360 Degree Chen Yizhou: His Long Story Of Online Entrepreneurship

No doubt, Chen Yizhou is a topic that runs through the Internet for 2008 years. At the end of April, people were excited to comment that Sun Zhengyi had taken the lead to inject $430 million into 1000 oak interactive, which is unprecedented.

But by the time of October, people were amazed at the advent of Kaixin.

In addition to the discussion of the rules of the game, the SNS market seems to have been completely detonated.

　　聰明人

Chen Yizhou was born in Wuchang, Hubei in 1969.

In 1987, he entered the Physics Department of Wuhan University.

In 1893, Zhang Zhidong, governor of Huguang, invited the Qing government to establish a self strengthening school. Its Gezhi gate was the predecessor of the Department of physics.

Of course, it has been upgraded to the school of physical science and technology, and is considered to be one of the most prestigious physics institutes in China.

Now, Chen Yizhou recalls that at that time, a library card of the then difficult Hubei library was set up. From time to time, sick leave and skipping classes were read. "Basically, the western science fiction and Western paintings were seen all over the place."

In the second year of college, Chen Yizhou tried to pfer from physics to computer department, but a year later, in 1990, the whole family emigrated to the United States.

Then he entered University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware.

University of Delaware, dating back to 1743, is located in the central part of new England. It happens to be the headquarters of many multinational companies in the United States, so it is not difficult to get a job in the of.

His experience at University of Delaware was rarely mentioned. Later, Chen Yizhou wrote in BusinessWeek: when his mentor was awarded the Nobel prize in Dudley Herschbach. with Li Yuanzhe, his research achievement was awarded the National Science Foundation Award.

However, he believed that systematic physics was not entirely in line with his wishes, so he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn mechanical engineering. The specific direction was automatic control and creative design theory.

Indeed, "Charles (Zhang Zhaoyang) and I have coincided in Massachusetts for a year...

At that time, Zhang was very famous among our Chinese students. He was rich and drove a convertible car. At that time, he had fewer mobile phones. He had a mobile phone.

We have seen two or three faces.

As a corroboration of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's advocacy and entrepreneurship and its pioneering spirit, it is said that if the company established by the graduate and teachers of the college is regarded as a country, the economic scale of the country will rank the twenty-fourth in the world.

After earning his master's degree, Chen Yizhou went to work in the American tech company.

Founded in 1929, it is a company that provides related equipment and services for the power, communications and construction industries, such as high-altitude operation vehicles.

At first, he was in charge of technical work in Asia and later promoted to North Asia regional affairs.

"During his tenure, he was awarded the 1997 president of the Alpha Company for outstanding performance."

After that, Chen Yizhou thought he would encounter the ceiling of his career, so he went to Stanford University business school in 1997 to study MBA and electrical engineering double masters degree.

We know that Standford and Silicon Valley are closely related. This stage is the time when "chieftain" Yang Zhiyuan and YAHOO attract global attention, and they also inspire Chen Yizhou.

But more importantly, he got acquainted with his partners, Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning.

Zhou Yunfan graduated from Tsinghua University and then enrolled in the Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University for master's degree. Yang Ning went to primary school in Xi'an to immigrate to the United States with his parents. After that, he obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from University of Michigan, and then joined the Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University to pursue his master's degree.

Chen Yizhou's comment is that "the two of them were the best students at the school of engineering."

At that time, Chen Yizhou launched a Standford China Internet symposium, and the three people in the communication quite congenial, so they soon agreed to decide to devote themselves to the Internet craze, the specific direction is virtual community, and of course, the business is implemented at a faster pace in the country.

On the virtual community, Chen Yizhou has his own understanding: the Internet is a new type of media. The virtual community is more in line with the characteristics of the Internet. The way of Internet revenue is no more than advertising and direct charging. "The community is the easiest to collect fees", and the community is also a good carrier for deep marketing in the future.

　　ChinaRen

At the beginning of 1999, three people improved their business plan. Next, they visited a venture capital firm in Sandhill street, and then returned to ChinaRen in May. The slogan was "building the largest Chinese virtual community in the world".

Chen Yizhou served as chairman and chief executive officer. Zhou Yunfan served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer, while Yang Ning served as chief technology officer.

