"Because there are investors and entrepreneurs here, this matter is very important to entrepreneurs, and it is not so friendly to investors. Because in the early stage of Internet entrepreneurship, you can find a profit model that suits you and run through this model, then you can have more autonomy to negotiate conditions with investors.

In the early days of Yahoo, the number of users continued to grow, and we did not find a good profit model, unlike a large number of enterprises and Internet companies in traditional industries advertising on Yahoo now, at that time no one saw the advertising value of the Internet.

In the face of the continuous growth of the number of users, only external financing can maintain the company's high-speed operation, and once external financing is accepted, the equity and voting rights will be diluted, and it is difficult to ensure that the control of one's equity is still in one's hands after the dilution of the same share through the structure of different rights to the same shares.

At present, the vast majority of investors are unable to accept weighted voting rights, and at present, I have heard that only Newman's NewPay adopts the model of weighted voting rights. After going public, even as a founder, the equity in your hands is a very small part, and every decision you make will be constrained by other shareholder representatives. ”

The large-scale acceptance of the investment model of weighted voting rights by angel investors will not wait until Facebook emerges.

"The company is still the same company, and there are fewer and fewer things you can control, which is a not very pleasant thing." Yang Zhiyuan said very bluntly, "If you have a stable profit model at the beginning and can make a profit."

The first is that companies can accept external investment more slowly, the less money you need to finance, the more voting power you have, and the more confidence you have in the negotiation process.

You think how can you find a profit model at the beginning, so many Internet companies in Silicon Valley have not found a profit model, this is too difficult for me. Yes, it's hard for an internet company to find a profit model, but the sooner you do that, the sooner you, as the founder, will be able to take the initiative.

An Internet company that can finally go public needs to go through several rounds of financing in the middle, and three to four rounds are generally the norm, and the sooner you find a profit model, the sooner you can have the initiative, whether it is to accept the next round of financing or go public.

Let's take Newman as an example, Newman, as the Internet entrepreneur I have admired the most in the past decade, I have learned a lot from several successful start-ups in his business, not only have I absorbed valuable nutrients from Newman, but I believe that other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are the same. Because in addition to the founder of Yahoo, I also make some investments myself, and when I talked to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, I found that when I talked to them before, they would say that the object of my study and worship was Gates, Ellison, Bezos, and me.

I'm not modest, as one of the founders of Yahoo, my name is often mentioned, but since Newman appeared last year, everyone's answers have gradually appeared in the name Newman, and the proportion is getting higher and higher, and in the second half of this year, almost no one mentions anyone else, all Newman.

Newman's first start-up company, Riot Games, went public after only accepting a round of funding from Gates, who bought shares and then injected funds, which is no different from financing.

Until now, Newman has a stake in nearly 40% of Riot Games, and with the aura of the founder, he has been able to firmly grasp the actual control of Riot Games, which is inseparable from the fact that Riot Games has wanted to become an online distribution channel for video games and rely on commissions to make money.

Including the financing model of NewPay with weighted voting rights, there are also a large number of investment institutions willing to participate, which is also clearly related to NewPay's profit model.

Therefore, my advice to Chinese Internet entrepreneurs is that the sooner they find their own business profit model, the better. After Yang Zhiyuan finished speaking, he put the microphone on the dark sofa, and the audience burst into warm applause.

Angel investment has been in China for some time, and Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers behind them have played a key role from its establishment to becoming the first stock of Huaguo Internet to be listed on the NASDAQ.

Founded in May and listed in November, Americ Capital's set of perfect methods of cutting leeks has opened the eyes of entrepreneurs who have never seen the market on Huaguo Internet, and they all aim to get overseas investment.

Obviously, I have not been educated by investors, thinking that angel investment, investors are really angels, only pay money and do not work.

What Yang Zhiyuan said is slightly ahead of his time, and the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs is interdependent and mutually exclusive, and the current Chinese entrepreneurs do not feel it directly. This is even more distant when it comes to finding a profit model that can have more initiative.

But the audience still applauded very facelessly, everyone is an elite, although they don't have an intuitive feeling, but they also know that Yang Zhiyuan is talking about dry goods, which pierces the warm side of investors.

As a former investment manager, Tsai Chongxin, who was impressed by Jackma's personal charm, was deeply touched by these words, he worked as a lawyer in New York, and then worked in private equity investment in Xiangjiang for almost five years.

"Jack, Jerry's words are very practical, for Ahri, we also need to find a profit model as soon as possible, if we don't want investors to take control of the company in the future, it is important to find a profit model." Tsai Chongxin said to Jack Ma.

Jackma replied: "I know, is it possible for Ahri's next round of financing to adopt the model of weighted voting rights?" ”

He is obviously more interested in the WVR model mentioned by Yang Zhiyuan, because Ahri is now doing a B2B business, and this business model determines that they need a lot of money to play well.

A large amount of capital means that multiple rounds of financing are needed, and the whole country is a huge market, and multiple rounds of financing can have the initiative and even obtain the majority of the market share in the B2B e-commerce market.

So Jackma knew that even if they found a profit model, they couldn't avoid the dilution of the founders' team's shares, so the WVR structure was the best solution to avoid similar events.

