"IDG Capital, they said that if we can get investment from Newman, then they are willing to continue investing in the qq project." Before Zeng Liqing could finish his words, the call came again.
After the phone call, Zeng Liqing said helplessly: "Yingke also called. Yingke means the same as IDG. As long as our project is favored by Newman, they are willing to continue investing in QQ according to the original terms."
Chen Yidan said: “If Newman is interested in our project, why do we still look for investment from IDG and Yingke?
Whether it is financial strength or influence in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, IDG and Yingke are far inferior to Newman. "
Most Internet people in China like to call Zhou Xin Newman, because there is no mistake in calling him this way, and Zhou Xin is famous in Silicon Valley.
IDG's current influence is far less than that of later generations. It can only be regarded as a small and medium-sized investment company in Amerikan, which is completely incomparable with Zhou Xin. Their only advantage is that they have entered the Chinese market since 1991.
Pony Ma said: “Regardless of them, if we want to get investment, no matter who we get the investment from, we need to gain Newman’s favor.
Now it is equivalent to playing an RPG game. Obtaining investment is our ultimate task. No matter which side task we choose, we need to obtain Newman's approval.
So the most important thing for us now is to write the company introduction. Everyone only needs to do this well now.
Yingke and IDG, wait until Newman and I finish talking, and we will talk to them after we have the results. "
Zeng Liqing asked: "Who should we choose between Newman, IDG and Yingke?"
Zhang Zhidong said: "It must be Newman. The resources, experience and vision that Newman can bring to us are things that IDG and Yingke cannot bring to us."
Zhou Xin’s investment in Baidu has also been reported back to China, including handing over Quora’s search engine to Baidu.
This type of investor is the most popular among entrepreneurs because they do not interfere too much in the internal operations of your company, but can also provide your company with help in addition to funding.
Similar conversations took place in many hotels in Yanjing. Zhou Xin's behavior caused the Internet conference in the following days to lose attention.
From the industry to the public, everyone is paying attention to who can get Zhou Xin's investment.
Compared with the direct money, the content at the Internet conference seems a bit lackluster.
"Boss, I have read hundreds of company introductions in total, and the twenty companies I have selected are companies that I personally think are pretty good.
In addition, three companies such as Sohu, Sina and NetEase are relatively mature in terms of their business formats, company size and scale.
They screwed it out alone. I guess Sohu is not short of money. Zhang Chaoyang simply hopes to chat with you and ask for some money from you.
He wants this money not for money, but for your endorsement. With your endorsement, it will be better to list on Nasdaq. "
Sohu, Sina and NetEase are all companies that have survived twenty years later. NetEase and Sina are both doing well. Sohu is not that bad, but it is not that bad.
Still alive at least.
After twenty years of vicissitudes of life, it is not easy for a company to survive.
Zhou Xin took a look and found that most of them were familiar names, such as Tencent, Alibaba, Tianya, China.com, eBay, Dangdang, Shanda and so on.
Even though Zhou Xin is technically a post-2000 generation, he is still no stranger to these companies.
The only thing that was a bit unfamiliar was a company called Yitang. He really didn't know what this company did.
Zhou Xin said: "Okay, there are only twenty companies, let's talk to them all. You can sort them. After sorting, we will talk to about six companies every afternoon. This arrangement is quite reasonable.
In addition, prepare the standard contract we prepared. If I am satisfied after the discussion, I can sign it directly. Anyway, I will change the amount. "
Yes, Zhou Xin has prepared the investment contract, and Yang Yimei, the head of the Asia-Pacific region of Kaishou Law Firm, is personally responsible for this matter.
Yang Yimei was waiting outside, waiting for the investors to come out of the conference room, and explained the detailed terms of the investment contract to them in detail.
This is a billion-dollar business, and legal fees are secondary. Helping Kaishou expand its business in China is of great benefit.
When helping Zhou Xin with his reputation lawsuit, Kaishou's business in China suddenly opened up. What happened last time strengthened Yang Yimei's desire to have a good relationship with Zhou Xin.
Therefore, after Zhou Xin emailed her about this matter, she made a special trip from the Lion City to Yanjing.
The first person to meet was Pony Ma. Zhou Xin was very interested in Pony Ma of this era. Due to his later celebrity status, he had almost no chance to chat with Pony alone.
"Hello, Mr. Zhou, my name is Ma Huateng, and my English name is Pony. You can just call me Pony."
