Chen Pei, CEO of Zhongsou: The supporting role of the search circle fell quickly after being popular on the new third board

Chen Pei, one of the earliest search engines in China, has done almost all search forms, and he has listed Baidu as his competitor. In fact, in the field of search, Chen Pei has always been a supporting role and has never become a protagonist on the stage.

After 5 years of silence, he became popular on the new third board. Lost in the east, harvested in mulberry elm. Chen Pei, who insists that he has only done searching all his life, has his first taste of the big guy in the new third board.

Today's Chen Pei, on his own APP Search Yue, opened a science and technology live talk show "Chen Pei Said", the content of which is to conduct exclusive analysis and in-depth interpretation of the military, science and technology, philosophy, venture capital and other fields, and is committed to creating a live broadcast big IP.

Search for life

Chen Pei, president and CEO of Zhongsou, was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of Zhejiang University at the age of 16. He was one of the earliest search engines in China, claiming that he only did search in his life, and was once called "the first person in China's search engine" by the media. In fact, in the field of search, Chen Pei has always been a supporting role and has never become a protagonist on the stage.

Baidu Encyclopedia shows that after graduating from university in 1987, Chen Pei went to Peking University to study artificial intelligence as a graduate student, and later entered a computing center of the General Staff Department. After leaving the military in 1995, Chen Pei launched the intelligent Chinese full-text search system I-SERARCH.

At that time, it was still the enlightenment stage of the Chinese Internet. Zhang Chaoyang returned to China 3 years later with millions of dollars to do the search, and Robin Li founded Baidu 5 years later.

In 1999, on the eve of the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Chen Pei came to Nanjing to attend an event and gave a speech on the theme of "Challenge Portal", making a forward-looking description of the bright future of the Internet in the future.

The speech deeply touched Guo Fansheng, then CEO of HC360, who was sitting in the audience. Guo, who cherished talent, immediately invited Chen Pei to join as vice president and CTO. This step is an important step in Opening Chen Pei's business search life.

In 2002, Chen Pei launched a large-scale Chinese search engine in China. In 2003, it launched the world's first Chinese news search engine, providing search engine technology for well-known domestic websites such as Sina and Sohu, and search engine technology for more than 5,000 search alliance websites.

"My search technology was on par with Baidu." Chen Pei once recalled to the media the search for the jianghu in that year.

In 2004, Zhongsou Network was born, then named Beijing HC Network Technology Co., Ltd., and Chen Pei became the chairman and general manager.

This year Chen Pei was 42 years old. At this step, Chen Pei really stood on the stage of searching for dramas and began his own search life. This year, Sohu, which started with Search, has given up search to start news, and Baidu has become a leader in the search field. According to the "2004 China Search Engine Research Report", Baidu, Yahoo and Google have market shares of 36.29%, 22.72% and 21.22% respectively. NetEase, Sina, Sohu, Tom, China Search, China.com, etc. carved up the remaining 20% share.

Even more ruthless is the reality that a year later, Baidu successfully landed on the NASDAQ. This year, Baidu's market share reached 46.5%, Google's market share was 26.9%, and the third place was the Yahoo series, with 15.6%. Zhongsou's share is 3%. Looking back at this historical node, Chen Pei is quite ambitious: in order to list HC360.com in Hong Kong, China, Zhongsou became independent too late.

Chen Pei, who missed the opportunity, thought of differentiation and took a personalized search route. Desktop search software "Web Pig" came into being.

Chen Pei believes that the perfect combination of client and search will revolutionize the Internet world. Chen Pei was still lucky. In 2005, Fidelity Fund, IDG and Lenovo invested $13.5 million in Zhongsou.

In April 2006, Chen Pei renamed the Internet Pig to IG (InternetGateway) and worked hard to build the concept of personal portal, declaring that "Zhongsou has changed from a challenger to a leader in personal portals".

He actively explored, but Chen Pei's efforts had little effect. In 2006, the market share of Zhongsou was no longer listed by the research institutions, becoming the other part, and the total share of the other part was only 2.6%.

A reporter with more than 15 years of Experience in Internet media said that Chen Pei was still relatively good at tossing in the field of Internet search, often attending various related activities, giving speeches, and appearing at a relatively high rate. But at that time, Chen Pei never became the protagonist of the search market, and the supporting role was the main theme of Chen Pei's search life.

5 years of alternative exploration

Since 2007, Chen Pei's exposure in activities and media has declined rapidly, and there are external factors and reasons of its own.

Chen Pei did not think so, and he did not give up, but took the form of roundabout combat, took another path, turned to the industry market to do search, and planned to return to the personal market and the public after success in the industry field.

"Industry China" was Chen Pei's new breakthrough at that time. Provide navigation and information for various industries, based on personalized search engine technology, provide different e-commerce technology and operational solutions for various industries.

