Tencent Biography 1998-2016: Evolution of Chinese Internet Companies
Chapter 8 Tuning: 1-Stop Online Life
Chapter 8 Tuning: One-Stop Shop for Online Life
The final product of strategic decision-making is false and pure. The enterprise combines the market and the product, through the combination of new elements, discards some old things, and expands from the existing position to achieve new goals.
——Igor Ansoff (American management scientist)
In the next few years, Ma Huateng will try to fully take over the online life of Chinese netizens.
——Internet Weekly, January 2006
The disillusionment of the "virtual telecom operator"
For quite a long time, Ma Huateng's strategic plan for Tencent was based on "imagination".
With the increase in the number of QQ users, he once tried to build an open "gold platform". In January 2001, when the number of QQ registered users exceeded 1 million, Ma Huateng told the reporter of China Computer News: "Tencent's strategy is to build a platform, and welcome all vertical industries, such as games, information, e-commerce, ISP, IP, etc. Telephone and other structures are built on it to form an all-encompassing application environment. At that time, QQ will not only be an instant messaging tool, but also provide its users with more practical business information. In this way, QQ will become a 'golden platform'. "
Before this strategy could be implemented, the changes in China's telecommunications industry have opened another door for Tencent. For Tencent, which has made great profits in the "Monternet" business, it is speculated that it will soon enter the telecommunications field and implement the "Monternet" business. Virtual telecom operator" strategy.
As early as September 2000, in order to promote the separation of fixed-line and mobile phone services, the Ministry of Information Industry promulgated the "Regulations on the Administration of Telecommunications", which combined e-mail, voice mail, online information storage and retrieval, electronic data exchange, and online data processing with Transaction processing, value-added fax, Internet access and information service, video conference call service, etc. are listed as the content of telecom value-added services, and resale telecom business is listed as a category of basic telecom business.This new regulation is considered to be a signal of the liberalization of telecommunications control. Professor Lu Tingjie of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications commented at the time: "The new regulation is developing towards the direction of renting out network elements, which has led to the inevitable emergence of virtual operators. This trend may lead to operability competition in China's telecommunications industry."
Soon after, China Mobile, which had nothing, launched the "Monternet" service with an unusually open attitude, opening the door to SMS value-added services.Around 2003, private companies that entered the telecommunications field through the Monternet project "curve" clearly saw a new possibility.NetEase and Tencent have successively proposed the strategic goal of becoming a "virtual telecom operator".
In September 2003, Tencent cooperated with Shanghai Telecom to launch the "Telephone QQ" service. Users dial 9 or log in to the "Telephone QQ" website page. After obtaining a QQ account, they can communicate with ordinary telephones according to the voice prompts. The announcement said: "The opening scope of this service includes all telephone categories of Shanghai Telecom, as well as mobile phone users of China Mobile and China Unicom, and fixed phone users of Railcom and China Netcom. The telephone QQ service is free of account opening fees and information fees. The tariffs for card-type telephones are the same as the current tariff standards for ordinary telephones and card-type telephones.” That is to say, Tencent has entered the core voice business field through cooperation with Shanghai Telecom, and there is only one step left to dial ordinary telephones directly from QQ. away.
In 2004, Ding Lei implanted VoIP technology in the new version of Netease Bubbles. According to media reports, "Once the policy allows, Netease can pay for calls through point cards or bubble 'gold coins'. At this time, point cards are Turned into a phone recharge card, NetEase will have the opportunity to become a virtual telecom operator in the true sense."
These actions of Tencent and Netease have aroused the collective vigilance of the monopoly state-owned telecommunications companies. In July 2005, the Ministry of Information Industry issued a notice, clearly stipulating: "Except for China Telecom and China Netcom, which can carry out commercial trials of PC-to-Phone (PC to Phone) Internet telephony in some areas, no unit or individual is allowed to engage in this business."
The dream of a "virtual operator" of private Internet companies has thus been shattered.
China Mobile, which achieved its phased strategic goals through "Monternet", also began to "close the network".Later facts showed that the rectification of content service providers, which began in the second half of 2004, eventually became a clearing operation, and China Mobile has since closed the door to cooperation and opening up.When state-owned telecom operators use policy control to block NetEase and Tencent from the door, they themselves actually "self-castrated" the drive for innovation and progress.In the next few years, they made a lot of money from the protection of policies. Until the end of 2012, Tencent once again challenged their telecom monopoly from an unexpected angle with WeChat.
The days of being "expelled" by China Mobile
Beginning in the second half of 2004, Tencent's wireless value-added business suffered a serious impact.Ma Huateng later said: "Wireless value-added services account for too much of Tencent's business revenue, and our business relationship with telecom operators is very close. During the cleaning process, our pressure may be the greatest."
In the continuous "inactive user" purge, the number of SMS users has shrunk sharply.
Many years later, Liu Chengmin still has lingering fears about the scene at that time. He talked about a detail: "In October 2004, we suddenly received a call from the China Mobile Data Department, requesting to go to Beijing immediately to talk about the matter. When we arrived in Beijing, they took a Zhang Xin's agreement was handed over to us. China Mobile proposed to renegotiate the sharing ratio of '10 Mobile Chat', otherwise the cooperation on this project would be terminated. '161 Mobile Chat' is a star project in wireless value-added services, accounting for It has reached about 161% of the total business revenue. Because all channel resources are with the other party, we have almost no room for bargaining."
In December, China Mobile announced that the "12 Mobile Chat" business agreement with Tencent had expired, and the sharing ratio was renegotiated. According to the new rules, Tencent's monthly net profit will be significantly reduced by about 161 million yuan, up to 400 million yuan a year. Yuan.In addition, China Mobile also forced Tencent to adjust the sharing ratio of SMS revenue from 4800:15 to 85:5, further reducing Tencent's profit margins.
Affected by these unfavorable news, the stock price of Tencent on the Stock Exchange hovered at a low level, and investors lacked confidence. In April 2005, in order to express its confidence, Tencent's board of directors had to announce the repurchase of 4% of the issued share capital, which would cost approximately HK$10 million based on the stock price at that time.By November, Tencent announced another share buyback plan of up to $9.74 million.
By 2006, China Mobile launched another "killing mace" and directly attacked Mobile QQ.
The key to Tencent's ability to obtain the largest and most stable income from the "Monternet" project lies in its huge QQ user base, so it is much less dependent on operators than other content service providers.Among them, Mobile QQ is the core product, with 700 million users, accounting for about [-]% of all Tencent SMS users.In the past few years, China Mobile has been coveting instant messaging tools. In its plan, if it can have its own product similar to QQ, it can smoothly integrate with operators and content providers. Transformation, thus forming a closed-loop business model that does not need to share profits with any other company.
By the beginning of 2006, the two finally reached the moment of showdown.China Mobile outsourced and developed an instant messaging tool called "Fetion" by itself. At the same time, it put forward two mandatory requirements to Tencent: First, Mobile QQ and Fetion "business merge", otherwise, Mobile QQ will be removed from the dream. Second, the entire QQ system is "interconnected" with Fetion.
Fearing that the user experience is not good, and the cost is difficult to share, Tencent rejected China Mobile on the grounds that the conditions were not mature.
In June, the test version of Fetion was launched, and China Mobile announced: "Fetion is not just a product. It is an important step in the future strategy. Through the Fetion platform, China Mobile can launch many value-added services, such as online games, online shopping, virtual Communities, mobile payment, etc..” At the same time, China Mobile issued the “Notice on Regulating “Monternet” Chat Services”, which reads: For the existing Monternet services in the chat community, we will no longer carry out any form of cooperation with such services. Marketing cooperation; Mobile QQ and Netease Paobo will be allowed to carry out until the end of 6, and the relevant SP cooperation agreement will be renewed until this point in time.
On December 2006, 12, on the last day of terminating the cooperation, Tencent issued an announcement in Hong Kong that Mobile QQ would "merge" with Fetion within 29 months, and its business would gradually transition to the Fetion platform. It is "Fetion QQ".
During the two-and-a-half-year clean-up campaign, the wireless value-added business that Tencent relied on for profit suffered an unprecedented blow.
Throughout 2005, Tencent's total revenue increased by 24.7% year-on-year to RMB 14.264 billion; net profit increased by 10% to RMB 4.854 million.Among them, Internet value-added service revenue increased by 79.2% year-on-year, and its proportion in total revenue rose from 38.4% to 55.1%, while wireless value-added service revenue fell by 19.3% year-on-year. 55.6% dropped to 36.3%, surpassed by Internet value-added services for the first time.
By March 2006, Tencent announced the third repurchase of shares, with a maximum repurchase amount of US$3 million.To boost revenue, Tencent also acquired a 3000% stake in Joyman Technology Co Ltd, a wireless value-added service provider.By the end of the year, the revenue of wireless value-added services increased from 100 million yuan to 5.17 million yuan, of which Zhuoyi Max contributed 7 million yuan. The annual financial report admitted that "the increase in revenue mainly reflects the content-based SMS service provided by Zhuo Yi Max. increase in income".In the company's total revenue, the proportion of wireless value-added services continued to decline to 1%, while the proportion of Internet value-added services rose to 25.0%.
"Stand on your own" on your mobile phone
China Mobile's "elimination" of former partners has once again proved the unchallengeable position of "entrance" in the information industry: whoever has "entry" has the right to speak and allocate resources.Ma Huateng was very wary of companies with import-level products later, and his lessons and experiences should come from this.
Under policy exclusion, the content service providers "parasitic" on Montnets experienced a collective avalanche, and each company panicked and scattered.Among them, Ding Lei was the most resolute. NetEase withdrew early and hid in the "safe haven" of online games.The most embarrassing thing is the "King of SP", TOM, which has just been listed in Hong Kong. At the moment when the revenue of SMS messages has fallen sharply, it "takes a slant" and launched some gray businesses. Disclosed in: "TOM is most famous for renting a house in the suburbs of Beijing, employing hundreds of women, and chatting with them through the phone number 1259*, all of which are pornographic." This kind of pornographic chat has a A very elegant professional name: Interactive Voice Response (IVR) business.A few years later, TOM was in a slump, and other content service providers, such as KongZhong and Linktone, also declined one after another.
