Chapter 11 Chapter 10: Opportunities Grow from Details

"Some failures are quite ridiculous." Zhou Hongyi said.In addition to goat milk, he has also invested in projects such as soup making and shooting ranges, all of which failed.There are also tens of millions of funds that were wasted due to failure.Painful and painful, he finally made up his mind: don't do it if you are not familiar with it! Of course, there are also good projects, most of which are in the Internet field that he is familiar with.The most well-known one is of course Qihoo. Entrepreneurs will have opportunities when the giants are embarrassed, although these opportunities are in the gaps.

In early 2006, Yahoo's quarterly earnings report showed weak performance.The weakness was due to changes in the online advertising landscape, which saw ad revenue decline.At the same time, Yahoo's mistakes in the competition have also given Google a lot of opportunities.Google has not been so merciful. When it comes to advertisements, we must mention that in early 2006, "Yaba" teamed up with Huayi Brothers Media Group, costing 30 million yuan, and invited three famous directors Chen Kaige, Zhang Jizhong, and Feng Xiaogang to create short video advertisements around "Yahoo Search".In conjunction with the advertisement, the "Yahoo Search Star" national talent show was also held.

The three directors respectively chose Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, Beihai Park in Beijing, and Wuyi Mountain in Fujian as locations. With the three lucky ones who stood out after several months of drafting, after dozens of days of intense shooting, the three "Yahoo blockbusters" finally appeared on September 28. Freshly baked.But the costly advertising clearly failed to save Yahoo's downward trend.The common theme of the three commercials is "Life is happy because you find it", but Yahoo did not find its own problem. At present, all information is developing towards entertainment, and even lifestyle is entertainment.Entertainment content is the Internet content that netizens are most concerned about. Tasteful and fashionable entertainment must guide the future trend. In the next five years, Yahoo will use search as the basis and emphasize interaction and individuality to become the largest search service provider in China.In terms of entertainment, Yahoo will also launch a series of layouts to inject more innovative and fun elements into Yahoo search.

Ma Yun, the new helm of Yahoo China, overturned Zhou Hongyi's layout in the past two years. After all, the current and predecessor are good at completely different fields, and their focus is also very different. Today, the positioning of "entertainment No. 1 engine" is naturally beneficial to Jack Ma and Alibaba, because Alibaba's content is closely related to entertainment and life, but it may not be a good thing for Yahoo.Its competitors are Google and Baidu, but it suddenly diverted to Chinese local websites. Yahoo already had a shortcoming in technology accumulation. It was able to catch up after climbing the wall well in the past two years. It seemed that it was time to launch a general attack. , Even the main enemy has changed.Google and Baidu are naturally having fun, but Yahoo itself doesn't think it's wrong. Perhaps the most annoyed are those unlucky ones who were raided.

It's no wonder—Yahoo itself has media attributes, similar to the domestic Haol23 online navigation, helping users find the content they want to find quickly.In the beginning, it was indeed a rigid demand, and many people visited it. When there were more people visiting, it was natural to start advertising.Later, it was logical to do channels and portals.Here's the problem: Yahoo's rapid descent into "the company that sells ads."Because the demand for the banner advertisement market led by it is really strong, who doesn't want to make money? However, selling advertising is the main business of media companies.So is Yahoo going to fight with Google, or with media companies such as Sina, Sohu, and Netease?

The enemy is not sure, how to fight the battle?Even though the content of many Yahoo channels is quite good, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports have a lot of views, but Yahoo has never clearly answered a question, that is: Why do people come to Yahoo? In the early days of the Internet, high-quality content could indeed attract users, but the rise of search engines and social networks has made it easier and faster for users to obtain information.It is not too late for Yahoo to make efforts on the search engine, and there was a chance.There are so many choices, looking left and right, and finally I don't know what I want.

Or, in the face of such a strategic turning point, Yahoo itself is also afraid of difficulties.All in all, Google got what it wanted more easily than expected because of Yahoo's messing around. Needless to say, Baidu, in China, even Google is not its opponent. It is not surprising that Yahoo is heading in this direction, after all, these two possibilities are in its genes.However, search is closer to the basic services of the Internet industry than media, and basic services are more conducive to building platforms.That stage happens to be the perfect time for the platform to emerge. In addition to the smug Alibaba, Baidu created "Baidu Yixia", which won the reputation of "China's Google", and Tencent's little penguin has become the "network ID card" of Chinese netizens. Around 2006, the three major platforms had become dominant, and there were not many opportunities for latecomers.

On the afternoon of August 11, 2005, Yahoo China announced a stock exchange with Alibaba. At 10 am on the same day, Zhou Hongyi officially disclosed his whereabouts after leaving Yahoo China.The new business card he handed out reads: Investment Partner of IDG Technology Venture Capital Fund. Foreign venture capital funds are optimistic about China's second wave of Internet boom, and he is also optimistic. On September 1, he officially joined IDGVC as an investment partner (KIDGVC, the venture capital fund of International Data Group, is the first American venture capital company to enter the Chinese market. Its investment focuses on high-tech fields such as the Internet, software, and communications.

