Why did Zeng Liqing mention IDG Capital and Yingke?
This is because he is now specifically responsible for Tencent’s external financing. During the process of Tencent’s external financing, he established a good personal friendship with Wang Shu of IDG.
In addition, it is true that 40% of the shares were sold to Zhou Xin alone. For Zeng Liqing, who has been studying venture capital for some time, he believes that there are huge uncontrollable risks.
In both public and private matters, he felt that they should be discussed carefully and then considered.
Xu Yidan looked at him with crazy eyes: "In the current environment, we do not have the capital to negotiate terms with emerging investments.
We have refused now, but the other party may not be willing to offer this condition when we return. "
Zeng Liqing said: "Yingke and IDG have said that as long as Zhou Xin is willing to invest in us, they will follow suit."
Xu Yidan: "You also said that it was on the premise that Zhou Xin invested in us, and now we are leaving. With empty words, why should IDG and Yingke Capital believe what we said.
Is it possible that they can find Zhou Xin for verification, or maybe they can find people from emerging investments for verification?
By the time the verification is completed, we simply cannot afford to delay it.
As for your concerns, QQ is a product that Zhou Xin can easily copy. He has no reason or excuse to covet Tencent. "
Seeing that Zeng Liqing still wanted to quibble, Xu Yidan did not give him any room to explain further and continued: "Even if Zhou Xin really wants to get control of Tencent, does he still have to convince two of the five of us?
If the company is not developing well, why would Zhou Xin want to gain control of Tencent?
If the company is developing well, why would the five of us split? Or even stand on opposite sides? "
Pony Ma stood up and interrupted: "Stop talking, Yidan, quickly read the contract, we signed it with Xinxing Investment, Li Qing, call Zhidong immediately and ask Zhidong to bring the company's official seal, sign and seal it.
I know what you are worried about. My view is the same as Yidan. What we need to worry about now is the survival of Tencent.
This is our urgent problem to solve. As for fighting for control, it is too far away.
And to be honest, we were still thinking about how to sell the company three months ago.
When we were talking with SEG, the 21CN business unit under the Guangdong branch of Huaguo Telecom, and the Zhongbei Paging Group in Yanjing, none of them thought about buying Tencent. "
For this kind of five-person company, the legal person is Pony Ma, and the official seal is carried with him. The five founders all came to Yanjing, and the official seal also came with them.
They also want to sign the contract immediately when someone invests. When they were looking for venture capital at the Shenzhen Fair, they took their official seal with them.
Zhongbei Paging was the largest paging company in North China in 1999, and paging is the BB business. Zhongbei Paging asked Tencent to build a network paging system. Pony Ma personally went to Zhongbei as an engineer to help them debug the equipment and install the system.
At that time, Zhang Zhihao, the engineer of Zhongbei Paging who was responsible for connecting with Pony Ma, helped Pony Ma to sell Tencent to the senior management of Zhongbei Paging, hoping that they would buy it.
It happened that Zhongbei Paging was also looking for business transformation at that time, because anyone with a discerning eye could see that the paging business was going to be in decline sooner or later. Unfortunately, Zhongbei Paging did not take a fancy to qq.
(Later, Zhang Zhihao served as the general manager of Tencent’s Yanjing branch.)
Pony Ma continued: "The other most critical point is that Mr. Zhou just told me that he knows how QQ can achieve profitability."
Zeng Liqing and Chen Yidan looked at each other: "I'll read the contract right away." "I'll call Zhang Zhidong right away."
As soon as this sentence came out, no one could care about Yingke and IDG Capital anymore.
Compared with Zhou Xin, these two investment institutions were far inferior to each other. Now, in addition to giving money, Zhou Xin also pointed out the direction of future development for them.
This is so important.
With Zhou Xin's reputation, no one would doubt that he had no solution.
You must know that several companies established by Zhou Xin in Silicon Valley all have clear profit models and have achieved profitability.
Before quora, who knew about the question and answer community, and who would have thought that it was possible to make money through paid questions and answers. The later quora gold selection was the golden touch. This model cleverly allows the media to create a special name, new media, to name this new media form.
Not to mention the online distribution of electronic games through SMS verification codes.
Money can only help Tencent survive temporarily, but I don’t know how long it can survive.
If they can't find a profit model, then they must go public to survive. However, depending on the external environment, they may not be able to achieve listing before the funds are exhausted.
Moreover, listing only turns burning investors' money into burning stockholders' money. There is no essential difference.
If Luckin had not relied on Chinese consumers, it would have been dead-end sooner or later if it had only relied on the funds raised from the Americen stock market.
