Chapter 21 Bottomless pit of birth

Ma Huateng launched the first test version of OICQ on the Internet. Two months later, the number of registered users reached more than 200,000, and the number of users has grown exponentially since then.After Ma Huateng launched the third version of OICQ, the number of registered users has reached hundreds of thousands within a month or two, and the growth momentum is getting stronger and stronger.In Ma Huateng's memory, "In the first year of our business, we couldn't feed the little penguin enough, and we couldn't see the money-making model. At that time, time seemed to pass very fast. In the blink of an eye, a month passed, which means You’re going to pay your employees again.”

However, the explosive growth of OICQ has something to do with Ma Huateng's new approach.Ma Huateng went to the BBS of the university to post. At that time, the Internet had just started in China, and trendy college students were the main crowd surfing the Internet, and BBS was also a place they often visited.Soon, this convenient and easy-to-use instant messaging tool replaced ICQ. There is another channel that also drives the growth of OICQ.At that time in China, Internet cafes were blooming everywhere. In order to attract more people to surf the Internet, the owners of Internet cafes liked to download some leisure game programs on the desktop and let netizens choose independently. It didn’t take long for OICQ to become popular all over the country.

The most direct result of the sharp increase in the number of users is the shortage of funds, from adding equipment to widening lines, from increasing developers to investing in management costs-every item of expenditure is like a "bottomless pit".And OICQ is a free service project, and it is impossible to get direct profits from the increase of users. Of course, this is not just Ma Huateng's confusion. The entire Internet field is facing such a problem.A company of more than a dozen people worked hard to earn a little money, bought equipment and rented lines, and spent hundreds of working days to develop a software, and then worked tirelessly to promote it.At that time, not only did Tencent have no rice to cook, but Sina and NetEase also had no profit model.Zhang Chaoyang still misses those days. He said: "At that time, making money didn't seem to be particularly important. We were spreading a concept. We seemed to be idealists, and we all felt like the standard bearers of the New Culture Movement." Ma Huateng He and his entrepreneurial team have worked so hard just to allow more netizens to download OICQ from the Internet for free and then use it for free; then Tencent has to pay a considerable amount of server hosting fees to the Communications Bureau.

In November 1999, only more than 10,000 yuan was left in Tencent's account.It was the most difficult period for Tencent. The "bosses" of the companies such as Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong could only try their best to guarantee the wages of their employees, and they only took a little "living expenses". In other people's words, "that little money is enough to buy some Biscuits and drinks or something." In 1999, Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, pretended to be an engineer and went to Zhongbei to debug equipment, because Tencent could not afford engineers at that time.In the computer room, Ma Huateng taught Zhang Zhihao how to use OICQ.Zhang Zhihao, who studied computer applications, keenly felt that this might be a huge market opportunity, so he urged the boss of Zhongbei to buy Tencent afterwards.It's a pity that people in Zhongbei only thought he told a joke that wasn't funny.

Ma Huateng went to Lenovo Capital, but before Zhu Linan even handed over the report, the people below sent him away on the grounds that he didn't understand it well.The negotiations with other companies interested in purchasing OICQ were not smooth.Whenever it reaches a substantive stage, the other company says that it "does not understand the value of Tencent's technology and intangible assets", saying that it can only buy according to "how many computers, desks, chairs and benches Tencent has".In the end, after talking about 4 companies in a row, none of them reached the expected bottom line of 1 million, and the highest one only paid 600,000. "When negotiating to sell QQ, I was in a very complicated mood. I talked to four companies in a row, but none of them reached the bottom line we expected. In this case, I decided to keep QQ and raise it myself." Ma Huateng explained the complicated mood at that time.

QQ users rose geometrically. After the launch of QQ, the number of users continued to increase. In November 1999, the number of registered users of QQ exceeded 1 million; in April 2000, the number of registered users of QQ reached 5 million; People's Daily also reported on this, and the number of QQ registered users broke through 10 million again in June.This also let Ma Huateng see the dawn of hope.In just over a year, Tencent quickly had nearly 100 million registered users, but Ma Huateng suffered from no charging channels.