Compared with NetEase or TOM, Tencent's situation is slightly better, but it can also be described as critical.
In the past few years, Tencent's decision-makers have maintained a restrained attitude towards the SP business. The reason why Ma Huateng "willed to go his own way" and successively invested in games, portals and other businesses is also related to his inner fear.However, the wireless business department showed a strong desire to save itself. Under the huge pressure of performance, the marketing department proposed a compromise plan: "If you are worried that the gray income will affect Tencent's reputation, then can it be done outside the system? Acquisition or building a new company, even if there is a problem, can it also serve as a firewall?" This proposal caused fierce disputes at the general office meeting, and Ma Huateng was determined to stop this plan at the end of 2005. The immediate consequence was the resignation of Tang Xin, the head of the department.
"It was really difficult at that time, and there seemed to be almost no way out. SMS was our main charging channel at that time." Ma Huateng recalled later.After careful consideration, he decided to "return to Tencent's core competence" and use QQ resources to re-layout in the mobile market.
At the beginning of 2006, Liu Chengmin, who replaced Tang Xin in charge of the marketing business, accompanied Ma Huateng to a secret meeting with the president of China Unicom, trying to change the family and seek another strategic cooperation.Ma Huateng demonstrated a newly developed Push-to-Talk (PTT, Push-to-Talk) function to China Unicom executives. This is a new mobile technology that runs on the Brew mobile platform provided by Qualcomm in the United States. "One-to-one" or "one-to-many" calls are like using an intercom - this is the prototype of the WeChat "intercom" function in 2012.Ma Huateng hopes to cooperate with China Unicom to build QQ in Unicom mobile phones and provide users with push-to-talk services, so as to form differentiated competition with China Mobile.China Unicom rejected Tencent's proposal. Its strategic focus at that time was on CDMA business, and China Unicom's version of instant messaging tool "Super Letter" was about to be released. It seemed that QQ was of little value to China Unicom.
In the case of unsuccessful cooperation, Ma Huateng quickly made the decision to set up his own company. In 2006, Tencent successively launched two major products, Super QQ and Mobile QQ.
Super QQ is an evolved version of mobile QQ. It provides users with a monthly SMS subscription service at a monthly fee of 10 yuan. Tencent seamlessly connects it with the QQ number on the computer side and provides menu-style services. Users can accumulate QQ on their mobile phones. Online time, SMS setting QQ information, in addition to watching information, weather, jokes, etc.Later, Tencent even implanted the privilege function of QQ members, and launched more than 4 VIP privilege services in four categories, including QQ privileges, game privileges, leisure privileges and life privileges.Liu Chengmin called it "SMS Portal".
Mobile QQ is a QQ software installed on a mobile phone, and its operation interface is similar to the computer version of QQ.Tencent has partnered with handset makers such as Nokia and Motorola to pre-install software on their phones.At the beginning, mobile QQ charged a service fee of 5 yuan per month, but it was canceled later, and all users can download and use it for free.Tencent's revenue mainly comes from simple mobile games and SMS value-added services.
The emergence of Super QQ and Mobile QQ in 2006 has quite important strategic significance.
With this, Tencent got rid of its dependence on China Mobile's "entry" and established two mobile portals entirely of its own.By the end of 2007, Tencent finally got out of the shadow of "Monternet" cleanup, and the revenue from mobile value-added services recovered to break through 8 million yuan.At the Christmas party, the employees of the wireless business department performed a skit, "The landlord's stupid son tried to force Xi'er to marry Xi'er. In the end, Xi'er's family rejected this unequal marriage due to their wealth and wealth."According to the employee's recollection: "At the climax of the plot, the big-screen camera switched to the face of Liu Chengmin, Senior Executive Vice President of Wireless Business, who was watching the show offstage. Liu Chengmin grinned heartily."
Another particularly far-reaching significance is that mobile QQ has won a strategic opportunity for Tencent in the future smart phone era. 3), mobile phone Tencent (2006), mobile QQ browser (2006) and mobile security manager (2007), forming a systematic mobile portal matrix. In May 2010, Liu Chengmin, who had retired, told me in his Beijing apartment: “Tencent’s layout and investment in the mobile terminal was earlier than all Internet companies, and it was many years earlier. Back then, Jobs’ iPhone was still In the lab, many people saw the future of smartphones, but no one knew how it would explode. We were pushed on the right path.”
New strategy: "Integrate into life like water and electricity"
In more cases, strategic transformation is the result of fierce competition, but not necessarily the product of mature planning in advance.
The dispute with China Mobile over the Montnets project forced Ma Huateng to abandon his strategic intention of being a "virtual telecom operator" and return to the Internet to find a new positioning.At this time, he very much needed to find someone within Tencent who could talk about strategy.
It was after the Spring Festival in 2005 that Lau Chiping officially went to work at Fiyta Building.He moved into an empty office, and no one reported to him except a secretary. Even Ma Huateng didn't know what the daily work of the "chief strategic investment officer" was.Chiping Lau said: "I take care of three things that no one cares about. One is strategy, the other is mergers and acquisitions, and the third is investor relations."
His role was quickly revealed. When Tencent's stock price was turbulent, he went to Hong Kong many times to explain the company's prospects to institutional investors. "If you do a good job in investor relations, your stock price will have a better response, and your recognition will increase." In 2005, under his suggestion, Tencent repurchased shares twice to show confidence.He also helped the company to complete a series of acquisitions, including the mailbox company Foxmail, the online game company domain, and the content value-added service provider Zhuoimex, Wangdian and Yingke Becheng, etc. "We have also been in contact with Kingsoft, and we are optimistic about their capabilities in online games and anti-virus software." These are tasks that Tencent has never tried before and is very unfamiliar with.
The "5-year business plan" is the first proof Liu Chiping gave to the outside world when he first joined Tencent. At the beginning of 2006, he put forward Tencent's "5-year business plan", described the blueprint for the development of each business of Tencent, and set a goal that seemed unattainable at the time, that is, Tencent's annual revenue will reach 5% in the next 100 years. billion yuan.
A set of comparable data is that in 2005, Tencent’s annual revenue was only 14 billion yuan, while Baidu’s annual revenue, which is listed on NASDAQ, was 3 million yuan.At that time, the three major portal websites had the best development momentum, among which Sina had an annual income of US$1.9 million, Netease had an annual income of US$2.1 million, and Sohu had an annual income of US$1.08 million.
It turned out that Tencent achieved the goal set by Lau Chiping, a year ahead of schedule.The financial report shows that in 2009, Tencent's annual revenue exceeded 124 billion yuan.
More often, Liu Chiping accompanied Ma Huateng to "sit and talk". "I was the one who was always talking and he was listening. At that time, he was not very familiar with many strategic concepts, but he had a good sense of perception, and he could often draw inferences from one instance and get to the core of the problem directly." After countless exchanges, they reached an agreement The general consensus is that the only core capability of Tencent is to master the interpersonal network. Starting from this, providing users with various online life services may be a feasible path.
So how do you define "online life"?Ma Huateng and Liu Chiping created a new English word - ICEC. I stands for Information (information), C stands for Communication (communication), E stands for Entertainment (entertainment), and C stands for Commerce (business). "The purpose of diversification is to provide online life, and behind the online life is the community, and all the above-mentioned services will be connected through the community."
By August 2005, Ma Huateng announced Tencent's new strategic proposition to the media for the first time: "Tencent hopes to fully meet the needs of people at different levels of online life, and hopes that its products and services will be integrated into life like water and electricity. .Tencent has initially completed the business layout for the online life industry model." In an interview with "First Financial Daily", Ma Huateng talked about Tencent's ambitions in more detail: "Wireless (value-added) has more than 8 billion yuan. We must go in; online games have more than 100 billion yuan, and Tencent can’t give up; advertising has more than 70 billion yuan, Tencent can’t give up; Tencent can’t give up search and e-commerce.”
The proposal of "online life" has made people see a Chinese Internet company that has never been seen before.However, not everyone was optimistic about Ma Huateng's new strategy, and voices of concern could be heard in the media comments at the time.
"Internet Weekly" believes in a report entitled "Ma Huateng Begins to Show Power: Tencent Takes Over China's Internet Life": "Ma Huateng's advantage lies in the relatively loyal hundreds of millions of registered QQ users in his hands, but he The difficulty lies in trying to provide all life and entertainment resources by itself. This means that Ma Huateng, who has a huge number of users, may face competition from all Internet companies, and it is very easy to lose the focus of development in the diversified expansion.”
Internet commentator Ma Qiji raised two questions: "The first question is, what is the concept of 'online life'? Does it have a boundary? Where is the boundary? How far is Tencent from the boundary? Compared with portals, QQ.com also has extremely obvious weaknesses, so how does QQ.com plan to make "online life" more perfect? The second question is more abstract. Real life itself is a big platform, but so far no one or organization can realize "life online". — Marketing" comprehensive integration, so how can 'online life' be achieved?"
Ma Huateng's explanation for this is: "On the surface, everyone may think that Tencent wants to do everything, but in fact, we do everything around the community and platform formed on the basis of the instant messaging tool QQ."
But even so, in the theory of corporate strategy, this is still very dangerous.In his book "Competitive Advantage", Michael Porter once warned against "strategic connections". In practice, a range of insurmountable organizational barriers, including organizational, cultural, and management structures, still hinder the acquisition of linkages.
Later facts also proved that Tencent will undergo a series of organizational and management changes, the main purpose of which is to adapt to the "online life" strategy.
The second organizational structure adjustment
After the new strategy is put forward, the first challenge is the existing organizational structure.
