The sun sets.

A black Maybach 62S drives on Chang'an Avenue.

In front of and behind the Maybach, there is a black Lincoln Navigator, and the three cars in the group are all Beijing A8 license plates, even in the Gyeonggi important place, a discerning person can see that the person sitting here is obviously a big man.

And this has now almost become the standard configuration of Lin Feng travel.

In recent years, Lin Feng's business tentacles have spread from the Internet to more industries, such as mobile phones, culture, investment, finance, manufacturing and processing, etc., and his position in the domestic political and business circles has gradually stabilized.

Nowadays, few people say that Lin Feng is a "business genius" or "young talent".

He has long been a big man on a par with the older generation of domestic entrepreneurs, and a "legendary" existence that countless people look up to.

In the Maybach car, Xie Jiaren sat in the passenger seat, wearing a dark blue Chanel autumn and winter suit, with her long hair pulled up and coiled behind her head, even in the car, her body sat straight and elegant.

She had a folder on her lap and leaned sideways, reporting to Lin Feng in the back seat.

"Boss, tonight's meeting, all the members of Sina's board of directors in Beijing will be present, according to the news obtained from many aspects, for this cooperation, Sina's board of directors is more positive."

Lin Feng nodded.

He was going to meet with Sina's board of directors in person in the evening, and it was about Fengxing Group's stake in Sina Weibo.

At the end of 2009, Sina launched its microblogging business, with the help of the star effect of the original Sina blog and Sina's own news media gene as the first Internet portal in China.

Fengxing launched the "Renren Weibo" business on Renren very early.

Lin Feng invested in Titter in the United States very early, and naturally will not forget to introduce this phenomenal product in the future in terms of mobile Internet into China.

However, to Lin Feng's surprise, although Renren was the first to launch the Weibo business, and used the fan economy in Renren, and also learned from the successful experience of Sina Weibo, it pulled a large number of celebrity certifications and posted Weibo to interact with fans, which can be said to be one step ahead.

However, after the launch of Sina Weibo, it has a tendency to catch up.

I have to admit that Renren is still a social entertainment website based on social SNS, and Weibo, a product whose media attributes are far greater than SNS's social attributes, is not what Renren is good at.

On the contrary, Sina, because of its own Internet media attributes, has a natural fit with Weibo.

In this way, Fengxing has two choices, either concentrate resources to promote Weibo and compete with Sina; Or simply invest in Sina and get Sina Weibo.

In fact, in the previous life, whether it was Sohu, Tencent or NetEase, they also launched Weibo and fought a vigorous Weibo war with Sina.

The result is not an egg.

The irreproducibility of Weibo lies in the content of information, and in the final analysis, the content is still people and operations, and Sina, which has media attributes in these two points, undoubtedly has an advantage.

Another factor that cannot be ignored is the communication between content regulation and the government.

The essence of Weibo is actually media, and in China, the Internet company knows how to do media the most, which is undoubtedly Sina.

Whether it is in terms of content supervision and review, or communication with the government, Sina, which has long been responsible for the Internet dissemination of news as a web portal, is very experienced.

In this case, Lin Feng felt that instead of spending resources to let Fengxing do this business by himself, it was better to invest in Sina faster.

Fengxing Group itself still focuses on social networking and entertainment, and does not deviate from its core business.

WeChat, which is now being led by Zhang Xiaolong and developed internally, is the "nuclear product" that will be popular in the future!

It is said that Fengxing's investment in Sina Weibo can be directly operated by Li Dong and their management, and there is no need for Lin Feng to come forward in person, after all, he rarely personally intervenes in the specific affairs of Fengxing.

However, Cao Guowei, who just became a major shareholder of Sina through MBO last year, and Lin Feng are both classmates of the Huaxia Alumni Association, and the two are also familiar with each other. He came forward in person, Cao Guowei would always sell him a little face, and it would be easier to talk.

Second, Lin Feng is still the CEO of Fengxing Group after all, and he is still the main one in terms of strategic layout. Although Weibo is just a new product, he knows what kind of influence Weibo will have in the future, and this investment cannot be lost, so he would rather go out in person and be more secure.

…………

Zhongguancun Ideal International Building.

Lin Feng's identity is now extraordinary, Cao Guowei and others personally greeted him downstairs and accompanied Lin Feng to the conference room on the top floor of the 20th floor.

Although it is already off-hours, there are still many people working overtime in the office area.

This is also the norm for internet companies.

The Fengxing Mansion is also brightly lit at this time.

Looking at the Sina "Big Eyes" logo that can be seen everywhere in the office area, Lin Feng is still quite emotional.

Sina, founded in 1998 and listed on the NASDAQ in 2000, was once one of the "Big Three" of the first generation of the domestic Internet industry.

In recent years, Sina has been in some decline, 05 years by the then in the glory of the grand "raid" acquisition, although the use of the "poison pill plan" to preserve, but also has the "domestic first portal" title, but Sina is now worth only 3 billion US dollars.

With the rise of new giants such as Fengxing, Baidu, and Alibaba, Sina has long fallen out of the ranks of the first echelon of the Internet.

No one would have thought that a "Weibo" product that had just been launched would enable Sina to rise again in the future and return to the center stage of the Internet industry.

From DAU to MAU, from information flow to discovery stream, from short video to live broadcast, from Internet celebrity to celebrity ......, Weibo has broken people's most optimistic expectations again and again and set new records.

Although from a commercial point of view, Weibo is difficult to be as "profitable" as some innovative products in the mobile Internet era, no one can deny that it has an unparalleled influence in media communication, opinion leaders and social opinion.

What Lin Feng values most is precisely this kind of influence!

There are many ways to make money, and there is no shortage of profitable companies under Lin Feng, but influential media are scarce resources.

