Rebirth 2002: Nano Life

At the beginning of its establishment, Baidu's main product was actually just a "behind-the-scenes tool", which mainly provided a set of search technologies and tools for various Internet sites, rather than individual users.

In May 2000, Baidu provided search technology services for the portal website - Silicon Valley Power for the first time, and then began to provide Chinese web page information retrieval services to portal giants such as Sina and Sohu. Search technology service market and become the most important search technology provider.

At that time, Baidu, in layman's terms, was just a start-up company selling technology and services to big websites, and even its slogan on the website was "Behindyoure-". And its business model is modeled after a US company called Inktodi - which makes money by providing search technology to more than 100 large US portals.

However, the good times did not last long. During the period from 2000 to 2001, the Internet ushered in the first "bubble" and "collapse", countless websites were closed, and many domain names became "dead links". What followed was that the stock price of Baidu’s benchmark object in the United States, Inktodi, fell from a high of $243 to less than $1, and was acquired by Yahoo.

All of the sudden, Li Yanhong began to realize that the transformation was imminent, so in 2002, Li decided to quickly adjust the strategy and change the business model from providing search technology for enterprises to running search engines on their own. At the same time, the business model has also changed. Baidu's imitation object has become Overture in the United States, which is the originator of the invention of "PPC" - the so-called "PPC", that is, according to the amount paid to determine the advertiser's website. Impression rank position in .

The "bidding ranking" business model made Baidu, two years after the second round of financing, get rid of its thirst for money. If there was no Souxia, Baidu's mp3 music search engine would have greatly increased Baidu's traffic. You must know that in 2002 Baidu The share of search in China is only the same as the search traffic of the four major portals. Soxia is just over a month faster than Baidu's mp3 search. In addition, Soxia has a diskless system bundled, as well as the combination of Yiyi's music website, etc., making the originally hoped mp3 search step by step.

Baidu Li Yanhong and others looked anxious, so they couldn't wait to take Soxia into their pockets. Otherwise, Soxia was acquired by other companies like the four major websites, which would hit Baidu even more.

"What price can Baidu get?" Chen Yizhe was a little curious. According to the information he read before, Baidu's first round of financing was $1.2 million, with a value of $0.25 per share, equivalent to 2.4 million shares, or 29.35% of the shares. The second round of financing amounted to US$10 million, with a value of US$1.04 per share, equivalent to 36.99% of the shares. After the two rounds of financing, the Baidu team’s shareholding was 44.51%.

If the shares offered are too low, Chen Yizhe will definitely not sell them, but if the shares offered are too high, the investors will also object.

Sure enough, in the next conversation, Xu Yong, on behalf of Baidu, proposed to acquire Soxia, a subsidiary of Chen Yizhe's company, for 8 million yuan in cash plus 3% of Baidu's shares.

Chen Yizhe replied with a smile and then went back and thought about it carefully. At present, Baidu's valuation is between 60 million and 90 million US dollars, and 3% of the shares are worth at least 1.8 million US dollars. I don’t know the bottom line, and once it can’t be listed and falls down in the middle, it’s basically a piece of waste paper.

A matter involving tens of millions cannot be negotiated once or twice. It is estimated that the final compromise between the two parties has a long way to go. Chen Yizhe is not in a hurry. The longer the time takes, the more anxious the Baidu side will be. .

Xu Yong observed Yan Guanse and knew that Chen Yizhe was dissatisfied with this, but this is the greatest sincerity Baidu has shown so far.

Yang Fei glanced at Xu Yong. As an investor, he and Robin Li discussed and established Baidu's new business model and strategy last year. As a result, there were large cracks within the Baidu team, especially Robin Li and Xu Yong. Before, the two had a big disagreement on whether to do bidding ranking. In the end, Li Yanhong insisted on bidding ranking, and Yang Fei also stood on Li's side here.

The disheartened Xu Yong has shown signs of quitting Baidu. He established a biomedical company at the end of last year, and his focus has also begun to rely on the new company. In Yang Fei's opinion, Xu Yong is actually not suitable to be the person in charge of this acquisition plan. He still does not adapt to Baidu's new market and operation method, and still does not understand the importance of traffic to the bidding ranking.

