Ma Huateng, The Successful "Copy"

In the ten years of Tencent, Ma Huateng has never stopped copying, so that every product in Tencent can find the shadow of well-known Internet products both at home and abroad.

Tencent became a portal website covering the whole network, and Ma Huateng also succeeded.

But he does not feel relaxed because others may copy him at any time. "Tencent does not have financial problems.

In the face of the industry's doubts about the financial situation of the Internet industry under the background of the global financial crisis, Ma Huateng today, though angry, still has a lot of stability and practice.

In November 11th, it was dubbed "singles day" by many singles, but for Tencent, it was a boiling day, the ten year celebration of Tencent.

It is also at this point that "Tencent's tight capital" is widely known.

Tencent's explanation is, "this is a misreading of the media, and Tencent does not have financial problems."

According to Tencent's 2008 third quarter earnings report November 13th, Tencent's net profit fell by 7.8% compared with the second quarter.

However, the operating profit of up to 810 million 500 thousand yuan (US $118 million 900 thousand) is still 72.3% higher than that of the same period last year.

Tencent can achieve today's results, just like ten years ago, no one can predict today's Chinese Internet.

In the past ten years, Tencent has copied too many products, and it has too many Internet Co's shadow.

Therefore, Tencent is still regarded as "copy" by many people in the industry.

But for today's Tencent, it seems that it is not important to "copy".

Ma Huateng is a software engineer in Shenzhen run ten years ago, who graduated from University five years ago.

After work, his biggest hobby is surfing the Internet, and he knows many "net worms" friends.

Some of them later became the heroes of the Internet, such as Ding Lei of NetEase and Qiu Baijun of Jinshan.

In November 1998, Ma Huateng and his college classmate, Zhang Zhidong, joined 500 thousand people and registered their company. This is the embryonic form of Tencent.

The first business of Tencent is to integrate systems into some paging stations. Several partners are busy as salesmen and engineers.

By chance, Ma Huateng saw the ICQ demonstration based on Windows system. ICQ had swept the world in that year, but there was no Chinese version.

From this point of view, Ma Huateng began to ponder whether it could launch a software like paging, chatting and e-mails similar to ICQ in China. This is such a simple idea. Ma Huateng and his colleagues began to imitate the functions and characteristics of ICQ, and developed an instant messaging tool for Chinese interface, called "Chinese Internet pager", or "OICQ".

In all respects, OICQ is a popular work of Ma Huateng's imitation of ICQ and the predecessor of QQ.

However, the birth of the software did not bring much surprise to Ma Huateng.

Because at that time, Ma Huateng's "bringing ism" was almost everywhere in Internet companies.

At that time, there were several similar softwares in China, but they didn't open the market.

No doubt, OICQ didn't bring much surprise to the market at that time. Ma Huateng's idea of making money with OICQ was almost shattered.

For the development of OICQ, some people say that Ma Huateng has seen ICQ sell from Israel to the US for $287 million, and others say he saw the stock market climax of the.Com company that shouted free.

For these statements, Ma Huateng refused to comment. "I just feel that this chat tool is full of huge business opportunities."

At the beginning of 1999, he tried to put OICQ on the Internet with the idea of trying to see it. Instead, the original orientation was changed to a free download mode. This action should be what students needed at once. The OICQ, which was downloaded for free, was popular in the university campus at that time.

The next thing is Ma Huateng.

This once neglected software developed 5 million users in less than a year, which made Ma Huateng worry about the survival of OICQ.

Because users are increasing, it also means expanding servers.

At that time, one thousand or two thousand yuan of server hosting fees, let small workshop Tencent Inc overwhelmed.

In desperation, Ma Huateng rubbed around other people's servers everywhere.

At the very beginning, only one ordinary PC machine was put into the computer room with broadband conditions, and then the program was secretly loaded into other people's servers.

However, this can only temporarily solve the urgent matter.

The days of Ma Huateng were a torment for him: "knowing that there is income and prospects, can support the development of users. What can restrict us is that we do not have enough money to buy servers and bandwidth. The reputation of products is achieved, but there is no money."

According to an old employee of the Tencent, in November 1999, the company's account was only 10 thousand yuan.

In October 1999, one year after the operation of the company, Tencent began formal financing.

"I've been in touch with some VC before, and I even thought about selling companies and selling OICQ."

Ma Huateng recalled the situation at that time, and seemed to have no sense of pain at that time.

In a letter claiming to be an employee of Tencent, the reporter saw a description of that period: several founders must have lunch together or dinner every day, and communicate with them at this time.

For this reason, a few of them often quarrelled, even patted the table, and even ignored each other.

However, Ma Huateng never quarrels, but only gets angry. When he is angry, his speech is mean.

At that time, because the company had no money, everyone was in a bad mood, including employees, because they had already lost wages.

However, I dare not ask this matter, but pray that the VC will patronize Tencent.

At that time, an enterprise financing had either core technology or good projects.

But for Tencent, the only advantage of financing is "users".

At that time, OICQ users were already millions, but they didn't have any income.

Ma Huateng asked, what is your core value? Ma Huateng said, "Israel's ICQ has sold tens of millions of dollars. How many users does it have? We have more users than they do now, so we are worth so much money."

With this in mind, Tencent has luckily invested $2 million 200 thousand in investment in IDG and Richard Lee's PCCW.

