies in the future. At the end of 1999, Li Yanhong, who obtained a master's degree in computer science in the United States, returned to China to found Baidu. At that time, he was already a well-known search technology expert in Silicon Valley. The meaning of "Baidu" comes from Xin Qiji's famous sentence: "People look for him thousands of Baidu, and suddenly look back, but the man is there, in a dimly lit place."
In the history of Chinese enterprises, these Internet entrepreneurial groups that appeared from 1998 to 1999 were an unprecedented generation. They formed a noisy and bright galaxy and separated a new generation of entrepreneurs.
First of all, they are very young, born in the mid to late 20s and early 60s.This is the "golden generation" in contemporary China. Most of them have received formal academic education and a good professional background. Many of them have master's or doctoral degrees, and even graduated from the best universities in the world.Their vigor and knowledge are far beyond the comparison of previous grassroots entrepreneurs who were born in rural areas or at the bottom of cities.
Secondly, these entrepreneurs are exposed to a information industry that has been born out of nowhere.They have been part of the global Internet wave from the first day. They have no natural resources, powerful relationships to rely on, and no need to engage in any rent-seeking games with the government. out of competition.Therefore, this is a born global generation, a generation that starts businesses under the sun.
Finally, they are a generation catalyzed by venture capital and international capital markets, and they are "entrepreneurs with wings".This is an entrepreneurial model that was unheard of in the Chinese business community in the past.Zhang Chaoyang and Li Yanhong had the help of venture capital from the beginning, Zhou Hongyi and Chen Tianqiao received venture capital injection within one year of business operation, and Ma Yun became the target of international capital after being reported by "Forbes".Sina, Sohu and Netease have won thousands of attention. At the end of 1999, they successively launched plans to go public on NASDAQ.
years of embarrassment
In the galaxy of Internet Genesis, Tencent is undoubtedly the most inconspicuous one.
It does not belong to any popular concepts such as portals, search, or e-commerce. It cannot define itself, and even its starting point is wrong. ", is a terrible product.
It seems that this is a very promising project. Ma Huateng designed a lot of innovative paging services in the package solution: such as web page paging service, users can visit the home page of the paging station on the Internet without making long-distance calls, The information can be sent to the pager through the paging system; another example is the mail paging service, the user can see the subject and part of the content sent to the e-mail on the pager; According to the itinerary, the network secretary will send the matter to the pager in time at the set time.
In addition, Ma Huateng also designed a virtual paging service: users do not need to have a real pager, they only need to have a virtual paging number, and friends can directly call the paging station and send messages to your e-mail.In principle, this is already an instant messaging tool based on the Internet.
However, when it comes down to it, it's still a terrible product.
The reason it is bad is not because it is technically immature, but because it violates a very simple but imperceptible principle of competition: in an industry that lacks growth, it is difficult to obtain equivalent returns for any innovation, so it is meaningless.
All of Ma Huateng's innovations are based on the premise that people will continue to use pagers.
The fatal problem is: after entering 1998, with the increasing popularity of mobile phones, pagers have gradually become an abandoned and outdated communication commodity, and almost all paging stations in the country have stopped expanding and investing.Motorola was once the dominant player in China's pager market. At its peak, a Motorola pager could sell for 3000 yuan, and the annual profit of its Chinese joint venture reached an astonishing US$3 million.But by the end of 1998, Motorola's pager division was abolished as a whole.This is a market that is in steep decline, and people are waiting in horror for the day when the industry disappears.At a major turning point in the industry, Ma Huateng stood on the side of the backward. The software products he provided seemed to be on the edge of the most fashionable Internet, but obviously he could not really save the fate of the pager being abandoned.
Ma Huateng, who was immersed in his entrepreneurial passion, did not realize his dangerous situation.He claims to be a person who "doesn't like taking risks in anything"—this is completely different from most entrepreneurs, so when he started planning to start Tencent, he had already started looking for business everywhere.A friend introduced a business from Hebei Telecom. They were interested in Ma Huateng's software system and were willing to pay 20 yuan for a try. From May to July 1998, Ma Huateng visited Shijiazhuang four times and finally completed the project. This excited the whole team and was the main reason for the official establishment of the company.
In order to develop business, Ma Huateng managed to obtain a "Paging Enterprise Encyclopedia", which included the addresses and telephone numbers of thousands of enterprises.They just printed out a business letter, bought thousands of envelopes, handwritten them one by one, and then sent them out, waiting every day.
However, what greeted them was a series of frustrations.Except for Hebei Telecom, no paging station in the country is willing to pay 20 yuan for this software, and Ma Huateng's offer is getting lower and lower.Chen Yidan became a business manager. He recalled: "My job at that time was to call the paging stations in various places every day. The first sentence I asked was: 'Is your general manager here?' Let’s go to two people. The job title printed on my business card is business manager, and that of Ma Huateng is printed as engineer. They seem to be very professional at first glance, as if there is a big team behind us, but in fact there are only a few of us in total. We went to More than ten orders have been made before and after, but the price is getting lower and lower, from 20 yuan to 10 yuan, then to 8 yuan, 5 yuan, and 3 yuan. The development cost of this software is in About 3 yuan, in fact, there is no profit. In order to take on more jobs, we do everything, from website design, server storage space, all-inclusive services of intelligent update management and maintenance, to simple web page production, some orders are only 5000 In the end, we even made it for free, because we wanted to earn maintenance fees in the future.”
Li Haixiang, Zhang Zhidong's colleague at Liming Network Company, also came in to help at this time. In his memory, it was a period of embarrassment: "There were no specifications and documents at that time, so I gave you a bunch of source codes, and you went to Installation. If you encounter some problems during the installation, others can’t explain it clearly, so you can figure it out and change it if you can. After the modification, the system will be under your control, because no one else can understand it. Later For a while, it became a tradition."
During this period, Zeng Liqing made contributions to the company. He used his personal connections in Shenzhen Telecom to secure a business of developing e-mails with an amount of 30 yuan, which made Ma Huateng and others busy and I was happy for a while.
In this way, in the whole year from the end of 1998 to the end of 1999, Tencent achieved a total operating income of 100 million yuan.In the cramped office in the SEG Technology Pioneer Park, Ma Huateng's team has been struggling from the very beginning. The main business has been stranded, and the funds cannot make ends meet. This seems to be a dying start-up company.Ma Huateng didn't even dare to encourage Chen Yidan and Xu Chenye to resign from their original units.For more than a year, they all rushed to SEG Technology Pioneer Park to work after get off work and on weekends.
However, it is at such a time that the story takes a small twist. The "God of Entrepreneurship" is always like this. It does not play cards according to common sense, regards past success and experience as a burden, and likes to challenge people's willpower and imagination in the limit state. It often stops with a playful smile. The front door of fate, then, reveals a gap under the armpit.
This gap is very small, and it has a name in the history of Tencent, called OICQ.
From ICQ to OICQ
Before talking about OICQ, let's talk about ICQ first.
In 1996, three young Israelis, Vesger, Wadi and Goldfinger, who had just finished their military service, developed a software that could communicate quickly and directly on the Internet. They named the new software ICQ, which means "I SEEK YOU" Looking for you)" means. ICQ supports functions such as chatting on the Internet, sending messages, and transferring files.They set up Mirabilis company to provide Internet instant messaging services to registered users.As an Internet communication tool, the interactivity of ICQ is much higher than that of BBS and e-mail. As long as the call signs of relatives and friends are listed on the contact list, you can know whether the other party is connected or offline, and you can talk at any time. Therefore, it is popular among young people. The user growth of ICQ is astonishing, and it has become the instant messaging software with the largest number of users in the world in less than a year. At the end of 1998, ICQ of Israel Mirabilis was acquired by AOL for US$4.07 million (including US$2.87 million for direct purchase and US$1.2 million depending on performance).At this time, the number of ICQ users has exceeded 1000 million.
