From a cold door to a big factory upstart, a self-made entrepreneur to the new richest man in South Korea, he wrote a heavy stroke for his own cold door counterattack road!
As a former dick, he became a tech conglomerate entrepreneur entirely from scratch, surpassing the country's largest conglomerate and becoming the richest man on the rich list of a country ruled by chaebols. He covered the sky with his hands to fight against the monopoly of the Korean chaebols. His name is Kim Fan-so.
How did Kim Fan-so fight back to become South Korea's richest man?
How hard is it to become the richest man in South Korea?
In July 2021, Kim Fan-so, the founder of the Korean Kakao Group, was selected by the American magazine "Forbes" as the richest man in South Korea in the new generation, becoming the richest person in South Korea at present, you may not know what Kakao is, but you must not be unaware of the Samsung Group, Kim Fan-so is the man who defeated lee Jae-yong, the son of the South Korean Samsung Group, to become the man with the most assets in South Korea.
The net worth of $13 billion squeezed out Samsung Lee's $12.3 billion worth, converting to 85 billion yuan. But everyone must not have expected that this 55-year-old middle-aged uncle was actually this poor dick, from a "slum" can be described as the lowest level of Korean society, he relied on courage, all the way through the barrier, broke out of the sky!
At this time, some people have to ask, what is the "kakao" group?
Kim Fan-so's "kakao" group actually has business in South Korea, including communication software kakaotalk, mobile payment, games, shopping and other Internet services, all-encompassing, you can understand the achievement is the "Korean version of WeChat".
Kakao has its own Internet ecosystem, which accounts for almost 80% of South Korea's communication software market, and the number of global users exceeded 100 million in 2013. In 2019, kakao's revenue grew to 3.1 trillion won and its operating profit exceeded 200 billion won.
According to the 2020 survey, South Koreans used youtube the longest in the first half of the year, but spent the most on Kakaotalk, so you can also say that Kim Fan-so is "South Korea's Ma Huateng".
Three-quarters of South Korea's population now uses kakao software.
Just as we can't do without WeChat, Koreans are also inseparable from Kim Fan-so's kakao, living on food, clothing, housing and travel to rely on kakao to solve, and even cooperate with "Ant Financial" to solve the problems caused by two-dimensional code payment, yes, it is the familiar Alipay.
But no matter how cattle Kakaotalk is, it is always inseparable from the legendary story of Kim Fan-so, a poor millionaire, because this is a story: a story of real cold door and real counterattack.
In the end, how did Jin Fanxiu climb to the top step by step?
What was the story before kakao was founded?
Kim Fan-so, born in 1955, was born in a family of 7, the family is poor, the parents in addition to work, but also have to take care of five children, the two parents in order to raise 5 children separated, only the father who graduated from high school moved out of the countryside to Seoul to do carpentry, the mother stayed in the countryside, from a young age Kim Fan-so was raised by his grandmother.
Jin Fanxiu is the third oldest, and Jin Fanxiu, who was born as the eldest son, did not lose his heart by the poor life, but was more energetic.
The difficult environment also made him realize that if he wanted to seek change in this adversity, the only thing he could rely on was "reading", and reading may be the only way for poor families to turn classes upside down.
In middle school, his father changed to a meat merchant and made a little money and bought a house, but the good times did not last long and eventually went bankrupt, so this made him more convinced of the importance of studying. He began to cultivate hard, because he believed that as long as he "achieved fame and success", he could reverse the hard days at home in one fell swoop, and his brothers and sisters would no longer have to starve and freeze, and even when they were studying, they really staged the drama of hanging beams and thorns, and cut off their fingers when they were distracted to set up a "blood book" to study seriously.
In the summer of 1986, Kim Fan-so was admitted to Seoul National University, The "Peking University" of South Korea.
