Want to know the entrepreneurial experiences of Li Xiang, Mao Kankan, Dai Zhikang and others
Li Xiang: Born in 1981, from Hebei. High school diploma, started a business in 1999, CEO of PCPOP.com
Be predictable on the highway and turn yourself into a director.
——Li Xiang
PCPOP is the third largest Chinese IT professional website. In 2005, the revenue was nearly 20 million and the profit was 10 million. Taking a price-to-earnings ratio of 20 times, the market value is 200 million. The founder, Li Xiang, is the only one with a net worth of more than 100 million. This year, Li Xiang is 24 years old and has been in business for 6 years.
Aside from the Internet, cars are Li Xiang’s favorite. He was driving very hard. Let's all come out of Houhai and take the Third Ring Road to the Jingchang Expressway. As soon as the car behind him reached the Third Ring Road, he had already made a U-turn at Jingchang Road. There are many people driving fast cars, but if they accelerate quickly, they must brake too much. But there is a kind of speed that is controllable. You can complete the entire fourth ring without having to step on the brakes; you drove a Polo and ran 100,000 kilometers in Beijing without a single slip. This is Li Xiang's style, "keep predictability on the highway and turn yourself into a director."
Do masculine things, but use safe techniques.
In fact, starting a business in six years is similar to driving a car with four rings, two words: smooth and stable. In 1999, an 18-year-old boy's personal website earned 100,000 yuan from online advertisements delivered to his door. That year he graduated from high school with mediocre grades. It was "natural" to give up going to college and start a business directly. In 2002, Li Xiang said goodbye to his parents, moved from Shijiazhuang to Beijing, recruited troops, and started "formal business operations." Since then, PCPOP's advertising sales have grown at a rate of more than 100% every year. In 2005, it expanded from IT products to the automotive industry. Today, websites such as Little Bear Online and Zhongguancun, which were once booming, have either stagnated or disappeared. The leading Zhongguancun Online and Pacific Online both rely on the resources of big media or hypermarkets, while PCPOP, which has the strongest momentum, relies solely on endogenous growth. . Xiao Li thought, how to do it?
Look at these simple qualities.
Li Xiang’s Law: If you put 5% more effort into something than others, you may get 200% of the return from others. Be serious about your work. Li Xiang asks everyone around him like this every day, because he himself is the beneficiary of this method. For example, if you go to a new product display together, Li Xiang will ask PCPOP to publish articles before other media, even if it is 5 minutes faster than others. Maybe you will do more homework and sleep 10 minutes less because of this, but the result will be the first In the next two days, all the website forums will be filled with your articles. Manufacturer recognition and advertising investment will follow.
I don’t think of myself as a businessman. I grew up in a rural area. The most important thing in this period of my life is to become "upright like a farmer." Every time the company encounters a development hurdle, a capable partner will join in on time. Because of our sincerity, “these talents have always followed me.” Li Xiang dares to say that among all IT network media, PCPOP is the only team that does not collect money from manufacturers; anyone who accepts money will be automatically excluded by this team. There is an overly "idealistic" atmosphere here.
There are many "big brothers" behind Li Xiang. A group of entrepreneurs in their thirties and forties all regard him as a little brother and help him at critical moments. Xue Manzi is a long-lasting friend. He is the founder of UTStarcom and served as the chairman of 8848. When a person of such worth comes into contact with you, you will feel that he is more enthusiastic and enthusiastic about you than your own friends. Li Xiang lamented that if you can't achieve this level as a person, you won't be able to have that kind of wealth. 265.com seems to be a simple navigation website, but after contacting the founder Cai Wensheng, Li Xiang concluded that it is because this person is so good that this website is so good. The levels that Cai can see are beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Li Xiang has never liked classes. He always wants to learn things that can be used quickly in practice. Learn what you need, and use what you learn immediately. But when I was in junior high school, I also studied hard in class because of the teacher's words of encouragement: "It doesn't matter if you don't study well, but you must be an excellent person." He considers this to be the most valuable thing he has learned in the classroom.
In his sixth year of middle school, Li wanted to devote all his spare time to computers and the Internet. "They were invented just for me." I have to go to all the post offices in Shijiazhuang to buy a piece of software, and stay in front of the computer all night to build my own online kingdom.
Views that are not shared with teachers and classmates in class during the day can be expressed openly and freely on the Internet at night, encountering strong collisions, and being continuously recorded and achieved in disputes or recognitions. "New things are learned on the Internet, and traditional education is abandoned."