Just like all innovative Internet products can find imitators in China, as early as 1997, some people began to invest in the development of the Chinese version of ICQ.According to the existing information, Taiwan's information company first launched the traditional Chinese version of ICQ, named CICQ. In August 1998, Infoman entered the mainland market and launched PICQ in Simplified Chinese.Almost at the same time, two young engineers in Nanjing founded Polaris Software Company and launched a product similar to ICQ, "Internet Elf".
Ma Huateng had already noticed ICQ during the Runxun period, and he had discussed the feasibility of developing this product with his colleagues within the company.A senior executive asked, "Can it make money?" The answer was no.The supervisor immediately changed the subject.Later, there were rumors: "ICQ went to China to find a partner and contacted Run Xun. Ma Huateng was the negotiator sent out. After Run Xun gave up this project, Ma Huateng started his own business." This is not true.
It was an accidental event that Ma Huateng's team invested in ICQ development.
Around August 1998, Ma Huateng was "hanging out" at the information port of Guangzhou Telecom, and accidentally saw a bidding news. Guangzhou Telecom wanted to purchase a Chinese instant messaging tool similar to ICQ, and it was openly inviting bids from the whole society.Ma Huateng immediately discussed with Zhang Zhidong and Zeng Liqing. Everyone felt that the technical difficulty was not too difficult and they could try it.However, the bidding meeting is about to start, and there is no time to make products, so we can only make a technical solution to bid for.
The next day, Zeng Liqing went to inquire about the news, and soon brought back a frustrating piece of information: the company participating in the bidding was Feihua, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Telecom. They had completed all product development and named it PCICQ. "This is an default target, and we have no chance if we go." Zeng Liqing yelled in the office.
However, Ma Huateng decided to give it a try.He and Zhang Zhidong closed their doors for several days and wrote a bidding letter. They had to give this "paper product" a name. Ma Huateng thought of open (open), so he called it OICQ, and the Chinese name is "Chinese Internet Pager ".
As Zeng Liqing expected, Guangzhou Telecom did not give Tencent any chance at the bidding meeting, and Feihua became the winning bidder as expected.
After returning to Shenzhen, the five entrepreneurs sat down and discussed a question: Is it "really" to develop OICQ?In Xu Chenye's memory, this was the first time in Tencent's history that there was a heated debate: "At that time, everyone had a heated debate, talking about everything, and the main reason was that there was no opportunity to make money. Moreover, the previous There are already Taiwanese information people, Internet elves and Feihua doing it. Does the market still need a fourth "Sinicized ICQ"? However, AOL seems to be very powerful in buying ICQ for several hundred million. Of course, everyone will listen to Ma Huateng in the end of."
Ma Huateng said: "Why don't we raise it first."
I have asked many interviewees the same question: why does ICQ not have a Chinese name?
In the first 30 years of China’s economic take-off, when most foreign companies or products entered the Chinese market, they would—and must—have a Chinese name, because more than 70% of urban or rural consumers did not know how to pronounce English letters , an enterprise or product without a Chinese name actually means contempt and abandonment of 70% of the consumer market.A very famous example is: In the 20s, a TV company named TCL appeared in Huizhou, Guangdong. When its products were placed on the counters of township shopping malls, most people did not know how to pronounce it. , because it hired Liu Xiaoqing, the most famous film actor at that time, to appear in the commercial, so it is often called "Liu Xiaoqing's TV".Later, the company had to add a very Chinese name in front of "TCL" and became "Ace TCL".
Even in the information industry, this rule is still valid.Jack Ma once recalled that when the Internet was introduced to China, it was first literally translated as Internet. It will come true." Growing up middle-aged people often ask cautiously: "Are you promoting communism?" Later, the Internet was translated as "Information Superhighway", and later, it was named "Internet".Similar to this, E-mail is translated as "electronic mailbox", and Portal Website is translated as "portal website".And ICQ, until it disappeared, still did not have a Chinese name.
Many people cannot answer this question.Zhang Zhidong's explanation may be one of the truths: no one regards it as a big industry, and it is too "niche" to bother to give it a Chinese name.
The facts later turned out to be like this: For quite a long time, portal websites have been the mainstream model of China’s Internet industry. Tencent, which started with instant messaging, has been marginalized for a long time. When the company has the most registered users and the highest profit in the industry, it is still not in the "mainstream".
Therefore, when Ma Huateng decided to "raise" OICQ, he did not realize that it would grow into a "little giant".He said to me: "When Tencent was officially founded, we had already seen the frightening downward trend in the pager industry, but we couldn't do anything about it. My idea at the time was to make OICQ first and keep it. It's not big anyway. , making money still depends on selling software.”
In this way, the newly established Tencent company was divided into two groups: Ma Huateng, Zeng Liqing and Li Haixiang worked on the network paging system, and Zhang Zhidong led people to develop OICQ.
Chinese-style transformation of OICQ
Following Zhang Zhidong to develop OICQ is Xu Gangwu, Wu Xiaoguang nicknamed "Little Light" and "Night Cat" Feng Linyi.
Xu Gangwu graduated from the Automation Department of South China University of Technology and worked in Runxun. He usually likes Linux (a set of UNIX-like operating system that is free to use and spread freely) and MUD (Multiple User Dimension, a computer program in which many users participate in activities) , proficient in background technology, is a typical background technology master.After joining Tencent, he became the first "background main program" of OICQ.
The other two are netizens of Huiduo.com's "Mazhan". "Xiaoguang" is a student of astronomy and dynamics at Nanjing University. He is an astronomy, computer and football enthusiast.He fell in love with computer programming during college and was good at writing C language. After graduating in 1996, he was assigned to work in Shenzhen Meteorological Bureau. "When I joined the Bureau of Meteorology, no one was in charge of the computer network in the bureau, so I was responsible for the management of the network and the development of internal system software." There was a platform called "Night Cat Inn" on the Internet.
At that time, both "Xiaoguang" and "Night Cat" participated in the development as part-timers. The division of labor between several people was as follows: Zhang Zhidong managed the project progress and cost control, and was responsible for cutting down those functions that the team wanted but had no time to do; Xu Gangwu Responsible for writing the background code; "Xiaoguang" and "Night Cat" are responsible for the client part; and Ma Huateng will propose many product ideas, and constantly "press" the details of the improvement requirements.
In the future, Tencent entrepreneurs are often asked a question: When you developed OICQ, ICQ had already matured and entered the Chinese market, and there were already three Chinese versions of ICQ products in use. How did you catch up from behind?
There are two reasons: one is the paralysis and weakness of the opponent, and the other is the micro-innovation of technology.
In terms of opponents, after ICQ was purchased by AOL, the three founders withdrew because they did not want to leave Israel. The rich and powerful AOL was fighting with Microsoft in the browser market at this time, so it did not invest much energy in ICQ.Zhang Zhidong later communicated with the executives of America Online on one occasion. He asked the other party: Why didn't they manage well after buying ICQ?The other party didn't know how to answer.As for the three rivals in China, Taiwanese information professionals are restricted by various policies and still don’t know how to manage the huge mainland market. Nanjing’s Polaris is a company mainly engaged in chess and card games, and lacks firmness in the “Internet Elf” However, the PCICQ developed by Feihua is only one of the many service items in Guangzhou Information Port. It has never been regarded as a strategic product, and the system of state-owned enterprises cannot keep up with the rapid iterative competition.