To this he once said:
"When I was a kid, I rarely lived with my mom because she had to make money everywhere. I was the only one in my family who went to college. ”
Poverty and lack of mother's love were once the biggest sorrows of Kim Fan-so's childhood, but he also made up his mind and vowed that no matter what, he must get ahead, he succeeded, and he became the first college student in the Kim family.
Seoul National University
Studying at Seoul National University in South Korea, studying industrial engineering, during his college years, because his family was really poor and could not pay tuition fees for several semesters, Kim Fan-so could only make money as a tutor himself, subsidizing his tuition and living expenses.
In this way, Kim Fan-so stumbled through the undergraduate studies of the university. However, he worked hard since he was a child and had higher ideals, so he was admitted to the graduate school of electronic information engineering at Seoul National University and continued his studies.
After graduation, Kim Fan-so, with the aura of "Seoul National University", successfully entered the "Samsung Group" as a software engineer, which is another very remarkable thing
Because Koreans once called themselves:
"In South Korea, three things that cannot be avoided in life are: death, paying taxes, and Samsung."
Being able to get into a Samsung job is another thing for Koreans, and Kim Fan-so has exchanged a paper education for a decent job.
High education, stable income, large company, it seems that Jin Fanxiu's life has such a perfect ending, but he is not so satisfied, he is more ambitious.
Before the story continues, let's first look at the life trajectory of the domestic North Drifters. After graduating from college, I found a good company, and then successfully promoted with some of my own abilities, and then relied on my experience to jump to another company as an executive, and then married and had children, bought a house, successfully raised my son, and then retired to my hometown to retire. Isn't it déjà vu, familiar with the life victory group equation?
Unfortunately, Kim Fan Soo's life is not so easy to get by, and he did not expect that his idea actually changed the Internet ecology of South Korea.
In 1997, Kim Fan-so, who had been a "social animal" for five years, resigned, and at that time, resigning from the Samsung Group was also a great event, because it was easy to enter such a "big factory" as Samsung. How can it be said to go away.
Based on the interest in BBS (online community forum) in college, in line with the wave of internet development before the millennium, in 1999, he and other partners raised 185,000 US dollars to co-found the game platform "hangame" (later changed to nhn emtertainment), which is an online game platform.
With his marketing and business acumen, he developed free-to-play games for players, instantly breaking through 1 million users in three months and attracting 10 million game users in a year and a half.
With the blessing of the new millennium Internet blue ocean, coupled with the experience of this game, he acquired the "Korean Google search engine " navar" founded by former Samsung colleague Lee Hae-jin, and jointly established nhn company in 2001, and later navar quickly became the largest entrance website and search engine for search in South Korea, and it has been until now, and nhn is also the most important enterprise that has caused Google to repeatedly suffer setbacks in the competition in the Korean market.
You think it's over here and it's over there?
However, it is not, in order to help the company to go to a higher level, in 2005, Jin Fanxiu, like many Internet dreamers, went to Silicon Valley in the United States, but he was inexperienced and ran into walls everywhere, but this did not make him desperate, because as long as he held nhn's shares well, he still made money more or less every year, and he could go on for a long time if he guarded his own city. Of course, this seems to be back to the state of working at Samsung before, life is about to begin to "set in stone", this time Kim Fan-so can not sit still, in 2007, 41-year-old he sold Nhn's shares.
A lot of people wonder why he left NHN
He just said lightly:
"Because it's so comfortable, I don't have the feeling of fighting on the battlefield, I like to fight on the battlefield."
The domineering spirit of an entrepreneur is vividly displayed here.
Of course, in the days of the United States, there was no nhn's income, which was equivalent to sitting on the mountain, but soon, he ushered in the second inflection point of his life - the era of mobility.
In the same year that Kim Fan-so sold his shares, Steve Jobs' iPhone was released, and for a while the topic of iPhones caused a sensation in the streets. Jin Fanxiu, who was working, was shocked by the Apple iPhone conference, and when everyone discussed the epoch-making products in Jobs's hands, he began to pay attention to future trends, and Jin Fanxiu asked himself: "What is the mobile phone?" "Thinking further, the future may be blueprints and plans.