My parents are teachers at a local art school, and my tutoring is lax. Li Xiang was sent to the countryside as a child and grew up in the countryside; he lived with his grandmother in middle school and was rarely left by his parents. Li wants to have a big enough space to grow freely. Tracing back to the source, Li wants to thank his parents the most. Independence is the most important quality they have given him.
Preface:
Born in the 1980s
Characters:
Geek Young Hero: Dai Zhikang
MySee Entrepreneurial team: Who else can you give me?
Zheng Li: If you are determined, your energy will be strong
Li Xiang: With a net worth of hundreds of millions
Zheng Li: If you are determined, your energy will be strong
〖Brief introduction of Dai Zhikang〗
Dai Zhikang, born in 1981, is from Heilongjiang. He was admitted to Harbin Engineering University in 2000 and started his own business in 2001, becoming the CEO of Kangsheng Century. Discuz!, a software that automatically generates communities, was developed and designed by Dai Zhikang. It was initially free for people to use. In October 2003, Dai Zhikang launched a new version, adding new functions and technologies. The capacity is several times that of rival products. Those template systems and data structures have become compulsory technologies for others to learn this language today. As a result, Discuz! has entered a high-speed track since then, with sales increasing by an average of 30% every month. In 2003, the income was tens of thousands, in 2004, it was hundreds of thousands, and in 2005, it was several million. In 2005, Discuz! became the leader in the community software field. In December, the software was implemented free of charge and transformed into a service. He is one of the earliest and most influential PHP developers in China. Since 2001, we have independently designed and developed the community forum system Discuz! Board. By 2006, it had become one of the PHP community forum software with the largest number of users in the world.
〖Kangsheng Chuangxiang〗
In 2004, Beijing Kangsheng Century Technology Co., Ltd., a high-tech enterprise, was founded in Zhongguancun, Beijing (now renamed: Kangsheng Chuangxiang ( Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.), specializing in community technology and software research and product development, except Discuz! In addition, it now has a series of community software products including community blog system X-Space and community portal system SupeSite.
In response to the global trend of Internet open source thinking and software servitization, in December 2005, Kangsheng Chuangxiang implemented the open source and free community software strategy and announced its transformation from a software sales model to a service model, thus becoming China's Internet community. The first company in the software field to promote free and open source.
Due to Comsenz’s influence in China’s LAMP field and its leading edge in Internet community technology. In the first half of 2006, Comsenz received an investment from Sequoia Capital, an internationally renowned venture capital firm; in June 2006, Comsenz’s Discuz! community forum software was presented at the 4th “Software Fair” " won the "China Software Top Ten Independent Innovation Product Award"; in August of the same year, Kangsheng Chuangxiang was selected as an unlisted "Top 100 Asian Technology Innovation Enterprises in 2006" by the famous American venture capital magazine Red Herring.
〖Dai Zhikang’s growth history〗
Dai Zhikang smokes Zhongnanhai cigarettes, eats in big cafeterias, wears small and old sportswear from high school, and his hair is often fluffy and upturned. rise. Perhaps only when you see him getting into that silver-gray BMW, looking at his subordinates with burning eyes in the office, or sitting down to negotiate with VC bosses, do you realize that Dai Zhikang is not a depressed young man.
Dai Zhikang, then CEO of Kangsheng Chuangxiang, is the founder of Discuz!, the most popular online community software in China. Discuz! Developed by Dai Zhikang in 2001, it is circulated on the Internet with the model of "free for individuals + corporate fees". At the end of 2005, Discuz software was all free and turned into a service.
To date, 300,000 community forums in China have adopted Discuz! Community software, this number accounts for more than half of the total number of domestic community forums.
In June 2006, Discuz! Community software won the "China's Top Ten Software Independent Innovation Product Award". In mid-July, Kangsheng Century won the favor of Sequoia Capital, a world-famous venture capital fund, and achieved its first round of multi-million-dollar financing. It is the first network in China to obtain venture capital. As a community software company, the entry of venture capital has provided a strong financial guarantee for the future development of Kangsheng Chuangxiang. Kangsheng Chuangxiang has fully entered the Internet industry and begun a new scale of development.
Dai Zhikang earned his first RMB 500,000 when he was in college. Now he is only 25 years old and owns a company with an annual turnover of RMB 5 million in Zhongguancun. He has just received venture capital investment not long ago. , becoming another dazzling new star among the "post-80s" Internet upstarts.