In terms of technology, Tencent has made several micro-innovations that will appear to be very successful in the future.
Wu Xiaoguang clearly remembers that at the first technical seminar, Ma Huateng asked a strange question that sounded irrelevant to technology: "Where will our users go online?"
In the United States at the end of 1998, personal computers were very popular. Many middle-class families owned more than one computer, and most white-collar workers had their own computers.But in China, the penetration rate of personal computers was less than 1%.There are 240 million Internet users in the country, and more than 25% are young people under the age of 1996. None of them have their own dedicated computers. In May 5, the first Internet cafe, Weigate Computer Room, appeared in Shanghai. The operator purchased 50 computers, which were used by young people at a fee of 40 yuan per hour.By the end of 1998, there were nearly 1 Internet cafes across the country, and the price dropped to 10 to 15 yuan per hour. They have become the most important online places for young Chinese netizens.On the second floor of the office building where Tencent is located, there is a large-scale Internet cafe.
Ma Huateng's question points to a subtle technological innovation: ICQ stores user content and friend lists on the client computer. It doesn't matter where it is. But it is very different in China. At that time, few people had their own computers, and most people used computers in work or Internet cafes. When they change a computer to go online, the original The content and friends list are gone, which is definitely a very annoying thing."However, neither the information people, Polaris nor Feihua found this problem.
Xu Gangwu solved this pain point for OICQ: moved the user content and friend list from the client to the backend server, thus avoiding the trouble of losing user information and friend list, and anyone using any computer to surf the Internet can find their friends list. "This technical difficulty is actually not that big. The key is that we regard it as the most important thing and adapt to the Internet environment in China at that time." Zhang Zhidong said later.
The second important innovation is in the size of the software.
China's network infrastructure cannot be compared with European and American countries. At that time, it was still in a very primitive narrowband state, and the network speed was very slow.Wu Xiaoguang recalled that there was no Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in China at that time, and dial-up was used to access the Internet. The common Internet bandwidth was 14K, 28K, and 54K was very fast, and the volume of an ICQ software was at least 3MB. It takes several 5 minutes to download a software to 10MB, and the speed is as slow as you can imagine.
At this time, Wu Xiaoguang gave full play to his technical talent and effectively controlled the volume of the entire software.Zhang Zhidong said: "When the first internal version was just developed, it was only 220KB. I showed it to Ma Huateng, and he didn't believe it. He thought it must not include the part of dynamic library packaging. In fact, this is a complete independent version. The version is ready to run." It only takes about 5 minutes for users to download such a version, which is undoubtedly killer compared to other ICQ products.
Another innovation that needs to be mentioned may not be felt at the user level, but it played a decisive role in the survival and development of OICQ at that time.At that time, Xu Gangwu decisively adopted UDP (User Datagram Protocol, User Datagram Protocol) technology when designing the network protocol, instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol) technology commonly used by other instant messaging software.The key point is that the development of UDP technology is more difficult, but it can greatly save the cost of the server, so that a single server can support more clients.This innovation allowed Tencent, which was short on funds back then, to persist for as long as possible with as few servers as possible by virtue of its technical advantages.
OICQ will be evaluated as a rare "genius product" by the industry in the future, claiming that its system architecture can still support when the number of users grows to [-] million.Only Zhang Zhidong understands the hardships involved. The so-called "genius" is the result of continuous "rewriting" and optimization by Xu Gangwu, Wu Xiaoguang, and countless engineers afterwards. "Users are growing rapidly, and performance bottlenecks continue to appear. In order not to disappoint users, the team is forced to continuously optimize performance and overcome bottlenecks. In the final analysis, it is the result of forcing." Zhang Zhidong recalled this point in the future, with infinite emotion.
In addition to the above-mentioned several innovations, the initial version of OICQ has also carried out some revisions for the defects of ICQ.
For example, ICQ can only chat with online friends, and can only find friends according to the information provided by users. OICQ has designed an offline message function, which also allows users to directly add strangers who are online at that time as "friends", which undoubtedly greatly expands the social function of OICQ.
Another example is that ICQ's user images lack personality. They are all a user name and a standard flower shape, green for online and gray for offline. OICQ provides personalized avatar options, and they have prepared cartoon images familiar to young Chinese—Donald Duck, Garfield, Pikachu, Popeye, etc., which allow users to show their individuality and have a sense of exclusivity.
OICQ also designed a message prompt tone.The last sound before the release of the system was to find a prompting sound. The technical team had a long discussion on the question of "what sound sounds familiar". The sound of whistles.In the end, Ma Huateng decided that "the sound everyone is most familiar with is the calling sound of a pager", so he recorded the "didi" sound with his own pager, which became the most classic "Tencent sound".It can also be imagined from this that Ma Huateng's "pager complex" is really very serious.
This series of seemingly subtle ideas and designs led to a completely different result: Tencent's OICQ is a product that seems to be derived from ICQ, but actually belongs to Chinese users.The starting point of their thinking is not a revolutionary breakthrough in technology, but the experience of customers!In the following 10 years, this instant messaging tool has been iteratively updated more than 100 versions.
The wisdom shown in this product of OICQ is almost the common trait of excellent Chinese Internet practitioners: from the first day of the birth of the Internet industry, Chinese people have made great efforts in the development of core technologies and the invention of basic product models. They are not the opponents of the American counterparts. They have always been a group of bold "bringers".However, in terms of localization transformation, they have carried out countless applied innovations. These small, detailed, and more pragmatic innovations are beyond the reach of those foreign developers, and it is even difficult to find the rules.Essentially, these innovations belong to the realm of experience and instinct.
OICQ release date: February 1999, 2
While Zhang Zhidong's team was developing behind closed doors, Zeng Liqing began to lobby his "old club" Shenzhen Telecom.In the end, he persuaded Shenzhen Telecom to invest 60 yuan, provide servers and bandwidth, and participate in the R&D and promotion of OICQ in the form of "joint project establishment".In this way, OICQ found a publishing platform.
The first version of OICQ, OICQ 99 beta build 0210, was officially released on February 1999, 2, three months after the founding day of Tencent.
In the impression of all the founders, there was no ceremony on this day.Before the number allocation, Ma Huateng and others reserved 200 numbers, and the external number allocation started from 10201. "The first 200 numbers were reserved for ourselves. At that time, we thought that 200 reserved numbers would be enough to meet the needs of the increase in the number of staff in the next ten or eight years." Ma Huateng reserved 10001 numbers for himself.According to their plan, they hope to develop 1000 users in the first year, 3000 to 4000 in the second year, and 1 in the third year, and then consider what to do next.Zhang Zhidong also calculated that the number of users is less than 1, and the annual personnel expenses, bandwidth rent and server fees will not exceed 10 yuan, which should be "affordable".
The first users of OICQ came from PCICQ.
At that time, the PCICQ developed by Feihua had already been launched and had thousands of users in South China. Guangzhou Telecom's information port advertised this product on the homepage every day, but its performance was not stable, the download speed was slow, and it often dropped. Wire.Therefore, when OICQ was launched, a "word-of-mouth effect" soon formed, and users turned to OICQ one after another.