The name of the website is ChinaRen, but the name of the company is called Sha Ling Information Technology Co. Ltd., and Sha Ling corresponds to Sandhill..

The website is located in 18 to 24 years old college students, the reason is very simple, on the one hand, this is the most concentrated group of Internet users, on the other hand, although this group is temporarily lack of consumption ability, but in the future will become the main force of consumption.

Around the virtual community, ChinaRen, which emphasizes technology, is then launched: home pages, games, mail, logs, and users only need to register once, that is, multiple functions can be used.

More prominent is alumni records, which is the initial application of social networking today.

This period coincided with the Internet bubble period. ChinaRen also did the homework of "burning money". In November 1999, the packaging circle took the "University whirlwind action" in December. In January 2000, it sponsored the "Tokyo Raiders" Shanghai premiere to mark the entry into the Shanghai market. In March, it sponsored the Chinese University mountaineering team to climb the Mount Qomolangma.

By March 28th, registered users had exceeded 1 million.

The Internet bubble burst quickly.

Yang Ning later sighed: I think sometimes the market is very powerful, just like the forces of nature, not one or two companies or one or two people, like the last tsunami in Indonesia, the power of the market is just like the power of nature. It is terrible.

Of course, at this point, ChinaRen has begun to take shape and still has room for good offices.

In September 14, 2000, the Sohu announced in Hongkong that it would buy ChinaRen with 4 million shares, which was worth about $30 million.

Shirley Lin, executive director of Goldman Sachs, the largest institutional investor in ChinaRen, said: "we invest in ChinaRen.com because we have confidence in the potential of China's Internet market and the management of this company, and are also very pleased to be shareholders of the new Sohu."

Before, ChinaRen has spent $about 10000000, and the money can be extended for another month when it is acquired.

After the company entered the Sohu, Chen Yizhou's title was senior vice president, but in March 2001 he chose to leave.

In an interview with Chinese entrepreneur later, he said: "it's not a big shareholder, but also can't be a master. It's not meaningful to keep there all day."

A more important reason is that he has new opportunities. Internet content is not profitable at that time. Cash flow is access.

Corresponding to Wuhan was committed to the construction of "Optics Valley" at that time.

There was such a chance that he met some other partners in an optical communication conference in Dallas, United States. Of course, Chen Yizhou was regarded as having entrepreneurial experience, so he had an idea of starting a business.

At that time, his mood was "1 billion of a company".

Chen Yizhou's envisaged services can increase the speed of 50%-100% Internet access by dial-up Internet users at a cost of $5 per month. During this period, the United States had 50 million dial-up users, and Chen Yizhou said, "this is a big business."

Six months later, the team took out the photoelectric chip, but to put it into use, it still needed to modify the network communication protocol and make improvements on the server side.

Since then, there has been "9.11", the capital market is colder, and big companies are not interested in equipment improvement.

After that, Chen Yizhou tried to find opportunities on the IP phone.

"People always go through such ridiculous things before they change."

Since then, Chen Yizhou has been dormant for some time, during which he has read many books.

Chen Yizhou concluded later: "the sooner the better, the worse for everything.

I am very lucky to have failed in the early days of my life. This is very good.

　　千橡互動

In the first half of 2002, Chen Yizhou found that the stock price of Sohu had improved.

However, at this time, he had not much Sohu stock, and "no one has long eyes." of course, the portals at that time seized the market of wireless value-added services that suddenly broke out.

In April 2007, at the ChinaVenture venture capital annual meeting, Chen Yizhou reviewed the period: "I am too poor to be poor in the United States.

I and an angel investor ate McDonald's for 8 times, he ate McDonald's 3 yuan, the standard McDonald's, I ate 5 yuan, I fused 80 thousand yuan.

By the end of the year, Chen Yizhou had returned home with a small investment from three Dezhou angel investors. This mode is clear, that is, SMS.

He founded the invitation texting technology development (Beijing) Limited.

There is an innovation, that is, if users get a page through 18dx.com registration, if someone else sends text messages or customized services on this page, they will be divided.

Chen Yizhou defined it as wireless C2C., but this mode is regarded as a wireless alliance, and has not been further developed with the adjustment of operator policies.

Of course, the corresponding environment, wireless business is still done, six months later began to make profits.