Dai Zhikang said frankly that the biggest advantage and disadvantage of young entrepreneurs is their youth. “Being young means you have more time to make up for your mistakes, but conversely, market competition will not change just because you are young. Be tolerant to you. If you make a mistake and others don’t, you may die.”
The First Pot of Gold
Dai Zhikang was born in an intellectual family in Daqing. He loved computers since he was a child. When he was in elementary school, he would tinker with the computer at home. From 286 to 586, he upgraded the computer at home time and time again, and his programming skills became better and better.
In 2000, Dai Zhikang was admitted to university, but after entering university, he was very disappointed. "I like self-study and am not interested in exam subjects, and the old textbooks in college make me not interested at all."
At that time, the Internet became popular, and Dai Zhikang learned about the outside world through the Internet. , he became interested in online communities that connect strangers together. He wanted to develop a set of software that can automatically generate communities so that even people who do not understand technology can manage them. If someone chats and gets to know each other in the community he designed, Friends should be a unique achievement. "I think this kind of thing is very interesting to make, and it will be easier to find a job in the future."
Dai Zhikang's wishful thinking is that making this kind of software can be used by thousands of users, and it will be used by thousands of users in the future. When looking for a job, you can tell others: I made this thing! This makes it easy to find a job.
In order to make software, Dai Zhikang moved out of school during his sophomore year, found a house with a monthly rent of 300 yuan, and spent almost 15 hours a day in front of the computer. After the software was designed, he named it "Discuz!" and posted it online for free use.
At first, this software was free. After accumulating a considerable number of users and comparing it with other similar software products, Dai Zhikang decided to charge for this software.
“I feel that my product far exceeds similar products in some key indicators, such as speed, security, load capacity and user-friendliness, and their products are all paid. Why do I "Can't we charge?"
The charge brought unexpected troubles to Dai Zhikang. There was a lot of abuse and condemnation against him on the Internet. For a while, Dai Zhikang didn't even dare to go online.
At that time, a software was sold for 500 yuan. It took nearly half a year to sell any software. Dai Zhikang thought, since he couldn't sell it anyway, he might as well raise the price to two thousand yuan.
After the price increase, Dai Zhikang met a Hong Kong man who wanted to build something for the BBS community. He found Dai Zhikang on the Internet and asked him how long it would take. Dai Zhikang told him that it would only take one week. Hong Kong people do not I believed it, so I told Dai Zhikang, "You sell this software for two thousand yuan. If you can finish it within a week, I will give you an extra thousand yuan. In this way, Dai Zhikang earned three thousand yuan."
After experiencing this ordeal, Dai Zhikang’s charging plan began to work. “We considered at that time that for relatively large forums, the load would not be able to load after using other software, and it would be unstable and unsafe. This is our opportunity.”
In October, Dai Zhikang launched a new version, adding new functions and technologies, and its capacity is several times that of similar products. Since then, Discuz! has been on a high-speed track, with sales increasing by an average of 30% every month. Dai Zhikang found his first pot of gold - by the time he graduated, he had 500,000 yuan.
Starting a company
At first, Dai Zhikang wanted to find a job by making software, but before he graduated, Dai Zhikang became a hot commodity, and some companies were even willing to offer him an annual salary of 300,000 yuan to invite him to join. , but Dai Zhikang chose to give up.
“I was very excited at the time, but when I think about it, if I go, I have to give up everything I am doing now. I feel that this thing is like one of my own children, and there is no way to let it go. . So no matter how great the temptation is, I feel there is no way to shake it."
With his first pot of gold, Dai Zhikang came to Beijing and founded Kangsheng Chuangxiang Technology Co., Ltd. After visiting dozens of departments and obtaining more than fifty official seals, the company was opened.
When we first started recruiting people, it was very slow. "It takes more than a dozen interviews a month to recruit one person, but the people screened out in this way are all people who are truly worth doing things with."
After two years of development, the company has expanded from the initial few people to There are more than 60 people, 80% of whom are programmers. The product share also accounts for 50% of the industry market. In 2005, the turnover reached 5 million yuan.