After the product was launched, Zhang Zhidong’s team continued to discover and fix bugs (vulnerabilities) based on the experience of netizens. In the first week, they completed three iterations in a row, releasing one every two days on average, which greatly stimulated users to use Enthusiasm, in the following 10 years, Tencent adhered to the principle of "small steps, trial and error and iteration" in technology research and development, and its tradition started here.
Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong also went to the Internet cafe on the second floor from time to time to observe the usage status of users on the spot. "At that time, when the sound of 'beep' came from some dark corner, our hearts would tremble with it. That kind of experience has never been experienced before, it is so wonderful." Ma Huateng said.
Obviously, the fulcrum to leverage the "Archimedes lever" is user experience.
In April 1999, Ma Huateng and Chen Yidan went on a business trip to Beijing. When they went to six or seven paging stations during the day to promote network paging solutions, they returned to a small guest house exhausted. When they turned on the computer, they suddenly found that the online users of OICQ had exceeded 4 people.This made them jump up almost at the same time, and the two frantically dug out two glasses, bought a bottle of beer, and clinked glasses in the small room to celebrate.
What they don't know is that this little "beep beep" will soon eat up all their cash and send them into an extremely fast "over-limit space".
(End of this chapter)
To redouble all the strength to charge forward, do not look back.This way, you'll be able to see things you couldn't otherwise see.
——Tadao Ando (Japanese architect)
In those years of starting a business, we never thought about the future, and we were all worried about surviving tomorrow.
——Ma Huateng
Founding date: November 1998, 11
Most people's entrepreneurship is a continuation of past experience, and Ma Huateng is no exception.He excitedly described to Zhang Zhidong the main product of the company he was about to start: connecting the newly emerging Internet with the very popular pager, developing a software system that can receive calls from the Internet in the pager, and receive news and e-mails. mail etc.Ma Huateng called this system "wireless network paging system", and its sales targets are paging stations all over the country.
This idea seems to be a good idea. It is not only related to Runxun's major, but also has the shadow of the stock card he developed before, and seems to be inspired by Ding Lei's "selling the system".Ma Huateng has been immersed in the field of paging services for 5 years, while Zhang Zhidong is a master of integrated systems, so their cooperation is a "natural match".Of course, later facts proved that these sound analyzes are very unreliable.
Zhang Zhidong was moved by Ma Huateng, and he was planning to leave Liming Internet Company at that time.He has an aunt in the United States, according to the arrangement of the family, he will go abroad to join his aunt.Ma Huateng's invitation gave him another choice, and he was indeed very interested in the products Ma Huateng described. "None of us had the idea of getting rich at that time, but we wanted to do something that we liked and had value." He told me later.He was even faster than Ma Huateng when it came to resigning: "I left Liming first, and then he made up his mind to leave Runxun."
In the next few months, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong began to look for business partners.First, Zhang Zhidong found Chen Yidan, they have been getting closer, and they used to travel together.Chen Yidan's job at the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau is very stable, and he got married early two years ago and lived a happy life. However, he was quite moved to hear that he could start a business with his good friend.When he went home to discuss with his wife, his concern at the time was: what would happen to the family's financial resources in case of failure.At this time, his wife said: "It's okay, I still have a job." Chen Yidan said to me later: "To this day, I am still deeply grateful for this sentence from my wife." As for Xu Chenye, who is in the same class, he works in the Shenzhen Telecommunications and Data Communication Bureau, so of course he has more professional advantages.
When these four students sat together, you looked at me and I looked at you, and found a problem: none of them was engaged in sales.
At this time, the "fifth person" Zeng Liqing appeared.
Zeng Liqing was born in January 1970, nearly two years older than Ma Huateng, but graduated in the same year.He studied communication at Xidian University, and worked in Shenzhen Telecom Data Communication Bureau after graduation.Zeng Liqing is tall, cheerful, and eloquent. His personality is completely different from Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong.At a young age, he has a record: he once persuaded a real estate developer in Shenzhen to invest 1 million yuan to build the country's first broadband community by himself.He is very popular in the telecommunications bureau, and he is the marketing manager of Longmai Company, a subsidiary of the bureau.Just in 120, the Telecommunications Bureau rectified the "tertiary industry", and Longmai was facing the fate of being abolished. Zeng Liqing was uncertain about the future, and happened to come into contact with Ma Huateng who was looking for sales professionals everywhere.
Zeng Liqing recalled: "The first time I met Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong about the establishment of the company was in the small office of Longmai Company. After closing the door, we simply divided the work, and Ma Huateng was in charge of strategy and products. Zhang Zhidong is in charge of technology, and I am in charge of the market.”
The new company to be established will have a registered capital of 50 yuan.When the company went to register, neither Ma Huateng nor Zhang Zhidong had completed the resignation procedures, so the name of the chairman was Ma Huateng's mother, Huang Huiqing, even though she had never been to the company.
When registering the company name, it was decided to use "Xun" as the suffix, indicating that it was related to "communication", but some twists and turns occurred in the choice of the prefix.Ma Huateng recalled: "The first name I came up with was Wangxun, which means network communication. It is the most direct and simplest. The second choice is Xircom, the third is Feixun, and the fourth name is Tencent. My father ran the industrial and commercial registration for me. He came back and said that the first few could not be registered, and only 'Tencent' was fine. I thought it would be too personal to have my name, and it was not good. But my father said, that's it Let’s go, or else you won’t be able to register. So it’s called Tencent.” Later, some people speculated that “Teng” was taken from Ma Huateng’s name, and “Xun” was related to “Run Xun”, which is also an inseparable explanation.
The company's English name Tencent was inspired by Lucent (Lucent). "At that time, left-right symmetry was emphasized, and Tencent was very symmetrical."Dividing this word is Ten Cent ([-] cents). It may be "God's will" that Tencent will achieve great success with the profit model of micro-settlement in the future.
Let's talk about the office space.Tencent's first office is in an old building facing south in Huaqiangbei SEG Science and Technology Pioneer Park.Ma Huateng recalled: "I knew a Hong Kong businessman named Tao Fa who was in the pager business. He always wanted to lure me to do it. I said I wanted to start my own business. He happened to have a vacant office in the Science and Technology Park. Lend it to me for a few months.” The office was on the fourth floor, covering an area of more than 30 square meters. There was a pair of gaudy large ceramic vases at the door, and a rotating crystal colored vase used in dance halls hung on the top of the room. lamp.Chen Yidan bought a few desks from the Xiangjiang Furniture Market, and the room was full with five or six people squeezed together.
A few months later, Hong Kong people wanted to take back the house. Ma Huateng found a new office on the second floor of the second east building next to it. This time it was about 100 square meters and divided into two rooms. Workspace.When I was writing this book, the office was empty, but it was still preserved. There were some old photos pasted on the peeling walls, dusty desks and chairs piled up in the corners, and old , The memory that has never been dissipated.
Zhang Zhidong recalled a detail: one day, he and Ma Huateng imagined the future of Tencent in the office. The multi-square-meter office is full.
The founding date of Tencent was determined to be November 1998, 11, but in fact, there was no "official" day. From the Spring Festival in 11 to the beginning of the next year, Ma Huateng and his entrepreneurial partners were busy Day after day was spent.Life is like a big river, the so-called "source" is the product marked by the latecomers.
The Unmissable "Internet Generation"
Now let us go back and see what was happening in the Internet world when Tencent was born.
In the Internet history of China and even the world, the two years from 1998 to 1999 were a mysterious period. If you miss this period, you will also miss a generation.
