Ma Huateng 6 Years Entrepreneurship 900 Million

The myth of Internet making wealth is emerging again.

This time, it was the turn of QQ's Tencent.

6 16, Tencent Holdings (700.HK) formally traded on the Hongkong stock exchange.

According to its issuing price of $3.70 per share, Tencent has a market value of HK $6 billion 220 million.

Tencent has created 5 billionaires and 7 millionaires.

According to the shareholding ratio, Ma Huateng held 14.43% of the shares, accounting for 898 million Hong Kong dollars, Zhang Zhidong had 6.43% of the stock, the book wealth was HK $400 million, and three top executives Zeng Li Qing, Xu Chenye and Chen Yidan shared 9.87% of the shares, three of the wealth of the contract 614 million Hong Kong dollars.

In addition, the other 7 top executives of Tencent have another 6.77% stake, and 7 have a total of HK $422 million.

The largest shareholder of Tencent, MIH group (Millard International Holdings Group) is also a great benefit.

MIH is a NASDAQ and Amsterdam listed company. Its main business is in South Africa. It is the largest pay TV operator in South Africa.

MIH took over 46.5% of Tencent's stake in June 2001.

According to MIH's financial report, MIH bought 46.5% of Tencent's shares from PCCW, IDG and management, and spent $32 million, paying 12 million 600 thousand dollars to PCCW.

After the acquisition, Tencent's management stake was 46.5% and IDG held 7%.

Even though IDG later held 7% of its equity, it was split into two and sold to management and MIH. MIH may have paid millions of dollars for that.

That is to say, the total investment of MIH is more than 40 million US dollars.

But today, MIH has a Tencent market value of HK $2 billion 333 million, and in 3 years, MIH's investment has appreciated 7 times.

If the IDG and PCCW holdings are not sold at the moment, the investment gains will be 70 times.

It is impossible to assume the history of profit seeking.

In fact, in Tencent's life of 5 and a half years, half of the time had struggled to find a profit making model, but who could have thought that it would be a "golden day"?

In November of 1998, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong, who were college classmates, decided to go to sea to do business, so they founded Tencent.

The original business was to make system integration for some paging stations.

The two were both sales and engineers, and the QQ software that was popular throughout the country was actually a by-product of the project.

QQ was originally named "Internet Chinese pager", or OICQ.

In all respects, OICQ is a popular activity of Ma Huateng's imitation of ICQ.

The ICQ of the year has swept the globe, but there is no Chinese version, and Chinese instant messaging software such as PICQ and CICQ has appeared, but it has not been known why the market can be opened effectively. Maybe Ma Huateng saw ICQ sell it to Israel from Israel at the price of 287 million US dollars, perhaps seeing the high tide of stock market that shouted free.Com company on the other side of the ocean. Maybe it was the first batch of Internet heroes in China surging up and down. At the beginning of 1999, OICQ software was suddenly hung on the Internet.

With its succinct, practical style and careful design, OICQ first started shooting at universities, and then centered on universities and spread at an amazing speed.

Opponents like PICQ and CICQ are almost vulnerable.

At this time, Tencent continued to develop projects, while earning money to live OICQ.

However, the geometric growth of the number of users of OICQ has raised the question of whether or not OICQ can be raised. The cost of hosting servers at a geometric level has also been unbearable for Tencent.

Ma Huateng later recalled the situation at that time, saying that he wanted to sell OICQ, and sold it many times without selling it, and he had to earn another living.

The trick is financing.

At the beginning of 2000, with the market position occupied by OICQ for only half a year, Tencent luckily pulled IDG and Richard Lee's 2 million 200 thousand of the investment in PCCW, accounting for 40% of the shares.

Although there is a sum of money, there is no worry about life and death.

However, the number of OICQ registrations continues to grow on steep curves, and OICQ's profit model still can not be found. In fact, OICQ's pioneer ICQ also has no profit model.

Tencent seeks the profit model of OICQ from web advertising. In the new version of the software in July 25, 2000, a BANNER advertisement bar was jammed in the message receiver.

Although Tencent's online advertising sales have been doing well, it has ranked third in the online advertising pioneer survey, following Sina Sohu.

However, compared to the daily number of newly registered users of several hundred thousand (up to 800 thousand new users per day at the highest level), Internet advertising will be a drop in the bucket if the input of new two servers is added in a month.

In 2000, Tencent has spent two rumors: one of the rumors is that Tencent will have to pay a full fee; two of rumors are that Tencent has to be sold, and the acquirer is TOM or pulse network.

These two rumors are related to Tencent's "no money", and the proof of "no money" is that OICQ software has stopped free new user registration.

The breakout of the value of mobile dream network brought about by 2000. At the end of, when China Mobile launched the "mobile Monet", it may not know that this innovative value chain will save a number of Internet Co.

Tencent is at the forefront of these lists.

At that time, Tencent had the number of Internet registered users approaching billion level, and these users contained a large number of consumer appeals, but Tencent was suffering from no fees.

However, mobile phone network charges the "28 point account" agreement (operators divided into 20%, SP 80%), like a flash of lightning, waking up the dormant Tencent.

Tencent quickly launched the fee membership business, restricted page registration and launched mobile QQ business. At one point, Tencent became the backbone of mobile Monet, and the share of [FS:PAGE] mobile dream network occupied the highest share of 70%.

