Chapter 20 QQ was born

As the director of the development department of Runxun Company, Ma Huateng must focus most of his energy on the pager business due to market requirements. Due to the violent situation of the paging industry at that time, the related development of the Internet he proposed was not received by Runxun. attention.So Ma Huateng had the idea of ​​leaving Runxun, but he was worried and wondered whether there would be a future for Internet software. At that time, Ma Huateng and Ding Lei were both wage earners, and they didn't know what the future was. "Ding Lei's subsequent success has inspired me. As long as you do it, there is nothing impossible on the Internet." In February 1998, Ding Lei, who was short of funds, spent 7 months writing NetEase's free email system and the 163.net domain name were sold to Feihua.com in Guangzhou at a price of 1.19 million yuan. Ma Huateng suddenly became enlightened, and the future seemed no longer uncertain.He understands that the Internet will inevitably become a trend in the future.

Also in this year, in the United States on the other side of the ocean, Microsoft quietly released Windows98 overseas. Compared with the old version of Windows95, the new version not only adds more features, but also has higher reliability and more convenient operation. fast.In China, Jiang Fengnian, an Internet practitioner, wrote an article called "Door Wars", which was widely hyped in the media.In his article, he introduced two new concepts emerging in the United States: Internet portals and portal wars.A "war" led by America Online (AOL) and YAHOO is in full swing, and NETSCAPE, Microsoft, and established search engine companies such as LY-COS, EXCITE, etc. are also joining in.

As the discussion on the article heats up, the concept of portals directly affects China's Internet industry.As if overnight, domestic ICPs (Internet Content Service Providers) and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) flocked to the portals one after another.In that year, Sohu was launched, Netease was revised, and Lifang Online (the predecessor of Sina) also announced the success of the revision. All websites consciously changed or moved closer to portals. At that time, the Internet began to try things other than e-mail, and BBS and news gradually became the new core of the Internet. "Internet" has gradually become synonymous with fashion.As of December 31, 1998, the number of Chinese Internet users had risen to 2.1 million.The growing popularity has attracted the attention of capital.How Zhang Chaoyang got the first venture capital to start the Sohu website has become the most important topic after dinner.The media and the public would rather believe that if you have a perfect business plan, it is enough to get thousands of dollars from investors. In order to win the favor of investors, ICPs are planning all day how to attract more attention to themselves, and how to occupy important positions in major media every day.In Beijing at that time, new websites were born every day, and Internet companies always had endless press conferences.Then, free mailboxes, online debates, and online novels began to have intimate contact with netizens.This kind of information made Ma Huateng think for a long time, "Since 1998, I have considered starting my own business, but I have never thought about what to do. I know that I am fully capable of doing well in the things I am obsessed with."

It was a netizen in Nanjing who really aroused Ma Huateng's entrepreneurial passion. He gave Ma Huateng a lot of encouragement and advice.After many ideological struggles, in October 1998, Ma Huateng submitted a letter of resignation to Run Xun Company.At that time, Ma Huateng had a vague direction in his mind. He felt that his future entrepreneurship could find space between the two major resources of paging and the Internet. With a general idea, Ma Huateng went to find his partner. It was Zhang Zhidong.Ma Huateng told Zhang Zhidong that he wanted to move paging to the Internet, including webpage paging, mail paging, and Internet expansion solutions for the paging industry.Zhang Zhidong thought that Ma Huateng's idea was very good, and the two hit it off immediately, and then they contacted Chen Yidan and Xu Chenye.The four former friends reunited, and the three of them agreed to Ma Huateng's proposal without much hesitation.

In October 1998, Tencent was established, and the source of the company's business became a common concern of several Tencent's entrepreneurial veterans.One day, Ma Huateng chatted with Xu Wenyan, then director of the Shenzhen Data Communication Bureau. Xu Wenyan talked to Ma Huateng about a person who was the marketing manager of China Telecom Investment Corporation.Xu Wenyan vaguely feels that this person should be helpful to Tencent's development, and one of the key reasons is that he is very reliable.After some inquiries, Ma Huateng found out that he knew this person himself, and he was Zeng Liqing.Talking about the process of getting acquainted with the Tencent team, Zeng Liqing was full of emotions, "I have always been very grateful to Xu Wenyan. At that time, I was at a low point in my career and felt very confused. She gave me sincere advice and helped me do the right thing. He chose and recommended me to get acquainted with Ma Huateng's team, and this is how the story between me and Tencent happened."

