Speaking of Cai Wensheng, "the king of domain names", "the king of webmasters", "the king of grassroots cattle", "the king of angel investment" and so on have come one after another. This businessman, who can be called "China's most opportunity-seeking", has firmly grasped it in the era of domain names, the era of personal webmasters, the era of Microblogging or the era of mobile Internet.
The aura of wealth hit Cai Wensheng and hid in the hearts of everyone.
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In addition to these hemetic titles, Cai Wensheng also has a status worth mentioning - "leading big brother".
As we all know, on the Map of China's Internet, in addition to Guangdong and Zhejiang businessmen, Fujian businessmen are thriving.
This rising Internet Fujian gang is divided into two factions, one is the "Longyan Sanjie" who is mainly a single player, and the representative figures are Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan Dianping, Zhang Yiming, CEO of Today's Headlines, and Fang Sanwen, CEO of Snowball.
The other faction is the "Hu Jianzhiguang" who loves to hug the group, led by Cai Wensheng, chairman of Meitu, Wu Xinhong, CEO of Meitu, Xiong Jun, CEO of Synchronous Push, Yi Guangxu, founder of Cold Joke Selection, Yao Jianjun, CEO of Flying Fish, and Chen Jianyu, president of Meitu, "following him around".
Cai Wensheng, who single-handedly shouldered half of the Fujian Internet gang, is undoubtedly a "leading big brother".
He not only invested in many local Internet companies in Xiamen, but also built a building, put a lot of projects in Xiamen, or even a building. Cai Wensheng often asked these Internet entrepreneurs to come out to chat and make tea, so these people gave up the way they used to fight their own battles and gradually formed a small circle of several people.
Cai Wensheng, who dropped out of high school, practiced martial arts, set up a stall, and founded a website, has a jianghu spirit. He loves martial arts novels, and he especially likes Gu Long's happiness and revenge, on the grounds that Gu Long's heroes are grassroots, and Jin Yong's pen is full of heroes.
The same grass is reckless and expensive, so most of the "followers" around him are "grassroots" with low academic qualifications.
Cai Wensheng first met Wu Xinhong. In 2000, Tsai Wensheng, who had previously set up a stall and founded a website, frequently encountered setbacks in his international trade business in the Philippines, and he was discouraged and went to Hong Kong to look for opportunities.
On April 25, he stumbled upon a newspaper story on the streets of Hong Kong with a story that the Business domain had been sold for $7.5 million. Smelling the business opportunities, Cai Wensheng immediately soaked in the Easy Domain Network (a domestic domain name trading and value-added service website, founded by Yao Jinbo, the founder of 58.com), and it was here that he met Yao Jinbo, Kong Dejing (the founder of Changing Name China) and Wu Xinhong, who was studying in his second year of high school at the time.
At that time, Wu Xinhong, the "second generation of the rich", was taking the 10,000 yuan given by his father and pulling Chen Jianyu at the same table to fiddle with the domain name business. The two chatted carefully on the forum and found that they were fellow villagers, and they were all in Quanzhou, so the two netizens met under the big banyan tree near the Baiyuan Qingchi in Quanzhou, and they saw each other as before.
Since then, Cai Wensheng often asked Wu Xinhong to come out to discuss domain name investment, in fact, at that time, the valuable international domain name has almost been registered, the two naturally paid a lot of tuition, but after slowly finding out the way, they found that the domain name registration needs to be renewed every year, that is, they can preemptively register those domain names that are not renewed and valuable.
According to this approach, from 2001 to 2003, Cai Wensheng's domain name business flourished, and domain names such as tudou (Tudou), weibo (Sina Weibo), and Qiyi (iQiyi) were sold by Cai Wensheng.
Interestingly, under the "boost" of Cai Wensheng, Wu Xinhong was trapped in the wave of the Internet and could not extricate himself, and then gave up the college entrance examination to further his studies and single-mindedly engaged in domain name investment.
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In 2002, Yao Jianjun, who graduated from secondary school, and netizen "Hard Stone" founded the China Webmaster Station, which was later the home of the famous webmaster. This website, which was born in the grassy era when everything was waiting to be revived, and was popular with grassroots Internet practitioners, became a must-have website for Chinese webmasters at that time.
Cai Wensheng, Wu Xinhong and others also often soaked here, and the three people who were also fellow villagers in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, and were grassroots, quickly became familiar with each other. Cai Wensheng, born in 1970, is several years older than Wu Xinhong, Yao Jianjun, Chen Jianyu and others born in 80, and he naturally plays the role of "big brother" with experience in society.
In 2002, invested by Cai Wensheng, Yao Jianjun and Wu Xinhong used 520.com domain names as social networking sites, mainly in the mode of exchanging online friends' contact information with paid members to engage in revenue. This is Cai Wensheng's first angel investment. However, the shy Wu Xinhong and Yao Jianjun were not "good candidates" for social networking, and two years later, the "520.com" account was cleared and had to be hastily closed.
Although this "sale" failed, it did not have much impact on their future cooperation. In 2004, Cai Wensheng took the "265.com" (265 is a website navigation imitating hao123) to the north to zhongguancun, as a support, Wu Xinhong called Chen Jianyu, who was studying in Beijing, to the effect that the eldest brother wanted to come to Beijing to start a business and entertain him well.