Tencent made money as fast as its original registered users. By July 2001, Tencent achieved positive cash flow. By the end of 2001, Tencent had achieved a net profit of 10 million 220 thousand yuan.

Meanwhile, in March 2001, Tencent changed the software name to QQ in order to deal with the copyright lawsuit of ICQ.

The growth rate of Tencent's performance in 2002 and 2003 began to be dazzling. In the past two years, Tencent has launched some new businesses such as QQ and QQ show on the one hand, and on the other has studied continuously, such as learning Sina to push short messages and ringing tones, learning NetEase to launch dating business QQ men and women, and learning to carry out online games.

In 2002, Tencent's net profit was 144 million, 10 times more than that of the previous year; in 2003, Tencent's net profit was 338 million, nearly double that of 2002.

According to Tencent's prospectus, Tencent's main profit is divided into three parts: Internet value-added services (including member services, community services, game entertainment services), mobile and communications value-added services (including mobile chat, voice chat, SMS ringtone, etc.) and online advertising.

In the first three months of 2004, the first two parts accounted for 96.1% of Tencent's total revenue.

Therefore, from a broad point of view, Tencent is a SP (content provider, the exact meaning extension needs to be determined), because the first two parts of the way of collecting money are mostly divided by mobile Monet.

Su Lifen, chief investment officer of Tencent, declined to disclose the percentage of total revenue from Monternet's revenue. Although Tencent has some membership cards and online game cards through some bookstalls and convenience stores, the industry pointed out that more than 90% of users' fees are charged through mobile Monet.

Statistics show that Tencent has 7 million 300 thousand toll members in the first quarter of this year, of which the senior members contribute 10 yuan to Tencent every month, and the "QQ line" members contribute 2 yuan per month. At the same time, Tencent has 13 million 100 thousand registered SMS users.

In addition, very QQ SMS services, such as men's and women's, ringtones, pictures and so on, make profits in various forms.

Tencent also intends to participate in the vent plan. Through video QQ or QQ games, Tencent can get some revenue from broadband operators.

In addition, Tencent's QQ is another ambition of its own. By customizing the use of enterprise QQ, Tencent is eager to generate revenue from the enterprise.

The Tencent has also leased QQ's brand to a toy company to produce QQ toys. Every year, Tencent gets a fixed income.

QQ future: against all.Com?

If we look at mobile value-added services from the narrow sense of SP, the proportion of Tencent's total revenue is gradually shrinking. The proportion of revenue from Tencent mobile and communications value-added services to total revenue is 75.6% in 2002 and 63.6% in 2003. By March this year, this proportion has steadily dropped to 55.5%. Tencent has begun to get away from the positioning of "pure SP". At the same time, the income from Internet value-added services has risen sharply, from 15.5% of 2001 to 40.6% of the previous March.

Long ago, Ma Huateng said that "mobile services can only reflect the peripheral parts of our core values, and value-added services based on PC are our core values". Then, the change of Tencent's profit patterns shown by financial data is the proof of Ma Huateng's statement.

Compared with ordinary SMS SP, Tencent's biggest advantage is the monopoly on the desktop, which is where the lifeblood is, and also the core competitiveness.

Market analyst Han Jingkui said that over the past 4 years, Han has been concerned about the development of Tencent, and has had many communication with many top executives including Ma Huateng.

According to this point of view, at present, as a high-risk SP, Tencent may get farther and farther away. On the contrary, as reflected in the financial statements, there will be more and more income on Internet value-added services.

On the Internet value-added service, "Tencent may continue to follow the strategy in the future."

Han Jingkui told our reporter, "Tencent is a bit like Microsoft, and has mastered huge amounts of user resources."

At present, QQ has 290 million super registered users. On this basis, we can see the success of others and then follow them, because the cost of developing new businesses will be relatively low.

A proven example is QQ games. From last year's mid term operation to less than 1 years, there is not much investment. However, due to bundling with QQ community, less than a year has achieved close to the size of Lianzhong game, which is the embodiment of the following strategy.

In addition, services like ringtones, SMS, friends and alumni, which were developed in the past, do not follow the strategic results.

The consequence of using the following strategy is that "Tencent may be hostile to all.COM" because "Tencent's user group and.COM user group have a high degree of overlap".

According to the prospectus, 2/3 of over 1 billion 500 million of Tencent's IPO will be used to expand new businesses.

The "prospectus" also lists the direction of the new expansion of the business, which is the key to the Internet business, which also coincides with the analysts' views on the future Tencent strategy.

Tencent said that its core of the future Internet business includes expanding the portal site of QQ games, establishing online dating communities and establishing vertical information websites. What is even more remarkable is that Tencent has mentioned that it will participate in the technology of "commercial advertising ranking" in the future, and connect with Tencent browser, which is bundled with QQ, and Tencent will have a clear ambition to compete with 3721 and Baidu.

It seems to be the development logic of Tencent that it gains a large number of users through free registration, achieves profits through mobile phone charges, and then enters other profitable network business areas.

However, this logic is based on the active huge number of registered users.

In the face of QQ charges, another MSN service that is still free today -- Microsoft MSN messager can not be turned into a strong rival for QQ.

Du Jun, editor in chief: