Founded in 1996, China Wanwang is a leading Internet application service provider in China. Wanwang is committed to providing enterprise customers with complete Internet application services, covering basic domain name services, hosting services, enterprise mailboxes, website construction, network marketing, voice communications and other application services, as well as high-end enterprise e-commerce solutions and consulting services. To help enterprise customers truly realize e-commerce applications and improve the competitiveness of enterprises.
Alibaba Group acquired Wanwang in 2009, and on January 6, 2013, Alibaba Group announced that its Alibaba Cloud and Wanwang will merge into the new Alibaba Cloud company, and the "Wanwang" brand will continue to remain as a domain name service brand of Alibaba Cloud after the merger
VC stories
He, wearing a pair of silver wire glasses and gentle, was mild-mannered when they first met him, and it was easy to think of him as a teacher. And he is often invited as a guest of honor at important conferences, winning thunderous applause from the audience, he is from Beijing Normal University with a legendary experience of China's leading Internet service provider, the founder of China Wanwang - Zhang Xiangning.
For the Internet industry, when it comes to Peking University, everyone will think of Robin Li; when it comes to Tsinghua, everyone will think of Zhang Chaoyang; and when it comes to Beijing Normal University, everyone will think of Zhang Xiangning, who leads the development of the Internet in different fields of the Internet. They represent the spirit of these schools and the common pursuit of students.
Although Zhang Xiangning voluntarily dropped out of Beijing Normal University, he still thanked Beijing Normal University for his training. Zhang Xiangning has said in his speech many times: "The struggle on the Internet also represents the efforts of the Sub-Internet of Beijing Normal University. Creating miracles together with other elites of colleges and universities is not only a great pleasure in their own lives, but also an interpretation of the spirit of Shida. ”
In 1996, from receiving IDG's first venture capital of $500,000 to part-time angel investors, Zhang Xiangning deeply realized the important role played by venture capital in entrepreneurship. In the familiar Field of the Internet, he also uses his own experience, energy and money to help more entrepreneurs realize their dreams and care for their growth with information technology.
A legendary and bumpy life
In the eyes of many people, Zhang Xiangning's entrepreneurship and career are smooth, and the 22-year-old entrepreneur won the first pot of gold of 1 million yuan and became famous because of this, and won the recognition and respect of the Internet and investment circles for the continuous creation of two major Internet companies of China Wanwang and Tianxia Internet Technology Group, but the actual situation is not the case.
Zhang Xiangning has been a person who is used to walking in front since he was a child, which is also doomed to his extraordinary. When he saw the children carrying school bags to school at the age of 5, Zhang Xiangning began to make restless noises about going to school, so later he was generally two years younger than his classmates; in high school, Zhang Xiangning had already developed a strong interest in physics, and the knowledge of the universe, black holes, quanta, and relativity, which was boring and tedious for other students, became a paradise in his eyes; after going to college, Zhang Xiangning was diligent in thinking and was a famous young genius at that time.
To this day, Zhang Xiangning still has a strong interest in complex geophysics, and still remembers the professors who once excited him, these teachers who taught him the most colorful knowledge collection at the university level, and also allowed him to swim in the vast ocean of knowledge, he constantly explored in physics, in order to pursue higher levels of knowledge, applying to study abroad.
At the same time, his thesis was also appreciated by the professors of the Physics Research Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, and he was given the opportunity to study abroad, and it became natural to withdraw from Beijing Normal University.
Zhang Xiangning, who has longed for the future to be able to show his skills in the physics world, got the news at this time, his father suddenly had a heart attack, in order to better take care of his parents, Zhang Xiangning resolutely chose to stay with his family and temporarily gave up his plan to go abroad.
Going abroad was stranded, he began to develop in the workplace, starting from an ordinary employee, has been in international trade, shipping, tourism, bidding management, equipment development and production, computer exhibition and other industries to try, in these industries although not much achievements, but quickly accumulated a lot of operational experience, smart talent plus a proactive learning attitude, let him continue to enrich himself, accumulate successful literacy.
