Just after the Lantern Festival, Ding Sanshi flew to Shenghai and found Song Weiyang, who had returned to Shanghai from his hometown in Xikang.

The two made an appointment to meet at the Time Cafe, and Song Weiyang sucked the juice and asked, "In such a hurry, what is the matter that came to me?"

"Two things," Mr. Ding said, "one is to ask you for advice on how to play online games, and the other is to hasten the plan to quickly accelerate the acquisition of NetEase shares." ”

Song Weiyang said with a smile: "Didn't you say last year that "Journey to the West" would be launched at the end of the year? ”

Ding Sanshi reluctantly explained: "The game studio I bought had no experience in making online games at all. There were too many bugs during the closed beta, and I kept postponing the public beta time, and I simply canceled the project before the Spring Festival, and all of them were demolished and remade "Journey to the West 2". Your "Legend" is so popular, I have to come over and learn from it. ”

Song Weiyang said: "Make all the products the same, find the right audience, and then develop according to this group." "Journey to the West" is a 2D turn-based online game, you can learn more from the successful experience of "Stone Age", and at the same time summarize the aspects that the other party has not done well. ”

"I mean operation and promotion," Ding Sanshi said, "Other game agencies also learn from "Legend" to engage in Internet café promotion, but "Legend" is the one that is really popular. Even your previous "War of Gods and Demons" is now about to die, and I really don't understand the promotion of "Legend". ”

Song Weiyang said with a smile: "The core gameplay of "Legend" is very simple, which is to cut monsters and upgrade equipment. Its essence lies in its brutal simplicity, which can attract countless Chinese people who have never played a game before. Another essence lies in social interaction, that is, good brothers meet to cut people, and the game environment is a bit like the Hong Kong film "Crazy Boy" in the past. But a turn-based game like "Journey to the West" is not suitable for the Crazy Boy route, and you have to find another way. ”

Ding Sanshi sat up straight and listened carefully: "You talk about it." ”

Song Weiyang said: ""Journey to the West" can be done a little bit and a little bit of leisure and entertainment, which can attract many girls. If there are a lot of female players in a game, then there are no male players in the pit?"

"That's right!" Ding Sanshi slapped his thigh.

This kind of marketing method appeared very early, for example, in the 90s, the dance hall was very popular, resulting in more and more numbers, and the fees were getting lower and lower, and the industry was extremely competitive. So some song and dance hall owners came up with a good way to hype that girls don't charge tickets and can go in for free and dance as long as they want. As soon as the number of girls increased, the men were moved, and this pattern quickly spread throughout the country.

Ding Sanshi, who often clubs in the bar, is naturally very familiar with this business model, so now he is thoroughly understood by Song Weiyang.

Song Weiyang asked: "What is the situation with NetEase's stock?"

Ding Sanshi smiled bitterly: "The stock price has fallen to 16 cents, and a large number of shareholders have filed a collective lawsuit on the grounds that they released false financial reports last year." Originally, on New Year's Day, NetEase's stock price had returned from 60 cents to $1, but because the news of the investor class action lawsuit was exposed, it fell directly from $1 to 16 cents. It has been a month and a half in a row, and the trading volume of NetEase shares has been zero, and if it continues like this, I am afraid that it will be delisted by NASDAQ. ”

"At 16 cents, that's ready to go. Song Weiyang was quite happy.

Mr. Song, along with Mr. Duan's friends and Taurus Capital, bought 10 percent of the other shareholders last year for about 80 cents. Now it's even better, with the stock price falling to 16 cents, which is a great opportunity to buy from the stock market.

In another time and space, Ding Sanshi naturally didn't know Song Weiyang, and he found Duan Yongping, a senior at the University of Science and Technology of China, during the Spring Festival.

The first is to ask Duan Yongping for commercial marketing issues to prepare for the launch of "Westward Journey 2", and the second is to ask Duan Yongping to help and spend some spare money to buy NetEase shares, so as to get rid of the dilemma of zero trading volume.

At that time, Duan Yongping only spent $2 million to buy a 5.05% stake in NetEase, and a few months later he threw money into it (the stock price was close to $2 at this time), increasing his personal shareholding to 6.8%. A year and a half later, NetEase's stock price had risen to $70, and millions of dollars in investment had turned into $150 million.

At this moment, Song Weiyang gave an order, and Taurus Capital immediately went to NASDAQ to sweep the goods, and several other friends who were willing to invest also jumped along.

The increasing daily trading volume caused NetEase's stock price to grow rapidly, from 16 cents to 92 cents, and its shareholding structure became: Ding Sanshi (51%), Song Weiyang (11.2%), Taurus Capital (16.5), Duan Yongping (5.5%), and others (15.8%).

According to the number of shares held by Song Weiyang and Taurus Capital, by the end of next year, NetEase shares alone will be worth at least $700 million.

Historically, NetEase's stock price is really not speculated by Wall Street investors. Due to the negative news of this stock, it has always been regarded as a junk stock, and the stock price has been hovering below $1 for a long time. Therefore, when the third quarter financial report was released in 2002, its excellent performance was suddenly targeted by many ordinary shareholders, and it was like buying cabbage, and then it skyrocketed nearly 70 times!

Of course, it is also due to the foil of peers, many Internet stocks are dying, and suddenly one stock stands out, and naturally becomes a firefly in the night.

This also has a lot to do with Ding Sanshi's operation, since the news of the false financial report was exposed, he has comprehensively reduced the amount of advertising to save the beginning, and at the same time adopted a very conservative financial reporting method. To what extent is it conservative? Montnets business needs funds to be credited to the account before it is included in the income, and the point cards in the chat room and game, even if they have been sold, the money has been seen in the account, but the point cards are used up before they are included in the accounts collected.