In the first structural adjustment in 2001, the company's business department was divided into R&D line (R line) and market line (M line), but with the increase of product types, this model has become unsuitable , There are more and more projects on the front line, and the research and development in the rear are crowded together.Liu Chiping recalled: "I did a rough calculation at the time, and there were more than 60 important product lines in the company, each of which had a timely demand for technology. After it was submitted to the R line, it was almost impossible to arrange it. It affects the normal operation.” In the QQ show project, the R line and the M line have been opened up, and the product manager system has been implemented, and the subsequent news portals, search and online games are all re-combined with R&D, content and operations.
因此，腾讯在2005年10月24日下发“深腾人字38号”文件，宣布进行第二次架构调整。公司的组织架构被划分为8个序列，分别由5个业务部门和3个服务支持部门组成。
B0: Enterprise development system, under the International Business Department, E-Commerce Department, Strategic Development Department, Investment and M&A Department, responsible for strategy, investment, M&A and related businesses, under the concurrent management of Chief Strategic Investment Officer Liu Chiping.
B1: Wireless business system, under the wireless product department, mobile communication department, telecommunications business department and local offices, responsible for business related to telecom operators, the person in charge is Liu Chengmin.
B2: Internet business system, under the Internet R&D Department, Community Product Department and the newly established Digital Music Department, responsible for QQ and related businesses, the person in charge is Wu Xiaoguang.
B3: Interactive entertainment business system, subordinated to the Interactive Entertainment R&D Department, Interactive Entertainment Operation Department, and Channel Marketing Department, responsible for the online game business, and the person in charge is Ren Yuxin.
B4: Network media business system, subordinate website department, advertising sales department, search product center, responsible for the portal business, under the concurrent management of Chief Information Officer Xu Chenye.
Line O: Operational Support System, under the Operational Support Department, System Architecture Department, Security Center, Management Engineering Department, R&D Management Department, and Customer Service Department, responsible for servers, databases, and security services. The person in charge is Li Haixiang.
R Line: Platform R&D system, subordinate Instant Messaging Product Department, Shenzhen R&D Center, Guangzhou R&D Center, responsible for technology R&D, under the concurrent management of Chief Technology Officer Zhang Zhidong.
S line: Functional system, subordinate administration, personnel, finance, legal, investor relations, internal audit, public relations and board of directors office, under the concurrent management of Chief Administrative Officer Chen Yidan.
Liu Chengmin, Wu Xiaoguang, Ren Yuxin and Li Haixiang were promoted to executive vice presidents.
This adjustment means the formation of the business department system.Each business department takes the product as the unit, develops projects, and divides labor into operations. From then on, Tencent "divides into many" and "brothers climb mountains and work hard on their own."From the perspective of the composition of business shares, B1 and B2 are the most important revenue departments, accounting for more than 4% of the company's total revenue. B3's news portal business was unremarkable at this time, but it was valued for its strategic significance.More special is the B2005 system.Around October 10, the number of chess and card game users of Tencent surpassed that of Lianzhong, but no real breaking point was found.From the perspective of the decision-makers, the prospect of online games is worth looking forward to, so it was formed into an independent army, and the interactive entertainment department, which was originally a sub-unit, was promoted as a whole. It will prove to be a successful strategic arrangement in the future.
In addition to the five major business systems, Ma Huateng believes that e-commerce and search are also areas that Tencent must set foot in. Therefore, in the middle of 2005, a team was quietly formed, and they were respectively subordinate to the B0 and B4 systems. They are expected to be separated after maturity.
There is a very subtle arrangement in this structure: all of Tencent's business foundations come from traffic. However, in the organizational structure, there is no organization like the "General Staff" for overall planning and configuration of traffic.This power is actually in the hands of the "general office".In other words, Tencent's organizational structure is quite similar to the model of "monopoly of power and decentralization of small power". The heads of each business group are granted the greatest authority in terms of business development, but their lifeline is always controlled by the top decision-making layer.
At an internal executive meeting, Ma Huateng talked about the adjusted management philosophy. He said: "In the next five years, Tencent's biggest challenge is execution. Everyone can see how the market is going, but not everyone can get it. Through a complete index system and organizational structure to ensure the transmission of pressure, through strict assessment and the last elimination system to retain good talents, all of these can make Tencent a company that does not rely on individual elites, but relies on institutional power mature system."
In the not-too-long history of Tencent, 2005 was a turning point. At the critical moment when the wireless value-added business that relied on it encountered a bottleneck, Ma Huateng’s team made radical strategic adjustments. The strategy of “online life” was proposed and The second organizational structure adjustment has a symbolic meaning.It means that this company, which started as an instant messaging tool, has embarked on a journey of diversification full of uncertainties with hundreds of millions of users, more than one billion yuan in cash and their young ambitions after seven years of entrepreneurship.Since then, a strange and ambitious Tencent has quietly appeared in front of people. It covered almost all Internet product forms at that time, and was ready to go in every segmented field. The five business systems can be regarded as five independent companies, and they are like five "octopus hands", each reaching out to all competitors with its own strength.Before this, no Chinese company or American company has reached the goal of "providing all online life services", and it seems more like an impossible task.The various doubts and attacks that Tencent encountered afterwards were all related to this.
In order to implement the strategy of "online life", Tencent has naturally entered various fields of the Internet.The strong and effective execution of Tencent's various business systems has positively promoted the business, and its "remarkable achievements" have inevitably had an impact on its peers.At this moment, Tencent is like an energetic young man, active in various fields of the Internet.
Ants moving: an encounter with Taobao
"What exactly does Ma Huateng want to do?" This is a question that many people are asking.
On September 2005, 9, Ma Huateng went to Hangzhou to participate in the fifth "West Lake Discussion of Swords". Ma Yun, Ding Lei, Ma Huateng, Wang Yan and Zhang Chaoyang appeared at the same forum. Ask everyone on the stage: "Apart from your own company, whose company do you like most?" Wang Yan chose Ma Huateng, and Zhang Chaoyang chose Ding Lei.Of course, such an answer has elements of play and affection. However, Ma Huateng, who was selected twice, seems to have become one of the targets and "imaginary enemies".
Among the five people in the same field at that time, Ma Huateng had a competitive relationship with Ding Lei, Wang Yan, and Zhang Chaoyang. It seemed that the only one that had no business intersection with Tencent was Jack Ma's Alibaba.However, just two days later, the situation has changed.
On September 9, Tencent released an e-commerce trading platform with an independent domain name, Paipai.com (www.paipai.com). One month later, the online payment tool Tenpay was launched. Jack Ma's declaration of war.Since the launch of Paipai, the import effect of QQ traffic has been very obvious. More than 12% of Paipai users are attracted from various interfaces of QQ. On March 2006, 3, Tencent announced that Paipai.com had 13 million registered users and officially entered commercial operation on this day.At the same time, Tencent released the search website Soso.com (www.soso.com), which means that Tencent will implement a closed strategy in the two fields of e-commerce and search.
Two months later, an encounter between Paipai and Taobao suddenly broke out.
On May 2006, 5, Taobao, which won the market competition with eBay, was eager to cash in. Jack Ma proposed a fee-based service called "Zhaocaijinbao", announcing that he would get more orders for those willing to pay for promotion. Taobao sellers provide bidding ranking services. This decision violated Jack Ma’s promise of “Taobao free for three years” made the previous year, and triggered fierce opposition from Taobao sellers. The sellers spontaneously organized an “anti-Taobao alliance” In the first quarter, a collective strike of 10 people was held.
On May 5th, Paipai.com launched a promotional activity of "Ants moving, moving out of a bright future". As long as the seller successfully imports his reference credit on the third-party trading website on Paipai.com and distributes more than 15 models, he has a good chance Get a Gold Referral.At the same time, buyers who purchase any product on Paipai.com and complete the payment through Tenpay can get a shopping coupon reward of up to 20 yuan.Aiming at Taobao’s plan of “recruiting wealth and making treasures”, Paipai.com announced that it will be “completely free for the next three years”.
Pai Pai's oblique stabbing was tantamount to "robbing while taking advantage of the fire" in the eyes of the battered Ma Yun.He was very angry. At a press conference in Hangzhou, he identified Tencent and eBay as the driving forces behind the strike. He directly named Ma Huateng and said: "Ma Huateng's trick is very good. It’s the taste of competition.” In addition, he also disclosed that “Tencent Paipai.com recruited a lot of people from Taobao at the beginning of its establishment.” When a reporter asked him his opinion on Paipai.com, Jack Ma thought it was an imitation of Taobao.com: “ In the C2C market, Tencent Paipai.com is just an amateur player, and Paipai.com has embarked on a road that will never return (blindly imitating), and it will swallow this bitter pill in a few years, and Ma Huateng will also have the same consequences.”
Regarding Ma Yun’s accusation, Ma Huateng expressed his innocence in a telephone interview with reporters: “We are good friends in private, and it is impossible to engage in such vicious competition behind the scenes.” Regarding Tencent’s digging of Taobao’s wall, Ma Huateng retorted: “One First, this kind of talent flow is normal; second, there are only two or three people who come from Taobao, so it’s not like poaching.” At the same time that the two sides exchanged fire across the air, a large number of people began to circulate on the Internet. That's how it came out! " and other posts, directly named "Tencent hired a public relations firm to attack Taobao".On the grounds of "defamation infringement", Tencent sued Thousand Oaks, which published this series of anonymous articles, to court, demanding an apology, eliminating the influence, and claiming 500 million yuan.
Under the double pressure from Taobao sellers and Paipai.com, Ma Yun chose to compromise. On the eve of the "'June 5st' general strike", on May 31, Taobao announced that it would decide through a referendum on the service of "recruiting wealth and treasure". As a result, the proportion of negative votes was as high as 63%, which led to the death of this fee-based service.
After this battle, Paipai.com became famous, and by March 2007, its transaction volume surpassed eBay to become the second largest C3C website.In the next few years, Taobao adjusted its charging strategy and did not give Paipai too many opportunities to attack. However, Alibaba regarded Tencent as its most dangerous enemy. Ma Yun once said to the media: "QQ is indeed a bit scary. Its attacks are always silent."