To this day, Dai Zhikang still defines his company as a technology company. He believes that only by specializing in technology can he realize his own value. "I often tell programmers that it is better to be proficient in one thing than to know ten things. To do one thing, you have to be very focused and devoted, even if you only do one thing at a time, be the best, the most proficient, the most in-depth, and do it To be the first-class expert in this field, or to make our products the best in this industry, this is our goal. ”
From paid to free
It’s in the company. When development was going smoothly, Dai Zhikang made another unexpected decision. Contrary to his previous efforts to turn free software into paid software, he decided to make all products that had been charged for many years free.
Dai Zhikang has made the company’s flagship BBS part Discuz! completely free of charge, and only charges fees for customization, technical support and other services to maintain the company’s basic operating costs.
“This has been an ideal of mine for several years. I originally wanted to make something popular and popular. Now that the product is free, people who originally wanted to use it but had no money to buy it can use it. With this software, my user base can grow rapidly. If 1% of these people become bigger, my income will also increase. Our future profit model will be based on this huge user base. "
After becoming free, Discuz! is installed on more than 1,000 websites almost every day. Now the number of effective users has reached about 300,000. Discuz!’s share of the 700,000 websites in China has reached 40%. about.
Dai Zhikang calculated that 600 of the 1,000 websites in China are owned by BBS, which means that BBS accounts for 60% or 70% of the entire Chinese websites. "I believe we provide this The solution will be higher in the future. We estimate it to be 80%, which means that 70,000 to 80,000 communities in China will become our users. I think the market prospects are still good. ”
From charging to. Free means a change in the company's profit model, from making money by simply selling products to making money by providing product service support.
“We don’t want to make your money first and then provide you with services, but we want to provide you with services first and then we will make money from you when you become bigger.”
< p>2. Chairman of Zendai InvestmentOverview
Dai Zhikang, male, was born in Haimen, Jiangsu Province in June 1964. In 1978, he was admitted to Haimen Middle School, a key middle school in Jiangsu Province. . In 1981, he was admitted to Renmin University of China, majoring in international finance. In 1985, he was admitted to the Financial Research Institute of the Head Office of the People's Bank of China to continue his studies. In 1987, he entered the head office of CITIC Industrial Bank and served as secretary of the president's office; in 1988, he served as the Chinese representative of the Beijing representative office of Dresdner Bank; in 1990, he served as department manager of Hainan Securities Company; in 1994, he founded Shanghai Zendai; in 1998, he reorganized the Zendai series company, established Zendai Investment Group and serves as its chairman to this day.
Resume
1978.09-1981.07 Student at Haimen Middle School in Jiangsu Province
1981.09-1985.07 Renmin University of China, majoring in international finance
1985.09 - 1987.07 Graduate student at the Institute of Finance of the People's Bank of China Head Office
1987 - 1988 Entered the CITIC Industrial Bank Head Office and served as secretary of the President's Office; 1988 - 1990 served as the German Deutsche Bank Chinese representative of Lesbian Bank Beijing Representative Office
1990 - 1994 Served as department manager of Hainan Securities Company
1994 Founded Shanghai Zendai;
1998 - present Restructured the Zendai series of companies, established Zendai Investment Group and served as chairman
Mao Kankan: The Devil in the World
Mao Kankan, known as the Devil in the World, was born in 1983 in Beijing. Junior high school diploma, officially started his business in 2004, President of MaJoy. At the end of 2004, Mao Kankan happened to meet the boss of a state-owned enterprise and communicated with the boss about the MaJoy project: moving the online game offline, imitating its background data operation, but using real scenes and actual actions by players Play. The two hit it off immediately, and Kankan used his intelligence to invest in his company. The two parties officially operated MaJoy, and the overall investment is expected to be 300 million. Later, Mao Kankan made a special report to the Shijingshan District Government and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission
I was young and it was difficult for me to fully weigh the pros and cons, so as long as an opportunity came, I would rush in regardless of whether it was good or bad. Go up and grab them all. Change the environment and live a different experience. Isn’t this what young people should do?
——Mao Kankan
Life History
In 1999, Beijing Yuying Middle School experienced an embarrassment that was "unprecedented in a century." A high school freshman named Mao Kankan failed the geography exam, took the make-up exam, and failed again. According to national policy, he is no longer eligible to enter college. Kankan said, "This is not good, so we won't learn it." It is said that the grade director at the time had his hair turn gray due to this. There is such a person!
Classmate Mao Kankan is as thin as a bamboo pole, his face is blue and black, and he is dressed in a hip-hop style. Sleep 4 hours a day, or 8 hours two days in a row. She's not married yet, but she wears two platinum rings on her right ring finger, one from her mother and one from her girlfriend. My favorite places to go are Qiangui and Shangdao Coffee.