Pony Ma was very nervous. He was not even sure whether he could be selected, because the QQ product had a clear benchmark overseas, which was ICQ.
ICQ has never found a profit model, let alone QQ. The reason why they are struggling to support and want to continue operating QQ is precisely because this thing has many users, and the users are growing at a high speed.
The user growth of QQ is several times or even ten times that of ordinary websites.
Although they don’t know how to make money, having so many users is always a good thing, the founders of Goose Factory think so.
The result is that the more users there are, the higher the requirements for servers and bandwidth, and they can no longer support it.
It was not until after the 3Q war that the media and the Internet industry realized the power of qq and what user stickiness and social attributes are.
Before the 3Q war, even though Goose Factory was listed on the Hong Kong stock market and achieved substantial profits through QQ shows and games, they were still not so popular.
Compared with portal websites, instant messaging software like QQ seems to be heretical.
To use Wu Xiaobo's original words in "Tencent Biography": The capital market has always looked at Tencent after its listing with a very cold eye.
Why? Because foreign benchmarking companies have not achieved profitability. Why did Baidu rank first among the early BATs? This is because the foreign benchmark company Google has achieved great commercial success.
The same is true for Alibaba. Amazon and eBay, which are the overseas targets, have achieved great success in business. Only ICQ, the target of Tencent, has not found a profitable direction after being acquired.
Not to mention that in 1999, most investors were not optimistic about qq. IDG had the idea of investing in qq because of Wang Shu's repeated insistence.
Wang Shu is the investment manager of IDG in China. He has invested in companies such as Kingdee and Zhongkejian, which will later establish a joint venture with Samsung.
It was only after Wang Shu's insistence that IDG decided to invest in the goose factory.
Now, with the new storm effect this week, causing the entire Federal Reserve to raise interest rates ahead of schedule, the collapse of Nasdaq is coming faster than expected.
IDG's Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Xiangjiang refused to invest in this project.
"pony, just call me Newman. Please briefly introduce what Tencent is doing now, what it will do in the future, and your founder team." Zhou Xin has never seen such a young pony.
There is not much difference in appearance from the pony horses of twenty years later. The only difference is probably the temperament.
Later, Zhou Xin saw him from a distance at a conference. At that time, Pony Ma was full of boss aura, but now he looks like a pure IT otaku.
Pony Ma seemed not so smooth during the introduction. He originally wanted to bring Zeng Liqing with him because Zeng Liqing played a bridge role in looking for investments.
He is far inferior to Zeng Liqing in terms of expression.
Unfortunately, Zhou Xin only saw one person, so Pony Ma had to come alone.
"The current situation of Tencent is roughly like this. We are now facing a very real problem. If we cannot attract investment, we will die immediately. If we find investment, the profit direction will not be clear." Pony Ma said.
After listening to this, Zhou Xin said, "Have you met the investors before?"
Pony replied: "I have met Wang Shu and Wang Gongquan from IDG, and the investors from Yingke Capital."
Zhou Xin said: "What you said is too candid. Aren't you worried that investors will take the opportunity to lower the price if you say it so candidly?"
What Zhou Xin is talking about is a practical issue. The more difficult it is for you, the more eager you are for money when talking to investors. Once you reveal this desire, it means you have lost the initiative.
Pony Ma said: "This is from a practical point of view. It is indeed difficult to find a profitable direction for the business form of QQ.
You asked me to find a profit model in just one or two days, which is unrealistic.
Everyone knows that you have a sharp vision in the Internet field. There is no need for me to cover up anything. Instead of covering it up and then being questioned by you, it is better to be more honest from the beginning.
And I am not only honest with you, I am also honest when I chat with Wang Shu from IDG. He asked me how I see the future of our company.
I just said, I don't know. "
Zhou Xin said: "QQ is a very popular application now. You just said that in just nine months, it has more than one million registered users.
This is an amazing number, and since users like it, there must be a way to monetize it.
It's just that you haven't found this path yet. I'm willing to invest in Tencent. You can set a price. "
Zhou Xin also wanted to have a more in-depth conversation with the other party, because after he returned to China this time, he was going to Silicon Valley to shop for goods.
In China, we invest in some Internet companies, but when we return to Silicon Valley, we can buy some semiconductor companies.
When the Nasdaq bubble bursts completely, semiconductor companies will not be able to survive alone.