"Public Enemy" Ma Huateng
On May 2006, 5, Tencent released its first-quarter financial report, showing that the company under adjustment is getting out of the "Monternet dilemma".In this quarter, its total revenue was RMB 24 million, an increase of 6.453% over the previous quarter and 50.3% over the same period last year; gross profit was RMB 114.8 million, an increase of 4.696% over the previous quarter and 62.4% over the same period last year ; The total number of its instant messaging registered accounts reached 136.5 million, an increase of 5.315% from the previous quarter.
The beautiful performance made the stock price rise by 26% on the day, sweeping away the decline a year ago.
However, at the same time as the performance soared, doubts and accusations also followed.
On May 5, the day after the quarterly report was released, Wu Bofan, the editor-in-chief of "25st Century Business Review", interviewed Ma Huateng and wrote the article "The Radius of the Penguin Empire".This is the mainstream financial media earlier using the word "empire" to describe the expanding Tencent, Wu Bofan therefore raised a "management radius" issue.
He wrote that Tencent's "business" is defined as "online life", which is obviously a far-reaching business, and it also means that Tencent will "go to war on all fronts."A small company that lives in Shenzhen and started with a single IM business is expanding its territory and building a central empire in the virtual world.Even the most well-meaning reviewers worry about it.As we have seen from the rise and fall of empires in history, it is relatively easy to open up territory, but if the radius of ruling ability does not reach the radius of the territory, such an empire will not last long.Does Tencent have core competencies?If so, can the "transmission power" of its core capabilities cover all its "starting from the core" businesses?From the perspective of the "spatial structure" of the business, can all these businesses be related to each other and form a trend of "stars participating in the Big Dipper"?From the perspective of the "time structure" of the business portfolio, can the business portfolio formed by "seed industry, nursery industry, fruit tree industry, and dead wood industry" succeed each other and have both sides?Can the fruit wood industry bear the weight of so many seed and nursery industries before it becomes a deadwood industry?
Obviously, these are questions with no standard answers.Peter Drucker regards business management as "art" rather than "science", and his subtext is a warning and respect for uncertainty.In "The Radius of the Penguin Empire", Wu Bofan raised doubts about Tencent from three aspects: business strategy, core competence and management ability. His conclusion is, "Tencent seems to have no strong rival now, but in fact there is a strong rival that is inseparable from it. Sui. This rival is Tencent itself, if it can’t grasp its business radius and management radius.”
If Wu Bofan warned against Tencent's strategy of "going to war on all fronts" from the standpoint of Tencent, then another financial reporter gave a new and more sensational definition from the perspective of the industry. In June 2006, Cheng Lingfeng regarded Tencent as an "enemy of the whole industry" in the "Chinese Entrepreneur" magazine he worked for. The title of his article was "'Public Enemy' Ma Huateng". for circulation.
Cheng Lingfeng is a young Internet observer. He later joined Tencent as the editor-in-chief of Tencent Technology Channel, and then left to become an independent self-media person.The report he published in June "defined" Tencent's public opinion image in the future.
Cheng Lingfeng wrote: "On the Internet in China, there is a man who competed with Chen Tianqiao, Ma Yun, Ding Lei, Zhang Chaoyang, and Li Yanhong at the same time. He looks gentle and behaves elegantly, but he is called a 'public enemy'. He is in charge of the Internet with the highest market value in China. Company." Cheng Lingfeng made such a description in the "Introduction" part of the article, and then he listed Tencent's almost all-encompassing fields, and sighed: "In fact, China's Internet spans multiple business lines. There are quite a few companies, but there is almost no Internet company that can lead in more than two business lines at the same time, except Tencent." Even if Tencent is placed within the scope of the global Internet, its ambition is surprising. of. "Tencent has done all the business done by the 'four kings' of the Internet, Google, Yahoo, eBay, and MSN," the report said.
In this report, Cheng Lingfeng keenly glimpsed a feature of Tencent's diversification strategy: keeping a close eye on market trends, copying the model of winners in the fastest way, and using the advantages of QQ users to surpass later.He quoted Ma Huateng as saying: "Because the Internet market is too new and too fast, there are many possibilities for where to go. If you take the lead, you may have no way to prove that the choice is right. Many new things will emerge within a few months. Come on, how do you judge which is the hot spot? When there are competitors, people start to have fighting spirit; see what others are doing well and what is not doing well, and what should they do if others kill them? Is it a hard top or go Detour to fight elsewhere?"
Ma Huateng later summed up the above passage as a strategy - "launch is the safest way".
This late-mover strategy will inevitably lead to the emergence of two situations.
First, Tencent will be identified as an "imitator" rather than an "innovator".Cheng Lingfeng wrote: "Ma Huateng doesn't think so. He said, I don't innovate blindly. What Microsoft and Google do are what others have done. The smartest way is definitely to learn the best cases and then go beyond. I don't strive for the first, no Significance. As soon as a new product comes out, it must be stable, and you can’t change it as you want, and you must be cautious.”
Second, Tencent regards the world as its enemy, and at the same time, the world regards Tencent as its enemy. "Whether Ma Huateng is willing or not, almost all Internet companies will automatically declare war on Tencent after establishing a firm foothold and completing the accumulation of original users. IM has a huge stickiness for users that cannot be compared with any other service such as mailboxes and games. Who would not be greedy? "
These two situations emerged in early 2006, but the evolution in the future will be many times more intense than that described by Cheng Wen.Another fact that Cheng Lingfeng did not have time to reveal is that in order to maintain the advantage of attacking late, Tencent will inevitably spare no effort in monopolizing user resources. "Imitation without innovation", "making the world an enemy" and "refusing to open up" have become Tencent's "three deadly sins".
Zeng Liqing's departure
There will be several "critical moments" in the course of any enterprise's growth.They are beyond the previous plan, but they are the results of active determination. When they are presented, they are often strange and unreliable, so they are full of drama.The choice at this "moment" shows the personal charm and characteristics of the entrepreneur, and determines the fate of the company in the future.
In my opinion, in the history of Tencent, the first "Tencent moment" was on February 1999, 2. The release of OICQ marked that the company found a direction to focus on, and found an inch of survival in the fierce Internet world. land.The second "Tencent moment" should be in August 10. The proposal of the "online life" strategy means Tencent's major transformation into an all-round and ecological enterprise, and all its future achievements and controversies are based on this.If, in the first "Tencent Moment", Ma Huateng showed his professional and keen side, then in the second "Tencent Moment", he showed his boldness and strategy.
At every "critical moment", the weight of business modules within the enterprise organization will change, and organizational imbalance and power adjustment will inevitably follow. After the autumn of 2005, with the formulation of the new company strategy and the adjustment of the second organizational structure, a personnel earthquake inevitably occurred. In February 2006, Tencent issued an announcement, appointing Liu Chiping to succeed Ma Huateng as the company's president, and Ma Huateng still retained the position of chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer.Liu Chiping's work is divided into daily management and operation.
This appointment surprised many observers, which meant that Zeng Liqing, who had been in charge of marketing and sales for a long time, was marginalized.By November 2006, Zeng Liqing proposed to the board of directors to retire, and Tencent announced in June 11 that he was hired as a lifelong consultant.Before leaving, Zeng Liqing asked a well-known painter in Guangdong to draw a picture of "Five Horses" and gave it to his partners.Five horses with different looks stand between heaven and earth, implying the five founders of Tencent.Ma Huateng hung it in the conference room on the third floor of the Fiyta Building. Few people in Tencent knew its origin.
In the past eight years, Zeng Liqing, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong have formed Tencent's "iron triangle".They have very different personalities and distinct specialties. Ma Huateng is good at products, Zhang Zhidong is good at technology, Zeng Liqing is good at marketing, and these three are almost the core competencies that a start-up company must have.While Chen Yidan is in charge of the company's rear, Xu Chenye is in charge of stabilizing the portal website. Among other Internet companies in China, such a complementary entrepreneurial combination has rarely appeared.
Despite his background in telecommunications, Zeng Liqing is closer to a traditional manufacturing or service industry person in his behavior. Compared with the quiet and shy Ma Huateng, he is more like a "person" when interacting with the outside world. the one who makes the decision".Ding Ke, who followed him to develop the Q coin business in the early years, remembers the scene when he saw Zeng Liqing for the first time: from the other side of the building, a huge figure staggered over, he had a loud voice, wearing a suit, Wearing a tie, but underneath a pair of knee-length blue shorts.In an Internet company with a strong engineer culture, Zeng Liqing with his rough style is an alternative.
Zeng Liqing created Tencent's marketing and marketing system by himself. His role is very similar to Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army during Lenin's period. The wireless value-added business team he led once contributed more than 1% of the revenue.When he left, the relationship between Tencent and telecom operators was at a freezing point, and the proportion of wireless value-added service revenue in total revenue had dropped to 4/[-].Obviously, Ma Huateng, who is in a period of transformation, needs an assistant who understands strategy, capital operation and has an international perspective.
Zeng Liqing's last job at Tencent was to recommend domain companies.Zhang Yan, the founder of Wangyu, is his college classmate: "He knew how to play when he was in college, and he never thought he would become famous. Once I went to an Internet cafe in Hunan to do research, and found that many people were playing Wangyu's "Huaxia" ", and suggested that the company buy it after I came back." Tencent bought a 2990% stake in Shenzhen Wangyu for 19.9 million yuan, and transformed "Huaxia" into "QQ Huaxia". This team later developed "Heroes Island" and other Online game products.By 2010, Tencent acquired all the shares of Wangyu.
After resigning, Liqing Zeng came back after half a year's rest and founded Decent Investment, whose English name is Decent, leaving obvious traces of Tencent.It is said that Zeng Liqing is willing to listen to their plans for those who start new companies from Tencent, and invest a little if they have the opportunity. In May 2013, he received me at the office of Kuehne & Nave Investments, a Center of Excellence located in the CBD of Shenzhen. He still used to call Ma Huateng "Big Boss". Cloth QQ penguin.