While Tencent's founders were having a heated conversation in the conference hall, a second person also entered.
"Hello Newman, I am the founder of Alibaba. You can call me Ma Yun, or you can call me Jack. I used to be an English teacher."
Lao Ma is obviously much more confident than Xiao Ma. Of course, this is also related to the financing he just received from Goldman Sachs. Only money will give you confidence.
Zhou Xin thought to himself that only Jack Ma would call him by his English name directly, and other entrepreneurs would not dare to call him that way.
"Hello Jack, let's get straight to the point. You wrote in your company introduction that you just received $5 million in financing from Goldman Sachs.
Based on my understanding of Goldman Sachs, the US$5 million in financing should be close to 50% of your shares, right?
Where do you get the shares to sell to emerging investments? "
Jack Ma replied: "To be precise, it is 46.7%. This is not a problem. If emerging investments are willing, we will help mediate in the middle.
Let Goldman Sachs sell part of Alibaba's equity to Newman.
In addition, we can also directly start the next round of financing and dilute Goldman Sachs' shares. Of course, I hope to adopt an A/B share structure and keep control in our own hands during the subsequent financing process.
You believe that I am definitely the best person at the helm of Alibaba. If I lead Alibaba, I will definitely be able to get it listed. "
Zhou Xin said: “Money is just a number to me, and when I invest in companies, I don’t just look at money.
Even if Alibaba goes public, it doesn't mean much to me. It's just a few hundred million more and a few hundred million less. You need to have something else that can impress me. "
Zhou Xin really wants to see what Jackma thinks about Ali's future at this point in time.
“Alibaba is now focusing on B2B business, and we can be seen as moving the Yellow Pages online.
Traditional Yellow Pages are printed on paper, and users search through indexes. This faces two problems. The first is that the information capacity of paper is limited. One Yellow Pages may only be able to carry hundreds of companies.
Alibaba currently has more than 10,000 registered users and a total of more than 20,000 members. "
Registered members need to pay membership fees, but general members do not. Early B2B business models, including Alibaba, Global Sources, etc., all achieved profits by collecting user membership fees.
Therefore, compared with other Internet companies, Alibaba's profit model is very clear.
But it’s not enough, because the number of merchants is limited and if you set your price high, other B2B websites will attract these merchants away. Pricing can only be maintained at a lower base.
This profit model is not enough to bargain with investors, and in the foreseeable future, its returns will not be much higher.
Unless you achieve a monopoly, merchants will have to pay you high membership fees.
But B2B is unrealistic, because B2B also faces one player, that is, the local government of China, and the local government is also doing B2B business.
Jack Ma first created the Huaguo Yellow Pages, and later Hangzhou Telecom also did it, directly merging Jack Ma's Yellow Pages.
Later, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation also built a B2B website similar to the Yellow Pages.
So as long as you monopolize the B2B business and charge high membership fees, you will be hit hard.
After Jack Ma had the experience of being acquired by Hangzhou Telecom, he knew that it was pure wishful thinking to monopolize the B2B business in China.
“We are now the e-commerce website with the largest number of users in China, and also the e-commerce website with the fastest growing number of users.
Our corporate purpose is to use e-commerce to serve small and medium-sized enterprises.
Simply put, it is a bridge that helps foreign demanders connect with the most suitable Chinese companies that can provide goods. The next twenty years in China will be two decades of rapid development, and countless small and medium-sized enterprises will be born.
This has been proven over the past two decades, and this growth will be even more intense in the next two decades. It is obvious that China cannot absorb the production capacity of our manufacturing industry, which will inevitably require foreign consumers to absorb the goods made in China.
Alibaba is a bridge between Chinese companies and overseas companies, and will develop with the development of China's manufacturing industry."
There is actually nothing new in what Jackma said, but his words were full of contagion.
Otherwise, Tsai Chongxin would not have gone from being an executive at Investor AB with an annual salary of 5.8 million RMB to working as the financial director of Alibaba, with a monthly salary of only 500 RMB.
In the early days, Jack Ma borrowed money from Alibaba employees, borrowed the money, and then paid it to them. If a state-owned enterprise in Lanzhou knew that Alibaba had also engaged in such an operation, it would definitely be more confident when looking for employees to lend money to itself.
Jack immediately deceived him, starting from international trends to China's future, from China's future to China's foreign trade, and then from China's foreign trade back to Alibaba. Zhou Xin felt a little excited when he heard it.