Let's look at the United States first--
On November 1998, 11, America Online acquired Netscape for US$24 billion. The browser battle between Netscape and Microsoft entered a fierce stage. Bill Gates very strongly compared Windows 42 and IE browsers. Bundled sales have achieved miraculous results.Microsoft also announced Windows 95 this year, introducing the web page design ideas in the browser into Windows, making Windows more vivid and practical, and truly becoming an Internet-oriented desktop system.This year, Microsoft's stock price soared 98%. At the same time, it was severely accused of unfair competition. The U.S. District Court in Washington opened a court hearing to hear the case that the Department of Justice and 72 state governments sued Microsoft for violating the federal antitrust law.
In 1998, after Jobs returned to Apple, he launched the minimalist iMac computer. Apple turned losses into profits and achieved victory in the hardware industry.But there is no sign that it will become the new ruler. At this time, the world belongs to software and the Internet, and Jobs is just a "returned bad boy".
In 1998, the most sought-after Internet hero in the United States was the young Chinese-American Jerry Yang. He appeared on the covers of "Time" and "Business Week" and was also listed in "Forbes" magazine's "10 High-Tech Billionaires" list with A net worth of $16 billion jumps to No. 1973.Yahoo's business began to enter China, and Jerry Yang even considered selling website advertisements in China.Of course, it was also in this year that he made the stupidest decision in his life: Two Stanford alumni born in 100 came to find Jerry Yang, wanting to sell one of his search technologies to Yahoo, Jerry Yang turned them down gracefully. On September 9th, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were forced to work alone in a garage in suburban California. They named the company Google.
in China--
Inspired by the "Miracle of Jerry Yang", China's Internet pioneers almost simultaneously found a path to growth.
In April 1998, Zhang Chaoyang's team took the lead in completing the development of the Chinese search system. He "cloned" a Chinese version for Sohu according to the Yahoo model. In October, Zhang Chaoyang was selected as one of the "4 Global Digital Heroes" by the US "Time" magazine, which made him the first national news figure in the Internet industry.
In August 1998, Wang Zhidong of Sitong Lifang came into contact with Huayuan Life Information Network, the largest Chinese website in North America, during his investigation in the United States. The two sides hit it off and quickly started merger negotiations. On December 8, Sina.com was established, declaring that it would "provide software, news, information and online services in an all-round way, and strive to become the world's largest Chinese website."
In Guangzhou, Ding Lei, who made his first pot of gold by selling e-mails, also made a genius decision to transform NetEase from a software sales company into a portal website.
So far, the "portal era" of China's Internet has arrived, and Sina, Netease and Sohu have emerged one after another, becoming the "Big Three" that will rule the next 10 years. On January 1999, 1, the "China Business Times" announced the top ten commercial websites in China at that time, namely Sina, 13 Electronic Post Office, Sohu, Netease, Guozhong.com, People's Daily website, Shanghai Hotline, ChinaByte, Capital Online and Yahoo China.From the types of selected websites, it can be seen that they are all news and information portal websites, and almost none of them have a profit model. The criteria for the selection agency is: "The number of visits is the most important, followed by content, and then aesthetics."
At the same time, some non-portal models have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, such as online games, e-commerce and professional search engines, none of which received the same attention as the "Big Three" at that time.
From 1998 to 1999, three people successively entered the field of online games. In June 1998, Bao Yueqiao, who developed the Sinicized Chinese platform system UCDOS, founded Lianzhong Games in Beijing, which quickly became the largest chess and card game website in China. In August 6, Zhu Jun, who dropped out of university after only two years of study, launched the entertainment community Gamenow in Shanghai, which was later renamed "Ninth City" ("Nine City" for short). In November, Chen Tianqiao, who was born in 1999 and graduated from Fudan University, took out 8 yuan of his savings to found Shanda Network in Shanghai, and began to operate a virtual community called "Internet Guigu".Online games will become the most profitable business in China's Internet industry in the future, but at the time they were "face-faced boys next to the protagonist", and they were not favored at all.
Attempts in the field of e-commerce also have their own merits. In June 1998, Liu Qiangdong founded Jingdong Company in Zhongguancun to act as an agent to sell optical and magnetic products, and later transformed into an e-commerce company. In March 6, Jack Ma founded Alibaba, a B1999B (Business to Business) website dedicated to small and medium-sized foreign trade companies, with only 3 yuan.A few months later, this unknown Chinese website became the most active e-commerce website in the world. Forbes sent reporters to Hangzhou and finally found this small company in a residential area called Lakeside Garden. In June, Ctrip, which aimed at the tourism industry, was born. Its four founders were the most prominent entrepreneurs at that time: Shen Nanpeng was the president of Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific, Liang Jianzhang was the consulting director of Oracle China, and Ji Qi founded In a technology company, Fan Min is the general manager of Shanghai Travel Agency. In November, Li Guoqing, who had been a self-employed bookseller for many years, and his returnee wife Yu Yu jointly founded Dangdang.com, which is engaged in online book sales. Its model is completely copied from the American Amazon website.
In the field of search, Baidu and 3721 appeared. In October 1998, Zhou Hongyi, a software engineer of Beijing Founder Group, developed a software that supports users to find the website they want to reach through Chinese. He founded Guofeng Internet Software in his hut. The company, the company's website name is 10, which is taken from the proverb "No matter what 3721 21", it means doing its own thing.Zhou Hongyi, born in 1970, will become one of Ma Huateng's most difficult enemies in the future. At the end of 1999, Li Yanhong, who obtained a master's degree in computer science in the United States, returned to China to found Baidu. At that time, he was already a well-known search technology expert in Silicon Valley. The meaning of "Baidu" comes from Xin Qiji's famous sentence: "People look for him thousands of Baidu, and suddenly look back, but the man is there, in a dimly lit place."
In the history of Chinese enterprises, these Internet entrepreneurial groups that appeared from 1998 to 1999 were an unprecedented generation. They formed a noisy and bright galaxy and separated a new generation of entrepreneurs.
First of all, they are very young, born in the mid to late 20s and early 60s.This is the "golden generation" in contemporary China. Most of them have received formal academic education and a good professional background. Many of them have master's or doctoral degrees, and even graduated from the best universities in the world.Their vigor and knowledge are far beyond the comparison of previous grassroots entrepreneurs who were born in rural areas or at the bottom of cities.
Secondly, these entrepreneurs are exposed to a information industry that has been born out of nowhere.They have been part of the global Internet wave from the first day. They have no natural resources, powerful relationships to rely on, and no need to engage in any rent-seeking games with the government. out of competition.Therefore, this is a born global generation, a generation that starts businesses under the sun.
Finally, they are a generation catalyzed by venture capital and international capital markets, and they are "entrepreneurs with wings".This is an entrepreneurial model that was unheard of in the Chinese business community in the past.Zhang Chaoyang and Li Yanhong had the help of venture capital from the beginning, Zhou Hongyi and Chen Tianqiao received venture capital injection within one year of business operation, and Ma Yun became the target of international capital after being reported by "Forbes".Sina, Sohu and Netease have won thousands of attention. At the end of 1999, they successively launched plans to go public on NASDAQ.
years of embarrassment
In the galaxy of Internet Genesis, Tencent is undoubtedly the most inconspicuous one.
It does not belong to any popular concepts such as portals, search, or e-commerce. It cannot define itself, and even its starting point is wrong. ", is a terrible product.