Kim Fan-so returned to South Korea after his trip to the United States, spending three years with his family while further thinking about what to do next. In 2009, the advent of whatsapp instant messaging software in the United States, let him see new business opportunities, at that time, the information circulation of the mobile phone industry in South Korea was still based on "text messages", whatsapp can also be used, but also had to pay an annual fee of 0.99 US dollars per year, which caused great resistance to the popularity of the software.
So with the release of the new iPhone 4 in 2010, prompting him to return to the workplace, this time he brought Kakaotalk, although Kakao talk imitates whatsapp as a communication software, but his ambitions are not limited to a small software.
When kakao talk came out, The Korean mobile information market was not a blue ocean. His old club, Navar, is preparing to launch its own software, and the former owner, Samsung, launched a chat on messaging software and bundled it on every Samsung phone.
SK Telecom Group also transplanted its own nate chat from the PC side to the mobile terminal, in 2011 because the SMS business is the source of profit for SK Telecom, and even used the government-business relationship, prompting the South Korean government to pass the case to restrict free communication software such as Kakao talk, requiring users who use Kakao talk to charge when using free voice calls, which is like every time you chat with your sweet lover WeChat voice chat, Our three major operators also have to charge you the same weChat phone bill by the minute.
After several twists and turns, the bill failed under public pressure from South Koreans, but this narrow-cut approach reflects the old-fashioned thinking of South Korean chaebols, whose slow pace of innovation has also bought time for kakao talk's survival.
Eventually Kakao Talk became a giant company, and Kakao launched other services, including taxis, online banking, digital streaming music, and more.
Kim Fan-so's different thinking in South Korea to break out of a different path, he insists that Kakao's working environment should be relaxed and diverse, there is no "big patriarchal" authoritarian leadership above and below the big chaebol, emphasizing the ease of youth and vitality, in South Korea surrounded by strong enemies, killing blood road, becoming one of the companies that young people in South Korea dream of now.
However, the process of Kim Fan-so's growth also reflects the phenomenon that South Korean chaebols are rampant and the group controls the lifeblood of the country. The chaebol has too much influence in South Korea, and in the early days of Kim Fan-so's hard work, he also entered a large company like Samsung.
In South Korea, even if a company does not look like Samsung, the parent company is actually Samsung
Group management has reached this level, that is to say, employment opportunities are controlled by chaebols - young people only want to go to large groups such as Samsung and SK. The hereditary system of Korean chaebols has brought the entire social structure to a standstill, but the people have no choice but to allow the chaebols to do evil. The rich third generation who did not learn any tricks committed a drug scandal and were acquitted.
But unconsciously, kakao group itself became one of the chaebols, he acquired a large number of Internet-related enterprises, became a Korean Internet giant, history is always strikingly similar, poor dick silk has also become a chaebol.
We seem to see a story of counter-attack growth, but in fact it may be another rise of Samsung. The ambition of the chaebol is so great, the power is so wide, the means are so fierce that people will be torn apart at the thought of it, and even the Blue House can be shaken, will Kim Fan-so be the next Lee Jae-yong?
In 2021, in response to the COVID-19 public welfare activities of global philanthropist Bill Gates
Kim Fan So sent a message to all kakao employees saying:
"I have pledged to donate more than half of my life's assets to solve social problems."
There are so many chaebols in South Korea, only he has personally joined the ranks of public welfare, and more than 200 super-rich people in the world have signed up to this initiative, but there is limited progress in East Asia, and a few rich people in Hong Kong and Taiwan have responded, and japan and South Korea have not one.
Perhaps it was the suffering of his childhood that made him unforgettable, he became the first person in Korea, we can only pray that Kim Fan-so of the Kakao Group can become the "clear stream" of the chaebol.
As Mencius said: "Out of its kind, it is superior to its superiority, and since the birth of the people, it has not been flourished in Confucius."