Yesterday (November 14), Renren announced that it will sell Renren to Duoniu Media for $60 million, which is considered a left-handed right-handed business. Because the predecessor of Duoniu Media was Donews, Donews is a website under the Thousand Oaks Group, and the founder of the Thousand Oaks Group is Chen Yizhou, the current CEO of Renren Company. Therefore, in the view of Liu Xingliang, a veteran Media person on the Internet, this $20 million business is actually just a left-handed trick to the right hand. But what is worth gossiping about today is the story of four men, Chen Yizhou, Wang Xing, Zhou Hongyi and Liu Ren, behind Renren.
<h1>Wang Xing and Chen Yizhou: The Story of Entrepreneurs and Bosses</h1>
The origin of Renren network actually has a lot to do with Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan Dianping today. But before gossiping about the relationship between Chen Yizhou and Wang Xing, please allow Brother Value to talk about Chen Yizhou's dedication to social interaction.
When it comes to Chen Yizhou, today's post-90s may not be familiar with this big guy, but in the hearts of the post-80s such as the post-70s and the value brother, he can be regarded as one of the representatives of the first generation of Internet people. Chen Yizhou (born in 1969), the founder of Xiaomi, is the same age as Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, and was once a classmate of Wuhan University. In the 1990s, Chen Yizhou had a dream of a social empire, so he recruited a group of high-achieving students on the campus of Tsinghua University, and now Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan, NetEase Youdao CEO Zhou Feng, and former Shanda Online CEO Xu Chaojun, including Chen Yizhou, were originally arrested by Chen Yizhou to develop ChinaRen, a product of China's SNS social originator. But the huge "Everyone on ChinaRen" ultimately failed, selling it to Sohu for $30 million, and Chen Yizhou became the vice president of Sohu in 2000. But Chen Yizhou still wants to do campus social SNS, which also has the intersection of Chen Yizhou and Wang Xing.
Wang Xing, known as "nine defeats and one win", was actually just a returnee's technical home and dixie entrepreneur in 2004, not the CEO of Meituan Dianping, which is now listed. At that time, he and his team did several projects and failed, and later created the university SNS intranet with his Tsinghua classmates Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang. However, this is not Wang Xing's innovation, but copied Facebook. According to Wang Xing's early investors at the time, Wang Xing was discouraged by the failure of successive ventures at that time, so he came up with an idea of "simply copy a ready-made bar, Facebook is very good." Therefore, the intranet of the school was born, and then there was the intranet.
Unexpectedly, in 2005, the school intranet and the intranet developed at an astonishing speed, but Wang Xing had no money and had to look around for buyers. At this time, Chen Yizhou's 5Q social networking also belongs to a state of silence, but he is not dead hearted. So I found the intranet of the school, found Wang Xing, and prepared to buy them. At that time, Chen Yizhou bid up to 2 million US dollars, which Wang Xing and others did not expect, after all, several people were used to starting a business. Without much hesitation, he agreed at the second contact, and in October 2006, Wang Xing sold the intranet and intranet of the school in its entirety. After selling the two websites to Chen Yizhou, Wang Xing did not stay in Thousand Oaks Interactive for long, in 2007 he started a business again, and founded Meituan.com in 2010, after merging with Dianping, Meituan Dianping and this year finally completed the listing. Without Chen Yizhou's $2 million, perhaps Wang Xing would still continue to linger in the failed entrepreneurial experience. From this point of view, Chen Yizhou can be regarded as a continuation of Wang Xing's entrepreneurial pace.
Turning back to Chen Yizhou and his Renren network. After the successful acquisition of the intranet and the intranet, it did not immediately usher in an outbreak, and what made Chen Yizhou and his Renren network (the intranet later became more celebrity network) famous was the "grabbing parking space and stealing vegetables" game that swept the white-collar crowd 10 years ago.
In 2008, the "Happy Network" founded by Cheng Binghao, former vice president of Sina, was born, and the game of "grabbing parking spaces and stealing vegetables" that made white-collar workers excited swept the country. Seeing that his hard-earned intranet and intranet were robbed of the limelight, Chen Yizhou immediately opened the giant imitation mode, snatched the domain name of the kaixin.com, and copied a happy network, while Cheng Binghao's "genuine happy network" can only use kaixin001.com. At that time, the two websites also launched a public relations war of words, but this time Chen Yizhou was ready to play a big one, in 2009 he changed the school intranet to Renren, and integrated packaging, he wanted to become the real "Chinese Facebook", and let the world know. Renren successfully landed on the IPO of the New York Stock Exchange on May 5, 2011.
Chen Yizhou was quite successful seven years ago, and Value Brother believes that he has achieved two things: first, he successfully went public before the copied Facebook (Facebook went public on May 18, 2012); second, it became the fourth largest Internet company at that time, after Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, with a market capitalization of $7.12 billion.
Today, however, Renren is only worth $60 million ($20 million in cash + $40 million in equity). This is a 157 times difference compared with the highest market value of Renren.com of $9.4 billion!
However, wang Xing, an entrepreneur at that time, sold his project to his boss Chen Yizhou with 2 million US dollars, but brought the latter the fourth largest Internet market value company, even if it is now 60 million US dollars sold to another company under his own, it is enough to explain Chen Yizhou's business maneuvering skills.