Regarding the motivation for joining venture capital, Zhou Hongyi said frankly: "At the most difficult time for me to start a business, without IDG's 250,000 US dollars, I would not have been able to develop a company with a dozen people to a scale of hundreds of people. My role in venture capital The understanding is very deep. The reason why IDG has taken a fancy to me is because I have complementary experience with other partners.” He believes that his advantages as a venture capital investment lie in: first, he has a technical background, can see the direction, and has a unique vision; second, he has rich experience in company operations.

In fact, there are two reasons why he switched from a digital hero in the first generation of the Internet boom to a venture capitalist in the Web 2.0 era: one is that he can no longer start a business in a short period of time because he signed a competition avoidance clause with Yahoo China; He hopes to experience the venture capital industry for himself. This is the last piece of virgin territory in his career.More importantly, this industry is the best place to familiarize yourself with and formulate the rules of the game. At about the same time, Shen Nanpeng, the founder, president and chief financial officer of Ctrip, also joined Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm, and was listed on Nasdaq's financial website Financial World. Jun also officially joined IDG.

The second wave of Internet boom triggered by Baidu's listing has greatly stimulated foreign venture capital funds. By the end of 2005, the top four international venture capital funds will all enter China.Accel, one of the four major VCs, invested 100 million US dollars and set up a 250 million US dollars venture capital fund together with IDG.Sequoia will also invest $150 million in China.Two other venture capital firms, Matrix Partner and KP, have also made moves. "With the influx of top VCs, China's IT industry will be hot in the future." Zhou Hongyi said that being a VC is his own start-up again, "I hope that companies like Baidu and Tencent will be born in my hands. " It stands to reason that Zhou Hongyi, who has an IT background, should focus on the Internet field.But he is a person who does not play cards according to common sense, and he is no exception when he is an investor.The scope of his investment projects is very wide. Maybe it's because he didn't have much spare time, but he was full of passion for life, so when he heard entrepreneurs "fooling" those things he was not familiar with, his mind became hot very quickly.The result is that a few million dollars will be invested in an industry that has nothing to do with the Internet. The most outrageous investment experience - investing in goat milk. At that time, an entrepreneur came to him and said that he wanted to make goat milk, and said that now that milk is no longer good, how good is goat milk? He also introduced that after three years of research, he invented a patent that can remove the smell of goat milk; Goat milk is the closest to human milk and has high nutritional value. There is definitely a market for women and children. At the same time, it also mobilizes dairy farmers to raise sheep to help farmers get rid of poverty and become rich.Soon, Zhou Hongyi was tempted by the extravagant business plan. After tasting the goat milk provided by the entrepreneur twice, he and another famous angel investor invested several million in it.Unexpectedly, after more than a month, the other party said that the money was gone, which surprised him, so he hurried to the field to investigate and find out how the money was spent.When he got there, the sight in front of him made his eyes darken.This doesn't look like a modern enterprise! After seeing the scene, Zhou Hongyi knew that it was impossible to invest in this project anymore, but the millions of meat buns and dogs never returned. "Some failures are quite ridiculous." Zhou Hongyi said. In addition to goat milk, he has also invested in projects such as soup cooking and shooting ranges, all of which failed, and tens of millions of funds were wasted because of the failure.After learning from the painful experience, he finally made up his mind: don't do it if you are not familiar with it! "Being an angel investor cannot be based on imagination, nor enthusiasm, nor impulsiveness." Zhou Hongyi later summed up three situations with a high failure rate: first, if you are not familiar with it, putting money in it is like buying a lottery ticket; It is also a gambler's psychology that projects don't look at people, or they can't see people accurately. Of course, there are also good projects, most of which are in the Internet field that he is familiar with.The most well-known one is of course Qihoo. As for the origin of the name "Qihu", it is really related to what many people ridiculed Zhou Hongyi said, "riding a tiger is hard to get off".This is originally a negative word, but Zhou Hongyi wanted to use it as a "devil": people usually say that they go to the website, go to the website, and I hope that when they go to my website, they will not go back. I hope it will be sticky-riding a tiger is hard to get off.At the same time, Qihoo also has the meaning of "strange tiger": unique, mighty, different, and fierce. The chairman of Qihoo at this time is Qi Xiangdong, but he followed Zhou Hongyi from Yahoo, so this is actually a platform built by Zhou Hongyi himself.As an angel investor, he invested millions of dollars himself.At the same time, investment institutions such as CDH and Sequoia also invested a lot of money. In the eyes of investors such as Wang Gongquan, Shen Nanpeng, and Zhang Fan, Qihoo's attractiveness lies in two aspects: one is that the team is very good and they have confidence in Zhou Hongyi, so they will invest no matter what he does; "The concept is good, and it is very different from Baidu. However, although Qihoo has raised more than 50 million US dollars in funds, its development has not been smooth.Users were unwilling to "ride", so Zhou Hongyi had no choice but to go back and "ride". In March 2006, less than a year after becoming an angel investor, Zhou Hongyi resigned from IDG and became a Chairman of Tiger Company, started his fourth venture. This reflects the contradictory nature of Zhou