Netda is in Mianzhu City, Sichuan Province
"People", an article about the network Dawei, suddenly evoked some memories of mine.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have any intersection with NetDa.
In 1998, I worked for an ISP company called NetChina, which mainly provided users with dial-up Internet services. I came to me one day by a man who claimed to represent MIH and wanted to give NetChina users a free set-top box that would allow them to surf the Internet through a TV. It sounds like a good idea, but the "free" thing seems a bit unfathomable. For various reasons, the cooperation did not work out, but I remember the South African company that was determined to expand its Internet business in China, MIH.
I learned that MIH is a cable company in South Africa and the largest pay-TV company in Africa. As early as the mid-1990s, it entered China, initially to help CCTV do the technical service of "village-to-village TV" and the landing of CCTV4 in Africa and Europe. Later, MIH began to invest in media business in China, such as Beijing Youth Daily and Sports Weekly.
In 1999, MIH decided to invest heavily in the Chinese Internet, first introducing MWeb, an Internet service that had done well in South Africa, Chinese called Pulse.com, which was launched in April 2000 with great fanfare. But PulseNet also came and went in a hurry, and after burning $80 million, MIH closed. It realized that in the Chinese market, it was far less comfortable to invest in a local team that had been proven by the market. Fortunately, the end was in time, and the ammunition was not all exhausted, which left a little money for the later investment in Tencent.
Headquarters of MIH Group in Yoburg, South Africa. Photographed on February 17, 2009
In 2001, he invested in Tencent on behalf of MIH and created an investment myth of 7,000 times the return. In 2009, I visited mih's headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I could see many Chinese elements in the headquarters building, such as inscriptions of Chinese leaders hanging on the walls and CCTV programs broadcast on TV. Of course, the successful investment in Tencent may still be their most eye-catching achievement.
In retrospect, Tencent and MIH are actually each other's nobles, and they have made each other successful. Tencent has made MIH's greatest investment, and MIH has allowed Tencent to smoothly survive the period of the company's highest risk of death after the bursting of the Internet stock bubble, and has a stable, one-man long-term investor, in Ma Huateng's words, "it is important to change an investor who can still come up with life-saving money after a promise."
In 2000, Tencent's investor ATG at the time was trapped in the big pit of 8848, and another investor, Yingke Digital, was not very optimistic about the long-term value of Tencent, and they all expected to find a receiver for Tencent. Therefore, after being rejected by Sohu, Sina, Yahoo China, Kingdee, Lenovo, Zhonggong Net, TOM.com, etc., the number of users has been growing rapidly, but in terms of funds, Tencent, which is poor in terms of funds, finally met NetDawei in January 2001.
In June 2001, MIH purchased more than 40% of the shares (later reduced) at a valuation of US$60 million, and Tencent retained the decision-making power of the company. Of course, this money is not paid to Tencent, but is used to buy old stocks in the hands of others.
MiH's investment in Tencent's past proves the vision of NetDawei. At that time, although the number of QQ users grew rapidly, in the Chinese Internet circle, almost no one was seriously optimistic about QQ - what is the commercial value of a child playing something, a boring online chat thing? What are the technical thresholds for QQ? Others don't do a better IM minute by minute? Even Tencent's investors were worried about selling Tencent, which showed how difficult it was to be optimistic about Tencent at that time.
2001 was also the darkest period of the Internet, the Internet companies lived like years, every family had a difficult scripture, and various contradictions broke out in a concentrated manner. Sina's board of directors voted to remove Sina founder Wang Zhidong from his CEO position, NetEase was deeply involved in an accounting fraud scandal and risked being delisted, and Sohu rumored that Zhang Chaoyang and Chen Yizhou's palace fight drama ended with Chen Yizhou out.
At this time, it is still optimistic about Internet companies, especially recognizing the value of QQ, and even giving a valuation of $60 million, today's legend was more like a fool at that time. What's even more shocking is that the net dawei has put itself in. Shortly after investing in Tencent, NetDawei simply joined the small Shenzhen company, which had only 45 employees in its three years. In hindsight, Zhuge Liang can say that this not only proves the investment vision of Net Dawei, but also proves his professional vision. He described how he felt when he met Ma Huateng and his entrepreneurial partners:
They were describing a world that I couldn't understand at all, who were far smarter than I was, who were thinking in a way I had never seen in my life, and I was completely calmed down, a feeling I had never felt before. I had only one thought, it was one of the smartest people I'd ever met on the planet, and I had to find a way to work with them.
I think that although the story of NetA's investment in Tencent is legendary, after all, this matter itself has a great contingency, just like MIH's so many investment projects, there is only one Tencent. Moreover, entrepreneurship is a matter of nine deaths, failure is normal, success is abnormal. It is relatively easy to bet on Tencent, and the huge success of Tencent in the future is purely unexpected.
However, NetA's joining Tencent, and the experience of the next 20 years, may be a more meaningful legend than betting on Tencent's huge success. Compared with a successful investment story, or a successful business story, how to promote this success after a company succeeds, it may be a more worthwhile story to write.
In a sense, NetDawei and Tencent are also a story of mutual achievement.
Frankly, my initial view of Tencent's position as chief exploration officer was that it was just an honorary position to thank NetDawei for his contribution and allow him to do something he wanted to do. But I came to realize that I might have misunderstood the meaning of "exploring."
The other day I watched a documentary called Zero Water Day, a three-year documentary that spanned four continents and intuitively revealed the looming water crisis of our water-covered planet, 71 percent of the surface. The film's global perspective and deep concern for the fate of mankind make it hard for me to believe that this is a documentary invested by a Chinese company, let alone that it is actually one of the projects initiated by NetDawei, the chief exploration officer of Tencent Group.
"When I was almost 40 years old, I realized that many things on Earth were not really taken care of, and very few people looked at these problems from a global perspective." The problems that Net-David calls few – food, energy and water. But does an Internet company really have the ability to solve such a grand problem? The answer is yes. A documentary like Zero Water Day, which is meant to draw attention to the water crisis, is already on the way to solving the problem.
"We're lucky that Tencent succeeded. So the most important thing we should do is to cherish the opportunities we have and leave more positive and good impact on the world. "It's remarkable that business success allows you to do more, isn't it?" ”
Perhaps, the chief exploration officer is to explore the value of the commercial value and sustainable value for Tencent. For example, a return period may take 20 years to benefit the average person's future aircraft, for example, can provide early diagnosis or even early prevention can greatly improve human health.
NetDawei's exploration has been echoed by Tencent Group. In 2021, Tencent released a new blueprint to incorporate "promoting sustainable social value innovation" into the company's core strategy, and announced that it will invest 50 billion yuan in sustainable social value innovation.
I suddenly found that NetDawei's exploration coincided perfectly with Tencent's new mission vision of "science and technology for good". He wants to explore investment and development opportunities outside of the day-to-day business operations of a successful business company, using the capital, technology, products and other resources at the company's disposal to solve a series of pressing problems facing humanity. It can also be said that what NetDa wants to explore is the opportunity for science and technology to be good.
I recommend reading this article about Net Dawei: "A Man Who Wants to Solve the Earth-Level Problem."