The hardships of dreams at the beginning
In 1996, when the first wave of the Internet began to sweep the world, Zhang Xiangning was keenly aware of the business opportunities and joined hands with his brother Zhang Xiangdong to found Beijing Chuanglian Communication Network Co., Ltd., which is now China Wanwang.
Like most startups, the initial start-up capital of Chuanglian is only 2 million yuan, and in the Internet, a money-burning industry, 2 million yuan is insignificant, and there is no clear and clear direction. Because the initial direction of Chuanglian is to help enterprises do website development or system integration, it is very difficult to get a list, so everything in the future is also very slim, the pressure is very large, Zhang Xiangning is calculating cash almost every day and can support several months.
In any case, it is impossible to stop time, and soon, only one-tenth of the 2 million is left, but the company still does not achieve profitability. Immediately close, the company can still have 200,000 funds left; continue to operate, there are only two possibilities, one is the remaining 200,000 also lost, the other is to achieve profitability, to success. Zhang Xiangning was in trouble.
Giving up is doomed to failure, and there is still a glimmer of life in perseverance. In the end, Zhang Xiangning chose to challenge the future, borrow money to support the company, the most difficult period, there are only four rooms in the company, in the hot summer, can not squeeze out excess funds to buy air conditioning, can only wear vests to work, if there is no female employees can also do "grandpa".
Immediately when the mountains were exhausted, Zhang Xiangning found that there were many preemptive registrations of domestic domain names, so Chuanglian launched a vigorous "domain name protection campaign" to provide domain name registration services. This campaign not only enabled Chuanglian to successfully get out of the predicament, but also found the main business direction in the future.
After several years of struggle, Chuanglian launched the "Wanwang Plan" - by the end of 2000, the number of Chuanglian customers had grown to 10,000. On May 31, 1999, the goal of Chuanglian was completed ahead of schedule, so Zhang Xiangning directly renamed the company "China Wanwang", and Wanwang also became the largest Internet business company in China at that time.
In the same year, the US venture fund IDG offered to inject capital into Wanwang. As a result, Wanwang got the first venture capital of 500,000 US dollars, and the venture capitalists Zhang Xiangning contacted during this period also taught Zhang Xiangning how to "burn money and circle money", the direct consequence of this is that Wanwang "burned" millions of dollars in a year, and fortunately, at the end of the road, Wanwang received funds from Xinqiao Investment, which is the second round of financing of Wanwang.
In just four years, Wanwang has developed into China's largest domain name registration and website platform service provider, with more than 100,000 enterprise users, and is one of the most successful Internet companies in China. In fact, Wanwang was able to get such a development, which had a lot to do with the commercial development situation at that time. At that time, venture capitalists did not pay attention to profits, but only valued the growth of business volume and user numbers.
After the second financing, Zhang Xiangning looked forward to listing on the NASDAQ, but at the end of 2000, the Internet bubble burst, the Internet companies ushered in their winter, many Internet companies collapsed overnight, and at that time, Wanwang was still not profitable, in terms of the economic situation of Wanwang, the company's finances could only support seven or eight months.
In order to ensure the normal operation of the company, Zhang Xiangning can only fight a battle. Zhang Xiangdong took pains to turn the tide, and the biggest challenge was to prove that Wanwang could make money, or that it must become a profitable enterprise within a certain period of time, at least not the current income can not be made up, otherwise, Wanwang will only have the end of bankruptcy.
At this time, the drawbacks of rapid expansion in 1999 appeared, the cost of Wanwang remained high, in order to minimize expenses, Zhang Xiangning took up the financial statements to study painstakingly, and compressed all possible costs (advertising, rent, labor costs, etc.) to the minimum, therefore, Wanwang's office space moved from a high-end office building of 3,000 square meters to only 1,000 square meters of office space, and reduced the number of employees by "natural loss".
After two years of hard work, finally in 2002, Wanwang turned a loss into a profit, from a difficult entrepreneurial period into a period of stable growth. Although Wanwang's business has been growing and has not declined, its fame is still not large enough. After all, the Internet is an industry that pays attention to "attention", and it is indeed not easy for Wanwang to survive in such a situation.