(End of this chapter)
The final product of strategic decision-making is false and pure. The enterprise combines the market and the product, through the combination of new elements, discards some old things, and expands from the existing position to achieve new goals.
——Igor Ansoff (American management scientist)
In the next few years, Ma Huateng will try to fully take over the online life of Chinese netizens.
——Internet Weekly, January 2006
The disillusionment of the "virtual telecom operator"
For quite a long time, Ma Huateng's strategic plan for Tencent was based on "imagination".
With the increase in the number of QQ users, he once tried to build an open "gold platform". In January 2001, when the number of QQ registered users exceeded 1 million, Ma Huateng told the reporter of China Computer News: "Tencent's strategy is to build a platform, and welcome all vertical industries, such as games, information, e-commerce, ISP, IP, etc. Telephone and other structures are built on it to form an all-encompassing application environment. At that time, QQ will not only be an instant messaging tool, but also provide its users with more practical business information. In this way, QQ will become a 'golden platform'. "
Before this strategy could be implemented, the changes in China's telecommunications industry have opened another door for Tencent. For Tencent, which has made great profits in the "Monternet" business, it is speculated that it will soon enter the telecommunications field and implement the "Monternet" business. Virtual telecom operator" strategy.
As early as September 2000, in order to promote the separation of fixed-line and mobile phone services, the Ministry of Information Industry promulgated the "Regulations on the Administration of Telecommunications", which combined e-mail, voice mail, online information storage and retrieval, electronic data exchange, and online data processing with Transaction processing, value-added fax, Internet access and information service, video conference call service, etc. are listed as the content of telecom value-added services, and resale telecom business is listed as a category of basic telecom business.This new regulation is considered to be a signal of the liberalization of telecommunications control. Professor Lu Tingjie of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications commented at the time: "The new regulation is developing towards the direction of renting out network elements, which has led to the inevitable emergence of virtual operators. This trend may lead to operability competition in China's telecommunications industry."
Soon after, China Mobile, which had nothing, launched the "Monternet" service with an unusually open attitude, opening the door to SMS value-added services.Around 2003, private companies that entered the telecommunications field through the Monternet project "curve" clearly saw a new possibility.NetEase and Tencent have successively proposed the strategic goal of becoming a "virtual telecom operator".
In September 2003, Tencent cooperated with Shanghai Telecom to launch the "Telephone QQ" service. Users dial 9 or log in to the "Telephone QQ" website page. After obtaining a QQ account, they can communicate with ordinary telephones according to the voice prompts. The announcement said: "The opening scope of this service includes all telephone categories of Shanghai Telecom, as well as mobile phone users of China Mobile and China Unicom, and fixed phone users of Railcom and China Netcom. The telephone QQ service is free of account opening fees and information fees. The tariffs for card-type telephones are the same as the current tariff standards for ordinary telephones and card-type telephones.” That is to say, Tencent has entered the core voice business field through cooperation with Shanghai Telecom, and there is only one step left to dial ordinary telephones directly from QQ. away.
In 2004, Ding Lei implanted VoIP technology in the new version of Netease Bubbles. According to media reports, "Once the policy allows, Netease can pay for calls through point cards or bubble 'gold coins'. At this time, point cards are Turned into a phone recharge card, NetEase will have the opportunity to become a virtual telecom operator in the true sense."
These actions of Tencent and Netease have aroused the collective vigilance of the monopoly state-owned telecommunications companies. In July 2005, the Ministry of Information Industry issued a notice, clearly stipulating: "Except for China Telecom and China Netcom, which can carry out commercial trials of PC-to-Phone (PC to Phone) Internet telephony in some areas, no unit or individual is allowed to engage in this business."
The dream of a "virtual operator" of private Internet companies has thus been shattered.
China Mobile, which achieved its phased strategic goals through "Monternet", also began to "close the network".Later facts showed that the rectification of content service providers, which began in the second half of 2004, eventually became a clearing operation, and China Mobile has since closed the door to cooperation and opening up.When state-owned telecom operators use policy control to block NetEase and Tencent from the door, they themselves actually "self-castrated" the drive for innovation and progress.In the next few years, they made a lot of money from the protection of policies. Until the end of 2012, Tencent once again challenged their telecom monopoly from an unexpected angle with WeChat.
The days of being "expelled" by China Mobile
Beginning in the second half of 2004, Tencent's wireless value-added business suffered a serious impact.Ma Huateng later said: "Wireless value-added services account for too much of Tencent's business revenue, and our business relationship with telecom operators is very close. During the cleaning process, our pressure may be the greatest."
In the continuous "inactive user" purge, the number of SMS users has shrunk sharply.
Many years later, Liu Chengmin still has lingering fears about the scene at that time. He talked about a detail: "In October 2004, we suddenly received a call from the China Mobile Data Department, requesting to go to Beijing immediately to talk about the matter. When we arrived in Beijing, they took a Zhang Xin's agreement was handed over to us. China Mobile proposed to renegotiate the sharing ratio of '10 Mobile Chat', otherwise the cooperation on this project would be terminated. '161 Mobile Chat' is a star project in wireless value-added services, accounting for It has reached about 161% of the total business revenue. Because all channel resources are with the other party, we have almost no room for bargaining."
In December, China Mobile announced that the "12 Mobile Chat" business agreement with Tencent had expired, and the sharing ratio was renegotiated. According to the new rules, Tencent's monthly net profit will be significantly reduced by about 161 million yuan, up to 400 million yuan a year. Yuan.In addition, China Mobile also forced Tencent to adjust the sharing ratio of SMS revenue from 4800:15 to 85:5, further reducing Tencent's profit margins.
Affected by these unfavorable news, the stock price of Tencent on the Stock Exchange hovered at a low level, and investors lacked confidence. In April 2005, in order to express its confidence, Tencent's board of directors had to announce the repurchase of 4% of the issued share capital, which would cost approximately HK$10 million based on the stock price at that time.By November, Tencent announced another share buyback plan of up to $9.74 million.
By 2006, China Mobile launched another "killing mace" and directly attacked Mobile QQ.
The key to Tencent's ability to obtain the largest and most stable income from the "Monternet" project lies in its huge QQ user base, so it is much less dependent on operators than other content service providers.Among them, Mobile QQ is the core product, with 700 million users, accounting for about [-]% of all Tencent SMS users.In the past few years, China Mobile has been coveting instant messaging tools. In its plan, if it can have its own product similar to QQ, it can smoothly integrate with operators and content providers. Transformation, thus forming a closed-loop business model that does not need to share profits with any other company.
By the beginning of 2006, the two finally reached the moment of showdown.China Mobile outsourced and developed an instant messaging tool called "Fetion" by itself. At the same time, it put forward two mandatory requirements to Tencent: First, Mobile QQ and Fetion "business merge", otherwise, Mobile QQ will be removed from the dream. Second, the entire QQ system is "interconnected" with Fetion.
Fearing that the user experience is not good, and the cost is difficult to share, Tencent rejected China Mobile on the grounds that the conditions were not mature.
In June, the test version of Fetion was launched, and China Mobile announced: "Fetion is not just a product. It is an important step in the future strategy. Through the Fetion platform, China Mobile can launch many value-added services, such as online games, online shopping, virtual Communities, mobile payment, etc..” At the same time, China Mobile issued the “Notice on Regulating “Monternet” Chat Services”, which reads: For the existing Monternet services in the chat community, we will no longer carry out any form of cooperation with such services. Marketing cooperation; Mobile QQ and Netease Paobo will be allowed to carry out until the end of 6, and the relevant SP cooperation agreement will be renewed until this point in time.
On December 2006, 12, on the last day of terminating the cooperation, Tencent issued an announcement in Hong Kong that Mobile QQ would "merge" with Fetion within 29 months, and its business would gradually transition to the Fetion platform. It is "Fetion QQ".
During the two-and-a-half-year clean-up campaign, the wireless value-added business that Tencent relied on for profit suffered an unprecedented blow.
Throughout 2005, Tencent's total revenue increased by 24.7% year-on-year to RMB 14.264 billion; net profit increased by 10% to RMB 4.854 million.Among them, Internet value-added service revenue increased by 79.2% year-on-year, and its proportion in total revenue rose from 38.4% to 55.1%, while wireless value-added service revenue fell by 19.3% year-on-year. 55.6% dropped to 36.3%, surpassed by Internet value-added services for the first time.
By March 2006, Tencent announced the third repurchase of shares, with a maximum repurchase amount of US$3 million.To boost revenue, Tencent also acquired a 3000% stake in Joyman Technology Co Ltd, a wireless value-added service provider.By the end of the year, the revenue of wireless value-added services increased from 100 million yuan to 5.17 million yuan, of which Zhuoyi Max contributed 7 million yuan. The annual financial report admitted that "the increase in revenue mainly reflects the content-based SMS service provided by Zhuo Yi Max. increase in income".In the company's total revenue, the proportion of wireless value-added services continued to decline to 1%, while the proportion of Internet value-added services rose to 25.0%.
"Stand on your own" on your mobile phone
China Mobile's "elimination" of former partners has once again proved the unchallengeable position of "entrance" in the information industry: whoever has "entry" has the right to speak and allocate resources.Ma Huateng was very wary of companies with import-level products later, and his lessons and experiences should come from this.
Under policy exclusion, the content service providers "parasitic" on Montnets experienced a collective avalanche, and each company panicked and scattered.Among them, Ding Lei was the most resolute. NetEase withdrew early and hid in the "safe haven" of online games.The most embarrassing thing is the "King of SP", TOM, which has just been listed in Hong Kong. At the moment when the revenue of SMS messages has fallen sharply, it "takes a slant" and launched some gray businesses. Disclosed in: "TOM is most famous for renting a house in the suburbs of Beijing, employing hundreds of women, and chatting with them through the phone number 1259*, all of which are pornographic." This kind of pornographic chat has a A very elegant professional name: Interactive Voice Response (IVR) business.A few years later, TOM was in a slump, and other content service providers, such as KongZhong and Linktone, also declined one after another.