Those years were spent like this: getting up at 5:30 in the morning, riding a 10-minute bike to school to work hard, and getting rid of all the homework for the day. During class, I was thinking about what was going to happen in the evening. I got home from school at 5:30 in the afternoon. After dinner, I stayed alone in the hut working on the computer until 12 o'clock. In the first year of junior high school, Yinghaiwei Time and Space was already online, and I applied to be a program forum mosaic. The most exciting thing was to come up with various ways to maintain the development of the forum. Organize activities on weekends and invite people from the forum to chat together. At that time, Kankan led the school team to sweep through computer competitions in Beijing without encountering any opponents. In the third grade of junior high school, I became obsessed with mountain biking again. I played mountain biking until 8 pm after school every day, and then worked on the computer until 2 am.
Mao Kankan’s thinking habits and behavior were formed at this stage. He basically doesn’t interact with people of his own age, and the people he interacts with online are all seven or eight years older than him. Most of the people who go mountain biking together are young people with jobs. The things we talk about are what kind of business we want to do and what kind of problems we want to solve, which is very practical. In addition to those superficial hip-hop dressing up, Kankan's thinking and behavior are much more sophisticated than his actual age. After meeting each other, many netizens couldn't believe that the person they were chatting with online was actually a 17-year-old boy!
In 2000, he took computer certifications from Microsoft and Cisco, and used these two signs to find a job on a home website with a monthly salary of 3,600 yuan. In the next three years, I changed a dozen jobs! From small websites, game companies, TV stations, to government institutions; from research and development, planning, marketing, publicity to program production. He also opened his own company to outsource R&D projects to others. I have gone through a lot of hardships in these years, spending more than 200,000 of my savings as tuition fees. Of course, I have also seen the "Tao Tao" of all walks of life, all walks of life, and all levels.
At the end of 2004, Mao Kankan once again ran into a state-owned enterprise boss who he had worked with before.
When I worked on a project for him, from back-end data processing to marketing planning, the results exceeded the boss's expectations. This time, Kankan talked to him about the MaJoy project that he had been thinking about for a year: moving the online game offline and simulating its background data operation, but using real scenes and players actually playing the role. The two hit it off immediately, and Kankan used his intelligence to invest in his company. The two parties officially operated MaJoy, and the overall investment is expected to be 300 million. Later, Mao Kankan made a special report to the Shijingshan District Government and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.
"You choose what you want to do, but as long as you choose to do something, you must do it well!" This is the truth that his mother emphasized to Mao Kankan since he was a child. Kankan often thought about this sentence when he was hanging out in society. There is often a saying in Hong Kong gangster movies, "Since you have chosen the underworld, you have one foot in the coffin and you can't quit." Kankan said, this is the truth
Personality
Among the four rich people born in the 1980s, Mao Kankan seems to be the most fashionable, with curly black hair, casual suits, jeans, and hilarious ringtones popping up from time to time on his mobile phone. "Going to nightclubs, but it's a pity that I have to go back to Beijing tomorrow and I won't have the chance to go to nightclubs in Chongqing." Talking about his hobby, Mao Kankan said that because of his hobby of going to nightclubs, his monthly expenses are higher than those of other three. There seem to be more bits. "Not much, maybe twenty or thirty thousand." Kankan said easily.
Quotations from Kankan
-"The meaning of life is that I am still alive. I am particularly afraid of death. If I want to live relatively comfortably, I will fight."
-"Never take any training classes, it is a waste of time. Learning and entertainment are inseparable."
-"I am a person who is not good at communication. It’s about dealing with girls.”
-“The student unions of many universities in Beijing are bureaucratic. I especially hate seeing anyone who says they are from the ‘×× student union’ on their resumes.”
< p>-"Now whenever I have time, I will drive to the university campus to find the feeling of studying. But if you ask me whether I will continue my studies, I cannot answer this question because time will not go back."-"Beijing is a place that pays attention to hidden rules, pays attention to the political background of companies and people, and has low work efficiency. Shanghai's entrepreneurial environment is relatively fair."
-"People must do everything Consider the balance between supply and demand, including falling in love."
-"I feel great about the environment in Chongqing. Jiefangbei is a place suitable for entertainment, which can make a person mature as soon as possible."