Produced by Radar Finance and Economics, edited by Li Yihui, Deep Sea
Xu Bo, who calls himself the "first father of China", contributed the biggest melon of the weekend.
Recently, Xu Bo, the founder and chairman of Duoyi Network, claimed that he was swept away 300 million yuan by his ex-girlfriend. According to reports, Xu Bo's relationship with his ex-girlfriend Tang began at the end of 2009, the two met through a blind date website, and gave birth to a daughter in June 2011, but did not go through the marriage formalities.
Xu Bo posted on social media that he transferred more than 800 million yuan for Tang, but Tang later fled with the money and is still in arrears of more than 300 million yuan. In addition, Xu Bo also mentioned that among the 13 children presented by Tang, only two were born together, and the remaining 11 were born to Tang to receive donations abroad.
However, the court did not support Xu Bo's claim, so he "sought justice" online. This wave of explosive revelations quickly attracted the attention of countless "melon-eating people", some people expressed shock at Xu Bo's behavior, and some people expressed concern about the legal and moral issues involved.
In fact, Xu Bo's personal life and professional behavior have been the focus of public discussion. He has been in the spotlight for his "polygamy" rhetoric, voluntary pay cuts to measure loyalty by employees, and accusations of corruption by former company CEOs. At the same time, Xu Bo is also very rich, and his net worth is as high as 27.5 billion yuan on the latest Hurun rich list.
This time, in addition to the attention of "self-blowing up family ugliness" again, it also made netizens curious, what kind of person is Xu Bo, "will make so much money"?
The "first father" seeks justice online
Xu Bo, who calls himself the "first father of China", used a special way to expose his family disputes in front of the public.
Since April 25, the official blog of Duoyi Network has posted a number of Weibo posts, telling the story of Chairman Xu Bo transferring more than 800 million yuan for his partner Tang, and then Tang fled with the money, and is still in arrears of more than 300 million yuan.
Sorting out what happened, Xu Bo and Tang met on an online blind date website at the end of 2009, and gave birth to a daughter in June 2011, but they were not married.
According to Xu Bo, only a month after the child was born, Tang proposed to end the relationship between men and women, and then the child was raised by Xu Bo.
However, the two continued to get along without interruptions, "because she had no income, and during this period, our mutual property was completely independent, and all related expenses were completely borne by me independently." ”
However, things have been dramatic since then.
"Because she was influenced by independent women's thinking, she wanted to be a single mother, so she communicated with me, and in 2012 she swore 'never leave me, never hurt me, or you won't die a good death' to deceive my trust. Xu Bo said.
In the end, from 2012 to 2018, Xu Bo successively transferred 819 million yuan to Tang through his bank account, which was used to buy a house and surrogate to give birth to a child for whom she was solely responsible. Among them, 419 million yuan was remarked with "borrowing" or "jiekuan" when transferring.
Xu Bo said that these transfers did not include the various expenses he spent for Tang, and that Tang also held various other assets at home and abroad on his behalf, with a total value of more than 1 billion yuan.
Why is Xu Bo willing to transfer such a huge amount of money to the other party? Perhaps in addition to the effect of the above oath, there is also the reason why he donated sperm to Tang to give birth to a child.
Over the years, Xu Bo has output remarks on the Internet such as "female function is fertility" and "dominant races should have 100 children", and has recruited "virgin beauties" to have sons with him in a high-profile manner.
Therefore, Xu Bo, who has the desire to have more children, thinks that he has been helping and supporting Tang out of consideration of his own genes (sperm donation) and traditional concepts.
Unexpectedly, in 2022, "Tang illegally abandoned all the children and fled with the money." Moreover, Xu Bo stated that only 2 of the 13 children cited by Tang were born together, while the other 11 were born to Tang by receiving sperm donation abroad.
Xu Bo said that after that, Tang transferred 515 million yuan back to him, but there were still more than 300 million yuan that had not been returned, and other assets held on behalf of him had not been returned.
According to Xu Bo, he sued Tang for the return of more than 300 million yuan in a private loan case, which ended in failure. The logic of the court's judgment was that Xu Bo provided bank transfer records, which could not prove that the parties had an agreement to borrow money, and although the parties were not married, they must have common expenses for living together and raising 13 children, so it was inferred that the parties were not in a loan relationship.
Judging from the latest Weibo content, Xu Bo seems unwilling to stop there, and he will "continue to sue and continue to provide evidence".
Previously, "wonderful" news was frequent
In addition to the "300 million gold coins that netizens jokingly called", Xu Bo's past personal remarks and company management methods are also hot topics after the tea and dinner of the people who eat melons.
As early as 2014, he donated 3 million yuan to Fang Zhouzi's security fund, and later because the security fund was misappropriated for other purposes, he fell out with Fang Zhouzi, sued him in court, and successfully recovered 3 million.
In October 2018, an article titled "Former NetEase Executive with a Net Worth of 28 Billion: Giving Birth to 12 Babies, Realistic Version of Polygamy" put Xu Bo on the cusp of public opinion, and the content mentioned in the article was even more breathtaking.
According to the article, Xu Bo, who used to be a NetEase executive, has gone under the pseudonym "Baobao Teacher" (formerly known as "Cooking Teacher") on Weibo since making money, openly advocating polygamy and publicly admitting to having multiple children with multiple women.