Compared with NetEase or TOM, Tencent's situation is slightly better, but it can also be described as critical.
In the past few years, Tencent's decision-makers have maintained a restrained attitude towards the SP business. The reason why Ma Huateng "willed to go his own way" and successively invested in games, portals and other businesses is also related to his inner fear.However, the wireless business department showed a strong desire to save itself. Under the huge pressure of performance, the marketing department proposed a compromise plan: "If you are worried that the gray income will affect Tencent's reputation, then can it be done outside the system? Acquisition or building a new company, even if there is a problem, can it also serve as a firewall?" This proposal caused fierce disputes at the general office meeting, and Ma Huateng was determined to stop this plan at the end of 2005. The immediate consequence was the resignation of Tang Xin, the head of the department.
"It was really difficult at that time, and there seemed to be almost no way out. SMS was our main charging channel at that time." Ma Huateng recalled later.After careful consideration, he decided to "return to Tencent's core competence" and use QQ resources to re-layout in the mobile market.
At the beginning of 2006, Liu Chengmin, who replaced Tang Xin in charge of the marketing business, accompanied Ma Huateng to a secret meeting with the president of China Unicom, trying to change the family and seek another strategic cooperation.Ma Huateng demonstrated a newly developed Push-to-Talk (PTT, Push-to-Talk) function to China Unicom executives. This is a new mobile technology that runs on the Brew mobile platform provided by Qualcomm in the United States. "One-to-one" or "one-to-many" calls are like using an intercom - this is the prototype of the WeChat "intercom" function in 2012.Ma Huateng hopes to cooperate with China Unicom to build QQ in Unicom mobile phones and provide users with push-to-talk services, so as to form differentiated competition with China Mobile.China Unicom rejected Tencent's proposal. Its strategic focus at that time was on CDMA business, and China Unicom's version of instant messaging tool "Super Letter" was about to be released. It seemed that QQ was of little value to China Unicom.
In the case of unsuccessful cooperation, Ma Huateng quickly made the decision to set up his own company. In 2006, Tencent successively launched two major products, Super QQ and Mobile QQ.
Super QQ is an evolved version of mobile QQ. It provides users with a monthly SMS subscription service at a monthly fee of 10 yuan. Tencent seamlessly connects it with the QQ number on the computer side and provides menu-style services. Users can accumulate QQ on their mobile phones. Online time, SMS setting QQ information, in addition to watching information, weather, jokes, etc.Later, Tencent even implanted the privilege function of QQ members, and launched more than 4 VIP privilege services in four categories, including QQ privileges, game privileges, leisure privileges and life privileges.Liu Chengmin called it "SMS Portal".
Mobile QQ is a QQ software installed on a mobile phone, and its operation interface is similar to the computer version of QQ.Tencent has partnered with handset makers such as Nokia and Motorola to pre-install software on their phones.At the beginning, mobile QQ charged a service fee of 5 yuan per month, but it was canceled later, and all users can download and use it for free.Tencent's revenue mainly comes from simple mobile games and SMS value-added services.
The emergence of Super QQ and Mobile QQ in 2006 has quite important strategic significance.
With this, Tencent got rid of its dependence on China Mobile's "entry" and established two mobile portals entirely of its own.By the end of 2007, Tencent finally got out of the shadow of "Monternet" cleanup, and the revenue from mobile value-added services recovered to break through 8 million yuan.At the Christmas party, the employees of the wireless business department performed a skit, "The landlord's stupid son tried to force Xi'er to marry Xi'er. In the end, Xi'er's family rejected this unequal marriage due to their wealth and wealth."According to the employee's recollection: "At the climax of the plot, the big-screen camera switched to the face of Liu Chengmin, Senior Executive Vice President of Wireless Business, who was watching the show offstage. Liu Chengmin grinned heartily."
Another particularly far-reaching significance is that mobile QQ has won a strategic opportunity for Tencent in the future smart phone era. 3), mobile phone Tencent (2006), mobile QQ browser (2006) and mobile security manager (2007), forming a systematic mobile portal matrix. In May 2010, Liu Chengmin, who had retired, told me in his Beijing apartment: “Tencent’s layout and investment in the mobile terminal was earlier than all Internet companies, and it was many years earlier. Back then, Jobs’ iPhone was still In the lab, many people saw the future of smartphones, but no one knew how it would explode. We were pushed on the right path.”
New strategy: "Integrate into life like water and electricity"
In more cases, strategic transformation is the result of fierce competition, but not necessarily the product of mature planning in advance.
The dispute with China Mobile over the Montnets project forced Ma Huateng to abandon his strategic intention of being a "virtual telecom operator" and return to the Internet to find a new positioning.At this time, he very much needed to find someone within Tencent who could talk about strategy.
It was after the Spring Festival in 2005 that Lau Chiping officially went to work at Fiyta Building.He moved into an empty office, and no one reported to him except a secretary. Even Ma Huateng didn't know what the daily work of the "chief strategic investment officer" was.Chiping Lau said: "I take care of three things that no one cares about. One is strategy, the other is mergers and acquisitions, and the third is investor relations."
His role was quickly revealed. When Tencent's stock price was turbulent, he went to Hong Kong many times to explain the company's prospects to institutional investors. "If you do a good job in investor relations, your stock price will have a better response, and your recognition will increase." In 2005, under his suggestion, Tencent repurchased shares twice to show confidence.He also helped the company to complete a series of acquisitions, including the mailbox company Foxmail, the online game company domain, and the content value-added service provider Zhuoimex, Wangdian and Yingke Becheng, etc. "We have also been in contact with Kingsoft, and we are optimistic about their capabilities in online games and anti-virus software." These are tasks that Tencent has never tried before and is very unfamiliar with.
The "5-year business plan" is the first proof Liu Chiping gave to the outside world when he first joined Tencent. At the beginning of 2006, he put forward Tencent's "5-year business plan", described the blueprint for the development of each business of Tencent, and set a goal that seemed unattainable at the time, that is, Tencent's annual revenue will reach 5% in the next 100 years. billion yuan.
A set of comparable data is that in 2005, Tencent’s annual revenue was only 14 billion yuan, while Baidu’s annual revenue, which is listed on NASDAQ, was 3 million yuan.At that time, the three major portal websites had the best development momentum, among which Sina had an annual income of US$1.9 million, Netease had an annual income of US$2.1 million, and Sohu had an annual income of US$1.08 million.
It turned out that Tencent achieved the goal set by Lau Chiping, a year ahead of schedule.The financial report shows that in 2009, Tencent's annual revenue exceeded 124 billion yuan.
More often, Liu Chiping accompanied Ma Huateng to "sit and talk". "I was the one who was always talking and he was listening. At that time, he was not very familiar with many strategic concepts, but he had a good sense of perception, and he could often draw inferences from one instance and get to the core of the problem directly." After countless exchanges, they reached an agreement The general consensus is that the only core capability of Tencent is to master the interpersonal network. Starting from this, providing users with various online life services may be a feasible path.
So how do you define "online life"?Ma Huateng and Liu Chiping created a new English word - ICEC. I stands for Information (information), C stands for Communication (communication), E stands for Entertainment (entertainment), and C stands for Commerce (business). "The purpose of diversification is to provide online life, and behind the online life is the community, and all the above-mentioned services will be connected through the community."
By August 2005, Ma Huateng announced Tencent's new strategic proposition to the media for the first time: "Tencent hopes to fully meet the needs of people at different levels of online life, and hopes that its products and services will be integrated into life like water and electricity. .Tencent has initially completed the business layout for the online life industry model." In an interview with "First Financial Daily", Ma Huateng talked about Tencent's ambitions in more detail: "Wireless (value-added) has more than 8 billion yuan. We must go in; online games have more than 100 billion yuan, and Tencent can’t give up; advertising has more than 70 billion yuan, Tencent can’t give up; Tencent can’t give up search and e-commerce.”
The proposal of "online life" has made people see a Chinese Internet company that has never been seen before.However, not everyone was optimistic about Ma Huateng's new strategy, and voices of concern could be heard in the media comments at the time.
"Internet Weekly" believes in a report entitled "Ma Huateng Begins to Show Power: Tencent Takes Over China's Internet Life": "Ma Huateng's advantage lies in the relatively loyal hundreds of millions of registered QQ users in his hands, but he The difficulty lies in trying to provide all life and entertainment resources by itself. This means that Ma Huateng, who has a huge number of users, may face competition from all Internet companies, and it is very easy to lose the focus of development in the diversified expansion.”
Internet commentator Ma Qiji raised two questions: "The first question is, what is the concept of 'online life'? Does it have a boundary? Where is the boundary? How far is Tencent from the boundary? Compared with portals, QQ.com also has extremely obvious weaknesses, so how does QQ.com plan to make "online life" more perfect? The second question is more abstract. Real life itself is a big platform, but so far no one or organization can realize "life online". — Marketing" comprehensive integration, so how can 'online life' be achieved?"
Ma Huateng's explanation for this is: "On the surface, everyone may think that Tencent wants to do everything, but in fact, we do everything around the community and platform formed on the basis of the instant messaging tool QQ."
But even so, in the theory of corporate strategy, this is still very dangerous.In his book "Competitive Advantage", Michael Porter once warned against "strategic connections". In practice, a range of insurmountable organizational barriers, including organizational, cultural, and management structures, still hinder the acquisition of linkages.
Later facts also proved that Tencent will undergo a series of organizational and management changes, the main purpose of which is to adapt to the "online life" strategy.
The second organizational structure adjustment
After the new strategy is put forward, the first challenge is the existing organizational structure.