In accordance with Tencent's valuation of $5 million 500 thousand, VCs accounted for 40% of the shares.

"For this financing success, there are technical reasons, and more luck," he said.

Ma Huateng did not hide his luck.

"Shenzhen is not like Beijing and Beijing is a circle of returnees, where enterprises find it easier to find investors.

Financing in Shenzhen was very difficult at that time, so we were lucky. "

According to a former Tencent employee, during the financing process, Ma Huateng underwent two lumbar surgery.

After the second operation, he was lying on the bed and holding a laptop office.

It is a great deal of money in the field. Today, it seems that venture capitalists account for 40% of the shares of Tencent Inc, which are 2 million 200 thousand yuan of indigestion and indigestion.

However, Ma Huateng believes that at that time, the most important thing is not to give them many shares, but the key is to survive.

Now, many new start-ups are reluctant to sell shares.

At that time, we had 40% more shares for venture capital, plus the convertible bonds they had later, the shares were close to 50%.

Until 2001, IDG and PCCW quit, and South Africa's media predator MIH was replaced by $about 30000000.

With the 2 million 200 thousand dollars, Ma Huateng pulled the Tencent from the brink of death, and Tencent was temporarily worried about life and death.

The number of OICQ registrations continues to grow, which is contrary to the fact that OICQ still does not find a profit model.

They found that ICQ, who once imitated, has never found a profit model.

To see Sohu and Sina making profits through advertising, Ma Huateng also decided to start with OICQ's profit model from online advertising.

In July 2000, Tencent tried water online advertising.

For a few months, Tencent's advertising sales quickly ranked second only to Sina and Sohu, ranking third.

However, compared to the number of new subscribers added to tens of thousands of new registrations a month, the advertising revenue is far from enough.

After several months of financing, Tencent is once again in financial crisis.

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

Ma Huateng has tens of millions of users, but can not profit from it.

Once, when he was browsing a Korean software, he found a service to dress the virtual image. So Ma Huateng moved it to OICQ.

He also found some famous international companies such as NOKIA and Nike to put the latest products and clothes on the Internet so that users can download trial and try them on.

All registered users can receive free service as always. Because there are a large number of user bases, Tencent can get the product design of these companies without spending a penny, and users are also willing to stand in the forefront of fashion.

Therefore, when Ma Huateng reaches out to these big companies for advertising fees, they are willing to give them.

As a result, a lot of "silver" poured into Ma Huateng's pocket.

According to the reporter's understanding, Tencent's business has been growing rapidly. At present, more than 40% users have tried to buy it.

Ma Huateng recalled, "Tencent was making money at the same time as the registered users at that time."

In just half a year, the cash flow of Tencent began to function normally.

By the end of 2001, Tencent realized a net profit of 10 million 220 thousand yuan.

In March 2001, Tencent changed the name of OICQ to QQ in order to deal with the copyright lawsuit that lasted more than a year.

Tencent is famous, Tencent has money.

Therefore, it has begun a new round of "cloning".

Tencent learn Sina's SMS and ringtone, copy NetEase's dating service QQ, men and women, imitate the grand online games.

Then they will be promoted to the QQ community.

The result is amazing: in 2002, Tencent realized a net profit of 144 million yuan, an increase of more than 10 times that of 2001; in 2003, the net profit of Tencent was 338 million yuan, which was nearly doubled compared with 2002.

Immediately after that, Tencent also contended with Ma Yun on online auctions and online payments. Since then, Tencent has rushed into the search market to challenge Baidu's Robin Li.

During the days of the Tencent, they seemed to be full of strength.

In fact, Ma Huateng was not too sure about what he had done at that time: "for every field, we are trying slowly, not knowing how we can make it. We can only gradually open up if we have confidence.

We have also taken a lot of twists and turns to learn a lot.

At the beginning, we knew nothing about online games, nor did we know how to do content on the website. This requires us to have a strong learning ability and avoid everyone living on credit cards.

When we are doing e-commerce, we are patting all kinds of things online to find the feeling.

Ma Huateng hopes to retain customers through product diversification.

"Our idea at that time was very simple. When the user was lost, these businesses could be superimposed to meet the needs of different users.

There are also a lot of people saying that I do not concentrate.

In fact, people who know the situation at that time know that for the instant messaging business, we have already satisfied the basic needs of 90% of users. We must take other measures, otherwise we will wait for death.

Instead of waiting for death, you might as well look for it everywhere and maybe seize the opportunity. "

In order to achieve this goal, Tencent has been searching for products to copy and integrate all kinds of products. This state has lasted until June 2004, and Tencent holdings is listed in Hongkong.

Tencent's many fields and a series of products developed by the company have finally been straightened out in the prospectus of the year. It divides Tencent's profit pattern into three parts: Internet value-added services (including member services, community services, games and entertainment services), mobile and communication value-added services (including mobile chat, voice chat, SMS ringtone, etc.) and online advertising.

Among them, the first two income accounts for 96.1% of Tencent's total revenue.

People have just figuring out the scope of Tencent business, and Tencent has launched QQ.COM portal, QQ mailbox, self developed online games, Internet search and personal e-commerce website.

Tencent is almost involved in all the application fields of the Internet, so that some people predict: "Tencent is about to become a competitor of all Internet Co!" the shortcut of "copy" is not Ma Huateng's original creation, but many people died after "copy".