Ma Huateng Laughed To See White Handed Wolf Dominate The Internet?

Ma Huateng.

You may be familiar with this name, but you must be very familiar with the QQ image of the little penguin wearing a red scarf on the Internet.

It has changed the habit of communication among hundreds of millions of people, created a culture of the Internet age and led to a new mode of profit making.

Ma Huateng is the incubators of QQ.

Unlike other Internet start-ups, Ma Huateng rarely appears in public and does not like to deal with the media.

This is a low-key performance, of course, perhaps out of arrogance, because QQ is strong enough now.

At the beginning of the interview, Ma Huateng was asked to talk about how he crawled and rolled in the workplace. It turned out that the man was too smooth on the way of career development. At the same time, he was sitting in the seat of president and CEO of the Tencent computer system limited in Shenzhen from a Software Engineer in Shenzhen.

Network player

In 1984, Ma Huateng, who came to Shenzhen with his parents from Hainan, used to like astronomy very much. But after all, it was a bit far away. When the computer appeared in front of him, he had a new master in his life.

When studying computer science at Shenzhen University, Ma Huateng's computer standard has made teachers and classmates alike. He is the nemesis of all kinds of viruses. It will provide a good solution for the maintenance of PC in schools. At the same time, he often does some practical jokes that lock the hard disk.

Hard to survive

After graduating from university in 1993, Ma Huateng entered Shenzhen run Sun company and began to work as a software engineer.

In 1997, Ma Huateng met ICQ for the first time. When he met, he was attracted by his infinite charm.

Immediately registered a number, but for a period of time, he felt that the ICQ of the English interface would not be easy to popularize among Chinese users.

So he thought he could make a Chinese version like ICQ.

In November 1998, Ma Huateng, in cooperation with his classmate Zhang Zhidong, registered the Tencent computer system Co., Ltd. of Shenzhen in Shenzhen, and decided to develop a Chinese ICQ software.

It is said that all the capital of the company's operation is the savings of several young men, and the whole company has three full-time employees.

Initially, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong just wanted to link paging with the Internet to develop a wireless network paging system.

At that time, the main business of this dozen people's small companies was to make projects for Shenzhen Telecom, Shenzhen Unicom and some paging stations. QQ was just a by-product of the company.

At that time, in order to make money, Ma Huateng would dare to take up any business, do web pages, do system integration, do programming.

It is said that at that time there were hundreds of companies such as Tencent in Shenzhen, and Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong had the greatest expectation as long as the company could survive.

Almost sold

Like other Internet Co that just started, capital and technology are the biggest problems of Tencent.

"First, lack of funds, capital has software and can not keep up."

At the beginning of 1999, Tencent developed the first "Chinese flavor" ICQ, namely Tencent "QQ", which was welcomed by users.

When Ma Huateng was in trouble for capital, he got the idea of selling QQ. He negotiated with four companies and ended up in failure.

Ma Huateng had to go around to raise money.

In the second half of 1999, from the us to China, the Internet began to "get a fever." inspired by former overseas friend Ding Lei's overseas financing, Ma Huateng took 6 versions and more than 20 pages of business plan to start looking for foreign venture capital. Finally, he met IDG and PCCW, and they invested QQ220 million dollars.

According to the latest statistics, as of September 2004, the total number of registered users of Tencent QQ was 355 million, the number of active users was 119 million, QQ was the highest, and online 7 million 300 thousand, QQ game was the highest online 780 thousand, leapt to China's largest leisure game portal.

Focus on doing things

Ma Huateng's success has been summed up by reason that luck is too good.

And Ma Huateng concluded that the focus on QQ has made itself today.

"He is a dedicated person," and almost all the industry partners mentioned that the 34 year old boss would use the word "concentration".

In the past five years, Tencent has been doing and perfecting and standardizing QQ services. It is the only company in China that focuses on network instant messaging.

Ma Huateng spends most of his time on the Internet every day. He only has one aim to find new business opportunities in the corners of the Internet.

QQ show is a piece of fat he found on the Internet.

By accident, Ma Huateng discovered that South Korea had launched a service to dress the virtual image. Ma Huateng thought it was very interesting, so he simply gave lessons to the South Korea, and moved to the QQ to promote it.

He also looked for some famous mobile phones and clothing companies, such as NOKIA and Nike, to get their latest products to be downloaded by QQ users.

QQ shows that these companies provide clothing design, mobile phones and many other products, which soon swept the world of Q, while Tencent did not spend any money on costumes and accessories.

Ma Huateng said that the growth of this business is very fast, and more than 40% users have tried to buy it.

Ma Huateng calculates that if every user is willing to spend 1-2 yuan, the income of qqxiu can not be imagined.

Ma Huateng's original vision once again earned money for Tencent. In the first three quarters of 2004, Tencent's profit reached 328 million yuan.

Ma Huateng's business philosophy: "three ask yourself"

It is said that Ma Huateng always asks three questions carefully in his business, and this "three questions" accurately reveals Ma Huateng's philosophy of business philosophy.

Q: are you good at this new field?

Most of the competitors are interested in business, profits and capital, but they do not necessarily grasp the real needs of their customers. Ma Huateng, with a hazy but quite foresight understanding of the Internet market, set up a Tencent shelf with almost paranoid interests and almost enthusiastic enthusiasm for work, firmly adheres to the technology centered company concept, and focuses on technology development and quality improvement.

Two question: if you do not do, what will the user lose?

The experience of software engineer makes Ma Huateng understand that the meaning of developing software lies in utility rather than author's self amusement: "actually, I am just a person who loves internet life very much, and knows what internet fans need most, so that is the only thing to develop the most useful things for myself and them."

Three question: if so, how much competitive advantage can we maintain in this new project?

1999 in the second half of the year, Tencent has become bigger and bigger in the market of Internet paging system, but has also faced big choices. On the one hand, the paging industry is going downhill; on the other hand, the number of QQ users of Tencent has reached 1 million, and it is still growing rapidly.

Earlier, QQ was only a by-product of the company. Ma Huateng did not know enough about the huge market value of QQ.

And he is not sure whether he can maintain his competitive advantage, technically or in terms of capital.

At that time, the strategy adopted by Tencent was "three pronged approach": on the one hand, it continued to consolidate the large profits brought by the traditional paging system; on the one hand, it concentrated more efforts on improving QQ functions and developing new versions; on the one hand, it sought support from venture capital.

Facts have proved that such a strategy is correct.