In the first structural adjustment in 2001, the company's business department was divided into R&D line (R line) and market line (M line), but with the increase of product types, this model has become unsuitable , There are more and more projects on the front line, and the research and development in the rear are crowded together.Liu Chiping recalled: "I did a rough calculation at the time, and there were more than 60 important product lines in the company, each of which had a timely demand for technology. After it was submitted to the R line, it was almost impossible to arrange it. It affects the normal operation.” In the QQ show project, the R line and the M line have been opened up, and the product manager system has been implemented, and the subsequent news portals, search and online games are all re-combined with R&D, content and operations.
因此，腾讯在2005年10月24日下发“深腾人字38号”文件，宣布进行第二次架构调整。公司的组织架构被划分为8个序列，分别由5个业务部门和3个服务支持部门组成。
B0: Enterprise development system, under the International Business Department, E-Commerce Department, Strategic Development Department, Investment and M&A Department, responsible for strategy, investment, M&A and related businesses, under the concurrent management of Chief Strategic Investment Officer Liu Chiping.
B1: Wireless business system, under the wireless product department, mobile communication department, telecommunications business department and local offices, responsible for business related to telecom operators, the person in charge is Liu Chengmin.
B2: Internet business system, under the Internet R&D Department, Community Product Department and the newly established Digital Music Department, responsible for QQ and related businesses, the person in charge is Wu Xiaoguang.
B3: Interactive entertainment business system, subordinated to the Interactive Entertainment R&D Department, Interactive Entertainment Operation Department, and Channel Marketing Department, responsible for the online game business, and the person in charge is Ren Yuxin.
B4: Network media business system, subordinate website department, advertising sales department, search product center, responsible for the portal business, under the concurrent management of Chief Information Officer Xu Chenye.
Line O: Operational Support System, under the Operational Support Department, System Architecture Department, Security Center, Management Engineering Department, R&D Management Department, and Customer Service Department, responsible for servers, databases, and security services. The person in charge is Li Haixiang.
R Line: Platform R&D system, subordinate Instant Messaging Product Department, Shenzhen R&D Center, Guangzhou R&D Center, responsible for technology R&D, under the concurrent management of Chief Technology Officer Zhang Zhidong.
S line: Functional system, subordinate administration, personnel, finance, legal, investor relations, internal audit, public relations and board of directors office, under the concurrent management of Chief Administrative Officer Chen Yidan.
Liu Chengmin, Wu Xiaoguang, Ren Yuxin and Li Haixiang were promoted to executive vice presidents.
This adjustment means the formation of the business department system.Each business department takes the product as the unit, develops projects, and divides labor into operations. From then on, Tencent "divides into many" and "brothers climb mountains and work hard on their own."From the perspective of the composition of business shares, B1 and B2 are the most important revenue departments, accounting for more than 4% of the company's total revenue. B3's news portal business was unremarkable at this time, but it was valued for its strategic significance.More special is the B2005 system.Around October 10, the number of chess and card game users of Tencent surpassed that of Lianzhong, but no real breaking point was found.From the perspective of the decision-makers, the prospect of online games is worth looking forward to, so it was formed into an independent army, and the interactive entertainment department, which was originally a sub-unit, was promoted as a whole. It will prove to be a successful strategic arrangement in the future.
In addition to the five major business systems, Ma Huateng believes that e-commerce and search are also areas that Tencent must set foot in. Therefore, in the middle of 2005, a team was quietly formed, and they were respectively subordinate to the B0 and B4 systems. They are expected to be separated after maturity.
There is a very subtle arrangement in this structure: all of Tencent's business foundations come from traffic. However, in the organizational structure, there is no organization like the "General Staff" for overall planning and configuration of traffic.This power is actually in the hands of the "general office".In other words, Tencent's organizational structure is quite similar to the model of "monopoly of power and decentralization of small power". The heads of each business group are granted the greatest authority in terms of business development, but their lifeline is always controlled by the top decision-making layer.
At an internal executive meeting, Ma Huateng talked about the adjusted management philosophy. He said: "In the next five years, Tencent's biggest challenge is execution. Everyone can see how the market is going, but not everyone can get it. Through a complete index system and organizational structure to ensure the transmission of pressure, through strict assessment and the last elimination system to retain good talents, all of these can make Tencent a company that does not rely on individual elites, but relies on institutional power mature system."
In the not-too-long history of Tencent, 2005 was a turning point. At the critical moment when the wireless value-added business that relied on it encountered a bottleneck, Ma Huateng’s team made radical strategic adjustments. The strategy of “online life” was proposed and The second organizational structure adjustment has a symbolic meaning.It means that this company, which started as an instant messaging tool, has embarked on a journey of diversification full of uncertainties with hundreds of millions of users, more than one billion yuan in cash and their young ambitions after seven years of entrepreneurship.Since then, a strange and ambitious Tencent has quietly appeared in front of people. It covered almost all Internet product forms at that time, and was ready to go in every segmented field. The five business systems can be regarded as five independent companies, and they are like five "octopus hands", each reaching out to all competitors with its own strength.Before this, no Chinese company or American company has reached the goal of "providing all online life services", and it seems more like an impossible task.The various doubts and attacks that Tencent encountered afterwards were all related to this.
In order to implement the strategy of "online life", Tencent has naturally entered various fields of the Internet.The strong and effective execution of Tencent's various business systems has positively promoted the business, and its "remarkable achievements" have inevitably had an impact on its peers.At this moment, Tencent is like an energetic young man, active in various fields of the Internet.
Ants moving: an encounter with Taobao
"What exactly does Ma Huateng want to do?" This is a question that many people are asking.
On September 2005, 9, Ma Huateng went to Hangzhou to participate in the fifth "West Lake Discussion of Swords". Ma Yun, Ding Lei, Ma Huateng, Wang Yan and Zhang Chaoyang appeared at the same forum. Ask everyone on the stage: "Apart from your own company, whose company do you like most?" Wang Yan chose Ma Huateng, and Zhang Chaoyang chose Ding Lei.Of course, such an answer has elements of play and affection. However, Ma Huateng, who was selected twice, seems to have become one of the targets and "imaginary enemies".
Among the five people in the same field at that time, Ma Huateng had a competitive relationship with Ding Lei, Wang Yan, and Zhang Chaoyang. It seemed that the only one that had no business intersection with Tencent was Jack Ma's Alibaba.However, just two days later, the situation has changed.
On September 9, Tencent released an e-commerce trading platform with an independent domain name, Paipai.com (www.paipai.com). One month later, the online payment tool Tenpay was launched. Jack Ma's declaration of war.Since the launch of Paipai, the import effect of QQ traffic has been very obvious. More than 12% of Paipai users are attracted from various interfaces of QQ. On March 2006, 3, Tencent announced that Paipai.com had 13 million registered users and officially entered commercial operation on this day.At the same time, Tencent released the search website Soso.com (www.soso.com), which means that Tencent will implement a closed strategy in the two fields of e-commerce and search.
Two months later, an encounter between Paipai and Taobao suddenly broke out.
On May 2006, 5, Taobao, which won the market competition with eBay, was eager to cash in. Jack Ma proposed a fee-based service called "Zhaocaijinbao", announcing that he would get more orders for those willing to pay for promotion. Taobao sellers provide bidding ranking services. This decision violated Jack Ma’s promise of “Taobao free for three years” made the previous year, and triggered fierce opposition from Taobao sellers. The sellers spontaneously organized an “anti-Taobao alliance” In the first quarter, a collective strike of 10 people was held.
On May 5th, Paipai.com launched a promotional activity of "Ants moving, moving out of a bright future". As long as the seller successfully imports his reference credit on the third-party trading website on Paipai.com and distributes more than 15 models, he has a good chance Get a Gold Referral.At the same time, buyers who purchase any product on Paipai.com and complete the payment through Tenpay can get a shopping coupon reward of up to 20 yuan.Aiming at Taobao’s plan of “recruiting wealth and making treasures”, Paipai.com announced that it will be “completely free for the next three years”.
Pai Pai's oblique stabbing was tantamount to "robbing while taking advantage of the fire" in the eyes of the battered Ma Yun.He was very angry. At a press conference in Hangzhou, he identified Tencent and eBay as the driving forces behind the strike. He directly named Ma Huateng and said: "Ma Huateng's trick is very good. It’s the taste of competition.” In addition, he also disclosed that “Tencent Paipai.com recruited a lot of people from Taobao at the beginning of its establishment.” When a reporter asked him his opinion on Paipai.com, Jack Ma thought it was an imitation of Taobao.com: “ In the C2C market, Tencent Paipai.com is just an amateur player, and Paipai.com has embarked on a road that will never return (blindly imitating), and it will swallow this bitter pill in a few years, and Ma Huateng will also have the same consequences.”
Regarding Ma Yun’s accusation, Ma Huateng expressed his innocence in a telephone interview with reporters: “We are good friends in private, and it is impossible to engage in such vicious competition behind the scenes.” Regarding Tencent’s digging of Taobao’s wall, Ma Huateng retorted: “One First, this kind of talent flow is normal; second, there are only two or three people who come from Taobao, so it’s not like poaching.” At the same time that the two sides exchanged fire across the air, a large number of people began to circulate on the Internet. That's how it came out! " and other posts, directly named "Tencent hired a public relations firm to attack Taobao".On the grounds of "defamation infringement", Tencent sued Thousand Oaks, which published this series of anonymous articles, to court, demanding an apology, eliminating the influence, and claiming 500 million yuan.
Under the double pressure from Taobao sellers and Paipai.com, Ma Yun chose to compromise. On the eve of the "'June 5st' general strike", on May 31, Taobao announced that it would decide through a referendum on the service of "recruiting wealth and treasure". As a result, the proportion of negative votes was as high as 63%, which led to the death of this fee-based service.
After this battle, Paipai.com became famous, and by March 2007, its transaction volume surpassed eBay to become the second largest C3C website.In the next few years, Taobao adjusted its charging strategy and did not give Paipai too many opportunities to attack. However, Alibaba regarded Tencent as its most dangerous enemy. Ma Yun once said to the media: "QQ is indeed a bit scary. Its attacks are always silent."