Of course, because Riot Games will also enter China in the future, with Riot Games here, qq will obviously not be able to achieve the scale of later generations.
"For US$2.2 million, we are willing to sell 40% of the shares, which means the valuation is US$5.5 million." Pony Ma said.
"Where did this price come from?" Zhou Xin asked.
“Because we don’t want to lose control of Tencent, and at the same time, our operations in the next year will require at least 10 million yuan.
Considering that the Internet winter is coming, I have estimated this amount upwards. "Pony Ma felt very uneasy after finishing speaking.
Because before knowing about angel investment, Tencent’s founding team had the idea of selling the company.
When they sold the company, their psychological expectation was only 3 million RMB.
Calculated based on the exchange rate of 8.27, the price he is negotiating with Zhou Xin now values Tencent at 45.485 million RMB.
It was 15 times what he expected six months ago.
Zhou Xin never thought about taking over Goose Factory, because Goose Factory has lost its founder team, can they still be able to achieve the form of future generations?
this is a problem.
At the same time, does Zhou Xin have the energy to make the goose factory bigger? This is more of a problem.
Therefore, only investing without operating is the best model.
There are too many good things for you to vote for.
Looking back from 2010, Baidu is obviously stronger than Alibaba and Tencent.
But looking back in another ten years, Baidu will already be far behind.
If we go ten years further, maybe Baidu will rise again.
Zhou Xin nodded: "Okay, Manager Wu is waiting for you outside. The contract is ready. We will sign it immediately. After signing, we will talk about how Tencent can achieve profitability.
I'll tell you some of my thoughts.
If you are not confident about the contract, you can ask your founder members or lawyers to come and review it together. I will meet the next entrepreneur first, and we will talk after you sign. "
After Tencent decided to seek angel investment, Pony Ma met with many investment institutions, including Zeng Liqing. They had an understanding of the styles of different investment institutions during internal meetings and discussions.
From the first meeting to the final investment, at least three rounds of negotiations are required, from the investment manager to the supervisor to the final decision maker.
Pony Ma suddenly realized that today was a day blessed by Buddha, and Tencent's life should not be cut off. He still felt a sense of elation.
Is this what it feels like to chat directly with the boss?
"Shiqiang, prepare the contract. The valuation is US$5.5 million. We will acquire 40% of Tencent's shares for US$2.2 million." Zhou Xin pressed the button on the table, and then Wu Shiqiang walked in.
After he glanced at Pony Ma, he didn't expect that the first person would be favored by Zhou Xin.
He nodded and said, "Okay."
Accompanying Pony Ma were Chen Yidan and Zeng Liqing. When they saw Pony coming out, they immediately greeted him.
"How is it?" Zeng Liqing asked.
Pony Ma said: "2.2 million US dollars, according to the price we negotiated with IDG before, we sign now.
Yidan, the emerging investment people will take out the contract later. You can take a look at it. If there is no problem with the contract, just sign it. "
Zeng Liqing shook his fist fiercely: "After the meeting is over, we have to celebrate. Fortunately, I brought Yidan here today, otherwise I really don't know what to do."
Chen Yidan is a master of economic law from NTU Law School. He took him with him instead of Zhang Zhidong and Xu Chenye because they speculated that the contract might be signed on the spot.
"Mr. Ma, please wait a moment. Our external lawyers are preparing the contract. You can sit here for a while."
Xinxing Investment directly rented an entire floor of the Marriott Hotel next to the City Hall.
Projects that are favored by Zhou Xin will be taken to another hall to wait separately.
The contract is a standard contract, but the amount, share ratio, and company name all need to be adjusted temporarily.
“Are we just going to sign with Emerging Investments?
Are you considering IDG and Yingke Capital? "Zeng Li Qing asked.
Chen Yidan was puzzled: "What else do you want to ask? Didn't we say yesterday that Newman can bring us far more than other investment institutions?"
Zeng Liqing explained: “It’s not that we don’t want Newman’s investment, but we are accepting investments from multiple parties to spread the risks.
Newman got 40% of Tencent's shares, which means that once he gets the support of two more of our five founders, he can control Tencent. "
There is only one chapter in "Sickness". I felt something was wrong after I finished writing it last night. After I finished writing, I took my temperature and it was 38.5 degrees. Sure enough, something was wrong. . .
I still have a low fever when I come back this evening. So there’s only one chapter for today.
(End of chapter)