It seems that this is a very promising project. Ma Huateng designed a lot of innovative paging services in the package solution: such as web page paging service, users can visit the home page of the paging station on the Internet without making long-distance calls, The information can be sent to the pager through the paging system; another example is the mail paging service, the user can see the subject and part of the content sent to the e-mail on the pager; According to the itinerary, the network secretary will send the matter to the pager in time at the set time.
In addition, Ma Huateng also designed a virtual paging service: users do not need to have a real pager, they only need to have a virtual paging number, and friends can directly call the paging station and send messages to your e-mail.In principle, this is already an instant messaging tool based on the Internet.
However, when it comes down to it, it's still a terrible product.
The reason it is bad is not because it is technically immature, but because it violates a very simple but imperceptible principle of competition: in an industry that lacks growth, it is difficult to obtain equivalent returns for any innovation, so it is meaningless.
All of Ma Huateng's innovations are based on the premise that people will continue to use pagers.
The fatal problem is: after entering 1998, with the increasing popularity of mobile phones, pagers have gradually become an abandoned and outdated communication commodity, and almost all paging stations in the country have stopped expanding and investing.Motorola was once the dominant player in China's pager market. At its peak, a Motorola pager could sell for 3000 yuan, and the annual profit of its Chinese joint venture reached an astonishing US$3 million.But by the end of 1998, Motorola's pager division was abolished as a whole.This is a market that is in steep decline, and people are waiting in horror for the day when the industry disappears.At a major turning point in the industry, Ma Huateng stood on the side of the backward. The software products he provided seemed to be on the edge of the most fashionable Internet, but obviously he could not really save the fate of the pager being abandoned.
Ma Huateng, who was immersed in his entrepreneurial passion, did not realize his dangerous situation.He claims to be a person who "doesn't like taking risks in anything"—this is completely different from most entrepreneurs, so when he started planning to start Tencent, he had already started looking for business everywhere.A friend introduced a business from Hebei Telecom. They were interested in Ma Huateng's software system and were willing to pay 20 yuan for a try. From May to July 1998, Ma Huateng visited Shijiazhuang four times and finally completed the project. This excited the whole team and was the main reason for the official establishment of the company.
In order to develop business, Ma Huateng managed to obtain a "Paging Enterprise Encyclopedia", which included the addresses and telephone numbers of thousands of enterprises.They just printed out a business letter, bought thousands of envelopes, handwritten them one by one, and then sent them out, waiting every day.
However, what greeted them was a series of frustrations.Except for Hebei Telecom, no paging station in the country is willing to pay 20 yuan for this software, and Ma Huateng's offer is getting lower and lower.Chen Yidan became a business manager. He recalled: "My job at that time was to call the paging stations in various places every day. The first sentence I asked was: 'Is your general manager here?' Let’s go to two people. The job title printed on my business card is business manager, and that of Ma Huateng is printed as engineer. They seem to be very professional at first glance, as if there is a big team behind us, but in fact there are only a few of us in total. We went to More than ten orders have been made before and after, but the price is getting lower and lower, from 20 yuan to 10 yuan, then to 8 yuan, 5 yuan, and 3 yuan. The development cost of this software is in About 3 yuan, in fact, there is no profit. In order to take on more jobs, we do everything, from website design, server storage space, all-inclusive services of intelligent update management and maintenance, to simple web page production, some orders are only 5000 In the end, we even made it for free, because we wanted to earn maintenance fees in the future.”
Li Haixiang, Zhang Zhidong's colleague at Liming Network Company, also came in to help at this time. In his memory, it was a period of embarrassment: "There were no specifications and documents at that time, so I gave you a bunch of source codes, and you went to Installation. If you encounter some problems during the installation, others can’t explain it clearly, so you can figure it out and change it if you can. After the modification, the system will be under your control, because no one else can understand it. Later For a while, it became a tradition."
During this period, Zeng Liqing made contributions to the company. He used his personal connections in Shenzhen Telecom to secure a business of developing e-mails with an amount of 30 yuan, which made Ma Huateng and others busy and I was happy for a while.
In this way, in the whole year from the end of 1998 to the end of 1999, Tencent achieved a total operating income of 100 million yuan.In the cramped office in the SEG Technology Pioneer Park, Ma Huateng's team has been struggling from the very beginning. The main business has been stranded, and the funds cannot make ends meet. This seems to be a dying start-up company.Ma Huateng didn't even dare to encourage Chen Yidan and Xu Chenye to resign from their original units.For more than a year, they all rushed to SEG Technology Pioneer Park to work after get off work and on weekends.
However, it is at such a time that the story takes a small twist. The "God of Entrepreneurship" is always like this. It does not play cards according to common sense, regards past success and experience as a burden, and likes to challenge people's willpower and imagination in the limit state. It often stops with a playful smile. The front door of fate, then, reveals a gap under the armpit.
This gap is very small, and it has a name in the history of Tencent, called OICQ.
From ICQ to OICQ
Before talking about OICQ, let's talk about ICQ first.
In 1996, three young Israelis, Vesger, Wadi and Goldfinger, who had just finished their military service, developed a software that could communicate quickly and directly on the Internet. They named the new software ICQ, which means "I SEEK YOU" Looking for you)" means. ICQ supports functions such as chatting on the Internet, sending messages, and transferring files.They set up Mirabilis company to provide Internet instant messaging services to registered users.As an Internet communication tool, the interactivity of ICQ is much higher than that of BBS and e-mail. As long as the call signs of relatives and friends are listed on the contact list, you can know whether the other party is connected or offline, and you can talk at any time. Therefore, it is popular among young people. The user growth of ICQ is astonishing, and it has become the instant messaging software with the largest number of users in the world in less than a year. At the end of 1998, ICQ of Israel Mirabilis was acquired by AOL for US$4.07 million (including US$2.87 million for direct purchase and US$1.2 million depending on performance).At this time, the number of ICQ users has exceeded 1000 million.
Just like all innovative Internet products can find imitators in China, as early as 1997, some people began to invest in the development of the Chinese version of ICQ.According to the existing information, Taiwan's information company first launched the traditional Chinese version of ICQ, named CICQ. In August 1998, Infoman entered the mainland market and launched PICQ in Simplified Chinese.Almost at the same time, two young engineers in Nanjing founded Polaris Software Company and launched a product similar to ICQ, "Internet Elf".
Ma Huateng had already noticed ICQ during the Runxun period, and he had discussed the feasibility of developing this product with his colleagues within the company.A senior executive asked, "Can it make money?" The answer was no.The supervisor immediately changed the subject.Later, there were rumors: "ICQ went to China to find a partner and contacted Run Xun. Ma Huateng was the negotiator sent out. After Run Xun gave up this project, Ma Huateng started his own business." This is not true.
It was an accidental event that Ma Huateng's team invested in ICQ development.
Around August 1998, Ma Huateng was "hanging out" at the information port of Guangzhou Telecom, and accidentally saw a bidding news. Guangzhou Telecom wanted to purchase a Chinese instant messaging tool similar to ICQ, and it was openly inviting bids from the whole society.Ma Huateng immediately discussed with Zhang Zhidong and Zeng Liqing. Everyone felt that the technical difficulty was not too difficult and they could try it.However, the bidding meeting is about to start, and there is no time to make products, so we can only make a technical solution to bid for.
The next day, Zeng Liqing went to inquire about the news, and soon brought back a frustrating piece of information: the company participating in the bidding was Feihua, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Telecom. They had completed all product development and named it PCICQ. "This is an default target, and we have no chance if we go." Zeng Liqing yelled in the office.