Chen Yizhou has actually missed the best period of SP growth. His former partner, Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning, founded the air network in early 2002, and was formally established in March 18th. After a few months, he got a $300 venture capital.

In July 9, 2004, the air network was listed on NASDAQ in the United States before and after two years and five months.

Chen Yizhou has an understanding that SP will be closely linked to Internet content in the future, and the community can create enough content, so he once again focuses on the community.

So DuDu network was set up, which was used for reference from similar websites in Korea.

The corresponding company is 1000 oak interactive, and this time the reason is that there are many oak trees on the campus of Stanford University.

In this process, Chen Yizhou gradually paid attention to the mop, and was attracted by its strange characteristics and entertaining style. The domain name was mopper.com, and the website had only two servers. Chen Yizhou later said to Chinese entrepreneurs, "on the balcony of his home," the cat pone stationmaster and I were sitting in a rocking hanging basket, like two cats, swaying around for a day, we got it done. "

After the change of domain name to mop.com, the mop was developing rapidly. By the end of 2005, "after two years of growth, mop has ranked 45 in the world, and it should be a website less than 10 in China."

This has become a new foundation for Chen Yizhou.

In May 2004, Thousand Oaks launched the Dudu network download accelerator and set foot in the client area.

In July 2005, AccelPartners Acer partners invested $10 million in 1000 oak interactive.

As an important venture capitalist in the US, it has invested $12 million 700 thousand in Facebook in May.

A month later, thousand oak bought the dating website UUMe., its founder and Liu Jian as chief operating officer of 1000 oak.

Liu Jian also studied in Standford, Chen Yizhou's brother, and there was a passage saying that Chen Yizhou sold an old car to Liu Jian for $6000, but Liu spent more money to repair the car in the following months.

At this point, Chen Yizhou has a theory: his user group is concentrated on students and young white-collar workers, and more than 80% of the community users are located in the developed areas of China.

The community promotes people to use wireless and client services. Conversely, wireless applications and clients strengthen community status.

Of course, he also stressed the potential of the human centered community's future advertising. In an interview with the first financial daily, he said, "when a user of a street in Wuhan surf the Internet at eleven in the evening, the website advertised the hot noodle shop beside his home. The bowl of hot noodles sold for 20 Fen and I collected a penny, which is the ideal of my ideal online advertisement."

12 at the end of the month, 1000 oaks announced that the mop would be merged by Donews. 100%. Chen Yizhou wrote later: "Donews and MP's future will become the two major websites of 1000 oak company which are juxtaposed and relatively independent.

The two user groups and the core values created by users are very different. We will never integrate the two.

In March 7, 2006, thousand oak Interactive Group officially announced $48 million investment.

The investment was jointly completed by GA (General Atlantic), Pan American the Atlantic investment group, DCM (Doll Capital Management), TVC (Technology Crossover Ventures), Technology and Lenovo investment.

GA contributed more than half of it. GA was established in 1980 and managed assets of 8 billion US dollars.

Previous investment projects include Lenovo Group, China Digital and Zhongxing microelectronics.

　　校內網

The founder of the school network is Wang Xing.

Wang Xing, born in Fujian in 1979, was sent to the radio engineering department of Electronic Engineering Department of Tsinghua University in 1997. After that, he won a full scholarship to study in the Department of electronics and computer engineering of University of Delaware.

Wang Xing returned home on Christmas day in 2003.

The first item is "many friends", which is undoubtedly a dating website, and later finds that users are accumulating slowly.

The second project is "travel map", that is, overseas students upload digital photos to the website. After the website is printed in China, they send them to their families. This project has some revenue. "The time and effort of our three people start business is a cost, and the income at that time is not enough to make up for our cost."

Of course, Wang Xing will no doubt notice that Facebook, who was in the same period, recalled in March 2006 that he had seen FaceBook in 2004, but I didn't feel much. In the first half of 2005, I went to see it again, and I didn't see any feeling.

Later I saw some reports. In the second half of 2005, I went up to see it carefully. I had a feeling that it was the representative of SNS.

That being the case, in December 2005, Wang Xing's team launched the school network.

The initial users came from Tsinghua, Peking University and NPC.

"They have the best network conditions and are easy to promote."