Zhou Xin said: “After listening to this, I feel that Alibaba is indeed a very promising company, so it’s no wonder that Goldman Sachs will invest in you.
But we have to return to the real world after all. After returning to the real world, I think the B2B e-commerce model has many practical issues that need to be considered.
Let’s go back to the issue you just mentioned, which is that you lack bargaining power. Membership fees can only be based on this basis. Merchants, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are very sensitive to price.
If your prices are high, small and medium-sized enterprises will choose other e-commerce websites. Alibaba's rapid development now relies on services plus low prices.
Then the more practical problems you can solve for merchants, the more your bargaining power will be strengthened.
Especially when you can solve users' problems that other companies can't solve, the money you can charge depends on how much the users will lose if they don't choose you.
Let me give a very simple example, that is, establishing trust between enterprises and customers, which requires costs.
You are not responsible for the guarantee, nor are you responsible for ensuring that the customer will pay the company after receiving the goods.
At the same time, you do not guarantee that there will be no problem with the quality of the goods provided by the company.
After enterprises and customers establish contact through Alibaba's website, their subsequent communication and cooperation require a lot of costs to establish mutual trust, which also involves foreigners, so the cost of communication is even higher.
The company first needs to provide samples to customers, and then after delivering the first batch of goods, it can only obtain part of the payment, such as 50% or even 30%.
Have you guys thought about solving this problem? In other words, you don’t just stop at the initial step of establishing contact between the company and the customer.
Any e-commerce company can do this step, Alibaba can do it, and tomorrow a Bilibili company will do it too. There is no threshold and naturally there is no bargaining power. "
Zhou Xin's words seemed to wake Jack up. He had been working on an e-commerce website for more than five years and had been thinking about how to build a good website. He had never thought so deeply.
Zhou Xin continued: "After I listened, it seems that you only mentioned how to serve small and medium-sized enterprises, but did not talk about how to serve? Just providing a channel for communication and understanding is not called good service.
E-commerce, I feel that you attach too much importance to electronics and ignore the word "business" at the end. The essence of e-commerce is still business.
I suggest that you work in the foreign trade industry for a while before you know what these merchants really want. "
This is what Alibaba originally did after the Nasdaq bubble burst. After gaining an in-depth understanding of the pain points of the foreign trade industry, they launched Integrity Pass in 2002 to solve credit problems in corporate online trade. .
Jack Ma, who is only in the early stages of starting a business, has not thought similarly, or he does not think so clearly.
After Zhou Xin finished speaking, his mind changed. What he had thought before was to find ways to obtain Zhou Xin's investment. This way, relying on Goldman Sachs and Zhou Xin at the same time would be of great benefit in terms of publicity and future financing.
Now Jackma just wants to get as much insight as possible from Zhou Xin, especially about e-commerce itself.
Regarding this aspect, he originally thought that he was the person who saw it most thoroughly, but he did not expect that Zhou Xin saw it more thoroughly than he did.
He has been engaged in the foreign trade industry since he was at the International E-Commerce Center of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.
Jack Ma said in an extremely serious tone: "What you said makes perfect sense. Our previous thinking on this matter was indeed far from enough.
The understanding of the problem is still too superficial, and there is no deeper thinking on how to solve more problems for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Let me ask one more question, why are you so familiar with e-commerce? "
Zhou Xin said: "Because I have worked on NewPay, which is electronic payment software. The core of all commercial activities is inseparable from payment, and the essence of many commercial activities can be seen through electronic payment.
We entered the electronic payment options of eBay and Amazon, and we helped them create a function to confirm the rights of accounts receivable. That is to say, after receiving the goods, the user needs to click to confirm receipt before the seller can receive the money.
This amount is stored in NewPay before clicking to confirm receipt. Of course, if the user wants to return the product, the merchant also needs to confirm it before the user can receive a refund.
So when you talked about your services, I thought that the accounts receivable confirmation model that NewPay helped eBay and Amazon can also be applied to B2B business models.
There is no essential difference between B2C business and B2B business. It is just a difference in objects. I also draw parallels.
NewPay does not have a branch in China yet. I can give you the contact information of the person in charge of NewPay’s business promotion department later. We have branches in America and Europe, and these merchants can confirm the rights.
At the same time, we can also act as an intermediary to help transfer the payment to the customer's bank card, indirectly avoiding the risk that China does not allow electronic payments. "
To put it simply, NewPay serves as an intermediary, and Alibaba is just a carrier. Enterprises and customers who have reached cooperation intentions on Alibaba can choose to use Alibaba's own NewPay accounts receivable confirmation function.