The low profile of Wanwang is related to his economic positioning, Zhang Xiangning has always divided the customers of Internet companies into two categories, one is individual users, the other is enterprise users, and Wanwang is more focused on the latter, therefore, Wanwang has not been popular in reputation, but the performance has been growing steadily.
In fact, Wanwang is the earliest profitable Internet company, and has maintained a steady growth trend after achieving cash flow balance in 2001.
Buy wheat network, step into e-commerce
In 2005, Zhang Xiangning decided to enter e-commerce and increase investment, expanding the business field from domain name registration and colocation to e-commerce. Because of hundreds of thousands of enterprise users and its own IT platform developed over the years, Wanwang has provided convenience for Wanwang to enter e-commerce.
On March 29, 2005, Wanwang's B2B (enterprise-to-business) new army "BuyMai.com" was announced in Hangzhou, which is also the base camp of B2B boss Alibaba. Zhang Xiangning intends to reach the third place in the market in a year and a half, and Zhang Xiangning's ultimate ambition is to make Maimai.com the largest online trading market in China.
The reason why the wheat net is "the newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger" is that it can be arrogant capital. Buymai.com is jointly funded by the famous venture capitalists IDG and Xinqiao, and IDG has always been known for its high success rate in China, and its investment is spread throughout all corners of the network industry, search engines, games, professional websites, e-commerce are involved, and IDG shares are available in Sohu, Tencent, Dangdang, Ctrip, etc.
Although IDG's investment in various industries has been smooth, B2B seems to be its heartache. Although Alibaba was not well remembered in 1999, in 2004, international venture capitalists began to fight to seize the B2B market. When SoftBank, The United States Fidelity, Granite, TDF, etc. look at the prospects of B2B and invest $82 million in Alibaba, they only exclude IDG, and IDG, which has attacked everywhere and has repeatedly won, cannot help but have a hint of bitterness.
In 2005, no one had any doubts about the attractiveness of B2B, and the IDC (Internet Data Center) 2005 report noted that the growth of global e-commerce was mainly affected by B2B, with B2B's share in e-commerce reaching 87%. In 2004, the profit of global B2B e-commerce was $2.776 trillion, and B2B boss Alibaba had already made an average daily profit of 1 million yuan in 2004. Even more striking is that there are currently 23 million SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZEDs in China, accounting for 99% of the total number of registered enterprises, but only 3% of enterprises are using e-commerce. At the same time, IDC believes that in the next five years, China's B2B e-commerce will grow at a rate of up to 120%, after years of Internet development precipitation, in 2005, the domestic e-commerce development environment will be greatly improved, B2B market will be greatly developed.
In the face of B2B's good development prospects, IDG naturally does not allow this side gap to appear on the map. In fact, as early as 1999, IDG has begun to try to enter the B2B market, IDG has joined other venture capital to participate in the then e-commerce hope star 8848, but two years later 8848 declared bankruptcy. After being rejected by Alibaba, IDG again chose HC, DG is one of the major shareholders of HC International, but the results are not satisfactory, HC did not have much to do, and in the second half of 2004, there was a scare incident within HC, followed by a tight capital chain, on March 23, 2005, once again came out of the news that "all intelligent employees stopped paying performance wages". A series of negative news caused HC's business to decline and also caused IDG to lose confidence in it. As a last resort, IDG and The American Shimbashi Group decided to invest 100 million yuan in Wanwang to turn around.
IDG puts its hopes on the wheat buying network. The goal of buying wheat network is to establish an interactive information exchange platform between buyers and suppliers, and at this time, the strong customer base of Wanwang has become the advantage of buying Maiwang, and the customers of Buymai Are basically from Wanwang, which is also different from several other B2B websites, and the quality of information is more guaranteed. As of 2011, Maimai has become an important strategic center of Wanwang.
After IDG and Xinqiao injected 100 million yuan into Wanwang, Zhang Xiangning, president of DG, Xinqiao and Wanwang, became the main shareholders, accounting for no more than 50% of the shares.