Looking back, look at Chen Yizhou, after getting the money, thousands of oak interactive began to expand rapidly, launched 5Q.com, is also similar to FaceBook's website, the acquisition of Renren.com and modified to classified website, similar to Craigslist.

As for the diversification of business, Chen Yizhou explained in an interview with Global Entrepreneur: the second wave entrepreneurs on the Internet are definitely more difficult to succeed than the first wave. When the last wave of entrepreneurship is done, there is nothing in the open space. You can take up one.

But now, there are already several big cities. We can only be guerrillas, looking for some relatively fertile grasslands, gradually becoming small villages, and then become cities.

Looking for other grasslands.

But the process of looking for it seems rather bumpy.

In September 27, 2006, 1000 oaks suddenly announced the layoffs of 150 people, and at the same time cut down video and other departments. Subsequently, in an interview with the Beijing morning post, Chen Yizhou explained: playing micro video requires huge bandwidth investment, but there are hundreds of competitors.

"I will support 10 people for three years."

At the same time, there is also the cancellation of Dudu network downloading accelerator, which is in the vortex of rogue software controversy.

"I did not do the controversial business. This is a place of right and wrong. For thousands of oak, the most important thing is goodwill."

When interviewed by Donews in the near future and talked about young employees, Chen Yizhou said, "I must have disappointed them."

I discovered bubbles early, and I shouted bubbles earlier, but the action was still a bit late.

"We have no way to do this industry, that is, there is a large number of fashion trends.

Quit early and lose less. "

And on the issue of listing, Chen Yizhou said: 2008 is a very important advertising year, mop and DoNews morning city, can make a relatively early planning, in 2008 has a better harvest.

In April 2007, "Global Entrepreneur" published in a thousand oak illusion, the article said: Although 1000 oak has announced that the scale of revenue last year reached 80 million yuan, but the company's insider said, policy changes made its wireless business revenue less 2/3, which directly led to September 2006 thousand oak's sudden layoffs.

In November 24th, thousand oak announced its entry into the portals.

The new portal of MP network includes three parts: Information Center, interactive center and entertainment center.

Thousand Oaks claim that compared with traditional portals, the MP portal will highlight the function of interaction.

However, a month later, 1000 oak announced again that, based on the cost considerations, the second round of layoffs, plans to cancel the online business unit, the Department responsible for media publicity will also be abolished.

By January 2007, thousand oak said that there have been changes in personnel and related business lines will also be restructured, while reducing the corresponding marketing promotion and community support staff.

So the employees who just announced the entry into the portal were faced with embarrassment.

However, after looking at it, 2006 belonged to Chen Yizhou's lucky year.

In fact, since the launch of the school network, Chen Yizhou has been negotiating acquisitions, but no result.

During the summer vacation, the school and 5Q began to face up positively. The school network was promoted by the university campus ambassadors, while 5Q was "user registration for chicken legs". Then there was a joke that people had repeatedly registered to get more than 40 drumsticks.

However, in September 2006, due to the indistinct business model of the campus network, financing was difficult and eventually sold to thousand oak.

The price in the industry is $2 million.

　　開心時代

At the end of 4 2008, it was revealed to the media that Softbank's injection of 1000 oaks made Chen Yizhou a hot media again. The total amount of 1000 oaks financing amounted to US $430 million in this round. Besides the $384 million investment from Softbank, there are strategic investments of Joho Capital and SBI.

With regard to Softbank capital injection, Chen Yizhou explained that Sun Zhengyi and his judgment on the Internet are consistent. "We all believe that the real SNS is the largest application on the wireless Internet."

Under the aura of huge injection of capital, the operation before it became clear and logical. In November 2007, the number of students in the university market was 2200, with more than 18 million of the college students and 9 million 800 thousand of the active users.

In November 20th, the school network held a press conference to show that it is entering the white-collar market and the high school market.

No doubt, this is consistent with FaceBook's thinking.

After the announcement of capital injection, Chen Yizhou said in an interview with the website: the school network now basically monopolizes the university student market, with a coverage rate of 90%.

Almost all the students who surf the Internet surround us. They like it very much.

At the same time, we are making great efforts to expand white-collar and high school market.

Hong Bo, who once served as editor in chief of Donews, commented: considering the gap of Facebook in terms of innovation ability, expansion ability and development stage, the valuation of campus network is far too high.