"After the customer confirms the harvest, NewPay transfers the money to the company through cross-border transfer. Only after the customer returns the product and the company confirms it, NewPay will refund the money to the customer."
Jack Ma didn't expect, really didn't expect, that Zhou Xin could not only ask questions, but also help them come up with solutions.
"Newman, your solution is very good. It perfectly solves the problem of difficulty in establishing basic mutual trust. Moreover, Alibaba can increase user stickiness and NewPay can acquire users and charge fees at the same time.
Enterprises and customers have also greatly reduced costs.
Our sales staff also often receive complaints from companies that they provide customers with relatively large quantities of samples. Customers say that these samples will be settled when the first batch of goods is delivered after passing the inspection.
As a result, the customer disappeared immediately after getting the sample.
This happens all the time. "
Zhou Xinji replied: "Because there is another very critical point. If Alibaba only charges according to the number of enterprises, then the number of enterprises is limited.
If you want to grow bigger, you can only charge according to the proportion of the company's total foreign trade. The development of China's foreign trade will be relevant to you. Otherwise, it will not have much to do with you.
User stickiness is one aspect, and irreplaceability is another aspect. "
Zhou Xin plans to let NewPay cooperate with Alibaba and build Alibaba into a model project. All subsequent B2B businesses involving foreign trade will need to be processed through NewPay.
In this way, after China joins the WTO, NewPay's transaction volume can quickly exceed 100 billion, and the unit can even be US dollars.
Jackma said: “I will contact the people at NewPay as soon as possible and we will push this matter forward as quickly as possible.
If you are still willing to invest in Alibaba, we have already welcomed it, and we welcome it even more now.
I'll talk to Goldman Sachs. They may transfer the shares to you at a higher price than when they invested in Alibaba. "
Zhou Xin continued: "Okay, Mr. Wu will discuss this matter with you, and I will not participate in the specific transactional negotiations.
When the time comes, Mr. Wu will negotiate the amount and shareholding ratio with you, and I will just confirm it after the negotiation.
In addition, I can give you some more thoughts, that is, the account period.
There are accounting periods in foreign trade, such as installment payments and installment loans.
You can actually do financial business and lend money to companies.
For example, with NewPay participating in your transaction process, company A and customer B do have a transaction, but the order is very large. Company A needs to expand its production scale to complete it, but they do not have so much on their books. money to expand production scale.
A has only two options: borrow money to expand production scale or transfer part of its production to other companies in the same industry.
The first path is definitely more profitable, and the second path is more secure.
Is it possible for Alibaba to get involved? Banks dare not lend to such enterprises because the risks in the foreign trade industry are too high.
Alibaba was able to confirm that customer B had a sum of money lying in NewPay's virtual account through data interaction with NewPay, and the money was frozen.
Then you can set up a financial company to specialize in this area of loan business. "
After Zhou Xin finished speaking, Jack Ma didn't say anything more. He was shocked.
Because this has touched upon the essence of financial technology, which is information plus finance.
To put it bluntly, financial technology is to use technology to obtain information that cannot be obtained in traditional business models to assist your business or risk control.
Zhou Xin signaled the secretary of Xinxing Investment to send him out, and then called Wu Shiqiang to come in and talk to him about the follow-up investment in Alibaba.
After Jack Ma and Cai Chongxin returned to the hotel, he recounted to Cai Chongxin exactly what he had talked with Zhou Xin today.
As a veteran with more than ten years of experience in the financial industry, his inner shock was even stronger than that of Jack Ma.
And Cai Chongxin has a vague feeling that there should be many items that can be expanded upon in what Zhou Xin said.
“This trip has been really rewarding. Newman is indeed the best product manager. In just a few words, he helped us figure out everything Alibaba will do in the next five to ten years.
It simply helped Alibaba directly set the direction from a strategic level. "
"Joseph, is it possible for us to recruit Newman? If we can recruit him, I am willing to give him the position of general manager.
Why didn't I ask him if he was willing to come to Alibaba? ” Jack Ma regretted it.
Joseph is Tsai Chongxin’s English name.
Tsai Chongxin said helplessly: "I came to Alibaba because I was still working for others, so I wanted to start a business. Newman is already an entrepreneur with countless successful entrepreneurial experiences.
He has no shortage of entrepreneurial experience. If you want to recruit him, even if Alibaba becomes the world's number one e-commerce company, it will be impossible.
Let’s think carefully about how to cooperate with NewPay in the future. "
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this chapter, not just dialogue.
(End of chapter)