After the article sparked huge controversy, NetEase and Xu Bo both "refuted the rumors". Among them, Xu Bo denied that IDs such as "Cooking Teacher" and "Baby Teacher" were his accounts, and said that "I respect women, and the CEO of the company is a married woman."
In terms of corporate governance, Xu Bo also often has many unexpected moves. For example, he was revealed to have announced on Weibo under the screen name "Xu Youzhen" that he would equip backbone programmers with BMW 730, and distribute an iPad2 to each of the 140 veteran employees, which caused a sensation.
According to public media reports, in 2018, Xu Bo asked employees who had been in the company for one year to say thank you or feedback to him, and sent him "thank you red envelopes", with red envelopes ranging from 100 to 500 yuan.
At the subsequent annual meeting, Xu Bo announced that he would refuse to accept all red envelopes and return them tenfold to the employees who gave them. The move was interpreted as a "loyalty test" for employees.
In addition, Xu Bo also carried out "obedience tests" and "values tests" for employees. In 2020, Xu Bo said that due to the company's good efficiency, profits increased significantly, and the company's employees voluntarily cut their salaries by 10%. TOEIC responded at the time that 100% of the old employees and executives applied to participate in the voluntary salary reduction activity, and "the heart is generally truly happy and satisfied." ”
In 2021, Xu Bo also staged a drama of "tearing" the company's former CEO. In August of that year, Xu Bo personally wrote an article entitled "The Chairman Personally Investigates Advertising Corruption and Advertising Fake Advertising Connivance Plug-in Case", saying that the company's former CEO Tang Yilu and others harbored and connived at plug-ins and were suspected of embezzling hundreds of millions of yuan in advertising expenses every year, and then issued a "reward order" of 10 million yuan to collect clues.
Duoyi Network said it reported the case to the Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau in March 2022. However, after three months of investigation, the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau finally gave a notice not to file a criminal case.
In the past year, Duoyi Network's official Weibo has posted several Weibo posts related to this. So far, Xu Bo's side has not made much progress.
The grassroots counterattacked and reached the pinnacle of wealth
Seven years ago, in April, Forbes released the 2017 Chinese Rich List, and Xu Bo ranked 69th as a dark horse that year, with a net worth of $4.1 billion.
Looking at Xu Bo's resume, you will find that his experience can be called a legend of the successful counterattack at the grassroots. According to "Chutian Metropolis Daily", Xu Bo was born in December 1977, graduated from junior high school (did not finish technical school) and went to work, and joined NetEase in 2001 as a customer service for "Journey to the West 1".
This small customer service is very good at seizing opportunities. In May 2002, Xu Bo participated in the internal test of "Westward Journey 2" as a customer service staff and wrote more than 30 pages of feedback and improvement suggestions.
In June 2003, "Fantasy Journey to the West" was established, and Xu Bo participated in the production of the core content of the game as the original sole planner, making it one of NetEase's most profitable games.
According to Guangzhou Daily, Xu Bo submitted a project plan to Ding Lei, the founder of NetEase, and put forward new treatment requirements, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement. In 2006, he left his job to accept Lei Jun's investment and entrepreneurship and set up Guangzhou Duoyi Network Technology Co., Ltd.
Since then, with the outstanding performance of a series of products such as "Dream World" and "Shenwu" (now renamed "Phantom Tang Zhi"), Xu Bo, who graduated from junior high school, has stepped into the peak of his life.
Such a counterattack, as Xu Bo said in a statement, "I went from being a network manager of an Internet café with a monthly salary of 400 yuan in 2001 to now the owner of an Internet company where I personally paid more than 200 million yuan in personal taxes in 2015 alone (the company is considering going public in China in 2016), and I am the sole founder and chief designer of China's most profitable online game." ”
However, the road to listing was not smooth. In June 2016, Duoyi Network submitted an application for an initial public offering and listing on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), but then chose to terminate the IPO review on March 27, 2018.
In June 2018, Duoyi Network submitted an IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but finally announced the termination of the IPO in January 2019.
According to the prospectus, from 2015 to 2017, Duoyi Network achieved revenue of 1.63 billion yuan, 1.55 billion yuan and 1.93 billion yuan respectively, and net profit of 1.04 billion yuan, 840 million yuan and 1.007 billion yuan.
The data shows that at that time, the ability of Duoyi Network to make money and absorb money was amazing. The gross profit margin ratio of the company in each period from 2015 to 2017 was 98.8%, 98.4% and 98.7% respectively, and the corresponding ARPPU value (average paid user revenue) was 417 yuan, 459 yuan and 558 yuan respectively.
However, Duoyi Network also has a dependence on a single ace game "Shenwu", and the Shenwu series accounted for more than 90% of the revenue from 2015 to 2017. As we all know, in the game industry, each product has a specific development cycle, and it is difficult for a single IP effect to last too long, so Duoyi Network needs to find the next "Shenwu".
It is worth noting that TOEIC Network is mired in a large number of judicial proceedings. According to the data of Tianyancha App, Guangzhou Duoyi Network Co., Ltd. has been involved in 195 judicial cases, including network service contract disputes, network unfair competition disputes, service contract disputes, sales contract disputes, etc.
What kind of story will Xu Bo write in the future? Radar Finance will continue to pay attention.