Tudou CEO Wang Wei: When IPO Encountered "Marriage Defense"

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From top student to golden collar

"It's hard for us to wear a suit, a tie and look at the computer all day, and sleep hard enough to be an entrepreneur." this is what Wang Wei used to tease with media reporters.

Like many entrepreneurs who have backgrounds in foreign studies, jeans, T-shirts and casual shoes are Wang Wei's standard "outfits". In his view, this is not only a habit formed by studying and working abroad, but also a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship.

In other people's eyes, Wang Wei, who is full of energy, is definitely a top student: he has a M BA degree from the European School of business administration and a master of Computer Science degree from Johns Hopkins University; he served as a Hughes Co during his time as a development manager; he was responsible for the satellite broadband and satellite TV business in the Asian market; later he served as the headquarters of German Bertelsmann group and served as director of enterprise development and CEO of Bertelsmann Online China.

But only those who really understand Wang Wei know that this top student actually has a "not excellent" past.

Wang Wei was born in a doctor's family in Fuzhou. His life course had nothing to do with shrewd "Fujian businessmen" at the very beginning.

"When I graduated from high school, I went abroad to study at University," Wang Wei said. But the reason was not that his grades were too good or his family's money was strong enough to send him abroad. "I can't really take the college entrance examination. It's far from the score line."

Fortunately, another popular trend in Fujian at that time gave Wang's new choice. "At that time, Fujian was very popular and sent children abroad to study in the University."

In Wang Wei's words, in retrospect, he was once a "poor student".

However, he did not shy away from his past, because he became a top student immediately after his arrival at the American island of St ton Island College.

Wang Wei explained that it may be more accustomed to teaching methods in the United States, but more importantly, the influence of American culture on oneself: dare to speak and dare to make demands.

In this way, Wang Wei no longer passively studied, but soon found the knack of learning and became a top student quickly.

But Wang Wei's life in the United States is not easy, and can even be described as "hard".

Because there is no scholarship, Wang Wei, besides saving and frugal, is squeezing time to work everywhere.

"At that time, I washed dishes and served as restaurant waiters.

Wang Wei, who is divided, has been shuttling between restaurants and university classrooms.

This seems to be one of his "special skills". Before he successfully completed his studies and found a job, Wang Wei had always been working to support himself.

In 1996, Wang Wei graduated with a bachelor's degree.

His employment career came to an end because he gained the favor of the US Hughes Co.

After entering Hughes, Wang Wei found that his technical skills were not enough, so he decided to continue his master's degree.

"It was estimated that the company didn't study my application very carefully, because I needed full-time work and had a master's degree," Wang Wei recalls. "When company colleagues realized what I was going to do, they were shocked."

Wang Wei began his study at Johns Hopkins University and entered the most difficult course of his life. He needed full-time work. He flew from Washington to Beijing once a month, but at the same time he had to read. But Wang Wei took the master's degree in Computer Science in one year and three months.

In 1999, Wang Wei was sent to the branch office in Beijing by the Hughes Co headquarters of the United States, responsible for the launch of the new products in the Asia Pacific market. That year, he was 26 years old and has been a standard "golden collar".

Later in the Internet bubble, Wang Wei went to France's European School of business administration to study M BA, and then was invited to join Bertelsmann online.

"Then thinking about why we should start a business may be related to this series of experiences," Wang Wei recalls. "If you are a professional manager, you will be responsible for the business in the big part of China at the most. I think if you want to be more interesting, you will have to start your own business."

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"Grow potatoes" online

In 2004, Wang Wei created Tudou, in his words, "planted potatoes."

Now it seems that when Wang Wei joined the army of the Internet, it was not the best time for the Internet industry.

Wang Wei himself paid 1 million yuan as the starting capital. He lived in a small apartment and went out on a bicycle to run his own "little potato".

In August 2005, investment agency ID G briefly talked with Wang Wei for 15 minutes and immediately decided to invest $500 thousand.

On the success of the first financing, Wang Wei summed up as "I think it might have been a concept approved by the investment community" at that time.

Wang Wei persevered in the predicament of the initial stage of entrepreneurship, and finally attracted $28 million in three years. In April 2008, the amount of financing increased by a record $57 million. The total record of $85 million became a good part of the Internet industry at that time.

Less than two years after the creation of Tudou, nearly 20 thousand new videos are uploaded every day.

For Wang Wei, such a performance is enough to please.

But he has seen the world before, but has a more far-reaching plan for the future of Tudou.

At that time, the operation mode of the domestic video websites was imitating the Y ouT UBE of the United States, and it was still in the stage of just starting to increase the traffic volume.

As for web advertising and video advertising, it will not be until around 2007.

In order to attract eyeballs to get traffic, the practice of websites is simple, that is, constantly increasing the number of videos.

This is indeed an effective way, but the problem is that in the surging video, apart from a large number of repeated videos, more are the "defective" videos.

At this time, Wang Wei's consideration is not how to increase the number of videos so simple. "Quality" is the real concern for him.

In 2007, after successfully completing the third round of financing, Wang Wei and his donkey brothers rode through Tibet, and recorded the whole process with D V, and made a complete video uploaded to Tudou.

This video has won praise from netizens, while Wang Wei's thinking about the quality of video website has gradually become clear.

Later, Wang Wei marked "everyone is the director of life" for the potato net and launched a series of original video programs.

Soon, this strategic adjustment of Wang Wei showed a success.

At that time, online game World of Warcraft was popular in China, and some game enthusiasts produced video related to games and uploaded to Tudou net. Not only did they win praise from netizens, but they also brought an inevitable flow for Tudou.

After that, Wang Wei tried to take pictures of his own video short plays. Although they were mixed with different opinions, they gave the potato net a rare experience, and laid the foundation for the successful launch of the potato net self made online TV drama "Orange Box: our story".

