Ten Years Dreaming: Cao Guowei's Sina World

　 1. Sina heel

　　 Share decentralization The separation of management rights and ownership has been the Achilles heel of sina. This problem has plagued Sina for 16 years, and has not changed until.

Everything must start with Sina's establishment. In December 1993, Wang Zhidong founded the four links with the support of Duan Yongji, the head of Stone Company, and 79% of the four links, and 21% of management shares headed by Wang Zhidong. In October 1997, the 3 Us Venture Capital Firm headed by the warden Group invested 6 million 500 thousand US dollars in the four way, when the valuation reached $15 million, and the stake in VC was 40%. Stone Company and Wang Zhidong held 47.4% and 12.5% respectively.

In 1998, the four party acquired the network of Huayuan, founded by Jiang Feng, to form "Sina network". In the "Sina", the original shareholders accounted for 60%, Huayuan accounted for 40%, and Wang Zhidong's shares diluted to 7.56%. In 1999, Sina made two total financing of 85 million US dollars. In 2000, Sina landed on Nasdaq, and Wang Zhidong shares were further diluted to 6.3%. Only five of the top five shareholders were left, and the shares were further diluted. {page_break}

Wang Zhidong, the entrepreneur, became a professional manager, and the Sina board lost its lead. A year after Sina's listing, the global Internet bubble burst and Sina got into a crisis. Wang Zhidong went out and became a sad case of "capitalists drive home."

As a result of the highly dispersed shareholding, Sina has become the target of sneak attack. Since 2003, YAHOO, NetEase and Chunghwa Internet have already heard news about Sina's acquisition. Before joining Sina, Cao Guowei joined Sina as deputy chief financial officer, and witnessed the ups and downs of the board of directors of sina. Cao Guowei recalled: the outside world knows that the grand attack on sina is unknown.

Efforts have been made to change the ownership structure of sina. The first person to make efforts is Duan Yongji, President of the four way group. In September 2001, Duan Yongji introduced Sun TV, Wu Zheng and Yang Lan landed on Sina with sina TV. Sina bought 29% of the sun's TV shares for $8 million in cash and about 4 million 600 thousand shares of newly issued shares, which accounted for 10% of the total shares diluted by Sina network.

According to the performance of Sun TV, 18 months later, sina will also pay 2 million 500 thousand new shares, while sina will own 16% of the shares. However, when Wu Zheng and Yang Lan finally came out, "Sina + Sun TV" copied the "AOL+ era Warner" dream of "cross media" which failed to become a reality. Sina failed for the first time.

The second is Chen's "sneak attack" on Sina. In February 2005, Chen attacked Sina with a stake of 19.5% and became the first shareholder of sina. Cao Guowei recalled that when Sina just completed the Sarbanes act, he felt very tired and flew to Australia on holiday on New Year's Eve (February 8th) night. In February 9th, they received a call from Chen Tianqiao, saying that they had acquired Sina stock. At 22 pm on the fourth night after the grand raid, Cao Guowei processed the "shareholder purchase plan" (the "poison pill plan"), successfully boycotting Chen Tianqiao's sneak attack.

Cao Guowei had been with Chen Tianqiao for more than a year.

The third opportunity is Sina's acquisition of segmented outdoor media business. By the end of 2008, Sina had issued 47 million ordinary shares and merged Focus Media's assets. At the same time, Fosun international began to hold a majority of shares. By March of this year, Fosun international has held 28.7% of the shares. Sina's successful acquisition of segmented outdoor media business, Fosun international will become the first shareholder of sina. The Ministry of commerce did not reply to the deadline set in the case, and Sina was worried about the risk of a significant drop in value. In September 28, 2009, Sina announced the merger failed.

This opportunity was missed again. In September 28th, there were 2 days before the merger deadline (in September 30th, the deadline for the merger of sina). Sina announced that sina had terminated the merger agreement with the sub group.