The shattering of the dream of a 10,000-online listing
In fact, listing has always been an important strategic goal of Wanwang, since 2007, Zhang Xiangning has been preparing for the listing of Wanwang, and has repeatedly said that it is only a matter of time before Wanwang is listed. In 2008, the economic environment began to turn cold, and Zhang Xiangdong also slowed down the pace of listing, but did not sit comfortably, and Zhang Xiangning made three mergers and acquisitions in one year.
First acquisition: Oak Power. Main business: enterprise website construction and network marketing, high-end customers, such as brand enterprises, real estate, golf, group user areas. The main purpose of the acquisition is to research and innovate in the web technology, animation and e-commerce of Ouke Power.
Second acquisition: Ningbo Netbo. Main business: enterprise information construction, once a technical service outsourcer of Wanwang, the customer is mainly for the world's top 500 well-known enterprises at home and abroad, providing a variety of enterprise IT customization services.
Third acquisition: Wolf Smoke Network Technology Co., Ltd. Main business: to provide self-service website construction services for enterprises and individuals, customer relationship management, B2C (some e-commerce matters for business-to-customer) and some functions of B2B. Main product: Super Station Car. After the merger, Wanwang introduced this product and repackaged it as a "fast website", and the product has been launched and quickly occupied more than 70% of the smart website market share.
Zhang Xiangning believes that these acquisitions are necessary preparations for the listing of Wanwang, but the price of these mergers and acquisitions is not cheap.
According to wanwang's original plan, it will be listed in the second quarter of 2009, but the financial crisis does not seem to be so easy to let wanwang go. Whether it is to acquire other companies or deal with the economic crisis requires a lot of cash, and for venture capital into wanwang, which has been in the past 10 years, the cash-out pressure is too great. In the face of a double crisis, Zhang Xiangning had no choice but to choose between listing and being acquired, which is the best choice for Wanwang.
In September 2009, Alibaba paid RMB 540 million in cash in two installments to acquire an equity stake in China's Wanwang operations, the first phase spent RMB435 million to acquire 85% of Wanwang' equity, and the second phase was Alibaba's re-acquisition of 14.67% of Wanwang's equity for RMB104.56 million in cash during a specified period from 2011 to 2013. At the end of 2009, Alibaba announced the completion of the first phase of the acquisition.
Alibaba is a leader in the field of e-commerce in China, and China Wanwang is a leader in the field of basic Internet services in China, and this cooperation is naturally highly praised and expected by people in the industry.
Zhang Xiangning started from scratch, successful entrepreneurial experience, let him deeply feel the importance of angel funds (venture capital) for entrepreneurs, Zhang Xiangning understands the difficulties to be experienced when starting a business, and also knows that the overstretched funds in the early stage of entrepreneurship bring a fatal blow to the enterprise.
Zhang Xiangning once said: "Although I don't have to worry about the company's funds now, I will still go to some entrepreneurship conferences, where I will see a lot of passionate entrepreneurs, look at their eager eyes, I will remember my own experience when I started a business." It is also because of this feeling that Wanwang and Zhang Xiangning have been helping those young entrepreneurs, and Zhang Xiangning has also worked part-time as an angel investor.
Revelation
Wanwang can become the only Internet company that exists in the same period can not be described as unsuccessful, although it has not been popular, but its growth is still worth learning.
At the beginning of the enterprise' entrepreneurship, it has to face the problem of pursuing speed or profit, even if the profit is zero, every year to re-invest the money earned in product research and development or market development, then its growth rate must not be underestimated, but if the enterprise has been going in this direction, there must be no profit to speak of, and eventually there will be some people who stand up against it. At this time, the input is reduced, and the profit will inevitably rise, of course, at the same time, the speed will slow down.
Therefore, as a leader, you must have a big picture of when to increase the speed and when to make profits reflected. For example, Wanwang has been expanding the market at the beginning of its establishment, and after forming a certain model, it has successfully achieved a balance of payments, and since then, the growth of Wanwang in all aspects has been very stable.
In addition, if the company reaches a certain stage and needs to find venture capital and needs to give up a part of the shares, it must be very careful, if you give up a lot, it is easy to be tied up in the later stage.
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