No. 085 is eyeing Tencent shares

Wei Dongsheng has a high theoretical advantage, and Xiao Leiqiang has more than ten years of experience in details, and the "Cambrian 2004" supercomputer project can move forward in an orderly manner.

In the midst of a busy schedule, 2003 came to an end.

Although the Spring Festival is the dividing point between the old and the new year in the hearts of the Chinese people, in the actual operation of each company, January 2004 has already belonged to the first quarter of 2004. And since January 21, 2004 was Chinese New Year's Eve, the time was very short, and the staff of various media worked overtime to summarize the events of 2003.

The Wisdom Universe series of companies is still in the preparatory stage; Although the torrenting artifact and the Spring and Autumn Security Manager are strong, they are not profitable; The presence of third-party payment credit is low; The current market share of Spring and Autumn Secure Browser and Spring and Autumn Search Engine is also extremely difficult to attract attention. Therefore, in the public impression, Wei Dongsheng and the Spring and Autumn series are still an online game developer and operator.

The horizon narrowed down to the online game circle, and the Spring and Autumn series of companies unexpectedly became a high-profile existence. Among the top ten news in the online game industry in 2003 voted by netizens, the first is "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" launched by Spring and Autumn Network and Spring and Autumn Software in the freemium model; The second is also the Spring and Autumn Network, which signed a contract with "World of Warcraft" at a sky-high price of 830 million yuan. In line with it, the legendary copyright incident that boiled in the first half of the year ranked third; The news that Guangtong Communications signed "Legend 3" with 20 million yuan ranked fifth.

After signing the contract with "World of Warcraft", Spring and Autumn Network began to prepare for listing in the United States. In order to attract capital cooperation and enhance the trust of public opinion, after several months of silence, Spring and Autumn Network took advantage of the year-end summary news boom to announce this year's operating data: "Spring and Autumn of Ten Kingdoms" The revenue in June was 9.181 million yuan, the revenue in July was 32.913 million yuan, the revenue in August was 44.787 million yuan, the revenue in September was 58.608 million yuan, the revenue in October was 82.119 million yuan, the revenue in November was 107.51 million yuan, and the revenue in December was 133.08 million yuan, with a total annual income of 468 million yuan.

The operating data of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" is undoubtedly very gorgeous, not only the total amount is terrifying, but the month-on-month growth rate is also confusing, as if it is not in the same dimension as other games.

More than ten days later, detailed data were released one after another, further highlighting the existence of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms".

Looking back on 2003, statistics show that the total annual revenue of Huaguo's online game market was 1.722 billion yuan, which was lower than the optimistic forecast of 2 billion yuan at the beginning of the year. In fact, if we ignore the impact of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", the growth of the online game market in 2003 must be much lower than expected. However, with "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" is "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", public opinion now laments the online game market, and will only compare the 910 million in 2002 and the 1.722 billion in 2003, and draw a positive conclusion: the online game industry is a sunrise industry with an annual growth rate of 89.23%.

The annual revenue of Spring and Autumn Network was 468 million yuan, accounting for 27.1%, ranking second among online game operators in Huaguo.

The first place is Shanda Network, whose annual revenue in 2003 was 633 million, accounting for 36.7%.

After Shanda Network and Spring and Autumn Network, it is the ninth city ranked third and Guangtong Communication ranked fourth. Among them, the market performance of "Legend 3" operated by Guangtong Communication is better than that of "Miracle MU" operated by Ninth City. In recent months, especially at the turn of December 2003 and January 2004, "Miracle MU" has been dragged into the abyss by the flood of private servers and plug-ins, and the number of simultaneous online users is currently less than 100,000. Just like Shanda Network to Spring and Autumn Network, "Miracle MU" operated for 12 months, while "Legend 3" was officially charged on August 1, and the ninth city relied on the advantage of time to sit firmly in the third seat; Guangtong communication is limited by the disadvantage of time, and the fourth seat is not stable.

However, the past is only the past after all.

Although the ninth city is ranked ahead of Guangtong Communication, public opinion is optimistic about the ninth city because of the sharp decline in the operating data of "Miracle MU", and is more willing to list Guangtong Communication as one of the three giants of China's online game industry. Although Shanda Network ranks ahead of the Spring and Autumn Network, public opinion is bullish on the Spring and Autumn Network because of the anti-sky operation data of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms".

Shanda Network's annual revenue is 633 million, which is the common income of many games such as "Legend of Blood", "Legend World", "Bubble Hall" and "Crazy Tank". When "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" developed to a monthly revenue of 133.08 million, it had already left "Legend of Blood" far behind. Not only that, the media roughly estimated the total income of "Legend of Blood", "Legend World", "Legend 3", etc. in December, and the total of the three games of the Legend Family was only more than 90 million. This means that although "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" only ranked second in the 2003 annual list, in fact, it has not only surpassed "Legend of Blood", but also completely surpassed the "Legend" brand, and one game is better than three games of Legend.

If nothing else, Spring and Autumn Network will definitely be the king of 2004.

Guangtong Communications ranked fourth but was regarded as third, and Spring and Autumn Network ranked second but was regarded as first.