After "Journey to the West 2" made money, Ding Sanshi immediately paid a lump sum to the shareholders for the class action settlement fee, which attracted a small range of attention from American investors. Then he took the opportunity of releasing the financial report to elaborate on NetEase's conservative financial statistics method, and sincerely apologized to American shareholders to ensure that NetEase would not have such a thing happen again in the future.

In an instant, the performance was there, the attention was there, the reputation was good, and the stock price immediately soared wildly.

Unlike Ding Sanshi's conservatism, Sina and Sohu both chose to brag, and their financial reports were more aggressive than the other. Throughout 2002, NetEase almost stopped advertising on a large scale, and Ding Sanshi disappeared directly from the public eye, while Sohu and Sina took the opportunity to advertise frantically, seemingly thinking that NetEase was dying, and they couldn't wait to grab the vacated market share.

At the first West Lake Sword Debate, several major network leaders said that the environment was not good, and network companies needed to calm down and practice their internal skills. But only Ding Sanshi and Ma Xiaoyun did this, and the others either left their jobs gloomily or are still doing the same old ways as they did in the dot-com bubble.

Zhang Chaoyang is still floating, constantly appearing in the public eye, and all kinds of advertising campaigns are flying. However, this has also paid off, firstly, Montnets's revenue has continued to rise, and secondly, Sohu's stock price has remained stable, and there is basically no financial pressure, but the disadvantage is that it has not yet found its future core business.

In other words, Sohu's core business is also the alumni directory that was renamed "Renren" by Song Weiyang himself. However, the operating costs of "Renren" are very high, and they have not found a suitable profit point for the time being, so that other shareholders have no confidence in this and have repeatedly asked Zhang Chaoyang to abandon the "Renren" project.

If it weren't for Song Weiyang's insistence and Zhang Chaoyang's character, maybe he would really give up, or no longer continue to invest a lot of money.

It can also be said that it was kidnapped by capital, which is the case with Sohu in history. Sohu started many projects that made a lot of money in the future, but it was too expensive to do it halfway, and under the huge pressure of the board of directors, it was gradually abandoned halfway.

Of course, Zhang Chaoyang himself also has a big problem, he likes to hype up Bo attention from the beginning, and he really thinks of himself as a big star when he is hype. Especially after 08 years, Zhang Chaoyang's personal prestige has reached the extreme, Sohu's performance and stock price have surpassed Sina for the first time, and Zhang Chaoyang has been playing in various ways for the next year, even not answering the phone, not replying to senior executives' text messages, the company is all thrown to his subordinates to take care of, and he himself went to climb mountains with stars, play yachts, engage in parties, and also appeared on the cover of fashion magazines, and even simply held a private party on the top floor of Sohu Building.

After playing this year, a large number of Sohu executives left, such as Gong Yu, who later founded iQiyi, who was serving as Sohu's chief operating officer at the time.

Zhang Chaoyang found himself overtaken by his opponent. Then he frantically "cheered up", in order to improve profitability in various short periods, the user experience of Sohu products was extremely poor, in this case, he made himself depressed, and the company never went back to slide into the abyss.

In the years when Zhang Chaoyang was floating in the clouds, Sohu COO, CFO, Sohu Video CEO, Sohu Editor-in-Chief and other executives resigned one after another. What Youku, iQiyi, Kuliu, and Miaopai...... The founders of these companies all resigned from Sohu, and this is only in the video field, which shows that Sohu was full of talents back then.

This is all in the future, for now, in addition to the love of hype and lack of determination, Zhang Chaoyang is generally relatively normal. Gu Yongjiang, the number one general in Sohu, also has a tacit understanding with Zhang Chaoyang, and the two are working together to survive the Internet winter.

Song Weiyang will not make any moves now, if Gu Yongjiang still leaves the original time and space, then he will have to stand up and make a statement. At that time, Song Weiyang is afraid that Zhang Chaoyang will be put in the air, or directly force him to resign, so that this guy can reflect behind closed doors for a while.

People change slowly, and those who are not strong-willed become more powerful.

Take Baidu as an example, a few years before Li Yanhong started his business, he delegated all kinds of power to his subordinates, and he only focused on the general direction, and let the person in charge take the blame if he did it badly, how wise and martial he looked. But later, the consensus of the Internet industry is that Baidu only has the number one person, and there will never be a number two person, and Baidu's CEO has become a joke.

Well, Baidu has already started to make a search website at this time.

When Li Yanhong first founded Baidu, he has been doing search services, which to put it bluntly is to provide search technology to other websites. Perhaps because it has accumulated enough funds, Baidu is now beginning a comprehensive transformation and is competing with Ding Ming's Sogou for business, but it is still regarded as a little brother for the time being.

……

Taurus Capital did not spend much money on the acquisition of NetEase shares. Under Song Weiyang's instructions, most of the remaining spare money of Taurus Capital was used to buy Amazon, and soon became a minority shareholder of Amazon with a 0.58% stake.

When Amazon's stock price recovers, this 0.58% of the weak shares will earn a lot more than investing in NetEase.

Just when Taurus Capital was buying the bottom, Song Weiyang held a conference call with the executives of the major companies he held shares in succession to discuss the development direction of the new year, and then went straight to Huadu to be a teacher in the EMBA class.

Many students of Taurus Business School are looking forward to Dr. Ma's arrival.