"Public Enemy" Ma Huateng
On May 2006, 5, Tencent released its first-quarter financial report, showing that the company under adjustment is getting out of the "Monternet dilemma".In this quarter, its total revenue was RMB 24 million, an increase of 6.453% over the previous quarter and 50.3% over the same period last year; gross profit was RMB 114.8 million, an increase of 4.696% over the previous quarter and 62.4% over the same period last year ; The total number of its instant messaging registered accounts reached 136.5 million, an increase of 5.315% from the previous quarter.
The beautiful performance made the stock price rise by 26% on the day, sweeping away the decline a year ago.
However, at the same time as the performance soared, doubts and accusations also followed.
On May 5, the day after the quarterly report was released, Wu Bofan, the editor-in-chief of "25st Century Business Review", interviewed Ma Huateng and wrote the article "The Radius of the Penguin Empire".This is the mainstream financial media earlier using the word "empire" to describe the expanding Tencent, Wu Bofan therefore raised a "management radius" issue.
He wrote that Tencent's "business" is defined as "online life", which is obviously a far-reaching business, and it also means that Tencent will "go to war on all fronts."A small company that lives in Shenzhen and started with a single IM business is expanding its territory and building a central empire in the virtual world.Even the most well-meaning reviewers worry about it.As we have seen from the rise and fall of empires in history, it is relatively easy to open up territory, but if the radius of ruling ability does not reach the radius of the territory, such an empire will not last long.Does Tencent have core competencies?If so, can the "transmission power" of its core capabilities cover all its "starting from the core" businesses?From the perspective of the "spatial structure" of the business, can all these businesses be related to each other and form a trend of "stars participating in the Big Dipper"?From the perspective of the "time structure" of the business portfolio, can the business portfolio formed by "seed industry, nursery industry, fruit tree industry, and dead wood industry" succeed each other and have both sides?Can the fruit wood industry bear the weight of so many seed and nursery industries before it becomes a deadwood industry?
Obviously, these are questions with no standard answers.Peter Drucker regards business management as "art" rather than "science", and his subtext is a warning and respect for uncertainty.In "The Radius of the Penguin Empire", Wu Bofan raised doubts about Tencent from three aspects: business strategy, core competence and management ability. His conclusion is, "Tencent seems to have no strong rival now, but in fact there is a strong rival that is inseparable from it. Sui. This rival is Tencent itself, if it can’t grasp its business radius and management radius.”
If Wu Bofan warned against Tencent's strategy of "going to war on all fronts" from the standpoint of Tencent, then another financial reporter gave a new and more sensational definition from the perspective of the industry. In June 2006, Cheng Lingfeng regarded Tencent as an "enemy of the whole industry" in the "Chinese Entrepreneur" magazine he worked for. The title of his article was "'Public Enemy' Ma Huateng". for circulation.
Cheng Lingfeng is a young Internet observer. He later joined Tencent as the editor-in-chief of Tencent Technology Channel, and then left to become an independent self-media person.The report he published in June "defined" Tencent's public opinion image in the future.
Cheng Lingfeng wrote: "On the Internet in China, there is a man who competed with Chen Tianqiao, Ma Yun, Ding Lei, Zhang Chaoyang, and Li Yanhong at the same time. He looks gentle and behaves elegantly, but he is called a 'public enemy'. He is in charge of the Internet with the highest market value in China. Company." Cheng Lingfeng made such a description in the "Introduction" part of the article, and then he listed Tencent's almost all-encompassing fields, and sighed: "In fact, China's Internet spans multiple business lines. There are quite a few companies, but there is almost no Internet company that can lead in more than two business lines at the same time, except Tencent." Even if Tencent is placed within the scope of the global Internet, its ambition is surprising. of. "Tencent has done all the business done by the 'four kings' of the Internet, Google, Yahoo, eBay, and MSN," the report said.
In this report, Cheng Lingfeng keenly glimpsed a feature of Tencent's diversification strategy: keeping a close eye on market trends, copying the model of winners in the fastest way, and using the advantages of QQ users to surpass later.He quoted Ma Huateng as saying: "Because the Internet market is too new and too fast, there are many possibilities for where to go. If you take the lead, you may have no way to prove that the choice is right. Many new things will emerge within a few months. Come on, how do you judge which is the hot spot? When there are competitors, people start to have fighting spirit; see what others are doing well and what is not doing well, and what should they do if others kill them? Is it a hard top or go Detour to fight elsewhere?"
Ma Huateng later summed up the above passage as a strategy - "launch is the safest way".
This late-mover strategy will inevitably lead to the emergence of two situations.
First, Tencent will be identified as an "imitator" rather than an "innovator".Cheng Lingfeng wrote: "Ma Huateng doesn't think so. He said, I don't innovate blindly. What Microsoft and Google do are what others have done. The smartest way is definitely to learn the best cases and then go beyond. I don't strive for the first, no Significance. As soon as a new product comes out, it must be stable, and you can’t change it as you want, and you must be cautious.”
Second, Tencent regards the world as its enemy, and at the same time, the world regards Tencent as its enemy. "Whether Ma Huateng is willing or not, almost all Internet companies will automatically declare war on Tencent after establishing a firm foothold and completing the accumulation of original users. IM has a huge stickiness for users that cannot be compared with any other service such as mailboxes and games. Who would not be greedy? "
These two situations emerged in early 2006, but the evolution in the future will be many times more intense than that described by Cheng Wen.Another fact that Cheng Lingfeng did not have time to reveal is that in order to maintain the advantage of attacking late, Tencent will inevitably spare no effort in monopolizing user resources. "Imitation without innovation", "making the world an enemy" and "refusing to open up" have become Tencent's "three deadly sins".
Zeng Liqing's departure
There will be several "critical moments" in the course of any enterprise's growth.They are beyond the previous plan, but they are the results of active determination. When they are presented, they are often strange and unreliable, so they are full of drama.The choice at this "moment" shows the personal charm and characteristics of the entrepreneur, and determines the fate of the company in the future.
In my opinion, in the history of Tencent, the first "Tencent moment" was on February 1999, 2. The release of OICQ marked that the company found a direction to focus on, and found an inch of survival in the fierce Internet world. land.The second "Tencent moment" should be in August 10. The proposal of the "online life" strategy means Tencent's major transformation into an all-round and ecological enterprise, and all its future achievements and controversies are based on this.If, in the first "Tencent Moment", Ma Huateng showed his professional and keen side, then in the second "Tencent Moment", he showed his boldness and strategy.
At every "critical moment", the weight of business modules within the enterprise organization will change, and organizational imbalance and power adjustment will inevitably follow. After the autumn of 2005, with the formulation of the new company strategy and the adjustment of the second organizational structure, a personnel earthquake inevitably occurred. In February 2006, Tencent issued an announcement, appointing Liu Chiping to succeed Ma Huateng as the company's president, and Ma Huateng still retained the position of chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer.Liu Chiping's work is divided into daily management and operation.
This appointment surprised many observers, which meant that Zeng Liqing, who had been in charge of marketing and sales for a long time, was marginalized.By November 2006, Zeng Liqing proposed to the board of directors to retire, and Tencent announced in June 11 that he was hired as a lifelong consultant.Before leaving, Zeng Liqing asked a well-known painter in Guangdong to draw a picture of "Five Horses" and gave it to his partners.Five horses with different looks stand between heaven and earth, implying the five founders of Tencent.Ma Huateng hung it in the conference room on the third floor of the Fiyta Building. Few people in Tencent knew its origin.
In the past eight years, Zeng Liqing, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong have formed Tencent's "iron triangle".They have very different personalities and distinct specialties. Ma Huateng is good at products, Zhang Zhidong is good at technology, Zeng Liqing is good at marketing, and these three are almost the core competencies that a start-up company must have.While Chen Yidan is in charge of the company's rear, Xu Chenye is in charge of stabilizing the portal website. Among other Internet companies in China, such a complementary entrepreneurial combination has rarely appeared.
Despite his background in telecommunications, Zeng Liqing is closer to a traditional manufacturing or service industry person in his behavior. Compared with the quiet and shy Ma Huateng, he is more like a "person" when interacting with the outside world. the one who makes the decision".Ding Ke, who followed him to develop the Q coin business in the early years, remembers the scene when he saw Zeng Liqing for the first time: from the other side of the building, a huge figure staggered over, he had a loud voice, wearing a suit, Wearing a tie, but underneath a pair of knee-length blue shorts.In an Internet company with a strong engineer culture, Zeng Liqing with his rough style is an alternative.
Zeng Liqing created Tencent's marketing and marketing system by himself. His role is very similar to Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army during Lenin's period. The wireless value-added business team he led once contributed more than 1% of the revenue.When he left, the relationship between Tencent and telecom operators was at a freezing point, and the proportion of wireless value-added service revenue in total revenue had dropped to 4/[-].Obviously, Ma Huateng, who is in a period of transformation, needs an assistant who understands strategy, capital operation and has an international perspective.
Zeng Liqing's last job at Tencent was to recommend domain companies.Zhang Yan, the founder of Wangyu, is his college classmate: "He knew how to play when he was in college, and he never thought he would become famous. Once I went to an Internet cafe in Hunan to do research, and found that many people were playing Wangyu's "Huaxia" ", and suggested that the company buy it after I came back." Tencent bought a 2990% stake in Shenzhen Wangyu for 19.9 million yuan, and transformed "Huaxia" into "QQ Huaxia". This team later developed "Heroes Island" and other Online game products.By 2010, Tencent acquired all the shares of Wangyu.
After resigning, Liqing Zeng came back after half a year's rest and founded Decent Investment, whose English name is Decent, leaving obvious traces of Tencent.It is said that Zeng Liqing is willing to listen to their plans for those who start new companies from Tencent, and invest a little if they have the opportunity. In May 2013, he received me at the office of Kuehne & Nave Investments, a Center of Excellence located in the CBD of Shenzhen. He still used to call Ma Huateng "Big Boss". Cloth QQ penguin.
(End of this chapter)
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