However, Ma Huateng decided to give it a try.He and Zhang Zhidong closed their doors for several days and wrote a bidding letter. They had to give this "paper product" a name. Ma Huateng thought of open (open), so he called it OICQ, and the Chinese name is "Chinese Internet Pager ".
As Zeng Liqing expected, Guangzhou Telecom did not give Tencent any chance at the bidding meeting, and Feihua became the winning bidder as expected.
After returning to Shenzhen, the five entrepreneurs sat down and discussed a question: Is it "really" to develop OICQ?In Xu Chenye's memory, this was the first time in Tencent's history that there was a heated debate: "At that time, everyone had a heated debate, talking about everything, and the main reason was that there was no opportunity to make money. Moreover, the previous There are already Taiwanese information people, Internet elves and Feihua doing it. Does the market still need a fourth "Sinicized ICQ"? However, AOL seems to be very powerful in buying ICQ for several hundred million. Of course, everyone will listen to Ma Huateng in the end of."
Ma Huateng said: "Why don't we raise it first."
I have asked many interviewees the same question: why does ICQ not have a Chinese name?
In the first 30 years of China’s economic take-off, when most foreign companies or products entered the Chinese market, they would—and must—have a Chinese name, because more than 70% of urban or rural consumers did not know how to pronounce English letters , an enterprise or product without a Chinese name actually means contempt and abandonment of 70% of the consumer market.A very famous example is: In the 20s, a TV company named TCL appeared in Huizhou, Guangdong. When its products were placed on the counters of township shopping malls, most people did not know how to pronounce it. , because it hired Liu Xiaoqing, the most famous film actor at that time, to appear in the commercial, so it is often called "Liu Xiaoqing's TV".Later, the company had to add a very Chinese name in front of "TCL" and became "Ace TCL".
Even in the information industry, this rule is still valid.Jack Ma once recalled that when the Internet was introduced to China, it was first literally translated as Internet. It will come true." Growing up middle-aged people often ask cautiously: "Are you promoting communism?" Later, the Internet was translated as "Information Superhighway", and later, it was named "Internet".Similar to this, E-mail is translated as "electronic mailbox", and Portal Website is translated as "portal website".And ICQ, until it disappeared, still did not have a Chinese name.
Many people cannot answer this question.Zhang Zhidong's explanation may be one of the truths: no one regards it as a big industry, and it is too "niche" to bother to give it a Chinese name.
The facts later turned out to be like this: For quite a long time, portal websites have been the mainstream model of China’s Internet industry. Tencent, which started with instant messaging, has been marginalized for a long time. When the company has the most registered users and the highest profit in the industry, it is still not in the "mainstream".
Therefore, when Ma Huateng decided to "raise" OICQ, he did not realize that it would grow into a "little giant".He said to me: "When Tencent was officially founded, we had already seen the frightening downward trend in the pager industry, but we couldn't do anything about it. My idea at the time was to make OICQ first and keep it. It's not big anyway. , making money still depends on selling software.”
In this way, the newly established Tencent company was divided into two groups: Ma Huateng, Zeng Liqing and Li Haixiang worked on the network paging system, and Zhang Zhidong led people to develop OICQ.
Chinese-style transformation of OICQ
Following Zhang Zhidong to develop OICQ is Xu Gangwu, Wu Xiaoguang nicknamed "Little Light" and "Night Cat" Feng Linyi.
Xu Gangwu graduated from the Automation Department of South China University of Technology and worked in Runxun. He usually likes Linux (a set of UNIX-like operating system that is free to use and spread freely) and MUD (Multiple User Dimension, a computer program in which many users participate in activities) , proficient in background technology, is a typical background technology master.After joining Tencent, he became the first "background main program" of OICQ.
The other two are netizens of Huiduo.com's "Mazhan". "Xiaoguang" is a student of astronomy and dynamics at Nanjing University. He is an astronomy, computer and football enthusiast.He fell in love with computer programming during college and was good at writing C language. After graduating in 1996, he was assigned to work in Shenzhen Meteorological Bureau. "When I joined the Bureau of Meteorology, no one was in charge of the computer network in the bureau, so I was responsible for the management of the network and the development of internal system software." There was a platform called "Night Cat Inn" on the Internet.
At that time, both "Xiaoguang" and "Night Cat" participated in the development as part-timers. The division of labor between several people was as follows: Zhang Zhidong managed the project progress and cost control, and was responsible for cutting down those functions that the team wanted but had no time to do; Xu Gangwu Responsible for writing the background code; "Xiaoguang" and "Night Cat" are responsible for the client part; and Ma Huateng will propose many product ideas, and constantly "press" the details of the improvement requirements.
In the future, Tencent entrepreneurs are often asked a question: When you developed OICQ, ICQ had already matured and entered the Chinese market, and there were already three Chinese versions of ICQ products in use. How did you catch up from behind?
There are two reasons: one is the paralysis and weakness of the opponent, and the other is the micro-innovation of technology.
In terms of opponents, after ICQ was purchased by AOL, the three founders withdrew because they did not want to leave Israel. The rich and powerful AOL was fighting with Microsoft in the browser market at this time, so it did not invest much energy in ICQ.Zhang Zhidong later communicated with the executives of America Online on one occasion. He asked the other party: Why didn't they manage well after buying ICQ?The other party didn't know how to answer.As for the three rivals in China, Taiwanese information professionals are restricted by various policies and still don’t know how to manage the huge mainland market. Nanjing’s Polaris is a company mainly engaged in chess and card games, and lacks firmness in the “Internet Elf” However, the PCICQ developed by Feihua is only one of the many service items in Guangzhou Information Port. It has never been regarded as a strategic product, and the system of state-owned enterprises cannot keep up with the rapid iterative competition.
In terms of technology, Tencent has made several micro-innovations that will appear to be very successful in the future.
Wu Xiaoguang clearly remembers that at the first technical seminar, Ma Huateng asked a strange question that sounded irrelevant to technology: "Where will our users go online?"
In the United States at the end of 1998, personal computers were very popular. Many middle-class families owned more than one computer, and most white-collar workers had their own computers.But in China, the penetration rate of personal computers was less than 1%.There are 240 million Internet users in the country, and more than 25% are young people under the age of 1996. None of them have their own dedicated computers. In May 5, the first Internet cafe, Weigate Computer Room, appeared in Shanghai. The operator purchased 50 computers, which were used by young people at a fee of 40 yuan per hour.By the end of 1998, there were nearly 1 Internet cafes across the country, and the price dropped to 10 to 15 yuan per hour. They have become the most important online places for young Chinese netizens.On the second floor of the office building where Tencent is located, there is a large-scale Internet cafe.
Ma Huateng's question points to a subtle technological innovation: ICQ stores user content and friend lists on the client computer. It doesn't matter where it is. But it is very different in China. At that time, few people had their own computers, and most people used computers in work or Internet cafes. When they change a computer to go online, the original The content and friends list are gone, which is definitely a very annoying thing."However, neither the information people, Polaris nor Feihua found this problem.
Xu Gangwu solved this pain point for OICQ: moved the user content and friend list from the client to the backend server, thus avoiding the trouble of losing user information and friend list, and anyone using any computer to surf the Internet can find their friends list. "This technical difficulty is actually not that big. The key is that we regard it as the most important thing and adapt to the Internet environment in China at that time." Zhang Zhidong said later.
The second important innovation is in the size of the software.
