Chapter 23 Listed Angels Coming Lightly

In early 2000, IDG decided to divest.At the same time, they are actively looking for investors who can take over Tencent.A few months later, an American appeared in Tencent's office - Wang Dawei, who was the vice president of China business of MIH (Millard International Holdings Group). Regarding the association with Tencent, Wang Dawei recalled in the future: "At that time, MIH hoped to find a partner in China to enter the Chinese market, so I began to pay attention to Chinese Internet companies. One day, I suddenly had a breakthrough. I found that the Internet in the whole of China can be connected through QQ, which may be the most core resource on the Internet. So I really want to know the boss of this company and talk to him about mergers and acquisitions.” Soon, Wang Da It is not easy to find the boss of this company.There was no mobile phone number, no e-mail, and only a QQ number on the homepage of Tencent's website. Wang Dawei felt that it was too much at the time. In order to find Ma Huateng, he had to install this software.At that time, Wang Dawei was not familiar with QQ, and was afraid that there might be viruses hidden in the software.

In June 2000, Wang Dawei called Ma Huateng.In the first communication, Wang Dawei seemed to be moved.When Wang Dawei introduced his company, several founders of Tencent unceremoniously pointed out the problems of his company.That meeting left a very deep impression on Wang Dawei. The founder of Tencent and his team know what their goals are and what they need. After communication to a certain extent, Wang Dawei began to understand that Tencent owns China. The largest user base, not by accident. In the following time, Wang Dawei seemed to regard Tencent as his own company. While negotiating investment projects, he helped Tencent understand the international Internet market. At that time, the employees of Tencent thought that Wang Dawei had joined Tencent.Because Wang Dawei was optimistic about Tencent and helped MIH to form a bond with Tencent, MIH took over 46.5% of Tencent's equity in June 2001.According to MIH’s financial report, MIH acquired 46.5% of Tencent’s shares from Yingke Digital, IDG and Tencent’s management at a cost of US$32 million, of which US$12.6 million was paid to Yingke Digital.After the capital integration, Tencent management holds 46.5% of the shares, and IDG holds 7%.Later, the 7% held by IDG was divided into two and sold to Tencent management and MIH. MIH may have paid several million dollars for this.In other words, the total investment of MIH is more than 40 million US dollars.MIH, which originated in South Africa, is by no means an ordinary person. It is listed on the Nasdaq and Amsterdam stock exchanges at the same time. Its main business is interactive TV and pay TV. A real media giant.Its attention and understanding of China's instant messaging market further demonstrates the extraordinaryness of the newcomer.In the process of changing the share capital, Wang Dawei joined Tencent and became the vice president of Tencent's overseas business department.

After the second round of financing was in place, the funding problem in Tencent's development was solved.Ma Huateng, a rather pragmatic Chaoshan native, has not given up thinking about how the huge QQ users can bring profits. In 2000, Tencent undertook a project of Shenzhen Unicom to provide mobile phone users with email arrival reminder service. The project itself did not have much money. OICQ's road to profitability began with online advertising. In the new version of the software on July 25, 2000, a BANNER advertisement was inserted into the message receiving end.Three months later, Tencent's advertising volume has increased significantly.According to statistics in December 2000, advertising brought Tencent 1.5 million yuan in revenue.Backed by the super popularity of QQ, Tencent’s promise to advertisers can be easily fulfilled. “The number of exposures for small banner ads is astonishing,” Ma Huateng said, “the exposures reach 400 million times a day, and 500 million times on weekends. It’s also 90,000 yuan per month.” Online advertising is the earliest profit model launched by Tencent, and now it has developed into a variety of models: there are QQ client BANNER advertisements, QQ client online FLASH advertisements, QQ client RICHBUTTON advertisements, and QQ system broadcasts , Tencent QQ chat room advertisements, etc., as well as the newly launched FLASH advertisements on the QQ client side.