The decentralization of ownership structure and internal disputes are the biggest pain of sina over the past ten years. The ultimate solution to this problem is Cao Guowei, not an external Wu Zheng, Chen Tianqiao, Guo Guangchang, nor an internal Duan Yongji or Jiang Fengnian. Cao Guowei became Sina's biggest surprise. {page_break}

　 2. Sina

Soon after the listing of sina, China's Internet industry was at a low ebb, and then the rise of wireless value-added service business. At that time, Cao Guowei was Sina's CFO, and he was extremely sensitive to the development trend of the industry. He felt an unprecedented opportunity and finally made two proud acquisitions.

The first was Sina's acquisition of the dragon in January 2003. The acquisition was considered the most successful acquisition in the Internet world, and the second was the acquisition of Shenzhen Internet in March 2004. The two acquisition laid the dominant position of sina in the wireless value-added business, and almost changed the fate of the company. Sina's share price also surged in the first quarter of 2004, thanks to a substantial increase in wireless revenue. Cao Guowei's design of the acquisition of the dragon and the network Xing mode has also become a template for the acquisition of China's Internet industry. Since then, many mergers and acquisitions in the industry have taken this as a model.

Sina wireless now has a huge revenue of $30 million per quarter and has become a strong pillar of sina's revenue.

In June 2004, another challenge began, and Cao Guowei was in charge of the company's COO. He was responsible for managing the company's most core advertising sales and website operations. It is quite unusual for a company to let CFO do advertising business and websites. At that time, the background of sina's Internet advertising was a bottleneck. Although it is still growing naturally, it has lagged far behind its competitors, and there is a trend of further deterioration.

Cao Guowei later recalled that sina was the biggest test in ten years as COO.

After his appointment, he adjusted the internal organization and made drastic reforms. He also replaced quite a few responsible persons, who gave the impression "strong" at that time. In just six months, Cao Guowei established a brand new sales team and a powerful sales system in Sina. In 2005, Sina's advertising growth rate exceeded its main rival Sohu for the first time in three years, leading to a further expansion.

In May 2006, Cao Guowei took the mace of sina CEO from Wang Yan. After CEO, he adjusted the direction of sina's development and vigorously developed Web 2 products and advertising businesses, which are blogs as the core, especially Sina's rapid growth.

After Cao Guowei's performance, Sina released its first earnings report, showing that there has been a decline in the number of businesses other than advertising. He told the newspaper that Sina's future is a gateway, Sina's future business is advertising, and its advertising business is good, proving Sina's future is good. Wireless business downturn is the general trend. As early as two years ago, other portals' wireless businesses have already begun to slide.

In the end, Internet advertising is indeed the engine of sina's revenue as Cao Guowei expected. The advertising sales performance of sina during the Olympic Games was brilliant. The total revenue in the third quarter of 2008 was over 100 million dollars, and advertising revenue reached 76 million 200 thousand dollars, an increase of 66% over the same period last year.

In August 2009, Sina launched microblog, and Cao Guowei began to add. It only launched more than a year. This product has become Sina's most important engine of growth, and hundreds of millions of active users have been called China's FaceBook. FaceBook's valuation is more than $84 billion, and Sina's share price has soared. In August 2009, the stock price was only $30, and now it has exceeded $117.

　　 Wall Street likes to listen to stories. This time, Cao Guowei told an alluring story with micro-blog.

Looking back, Cao Guowei is unbelievable. "The rapid development of the Internet industry has made Sina experience many twists and turns in the past few years, and I have almost experienced and participated in all these processes. Many opportunities or challenges are the first time for Sina or myself. I have no experience to refer to, so I have to learn continuously, and I can only rely on judgement and intuition more often. In the process, I grew up unconsciously. "

It is these unusual experiences and "torment" that make Cao Guowei one of the most experienced managers in this industry. As a professional manager, he has also embarked on the power summit of an overseas listed company.