Hongyi's character.On the one hand, because he is not confident, he especially likes to show his personality in public.On the other hand, he is really good at showing his talents in uncertainty. Once the environment is stable, he doesn't know what to do and feels insecure. Normally, a person is always looking for certainty in order to feel safe.Therefore, after some people arrive at a large foreign company, even if some things do not go well, they will not easily leave this large platform, because this platform can provide good salary and reputation.But Zhou Hongyi is different. It seems that only by building his own platform can he find a sense of security.On other people's platforms, he can't stay idle all the time, challenging this and subverting that. The result of his restlessness is that others don't like him. In the end, he has to come out and build his own business kingdom. Strange people always do strange things, and the word "odd" is appropriate for him. From an entrepreneur to an investor, although Zhou Hongyi has changed roles, he still maintains his straightforward and persistent style.He said: "After I came out of Yahoo, if I want to start a business, many venture capitals will chase after me to invest, but I think it is more suitable to do venture capital now, and I am willing to try this kind of challenge." He saw that two types of people are not easy to succeed in starting a business.One category of people is technicians.Because he himself is also a technical background, he understands their strengths and weaknesses better.Technicians are particularly conceited, and there are few successful programmers in China so far.There is also a class of people who are literati, and they are mostly conceited like programmers, and they don't listen to advice and suggestions.In fact, those who cannot listen to other people's opinions and are particularly conceited will not be easy to succeed in anything.It was the same when he started venture capital. Interestingly, Lei Jun, an "IT model worker" who has worked in Jinshan for 16 years and led Jinshan to go public, and is known as the "most hardworking CEO", also made venture capital at almost the same time, but their investment dreams, investment Philosophy, investment methods and styles of the two are very different. This may be out of character.Zhou Hongyi is impulsive and enthusiastic, and regards investment as a startup, especially in the early stage of the company's entrepreneurship, he is good at teaching entrepreneurs by hand; Lei Jun is stable and has a city, and can firmly guard his pocketbooks in projects such as "goat milk". Different investment styles have different results.Lei Jun has invested in nearly 10 IT Internet companies, including the mobile Internet company UCWEB (Ushi), the mobile Internet community Lexun, and Lakala, which provides convenient financial payments. Each company is operating well.He later joked: "As an investor, you can choose to be an investor who makes yourself happy or an investor who makes others happy. I choose the latter. If I want to make myself happy, I will start a company by myself and be a local emperor." gone." Lei Jun's background may have some advantages over Zhou Hongyi.Regarding failure, Zhou Hongyi is already very indifferent. Anyway, he has almost nothing that succeeds the first time.His characteristic is the second force, the second explosive power that often makes people dumbfounded.Because of this, he had to reset himself to zero when entering a new industry. In fact, if Qihoo's problems at the beginning were traced to psychological reasons, it was precisely because they did not set themselves to zero. As mentioned above, it is actually not easy for Zhou Hongyi to start from scratch.At this time, what he lacked was no longer self-confidence and capital, but the industry environment had undergone tremendous changes.Search, communication, and transaction, the three basic fields that are easiest to build a platform, have been occupied by Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba. Where are the opportunities for latecomers?Where is his chance with Qihoo?Why is venture capital still shuttling like crucian carp across the river? The opportunity probably comes from two aspects.The first is that big companies make mistakes too. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" gave him inspiration, and big companies like Yahoo gave him a living example-those who have been envied by many people, imitated, and have amazing innovation capabilities The outstanding enterprises of China will fail and decline in the first place.There are many reasons for the decline, bureaucracy, arrogance, rigid management, short-sighted strategy, or simply bad luck. Anyway, they no longer adapt to the changes of the times and technological innovations, and cannot continue to maintain their leading position in the industry. The second is that there are always gaps between black holes. Although search, communication, and trading are like three huge black holes, which have shown the ability to swallow everything, but after all, the basic needs of people are not only these three categories, there are always corners that they cannot cover. Even if they can cover them, their development will always take time. If you search for such a corner first, who knows that a seed planted here will not grow into a big tree, a forest or even a large forest?Even if that doesn't work, the future is still unpredictable. Before the advent of the steam engine, no one knew what could speed up transportation other than people carrying horses.Before the advent of the Internet, we could not have imagined all this today. Time is your best weapon.Take the computer industry as an example, and this story has been repeated again and again. IBM dominated the mainframe computer market, but for a long time ignored the rise of the technically simpler minicomputers.In fact, none of the major mainframe computer makers has managed to hold a dominant position in the minicomputer market for long. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) created the minicomputer market, but it and its followers missed the desktop PC market.Apple had set the standard for user-friendly computers, but it and IBM were five years behind the industry leaders in the portable computer market.