China's network infrastructure cannot be compared with European and American countries. At that time, it was still in a very primitive narrowband state, and the network speed was very slow.Wu Xiaoguang recalled that there was no Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in China at that time, and dial-up was used to access the Internet. The common Internet bandwidth was 14K, 28K, and 54K was very fast, and the volume of an ICQ software was at least 3MB. It takes several 5 minutes to download a software to 10MB, and the speed is as slow as you can imagine.
At this time, Wu Xiaoguang gave full play to his technical talent and effectively controlled the volume of the entire software.Zhang Zhidong said: "When the first internal version was just developed, it was only 220KB. I showed it to Ma Huateng, and he didn't believe it. He thought it must not include the part of dynamic library packaging. In fact, this is a complete independent version. The version is ready to run." It only takes about 5 minutes for users to download such a version, which is undoubtedly killer compared to other ICQ products.
Another innovation that needs to be mentioned may not be felt at the user level, but it played a decisive role in the survival and development of OICQ at that time.At that time, Xu Gangwu decisively adopted UDP (User Datagram Protocol, User Datagram Protocol) technology when designing the network protocol, instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol) technology commonly used by other instant messaging software.The key point is that the development of UDP technology is more difficult, but it can greatly save the cost of the server, so that a single server can support more clients.This innovation allowed Tencent, which was short on funds back then, to persist for as long as possible with as few servers as possible by virtue of its technical advantages.
OICQ will be evaluated as a rare "genius product" by the industry in the future, claiming that its system architecture can still support when the number of users grows to [-] million.Only Zhang Zhidong understands the hardships involved. The so-called "genius" is the result of continuous "rewriting" and optimization by Xu Gangwu, Wu Xiaoguang, and countless engineers afterwards. "Users are growing rapidly, and performance bottlenecks continue to appear. In order not to disappoint users, the team is forced to continuously optimize performance and overcome bottlenecks. In the final analysis, it is the result of forcing." Zhang Zhidong recalled this point in the future, with infinite emotion.
In addition to the above-mentioned several innovations, the initial version of OICQ has also carried out some revisions for the defects of ICQ.
For example, ICQ can only chat with online friends, and can only find friends according to the information provided by users. OICQ has designed an offline message function, which also allows users to directly add strangers who are online at that time as "friends", which undoubtedly greatly expands the social function of OICQ.
Another example is that ICQ's user images lack personality. They are all a user name and a standard flower shape, green for online and gray for offline. OICQ provides personalized avatar options, and they have prepared cartoon images familiar to young Chinese—Donald Duck, Garfield, Pikachu, Popeye, etc., which allow users to show their individuality and have a sense of exclusivity.
OICQ also designed a message prompt tone.The last sound before the release of the system was to find a prompting sound. The technical team had a long discussion on the question of "what sound sounds familiar". The sound of whistles.In the end, Ma Huateng decided that "the sound everyone is most familiar with is the calling sound of a pager", so he recorded the "didi" sound with his own pager, which became the most classic "Tencent sound".It can also be imagined from this that Ma Huateng's "pager complex" is really very serious.
This series of seemingly subtle ideas and designs led to a completely different result: Tencent's OICQ is a product that seems to be derived from ICQ, but actually belongs to Chinese users.The starting point of their thinking is not a revolutionary breakthrough in technology, but the experience of customers!In the following 10 years, this instant messaging tool has been iteratively updated more than 100 versions.
The wisdom shown in this product of OICQ is almost the common trait of excellent Chinese Internet practitioners: from the first day of the birth of the Internet industry, Chinese people have made great efforts in the development of core technologies and the invention of basic product models. They are not the opponents of the American counterparts. They have always been a group of bold "bringers".However, in terms of localization transformation, they have carried out countless applied innovations. These small, detailed, and more pragmatic innovations are beyond the reach of those foreign developers, and it is even difficult to find the rules.Essentially, these innovations belong to the realm of experience and instinct.
OICQ release date: February 1999, 2
While Zhang Zhidong's team was developing behind closed doors, Zeng Liqing began to lobby his "old club" Shenzhen Telecom.In the end, he persuaded Shenzhen Telecom to invest 60 yuan, provide servers and bandwidth, and participate in the R&D and promotion of OICQ in the form of "joint project establishment".In this way, OICQ found a publishing platform.
The first version of OICQ, OICQ 99 beta build 0210, was officially released on February 1999, 2, three months after the founding day of Tencent.
In the impression of all the founders, there was no ceremony on this day.Before the number allocation, Ma Huateng and others reserved 200 numbers, and the external number allocation started from 10201. "The first 200 numbers were reserved for ourselves. At that time, we thought that 200 reserved numbers would be enough to meet the needs of the increase in the number of staff in the next ten or eight years." Ma Huateng reserved 10001 numbers for himself.According to their plan, they hope to develop 1000 users in the first year, 3000 to 4000 in the second year, and 1 in the third year, and then consider what to do next.Zhang Zhidong also calculated that the number of users is less than 1, and the annual personnel expenses, bandwidth rent and server fees will not exceed 10 yuan, which should be "affordable".
The first users of OICQ came from PCICQ.
At that time, the PCICQ developed by Feihua had already been launched and had thousands of users in South China. Guangzhou Telecom's information port advertised this product on the homepage every day, but its performance was not stable, the download speed was slow, and it often dropped. Wire.Therefore, when OICQ was launched, a "word-of-mouth effect" soon formed, and users turned to OICQ one after another.
After the product was launched, Zhang Zhidong’s team continued to discover and fix bugs (vulnerabilities) based on the experience of netizens. In the first week, they completed three iterations in a row, releasing one every two days on average, which greatly stimulated users to use Enthusiasm, in the following 10 years, Tencent adhered to the principle of "small steps, trial and error and iteration" in technology research and development, and its tradition started here.
Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong also went to the Internet cafe on the second floor from time to time to observe the usage status of users on the spot. "At that time, when the sound of 'beep' came from some dark corner, our hearts would tremble with it. That kind of experience has never been experienced before, it is so wonderful." Ma Huateng said.
Obviously, the fulcrum to leverage the "Archimedes lever" is user experience.
In April 1999, Ma Huateng and Chen Yidan went on a business trip to Beijing. When they went to six or seven paging stations during the day to promote network paging solutions, they returned to a small guest house exhausted. When they turned on the computer, they suddenly found that the online users of OICQ had exceeded 4 people.This made them jump up almost at the same time, and the two frantically dug out two glasses, bought a bottle of beer, and clinked glasses in the small room to celebrate.
What they don't know is that this little "beep beep" will soon eat up all their cash and send them into an extremely fast "over-limit space".
(End of this chapter)
Tap the screen to use advanced tools
Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.
You'll Also Like
-
Steel, Guns, and the Industrial Party that Traveled to Another World
Chapter 764 1 days ago -
The Journey Against Time, I am the King of Scrolls in a Hundred Times Space
Chapter 141 1 days ago -
Start by getting the cornucopia
Chapter 112 1 days ago -
Fantasy: One hundred billion clones are on AFK, I am invincible
Chapter 385 1 days ago -
American comics: I can extract animation abilities
Chapter 162 1 days ago -
Swallowed Star: Wish Fulfillment System.
Chapter 925 1 days ago -
Cultivation begins with separation
Chapter 274 1 days ago -
Survival: What kind of unscrupulous businessman is this? He is obviously a kind person.
Chapter 167 1 days ago -
Master, something is wrong with you.
Chapter 316 1 days ago -
I have a space for everything, and I can practice automatically.
Chapter 968 1 days ago