<h1>Liu Ren and Zhou Hongyi: The "friend" feud between jianghu reporters and militant gangsters</h1>
After gossiping about Chen Yizhou and Wang Xing's inside story, Brother Value will talk about the other side of this transaction- Duoniu Media. The mention of many cattle may not be familiar to everyone, but its predecessor was once a big name - Donews. Founded in 2000, this IT community can be called the Whampoa Military Academy of Internet editors and journalists, and was the most influential IT community in China at that time. At that time, Donews gathered Zhou Hongyi, Cai Wensheng, Chen Nian, Qiu Bojun, Chen Yizhou and other bigwigs. At that time, Liu Ren could become Liu Chuanzhi's guest of honor, and could make dinner appointments with Lei Jun and Ding Lei at any time. Donews' annual year-end party is almost always an annual event in the internet space. Robin Lee, Kai-Fu Lee, Ma Huateng and almost all well-known Internet figures in China at that time participated. At that time, Liu Ren seemed to be on a par with the science and technology giants, and also won the support of many subordinates, quite a lot of jianghu.
But a twist in 2008 nearly killed Donews. This is the story of Zhou Hongyi, founder and chairman of 360, and Liu Ren, founder of Donews.
According to Southern People Weekly, Liu Ren, who was once known as "China's first IT reporter" in 2008, was caught by the police after Xu Xinshi, the editor of "Little Brother" DoNews, agreed to Qihoo 360's "paid public relations" requirements. The reason was suspected commercial extortion. The person who sent him to 3 years in prison was Zhou Hongyi, the chairman of 360, who was once called a "friend" by Liu Ren.
Mentioning the relationship between Liu Ren and Zhou Hongyi can be described as a complicated grudge, and perhaps only the parties can understand. In 2002, Liu Ren's "CNNIC Hand" spoke for Zhou Hongyi, who had a close relationship with Zhou Hongyi. In 2001, Zhou Hongyi gave Liu Ren a very expensive set of combination sounds. "Knowledge Economy" struggled, with a large amount of advertising money invested by Zhou, and DoNews' servers were even once located in Zhou's computer room. For a long time, they maintained the habit of seeing each other every month. (Quoted from Southern People Weekly).
However, the two also began to fight quickly after a few years, and the outside world was rumored to come mainly from Liu Ren's jianghu qi. In 2006, 3721 was acquired by Yahoo, and Zhou Hongyi then founded Qihoo 360, which specializes in killing rogue software, including the original 3721 he created. "Your first bucket of gold was earned like this, how can you turn around and deal with the person who gave you money?" Turn your hands over to the clouds and cover your hands for the rain, do whatever you want? This is the basic principle that cannot be touched in business," Liu Ren once said of Zhou Hongyi. For Liu Ren, what he admired was the bright and honest big man, and Zhou Hongyi's approach at that time was quite inappropriate. But the two have not yet completely broken up. The two of them are on the opposite side of you and me, perhaps from the big battle of free antivirus.
In 2008, Qihoo 360 entered the field of free disinfection. This is undoubtedly a fatal shock to Kingsoft, Rising, etc. Liu Ren has close relations with anti-virus software companies such as Rising, Jiangmin, and Jinshan, and when 360 broke out into a war with traditional giants, he was entrusted to mediate, but Zhou Hongyi did not sell his face. After that, Rising's people found Liu Ren and posted a series of negative news against 360 on Donews, with no shortage of extreme words, such as the headline "Zhou Hongyi: Half Devil, Half Devil", "Who dares to be more shameless than Zhou Hongyi?" articles like that. Liu Ren and Zhou Hongyi finally became enemies.
On October 12, 2008, Xu Xinshi, a subordinate of Liu Ren, received a call from 360 Company, agreed to pay the balance of public relations fees, and asked Liu Ren to be present. At a teahouse in Haidian District, the moment they received 80,000 yuan in cash, the police who had ambushed them in advance broke through the door and arrested Liu Ren and his companions.
"No, how can the brothers put such a poisonous hand and push their brothers to death", the founder of Duoniu Media said at the time, he did not think that Zhou Hongyi would attack Liu Ren. Wang Gongquan, a 360 angel investor, said at the time, "Zhou Hongyi did not let outsiders intervene in this matter." Liu Ren was sentenced to three years in prison for extortion and released in May 2011. At that time, Renren had been successfully listed in the United States, and Donews had also completed its transformation, known as today's Multi-Cow Interactive Media.
After his release from prison, Liu Ren was quite low-key, said not to trust anyone, and even very resistant to interviews. Zhou Hongyi had privately sought reconciliation with Liu Ren, but was rejected by Liu Ren. Perhaps in Liu Ren's view, without Zhou Hongyi, he could call the wind and rain more and continue to sit on an equal footing with Liu Chuanzhi, Lei Jun, Ding Lei and other big men.
Zhou Hongyi's blow to Liu Ren was fatal, and the latter could never be forgotten. When Liu Ren began to have a bad relationship with Zhou Hongyi many years ago, when asked about the relationship between the two, he called Liu Ren a "friend", but after he was released from prison, he said, "I Liu Ren have never had a real friend for so many years" and "No one can help me." Zhou Hongyi once asked Chen Nian, the president of Fanke, to reconcile, and Chen Tong, the former vice president of Sina, also tried to help the two reconcile, but Liu Ren refused, "Emotionally, it is temporarily difficult to bend."
Now that Duoniu has acquired Renren, liu Ren, the former founder of Donews, has made an investment, although he has also fallen into fraud rumors (some victims have released the "How Liu Ren LinBing Committed Fraud", but the authenticity cannot be examined), but there are many Buddhist lineages. The belligerent Zhou Hongyi still likes to fight with people, but the sharp edge is not as sharp as it was a few years ago.