Although Tencent's online advertising sales are doing very well, it once ranked third in the survey of "Online Advertising Pioneer", following Sina Sohu.However, compared with the investment of hundreds of thousands of new registered users every day (the highest number of new users per day reached 800,000), and the investment of adding two new servers a month, online advertising is a drop in the bucket. In addition to advertising revenue, Tencent began to try "membership."At that time, there were more than 3,000 Tencent members, and each person had to pay 120-200 yuan in membership fees every year.But compared with the tens of millions of ordinary users, the mere 3,000 members are pitifully small.Ma Huateng analyzed the reasons and believed, "One reason is that the functions promised have not yet been launched. Another reason is the bottleneck of China's e-commerce. Membership fees can only be remitted or credit card transfers. I believe most netizens are not willing to pay for 20 yuan per month. Run to the post office."He believes that "the lack of financial means is the reason why China's Internet is difficult to make money."Although Ma Huateng and his team have worked hard on how to make money, the scale of Internet advertising was still small at that time, and merchants' awareness of online advertising and user experience were still insufficient, so they were willing to spend money on Internet advertising. There are still very few companies, and for Tencent, advertising revenue can hardly make up for its expenditure.

Among Tencent's multiple profit methods, the most worry-free is QQ brand outsourcing, from which Tencent obtained 10% of the agency fee, while the agency fee of the famous cartoon character Hello Kitty at that time was only 5%.Ma Huateng said that they never thought of taking advantage of this little penguin, but a company in Guangzhou approached them. A few months later, the OICQ system broadcasted such news continuously, which means that Tencent has launched various QQ toys, which can be purchased in various Internet cafes across the country.Since then, OICQ (and later QQ) and Little Penguin have finally become a kind of culture, and the deeper level of this culture includes fashion, communication, netizens, online dating and so on.After bidding farewell to the days of being raised in a boudoir and being unknown, many entertainment companies and publishing houses approached Tencent to discuss cooperation. The plans were very ambitious and attractive, but Ma Huateng felt that it was beyond the scope of Tencent's capabilities and rejected them all.

It was not until the end of 2000 that the dawn of hope appeared before their eyes.China Mobile's launch of "Monternet" became the warm sun in early spring, warming and saving a number of Internet companies.After entering 2001, Tencent has also entered an unprecedented growth period, and the number of registered mobile QQ users has exceeded 10,000.At that time, Tencent began to plan to establish its own payment system. In July 2001, according to China Mobile's statistics: the number of mobile QQ users had reached 1.6 million, and the business volume ranked first in Monternet.Shortly after Tencent launched Mobile QQ, America Online's ICQ also began to join forces with Mobile Communications.It has been proved in the future that Tencent has been at the forefront of the development of instant messaging in the world in terms of cooperation with traditional communications, and even expanded new ideas for the development of instant messaging.The speed at which Tencent made money was the same as the crazy growth of its registered users. It was only in July 2001 that it realized positive cash flow. By the end of 2001, Tencent had achieved a net profit of 10.22 million yuan.

Inspired by Korean companies, Tencent began to promote QQ show. After activating this function, QQ users will have a near-naked image. No one wants to use this image to face their friends. Therefore, Tencent's virtual clothing business is very hot.At the same time, Tencent learned from Sina and began to push text messages and ringtones; learned from Netease to launch the dating business QQ men and women; learned from Shanda to develop online games. In 2002, Tencent's net profit was 144 million yuan; in 2003, Tencent's net profit was 338 million yuan. On June 16, 2004, Tencent was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.Ma Huateng holds 14.43% of the shares.In Ma Huateng's view, luck accounted for a relatively large proportion of Tencent's early development, at least 70%.But after 2001, I mainly relied on myself.In his opinion, there is nothing particularly lucky about him, and there are quite a few times when he is unlucky. At this time, many things need to be carried and figured out by himself.

When the difficult years of starting a business have become far away, Ma Huateng has also developed a habit, that is, if he stops surfing the Internet at night, checks the number of people, and checks the server a little bit, he always feels that something is missing.