Spring & Autumn Network only operates one game, "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", and its revenue source is very single, and it does not seem to be a healthy financial institution.

However, there is no need to care too much about this, because the Chinese online game industry is currently such a business model. Analyzing the revenue structure of Shanda Network in December, the three games of "Legend of Blood", "Legend of Legend" and "Bubble Hall" accounted for 96.9%, except for these three games, the sum of all other revenues was only 3.1%. The income of the ninth city mainly comes from "Miracle MU"; Guangtong Communication's revenue mainly comes from "Legend 3". Although they operate a large number of online games, they can't change the cruel fact that they have a single income.

In all this, the Spring and Autumn Network has become the undisputed king of the Chinese game market, if 2002 is named the Year of Legends, 2003 can be named the Spring and Autumn Year.

The development of Spring and Autumn Network is like cooking oil on a fire, and its listing plan in the United States has naturally been sought after by various venture capitalists. On January 14, 2004, Jing Minqiang received positive news: "IDG is willing to negotiate with us on the issue of Tencent's equity exchange. ”

Let's start with the background.

At this time last year, IDG's Yang Fei, influenced by Zou Shenglong and Cheng Hao, focused on the download tool market. Yang Fei contacted Chunqiu Software and Wei Dongsheng to verify whether the torrent download artifact project was worth the investment, but he was choked back by Wei Dongsheng's sentence "The torrent download artifact is free software".

As the saying goes, business is not friendship.

Business operation is not the ideal of painting, and no matter how successful a company is, the success rate is generally less than one-fifth from cooperation intention to real cooperation. That is to say, most of the business in the world cannot be done; The vast majority of salespeople fail in market development. However, in the process of negotiation, negotiation and cooperation, both parties will invest more or less emotion and money. There are many reasons for failure, some are due to the inconsistency of the judgment of the market demand between the two parties, some are because the time is not appropriate, some are due to internal constraints, some are due to lack of funds, some are due to insufficient authority, and not all cooperation failures are deliberate. If you can adhere to the principle of "doing business is making friends" and successfully demonstrate your ability in the negotiation, this failure will be the accumulation of success next time.

Failure is the mother of success, not just a phrase of chicken soup.

Therefore, although Yang Fei's investment in the torrent download artifact on behalf of IDG ended without a problem, it did not affect the "friend" friendship between them.

Business competition is business competition, business cooperation is business cooperation, and private friendship is private friendship.

From January 2003 to June 2003, Yang Fei's attention to Wei Dongsheng stopped in the impression of torrenting artifacts, and occasionally came to chat with Wei Dongsheng, talking about topics such as "downloading tools can be profitable". It wasn't until the launch of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" that Yang Fei took a long breath of cold air, and his impression of Wei Dongsheng was no longer limited to torrent download artifacts. Yang Fei regretted that he missed the "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" project, and immediately expressed his willingness to invest in the Spring and Autumn Network, the operator of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", and the developer of "The Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", Spring and Autumn Software, either to develop existing markets or continue to develop new games.

Online gaming is a special industry.

The cost of an online game is mainly focused on the pre-development and server rental purchase, and after the game is launched and operated, it is the time to reap profits. Yang Fei wanted to invest after the operation of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms", as if farmers were indifferent during the ploughing, seed selection, sowing, fertilization, irrigation, weeding, and insect control, and saw that the seedlings were about to mature, so he ran over and said: "I will invest you in two sickles, let's harvest together." ”

Hehe, "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" has been launched to make money, who will accept your investment.

Wei Dongsheng is not a fool.

However, Wei Dongsheng did not refuse Yang Fei.

Because the purpose of the next stage of Spring and Autumn Network is not to slowly harvest the money bags of players, but to go to the United States to list the money of American stockholders, Wei Dongsheng and Spring and Autumn Network need the help of venture capital.

Nowadays, IDG's influence is relatively weak. For example, a few months ago, Zhou Hongyi wanted to sell 3721 to Google instead of Yahoo, but IDG was embarrassed to have no access to Google's senior management and could not get through the talks between Zhou Hongyi and Google's senior management. In the end, Zhou Hongyi could only indirectly spend $100,000 in bribes, followed the route of former US Vice President Al Gore, and met a Google executive euphemistically. Look, in 2003, IDG's reputation couldn't even meet with Google's top management, and Yang Fei's resources could be stronger under IDG's subordinates.

Wei Dongsheng didn't expect IDG to help Spring and Autumn Network go public in the United States.

However, small is also good for small, and if it cooperates with IDG in a limited way, Spring and Autumn Network has more choices.

Considering that IDG's family background is weak and stingy, and the habitual investment of $1 million, $2 million, $10 million and other scales is small to big, even if Yang Fei is very willing to invest in Spring and Autumn Network, he can't get too much money. Wei Dongsheng decisively gave up the investment method of capital investment, and the revenue of "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" in January was as high as 133.08 million yuan, which is not short of millions of dollars from IDG.

Compared with shabby funds, Wei Dongsheng is more optimistic about IDG's investment returns, such as its Baidu shares and Tencent shares.