This article is from Chapter 5 of "Thirty Years of the Wave" 1998 Heroes Emerge Without Permission Please do not reprint
Zhang Chaoyang in 1998 can be described as a moment of scenery, giving speeches everywhere, attracting countless young people to invest in the Internet industry, including a young man named Ma Huateng.
On October 29, 1971, Ma Huateng was born in Basuo Port, Dongfang City, Hainan Island, to parents who were employees of the Baduo Port Authority. In the place of origin column of the household registration book, according to the custom, the father filled in "Chaoyang County, Guangdong Province (former name)". He has an older sister who is 4 years older.
Ma Huateng's father attaches great importance to the cultivation of his son and often subscribes to some scientific books for him. This made Ma Huateng have a strong interest in cosmic astronomical science, and on his 14th birthday, his father gave him a quasi-professional-grade, 80mm aperture astronomical telescope, which was expensive, equivalent to his father's 4 months' salary.
On April 11, 1986, he used this telescope to observe Halley's Comet with its brilliant and mysterious long tail. Immediately Ma Huateng excitedly declared that he was the first person in the school to see Halley's Comet.
Ma Huateng transferred to Shenzhen Middle School in the second year of junior high school, and at the same time, a transfer student named Xu Chenye came to his class, and the two transfer students quickly became good friends because they had a common experience. In this Shenzhen middle school, Ma Huateng also met Zhang Zhidong and Chen Yidan in the next class. No one expected these four alumni to create an Internet empire together.
In 1989, Ma Huateng was admitted to Shenzhen University and entered the Department of Electronic Engineering to study computer science. Along with him in this major were Xu Chenye and Zhang Zhidong, Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye happened to be assigned to a dormitory, and Chen Yidan was admitted to the Chemistry Department.
Every morning, Ma Huateng and Xu Chenye run together on the playground of Shenzhen University and talk about their dreams. They wouldn't have imagined that 20 years later, a 39-story Tencent Tower would be erected next to their university, and their offices would be on the top floor overlooking the entire Shenzhen University.
In college, Ma Huateng has a strong interest in product application development, he knows how to implement a product; Zhang Zhidong shows some unusual talents in programming.
In his senior year, Ma Huateng went to a company called Shenzhen Liming Computer Network Co., Ltd. for an internship. The company was the first in China to be named after a computer network. The main business is to provide relevant automated trading systems for the newly established stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. In those days, with the rapid development of the stock market, the company quickly earned its first pot of gold.
Intern Ma Huateng developed the first real product in his life here - a stock analysis system with graphical interaction, and Ma Huateng added elements such as stock technical analysis, function analysis, and Chinese character input method to the software. Users can use the software to visually see stock movements and related analysis.
Ma Huateng's software stood out from many stock analysis software at the time, and soon Dawn took notice of the software and offered to buy his software. Ma Huateng asked cautiously: How much is it? The other party offered 50,000 yuan, which was equivalent to the salary of a college graduate for 3 years at that time. Ma Huateng did not expect the company to pay such a high price, and he did not hesitate to sell the software to the company.
With the end of the deal, Ma Huateng's university life also came to an end. Ma Huateng and his classmates also went their separate ways.
Zhang Zhidong chose to continue to study programming algorithms, Xu Chenye worked for half a year, also chose to go to Nanjing University for graduate school, Chen Yidan was assigned to the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Administration Bureau, and at the same time studied for a master's degree in economics at the Law School of Nanjing University. Ma Huateng went to Runxun Communication Group Co., Ltd. as an engineer.
In the days of Tengxun's work, although Ma Huateng soared from a monthly salary of 1100 yuan to 8000 yuan with his excellent software development ability, it was difficult for Ma Huateng to realize his ideals in a large company with strict grades.
Until 1994, Ma Huateng began to contact Huiduo Network and began to branch stations in Shenzhen. A new world of the Internet is opening its doors to him. Ma Huateng met a netizen named Ding Lei on Huiduo Network, and the next year, Ding Lei decided to drift south to Shenzhen. As the station manager of the Shenzhen branch of Huiduo Network, Ma Huateng naturally had to go through the friendship of the landlord and receive Ding Lei warmly, and the two "ran" successfully and became friends.
In September 1996, when Ma Huateng learned that the NetEase mailbox developed by Ding Lei had sold more than 1 million, he could not sit still. In fact, in Runxun Company, Ma Huateng proposed to develop a mailbox system very early, but the company did not have any support, and the result was made by Ding Lei, and he sold so much money. Ma Huateng felt that he could not continue to waste his precious youth, and he decided to do something on the Internet.
So Ma Huateng asked Zhang Zhidong to discuss what should be developed on the Internet. The two of them spend their days in the café discussing models of various products. Finally, a "wireless network paging system" was determined, which can realize receiving calls from the Internet side in the pager, receiving news and e-mail, and so on. This set of software can be sold to pagers in various places to provide them with a value-added service project. Of course, this system and the Ding Lei mailbox system have the same magic.
Entrepreneurship has a "business", the next step is to start looking for entrepreneurial partners, the current team is only Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong. A few months later, Zhang Zhidong found a classmate Chen Yidan, at this time Chen Yidan was already working at the customs, the work was stable, but he heard that the old classmates wanted to start a business together, there was still a little excitement in his heart, he began to hesitate to quit his job to start a business, at that time his biggest concern was: the outside failed, all the family savings were gone, how to live in the future. His wife, who was on the sidelines, saw through his concerns and said comfortingly: "It doesn't matter, even if I fail, I still have a job!" Many years later, Chen Yidan, as vice president of Tencent, still thanks his wife for that sentence. Without the strong support of his wife, there would be no later Vice President of Tencent.
Ma Huateng also found Xu Chenye, who worked at the Telecommunications Bureau.
Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Chen Yidan, Xu Chenye, and the four students finally began to discuss their "business plan" together. However, as the discussion deepened, they found that a big problem was that the four of them were all technical, and none of them were good at business negotiations. Even if they make a system, who will they sell it to?
At this time, the fifth person appeared, he was Zeng Liqing, who was a sales genius. Two years older than Ma Huateng, he single-handedly persuaded a real estate developer in Shenzhen to invest 1.2 million yuan to build the country's first broadband community. He was a very "famous" figure in the local telecommunications bureau. With the reform of the telecommunications system, Zeng Liqing's department is facing the embarrassing situation of being abolished.
At this time, Zeng Liqing met Ma Huateng, who was looking for sales talents all over the world, and they could shoot it. He let Li Qing smoothly join Ma Huateng's entrepreneurial team.
When registering the company, considering that the company is still related to the paging newsletter, so they have four names of "Netcom, Jiexun, Feixun, and Tencent" as alternative names for verification, and the first three have been registered, and only "Tencent" can be registered. This name is taken from Ma Huateng's name.
On November 11, 1998, in an old building in Huaqiang North, "Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd." was officially established. A small company that started with 5 people has become an Internet giant with 50,000 employees 20 years later.