Enterprises do not have to make their own websites alone, but combine industry resources, corporate information and the "Industry China" platform to become an industry website, similar to Alibaba and HC. Chen Pei said.

At that time, making a website was still a difficult technical work, and it was quite attractive. Chen Pei said that the industry China is quite popular with enterprises, on the day of launch, that is, to achieve 1.7 million yuan of revenue, from 2009 to 2010, Zhongsou's "industry China" e-commerce platform has cooperated with industry giants such as Anjia Media, Hailong, Founder Apabi, etc., and more than 3,000 subdivision industry portals were born on this platform, with great influence.

Capital still took good care of Chen Pei. In 2009, Kenrui Investment, Yingkejia Investment, and Lenovo Investment invested in Zhongsou again.

This year, Chen Pei and other shareholders reached a consensus and decided to abandon the overseas listing plan and return to the domestic A-share GEM listing, and identified Zhongsou as the domestic A-share listing entity.

Since then, Chen Pei has begun the capitalization road of Zhongsou. According to the media quoted By Hu Guichun, director of Zhongsou, in order to look good on the listing report, many forward-looking plans should be done, but they cannot be done, even if next year will be very good, as long as this year can not produce certain benefits, can not be done.

In 2012, Zhongsou was full of confidence to impact the CHINext board. However, at that time, there was a disagreement in the industry as to whether Zhongsou already had a complete three-year financial statement, and in the process of debate, Zhongsou missed the opportunity to list on the ChiNext board in 2012.

After that, the stock market was cold, the IPO was suspended, and Chen Pei's capitalization exploration was not rewarded.

It was praised by the new third board

Blessings, woes! Woe, woe! The failure of breaking through the ChiNext board, reporting the mentality of trying it out, zhongsou logged on to the new third board. As a result, Chen Pei, who is not popular in the Internet circle, has become popular on the New Third Board. This was unexpected by everyone, even Chen Pei himself.

In November 2013, Zhongsou Network was officially listed on the New Third Board. In its prospectus, Zhongsou positions itself as a leading mobile ecosystem provider and operator, with "leading third-generation search engine technology in China", and takes this as the core of its business model.

After the listing, Zhongsou was called "the first stock of the Internet on the New Third Board".

Good luck can't stop it. In mid-2014, Zhongsou issued 4,347,827 shares at a price of 23 yuan per share, raising about 100 million yuan; in November of the same year, Zhongsou once again issued a targeted stock issuance plan, planning to raise about 220 million yuan at a price of 25 yuan per share.

Even if Zhongsou Network can log on to the ChiNext board in 2012, the amount of financing is basically this number. The open life does not need to be explained.

Honors such as "The Most InstitutionalLy Concerned Company of the Year" and "The Most Influential Person of the New Third Board of the Year" followed. At the end of the year, Chen Pei became a sought-after guest. In 2015, the new third board related activities to ask Chen Pei to be a guest, that is a more face-saving thing in the circle.

Chen Pei, who stands in the center of the new third board stage, probably did not expect that there is no red in the Internet circle, and it will become popular in the new third board.

The good days come and go quickly, and 2016 has become a turning point, and there are market reasons and reasons of their own: on the one hand, in 2016, the new third board returned to calm. On the other hand, the performance of the Zhongsou network is the same as that of the eggplant that has been frosted. It lost 129 million in 2014, 123 million in 2015 and 180 million in 2016.

Failed to the innovation layer, the stock price fell from the highest 98 yuan to 7-8 yuan, and now it is only about 1 yuan. Chen Pei went back again.

Lost Chen Pei

In the first half of 2017, Zhongsou Network continued to be unprofitable, with a loss of 25 million yuan. The business model, too, got rid of search. Yunyue, Juli Mobile Alliance, Cloud Mall, and Soyue have become keywords in The Annual Report of Zhongsou.

Today's Chen Pei, on the live broadcast of peppercorns "Chen Pei Said", the topic of the lecture is whether robots will rule over human beings? Chen Pei said, "The progress of machines has benefited from the breakthrough of artificial intelligence. This breakthrough comes from technological progress in many computer fields, first of all from the development of the Internet, with the development of the Internet, computers are closely linked, all data is closely linked, and computing power is greatly improved. ”

The resume of Chen Pei, the protagonist of "Chen Pei", is now like this, a famous search engine expert in China, and a famous cloud computing expert in China. In addition, Chen Pei is also a true chess fan. Chen Pei has been studying Go since he was six years old, and has won the Zhejiang University Go Championship, the General Staff Go Champion and the Beijing Amateur Go Champion. He has worked on many artificial intelligence projects and written game programs for backgammon.

Search, personal portal, enterprise search, live broadcasting, artificial intelligence, Chen Pei's Internet life is rich and colorful.