Whether it is TVB, Caixin Media, or Sina Weibo, Lin Feng's layout in the media has just begun.

Sina's board of directors is not large, only 7 people.

The first batch of directors such as Mao Daolin, Jiang Fengnian, Wu Zheng, Duan Yongji, etc. have all retired from the board of directors, and the current chairman is Wang Yan.

Cao Guowei, who just passed the MBO (Management Buy-out) in September last year and became the largest shareholder from a professional manager, has a pivotal position on the board of directors as CEO and on behalf of the management.

Several others are independent directors: Cao Defeng (Cao Defeng's company invested in Sina at the beginning of its listing), Zhang Songyi (joined as an advisory director of Morgan Stanley in the early days), Zhang Yichen (joined as an investor in CITIC Capital), Chen Liwu (chairman of Walden International), Chen Pihong (president of Hongdao Information), etc.

From the composition of Sina's board of directors, it can be seen that there is a multi-party combination of interests, which is also a point that Sina has always been criticized, with scattered equity, many controlling shareholders and too many stakeholders.

However, after the management MBO led by Cao Guowei last year, Sina has now begun to enter the era of Cao Guowei.

This is also one of the reasons why Lin Feng is sure to invest in Sina Weibo.

At least Sina now has "talkers", and it is easier to negotiate.

After all, before joining Sina, Cao Guowei worked as an auditor at Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and was very good at capital operation.

For Sina, Lin Feng's intention was a bit of an unexpected surprise.

After all, Sina Weibo has just been launched, and no one knows what will happen to this product, but from the perspective of foreign Titter, it is still very promising, but there are also very strong opponents in the market, whether it is Renren Weibo, Sohu Weibo, NetEase Weibo, etc., they are all menacing.

In this case, Lin Feng, who has the largest social network in China, is interested in Sina Weibo and even wants to make a strategic investment, which is obviously beyond everyone's expectations.

After the board of directors of Sina learned of this news, the general first reaction was: Could Lin Feng be "a drunkard who does not mean to drink"?

Nominally investing in Sina Weibo, but in fact it is Sina itself?

In fact, because of Sina's special shareholding structure, and the fact that it used to be a domestic Internet flagship company, high visibility, low valuation, and equity dispersion, Sina has become the target of emerging giants from time to time over the years......

The "scandals" that have been reported many times by companies such as Shanda and Focus have made the board of directors of Sina a somewhat sensitive.

To be honest, Lin Feng really didn't have any thoughts about Sina.

He has enough Internet resources in his hands, and into the era of mobile Internet, the glorious history of the former PC "portal" has become a thing of the past, and the distribution of information flow in the future will be WeChat, Weibo, Toutiao and other new communication methods.

To put it mildly, Sina Weibo is more valuable than Sina itself.

…………

"One of the biggest differences between Weibo and the American Titter in China is that it is not a social network, but a social network." Lin Feng sat in the conference room and said casually.

"We must take into account the national conditions, and in the Internet environment of open speech such as Weibo, you can't be too aggressive, and you can't be too reckless; Be open, but not completely. This requires a very mature balance art and management experience, and Sina has fully accumulated the corresponding talents and experience over the years, whether it is a portal or a blog. ”

"I am very optimistic about the development of Sina Weibo, I don't have to worry about profitability first, the most important thing for Weibo now is to develop rapidly, accumulate users, and form a scale."

"Fengxing does not seek full control, but hopes to enter as a strategic investor and be able to form cooperation with Weibo in more aspects."

"The value of Weibo is not only a social product, or an Internet product, in a sense, it will change the way of information dissemination, with the nature of becoming a mainstream media with social influence, so we should look at this cooperation from a higher perspective, I believe that with the popular capital investment and resource cooperation, the development of Sina Weibo will be faster."

I have to say that Lin Feng's weightless negotiation method is casual but atmospheric, which shocked the Sina board of directors.

You must know that over the years, Lin Feng has acquired too many famous companies, and there are few that are larger than Sina.

He is not talking about it from the perspective of investment returns, but from a more macro perspective.

In a word, money is not a problem, don't worry about making a profit, I invest money in!

As long as you do Weibo well, make it bigger, and make an impact, it's enough!

If you want to make a profit in the future, you can sell shares, the more influential Weibo is, the more valuable it is.

And the offer given by Lin Feng made the Sina board of directors even more excited......

A product that has just been launched not long ago and has only 10 million users, Lin Feng gave a valuation of 600 million US dollars!

Nima, our Sina is now worth more than $2 billion, okay......

Fengxing invested $180 million and hoped to account for 30% of the shares.

This ratio does not exceed Cao Guowei's psychological bottom line. He still hopes that Weibo will be controlled by Sina.

Of course, Lin Feng came forward to talk, mainly to show his attention, the two sides first ......reached an agreement on the big intention, as for the specific amount, valuation, transaction methods, etc., there will be Zhao Yihua to lead a special investment team to discuss in detail.

What Lin Feng solves is the problem of whether Sina Weibo sells or not.

How much to sell, how to sell, just let the people below talk about it.

If you want to invest in Sina Weibo alone, you must first spin off Weibo from Sina.

Sina's board of directors is also worried that he "Xiang Zhuang dances the sword with the intention of Pei Gong"......

This is also exactly what Lin Feng meant.

In fact, there is another point he did not say in detail, that is, Weibo has a unique value in marketing.

In the previous life, whether it was entertainment programs, movies, or television, when it was newly released, there were official Weibo and actors on Weibo to promote it.

After investing in Sina Weibo, it is very beneficial to the popular overall entertainment industry group.

With WeChat, if Weibo is taken down, then the marketing and traffic entrance in the mobile Internet era will basically complete full coverage.

It is a very important part of his overall strategy.