Of course, if Sun Zhengyi is willing to invest at such a price, he will have his reason.

Before financing disclosure, Chen Yizhou said at the media conference: "the battle for domestic SNS has ended."

The most scarce resource in this industry is users. Users who like to use this service are limited. Maybe China is also two or thirty million.

After financing disclosure, he stressed that even without financing, he thought so.

Although the ups and downs, but Chen Yizhou's conclusion is still a little earlier.

At first, people did not pay much attention to the social networking site with kaixin001.com as the domain name, but then the invitation links from instant messaging software and e-mail finally prompted people to experience it.

Later, they were attracted by their friends' trading and parking games. They were very happy. In order to get more virtual coins, they soon joined the team that enthusiastically invited friends to join.

Since May, the curve of Kaixin001 has been rising continuously on the website of traffic statistics Alexa.

People are curious about the website that is being tested.

The address is 306 in the north building, Xinya building, 63 North Road, West Fourth Ring Road, Haidian District, Beijing.

This is a four story, old building. It can not be viewed from any angle with the website of Kaixin, which has changed the city's white-collar lunch break.

Of course, it has been pointed out that Facebook can be found on friends and parking games on the Facebook, namely the components "Friends for sale" and "Parking war".

On the other hand, some of the ways in which friends interact is somewhat ambiguous, which leads to reverie, or it is also an important part of attracting people's attention.

On the afternoon of September 17th, Wu Jiong, an investment partner of North Light Venture Capital, told the media that the venture capital will provide 4 million to 5 million dollars of venture capital to Kaixin.

"This is only the first venture capital investment. According to the aurora borealis mode, the wind investment fund will continue to be added."

In fact, in September, according to the statistics of Alexa, the flow of Kaixin has caught up with the school.

Although the business mode of social networking sites is still in the process of exploration, the common experience of the Internet shows that if one way can easily get a lot of traffic, it will be easier to profit from it.

It has been pointed out that parking games are related to car brands, so the recent purchase of house games can also be combined with real estate brand promotion.

With the rise of Kaixin net in September, during the China Internet Conference, Chen Yizhou said: we are competing in different fields.

I think the biggest feature of Kaixin is the invention of two white-collar workers who like to play online games. There are many such companies in the future, because its barriers are not high enough to imitate easily.

But since then, thousand oak has amazed everyone. In October 10th, Thousand Oaks confirmed that they had purchased the domain name kaixin.com, but indicated that there was no plan for use.

Four days later, 1000 oaks launched kaixin.com, similar to kaixin001.com from promotion to specific content.

IT commentators have called it "Shanzhai version of Kaixin net" after returning to their senses.

After that, it triggered a large number of other "happy nets" emerging.

As for "Shanzhai", Chen Yizhou responded, "if kaixin.com is a copycat version, Baidu must also be a copycat search."

As for the location of campus network and Kaixin net, he explained: this game is equivalent to playing several game consoles in Starbucks store.

People who drink coffee will definitely play games.

The two are not completely in conflict.

Unlike kaixin001.com, Chen Yizhou, who has already realized the financing, is facing the pressure of profit. The way is online games. "At present, we can live very well by advertising. The game community-based is put forward three years ago, so we did this in a long time ago.

Now the game department is the largest number of teams in the school.

In December 11th, the campus network officially opened the new logo, and announced the new positioning as "interactive communication platform".

The target age of SNS is extended from the young people to all ages.

Chen Yizhou stressed, "the ultimate goal of the school is to enlarge the advantages of powerful user groups to the limit, create an interactive communication platform, and become a part of daily life of all netizens."

　　結語

Chen Yizhou is actually doing a very difficult task. After 1998, China did not appear a very successful website after 2000. The success is undoubtedly defined as scale profit and listing.

The reason is that the opportunities for new websites seem to lie in the new user community. This is also the reason why websites emphasize entertainment and youthful characteristics for a while, but this is caught up in competition with the TV media, and the most successful mode of direct charging is online games.

Another opportunity lies in the re development of the original user group.

Logically, it is better to drive a network active user group, for example, people keep in touch with their graduates through alumni records, and students are active enough to use the Internet.

Chen Yizhou may break the fatalism of the Internet for many years, at least he has enough resources, and now he has enough experience. Besides, his mentality is quite competitive.