Zeng Liqing hit it off with Ma Huateng and the other founders of Tencent.After deciding to start a business together, they carried out a simple division of labor and worked together.The story of Tencent later showed that Zeng Liqing's extraordinary marketing ability helped Tencent overcome the most difficult period, but this is all for later.Tencent's initial business revolved around network paging.Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong joined hands to develop a wireless network paging system. The main function of this system is to allow users to send information directly to pagers through the Internet without making calls.At that time, Ma Huateng was just a president who slept on the sofa and ate boxed lunches. He and Tencent’s entrepreneurial “veterans” crowded together to work in a small factory building of tens of square meters on the 4th floor of Shenzhen SEG Science and Technology Park. However, Tencent at that time, There are only two full-time employees, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong; Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan and Zeng Liqing are shareholders who come to help in their free time, so the small office is quite spacious.At that time, the word "general manager" did not appear on Ma Huateng's business card, only "engineer" was printed - Ma Huateng's only hope at that time was that the company could survive.The main business of this small company with more than a dozen people is to do projects for Shenzhen Telecom, China Unicom and some paging stations. In order to make this start-up company survive, Tencent also does web pages, system integration, and program design.These seemingly complicated businesses seem to have little to do with Tencent's future main business.

In February 1999, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong developed the Chinese OICQ.Prior to this, in 1996, four Israelis invented ICQ, the originator of IM. At that time, it was just a "gadget" mainly engaged in online paging. In 1998, ICQ became popular all over the world with the trend of starting a prairie fire, and chatting with ICQ was a fashionable behavior at that time.America Online acquired the ICQ brand for US$287 million, which made many companies see huge business opportunities, including companies such as China Telecom, which are also planning Chinese instant messaging projects, because the English interface is not cheap for most Chinese. threshold.Soon, Ma Huateng saw a bidding for a Chinese instant messaging project on the information port of Guangzhou Telecom. Although there was no product prototype, Tencent also made a bidding document, but the bidding failed. The failure of the OICQ bidding is undoubtedly a red flag.

Many years later, Ma Huateng recalled the past and believed that the failure of the bid at that time was a good thing, because if the bid was successful, the software QQ would no longer belong to Tencent.At that time, Tencent's quotation was only more than 300,000 yuan.Although the winning bid failed, Tencent's entrepreneurial team unanimously agreed to complete it because the software development was close to success at that time.For technical geniuses like Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong, the completion of product development was a very simple matter, and the product development was completed soon.Several founders of Tencent knew that operating this product would mean a large investment for the fledgling Tencent, which would put the fledgling Tencent in a difficult position. Within the scope, there is no profit model.Just when Ma Huateng and his founding team were hesitating, Shenzhen Telecom helped a few young people objectively.Although the project bidding in Guangzhou was unsuccessful at that time, Ma Huateng successfully signed an experimental project of Shenzhen Telecom.This means that Tencent can use the server and bandwidth of Shenzhen Telecom to carry the bandwidth and server costs required by OICQ.

So and so, OICQ came out.The early OICQ was just a Chinese version of ICQ, almost a replica of ICQ.Just like the release of the stock card, Ma Huateng conducted a very detailed analysis of the already famous ICQ. His Chinese version not only combines all the advantages of ICQ, but also creates some functions that ICQ does not have.At that time, the already famous ICQ still had a lot of room for improvement for most users.For example: all its information is stored on the client side, if the user logs in with another computer, the friends added in the past will disappear; it can only chat with online friends, and can only find friends according to the information provided by the user; because of this The software was invented abroad, so users can only chat in English.

Once again Ma Huateng's technical genius was on display. As soon as OICQ was born, it had the function of offline messaging; anyone can freely choose a chat partner through the list of online users; in addition, OICQ also provides personalized avatars. After the birth of OICQ, Ma Huateng combined it with his old bank: the traditional advantage service - network paging, which also became a feature different from the similar simplified ICQ version at that time. A few months after the launch of OICQ, Ma Huateng went to Beijing on a business trip as an engineer and Chen Yidan as a business manager.One day, they went to six or seven paging stations to recommend network paging solutions, and came back to live in a guest house introduced by a friend.In their spare time, the two turned on their computers and received congratulatory text messages from netizens. The number of OICQ users exceeded 500.Ma Huateng and Chen Yidan found two cups and clinked glasses to celebrate.At one time, OICQ once covered large-scale wireless paging networks such as China Telecom, China Unicom, Zhongbei, Wansheng, Wanlitong and China Railway, and became the largest wireless Internet paging network in China.If your friend has registered a pager or opened a GSM mobile phone short message, even if he is offline, your message can "catch" him out of the vast crowd.It can be said that Tencent was on the right track when it chose to develop the combination of wireless paging and virtual OICQ paging.

In fact, Sina can also be said to be a pioneer in this field. As early as 1999, Sina launched an IM tool called Sinapager. There are not many user groups.It's just that Sina didn't focus on the IM field at that time. In fact, the birth of OICQ was not all smooth sailing. Several founders of Tencent also had heated debates - ICQ is already a world-class brand and has occupied a considerable Chinese market. PICQ, CICQ and other chat tools; secondly, their own technology is not leading, and there is no special advantage compared with the previous ones... In this situation, few people will care about a small chat software, which is also It left an opportunity for Ma Huateng. At that time, no one knew that OICQ could grow so big today and become a super money-making machine, including Ma Huateng.