According to Wang Wei, there are now hundreds of professionals in the Tudou network, who are creative teams. They are concentrating on creating original programs. "Potato angel" and "Internet Millionaire" are the original programs that are popular and popular on the Internet.

In April 2008, Wang Wei's original strategy reached the first climax - the opening of the first potato Film Festival. All the entries were from the original video of Tudou.

The grassroots film festival attracted a lot of attention at that time, but Wang Wei's strategy of "content is king" was only half completed.

In line with these encouraging original video programs, Wang Wei is buying the right to broadcast TV and TV programs online.

In September 2008, Tudou launched the "black bean" high-definition platform, "Kangxi came", "destined to love you" and so on. A large number of popular TV shows and TV shows were pulled to potatoes by Wang Wei. More than a dozen blockbusters such as ye asked, Big Slam Dunk came to the network from the big screen. In 2009, Tudou also won the "2009 Happy Girls" live broadcast rights.

The latest public figures show that in 2010 Tudou spent more than 50 million yuan on the purchase of legitimate TV shows and programmes.

Followed by the rapid increase of advertising revenue, Tudou responsible person told the economic reference Daily reporter that advertising revenue is currently one of the main income of Tudou, while advertising revenue originates from original programs and genuine video programs is obviously higher than the advertising revenue brought by other videos.

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Entangled copyright

Thanks to the success of the new strategy, the profitability of potatoes is improving.

Finally, Wang Wei can make time to consider listing.

But like all the fascinating TV plays, the fate of the hero can not be a smooth road.

Copyright has become a top priority for Wang Wei.

Over the past two years, copyright disputes have been appearing frequently in the online video industry.

In 2008, a group of portals, such as Sohu, took the lead in Tudou.

Subsequently, copyright litigation related to Tudou has never stopped.

In January this year, the wave of prosecution triggered by the excitement network pushed the potato network to the cusp of the storm.

At that time, the more than 80 parties, including Beijing's Poly bona, Beijing orange entertainment, Beijing Ji'an Yongjia, Ying Ying Ying and Shanghai silver run, set up an anti piracy alliance and launched the annual "liquidation" action.

At the most troublesome time, 14 copyright lawsuits against potato net can be seen on the Shanghai court online. They are concentrated in 18 days. Half of the plaintiffs are excited networks. The latter said that there was an exclusive online video content on the Internet.

In those days, I believe Wang Wei still remembered that he had convened dozens of media conferences in the country to answer questions, and patiently explained every day.

After being bothered by copyright problems, Wang Wei realized that it was impossible to solve the problem by talking with his lips. So he started again and decided to launch a new deletion system on Tudou in September this year, allowing copyright owners to mark videos uploaded by the netizens and infringing their own rights, and then inform the video websites to delete them.

In addition, Tudou also launched the ad sharing system. The copyright owner can get 30% of the advertising division, hoping to solve the frequent disputes with copyright owners in business interests.

Prior to that, the "black bean" channel launched by Tudou has adopted genuine HD content, and the copyright partners have used the way of "guaranteed bottom up plus sharing", which has already expressed the interest sharing attitude.

"Why can't we be optimistic about copyright issues?" Wang Wei asked. In his view, copyright is not a problem at all, but only a reasonable solution has yet to be found.

Troubled marriage

Although there has been a copyright dispute between a video website and Tudou recently, it has been brought to court, but Wang Wei now has no time for this headache - all because of the troublesome marriage.

An insider revealed that the marriage between Wang Wei and his ex-wife Yang Lei lasted only 10 months from 2007 to mid 2008.

In January this year, the court made a first instance judgment on the division of property involved in divorce.

Because of the negative assets of Wang Wei, Yang Lei did not get the property right when he divorced.

But just after the battle for property between the two sides has just come to a close, the news of Tudou IPO is in the news.

Once Tudou is listed in the US, Wang Wei will be unlimited.

And this hurt Yang Lei, making her make an astonishing decision to sue Wang Wei.

At present, Yang Lei has filed a lawsuit against the court, demanding the division of marital property.

Tudou Public Relations Department official said, at present, potatoes net is listed in the silent period, can not make relevant comments.

In addition, divorce and property disputes are private questions, which are not easy to answer.

According to the marriage law of our country, the property acquired by one party before marriage is not the property of husband and wife. Wang Wei has acquired the existing stake in Tudou before marriage.

Therefore, Wang Wei may propose that this part of the property is a property rather than a common property.

Yang Lei may argue that if Wang Wei's equity value is increased during the marriage period, the value added part of this share should belong to the common property of the couple.

However, after many times of financing, the current shareholding calculation will be more complicated.

According to the legal profession, Wang Wei currently owns 95% of the shares of Shanghai whole potato network technology Co., Ltd., which is entrusted to hold shares, that is, holding shares on behalf of all investors. But Yang Lei has not. If this share is frozen or acquired by Yang Lei, it means that the shares of Core Company will be affected by a person who has not signed a shareholding agreement, which will be a risk to investors.

At present, there are two ways to solve the "housework" in front of Wang Wei. If Yang Lei cares about Wang Wei's earnings after listing, it can be reconciled with money; if she insists on acquiring shares and winning the lawsuit, it will have some impact on the company.

Whether or not it will negatively affect Tudou's listing in the US depends on the direction and outcome of litigation, and the risk assessment of the team, investors and the stock exchange of the listed companies.

If we can predict today's mess, I believe Wang Wei will not be directing the marriage a few years ago.

But just like all the wonderful films and TV shows, the big play that Wang Wei directed himself has just begun. Where will his life go? Where will the future of Tudou be? These hard questions are waiting for Wang Wei to direct himself.