As a result, after meeting with Cai Wensheng, Chen Jianyu, who originally wanted to be an animation director, was infected by his eldest brother and eventually "abandoned the director to engage in business" and joined Cai Wensheng's 265.com. It is really "as soon as the big brother shoots, he knows whether there is one or not".
Cai Wensheng's "jianghu qi" is also reflected in the matter of dealing with Lenovo. Once, Lenovo found Cai Wensheng through the middleman, proposed to buy back the FM365 domain name with millions of yuan, and at the end of the negotiation, Cai Wensheng suddenly waved his hand and said in Mandarin with a strong Minnan accent, "This domain name is returned for free."
In this regard, he enjoyed the treatment of a central leader in Lenovo, accompanied by a cadre of senior executives, to visit Lenovo, which is called a scenery. With this battle, the whole of Zhongguancun knew that there was such a person, and he became famous, befriended Lei Jun and many other big names, and also received millions of dollars of investment from IDG.
As the saying goes, a strong dragon is difficult to suppress the head snake. Although there is a reputation in Beijing, there are too many masters, and it is not their own territory after all, where is it more comfortable than Xiamen," which is "one acre and three points of land".
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In 2007, after Cai Wensheng sold 265 to Google for $100 million, he "returned home.".
When working hard in Beijing, Cai Wensheng never gave up Xiamen, he continued to give Wu Xinhong blood transfusion to trick yok super search, and later Wu Xinhong hatched Meitu Xiuxiu, and also gave Yao Jianjun a trick to establish Xiamen Xianglian Technology to operate the Chinese webmaster station in a corporatized manner.
This time "returning home", Cai Wensheng's ambition is even greater, not satisfied with "investment", he also spent a lot of money in the park building of Gulangyu Island to build a conjoined office building, the Internet entrepreneurs "placed" here, trying to build Xiamen into an Internet "town", in order to lay the status of the jianghu.
Its investment in 4399, Meitu Xiuxiu, "Cold Joke Selection" and other companies are concentrated here.
At the end of 2009, Xiong Jun "broke up" with NetDragon and was ready to go it alone. Lee Kai-fu introduced Xiong Jun to Cai Wensheng and hoped that he would take care of this Fellow fuzhou. Cai Wensheng is also righteous enough, less than 24 hours after meeting with Xiong Jun, the funds have arrived, the speed makes Xiong Jun stunned, you know, at that time, Xiong Jun himself did not think clearly about what to do, the agreement was not signed, and the money arrived.
The style of this "big brother" made Xiong Jun admire. "Wensheng sometimes says that for entrepreneurs, a stage of growth is needed, because the premise of people not bending their waists for five buckets of rice is that you already have five buckets of rice or ten buckets of rice, so you will not bend your waist for ten buckets of rice, otherwise a dime will also worry about the hero." Xiong Jun later recalled this.
In addition to financial support, Cai Wensheng also arranged Xiong Jun's synchronous push into his office building to facilitate care and communication.
Of course, the generosity of the eldest brother is also rewarded. In October 2014, Taiwan-listed game company Lesheng announced that it would acquire 1.068 billion yuan for the same time, and as an investor, Cai Wensheng gained a lot.
Yi Guangxu, the founder of "Cold Joke Selection", and Cai Wensheng's association, is equally legendary.
In 2010, Yi Guangxu wanted to get to know Cai Wensheng, a fellow fujian countryman, so he sent a message to the other party on Weibo to ask for advice on buying a domain name. Unexpectedly, Cai Wensheng not only replied, but also left his QQ number to Yi Guangxu, asking him to find Kong Dejing, the CEO of "Name Change China" that he invested in, and by the way, he also gave him Kong Dejing's phone number.
Yi Guangxu was flattered and had not yet returned to his senses, when Cai Wensheng personally called and asked him to meet and talk in Beijing. After that, Cai Wensheng bought a plane ticket for Yi Guangxu to return to Xiamen, and the two talked further and finally finalized the investment.
"I think Cai Wensheng is a very godly person. The first is that as an angel investor he is more proactive than an entrepreneur. The second is that his ability to judge things is sharp enough, he can easily understand the project, others listen to 90% to understand, he listens to 40% to understand, and he seems to see through me at once. Yi Guangxu recalled this meeting.
Cai Wensheng's deeply cultivated land is far more than his own "one acre and three points of land", and many big coffee on the Internet are also inextricably linked to him.
When Meitu went public in Hong Kong in 2017, Cai Wensheng, as chairman, wrote an open letter in which he listed "many good friends and nobles on the road of entrepreneurship for more than 30 years".
Media person Zuo Lin Youhu once wrote, "Every time I go to Beijing, I will hear stories about Cai Wensheng in various bureaus, Xue Manzi is his angel, Lei Jun is his friend, Huang Mingming is his partner, Wang Feng has been peddled domain names, Feng Xin has been conspired against storms, Jiang Tao has invited him to be a guest, liang Ning and him discuss feng shui ..."
It can be seen that Cai Wensheng has a wide network.
As the saying goes, the industry where money gathers, the jianghu where people gather. The Internet jianghu of "leading big brother" Cai Wensheng is still worth looking forward to!
Author: Li Ying, an e-commerce newspaper
(This article is the original author of the e-commerce newspaper, and may not be reproduced without authorization)