The acquisition and investment had come to an end, but the three of them chatted about other topics.

Yang Fei is very interested in Yiyi Dongting platform. After all, the current registration volume of the platform is already amazing. In the early days of the Internet, content is king is the characteristic of this stage, so in this era, retaining users should definitely be ranked first. When it comes to content being king, we have to talk about news websites and digital entertainment websites, because these two types of websites are almost all classic representatives of emphasizing that content is king, so there is no need to talk about news. , Sina's successful listing has been a milestone, the next look at digital entertainment. Therefore, Yang Fei felt that Yiyi's beautiful sound had great potential for investment, but unfortunately Chen Yizhe's temperament discouraged him. And he also raised several points. The first point is the issue of music digital copyright. Although the Yiyi Dongting platform is marked with original music, it contains more copyright-free digital music, which will be a problem that the website will face in the future. Difficulties, how to negotiate with the record company, and how to grasp the pricing power, are all within the scope of consideration. The second point is where is the profit point of digital music flat? In the early Internet, as long as there was traffic investment, they were willing to invest. However, after the end of the Internet bubble, Internet investors who have returned to rationality want to see a profitable model.

For the two points raised by Yang Fei, Chen Yizhe agrees very much in his heart. In the future, the competition for digital copyrights among major music websites will be in full swing, and the appetite of record companies will be very full, but the major digital music platforms will lose money again and again. However, there is one thing that Chen Yizhe did not point out to Yang Fei. The telecom value-added services that played an important role in the early days of the Internet are the next point of profit for the platform, but there is not much time to make money. Once telecom operators react, They go off the field and play while refereeing.

"Mr. Xu, I am actually more interested in biomedicine." Chen Yizhe smiled at Xu Yong. He had a good impression of Xu Yong. He spoke modestly, saying that he was a businessman and more like a scholar. I discovered a new material over time, and I think there is still something to do in the field of biomedicine."

Yang Fei and Xu Yong immediately showed surprised expressions when they heard Chen Yizhe's words. After all, it is amazing to have such a big company at Chen Yizhe's age~www.readwn.com~ He also studied materials science? but

Yang Fei asked curiously, "What is it, is it convenient to reveal it?"

Chen Yizhe smiled, "Do you know about single-walled carbon nanotubes?"

After all, in the ten years since its discovery, carbon nanotubes, as a legendary universal material, have been hotly researched.

Seeing the two nodding, Chen Yizhe continued, "This new material comes from graphite, I call it graphene, and it also appears in the form of a carbon structure, similar to carbon nanotubes, except that carbon nanotubes It's a tube, and it's a two-dimensional structure of a single layer of carbon atoms."

Xu Yong looked at Chen Yizhe strangely and asked, "How did you find out?"

Chen Yizhe smiled and said, "It's also a coincidence. I used 3m tape to stick it out."

Seeing the disbelief on their faces, Chen Yizhe continued, "I later sent a letter to a professor surnamed Fu from the School of Materials Science and Technology of the National University of Science and Technology, who also confirmed that this is a brand new material. ." Fu Weiqiang formally submitted a paper to the scientific journal the day before yesterday, titled "Electric Field Effect of Atom-Thin Carbon Films".

"Carbon is one of the basic components of organic organisms, and I have confirmed through many studies that graphene that has been modified to a certain extent has good biocompatibility, which also proves that graphene is used in the field of biomedicine. It has natural advantages." Chen Yizhe briefly introduced the forward-looking technology of graphene to the two.

When they were leaving at the end of the meal, Chen Yizhe and Yang Xu shook hands respectively, and when they said goodbye to Xu Yong, Chen Yizhe said, "I know that Mr. Xu's old line of business is biomedicine. In fact, this time I met Mr. Xu, not only It is because of the acquisition, and more importantly, I hope that one day I can cooperate with President Xu in the field of biomedicine."