Tsai Chongxin thought for a while: "It's possible, but we still have to find a profit model as soon as possible, and only the more valuable we are, the more they will face up to our demands when negotiating with investors."

Only strong opponents will be respected. ”

Taiwan Zhou Xin has begun to speak, Jack Ma only nodded and did not speak to indicate that he knew, what he didn't know was that according to the original historical trajectory, Yang Zhiyuan would transfer all the assets of Yahoo Huaguo to Ahri in five years, and invest $1 billion in Ahri.

The threads of fate converged in advance at this moment, and Yang Zhiyuan also didn't know that there was an investment object of the most successful investment in his life sitting in the audience.

When Ahri went public, Yahoo held a 16% stake in Alibaba, valued at $36 billion.

Zhou Xin joked: "Jerry, what you said is too straightforward, you have said that investors are beasts, and your words will be criticized by Wall Street." ”

Yang Zhiyuan said: "No, no, no, the Wall Street gang will only be happy to see Internet companies can have a profit model, rather than relying on the number of users to make them invest, reality has proved that the number of users does not mean anything, users without a profit model, just a number."

Once there is a profit model, there is revenue and profit that allows Wall Street investors to judge the true value of the company more quickly, and I am helping them.

I thought of a less appropriate analogy, we are the kite, the investor is the line, the kite needs the line to give him a traction when taking off, and after the kite flies into the sky, this line will control the direction of the kite, and even become the resistance for the kite to continue to fly upward. ”

This metaphor is a metaphor for Yahoo's future, as Yang left Yahoo's board of directors after the board decided to sell 523 million shares of Ahri for $13 per share.

And those shares were worth $90 per share after Ahri's listing, and if it weren't for the sale of the 523 million Ahri shares, Yahoo would have held 30% of Ahri.

It has also been hailed as one of the stupidest decisions in business history, comparable to Time Warner's acquisition of AOL, and Yang Zhiyuan explicitly voted against this deal.

So much so that after Ahri went public, Yahoo was only an intermediary channel for investors to invest in Ahri.

"Isn't this what you're asking us to give to entrepreneurs in China? I'm talking about my real feelings. ”

Zhou Xin chose to throw the words to Bill: "What about you, Bill?" ”

Bill thought for a moment and said, "My advice still needs to be taken early, when you have a promising direction, you need to judge whether this field is in the early stage or has matured."

Ten years ago, it was a good choice to do an online forum, because there weren't many online forums at the time, but when you do it today, it's very difficult for you to compete with very established online forums for users.

It's also good to do a portal five years ago, and to do a portal today, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc., these are competitors that you can hardly beat.

The invincibility here does not mean that you can't make a better product than these portals, but that users have developed a habit of using it, and investors will not invest money in this kind of project.

It's like whoever says they want to be a quiz community right now, whether it's Wall Street or Silicon Valley, no one is going to invest in a portal.

In the first half year of Quora, there are 20 knowledge quiz communities of all sizes in Silicon Valley, and almost a year has passed, and now only Quora has survived, and Yahoo Q&A is still struggling to support it with Yahoo backing.

This field is already very mature, and if you want to enter it at this point in time, in Chinese dialect, it will be half the effort. ”

Bill is a Hua Guotong, and he has been to China many times, and he even said it directly in broken Chinese.

He continued: "Of course it's best if you can be innovative. Innovation means that you have no opponents for a short period of time, and you will have a certain first-mover advantage.

Whenever possible, build user loyalty during the first-mover advantage. ”

Compared with Yang Zhiyuan, what Bill Gates said is a cliché topic, and the topic he must talk about every time he comes to China is innovation.

Without waiting for Zhou Xin to hand over the words to Gerald, he began to say himself: "Unlike the other three, although I am also an Internet practitioner, I am a professional manager, not an entrepreneur.

Therefore, I also stand in the perspective of professional managers and talk about my feelings, that is, we should be good at using the power of capital to help the growth of enterprises.

The best example is Time Warner's acquisition of Quora, which was worth only $20 billion before the acquisition of Quora, and came to $150 billion after the acquisition of Quora.

Whether it is the recognition of the enterprise, or the ability to raise funds, or the ability of the enterprise to operate, there is a qualitative leap.

Prior to the acquisition of Quora, Time Warner's corporate operations could not find a growth point.

It's a terrible thing to not find a growth point, you have people, money, and resources, but you can't find the direction to invest. After the acquisition of Quora, Quora was a very successful company, but it was immature in many places due to its short existence.

Time Warner is a very mature company, we can replicate Time Warner's experience on Quora, and at the same time, we can invest a lot of Time Warner's resources in Quora, and the fact has proved that Quora has brought time Warner a return rate far beyond Time Warner's original business.

We invested in movies with a combined return of less than 10%, and we invested in quora, which returned more than 20%, and that number will be even more exaggerated after we expand into the Asian and European markets.

Of course, Quora also has a ceiling, and after Quora reaches the ceiling, his ROI cannot always be so high.

Even though the Nasdaq fell by more than 10%, Time Warner's stock price did not fall and even rose.

This is the benefit of capital mergers and acquisitions, and this is also an important reason why companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon are keen on acquisitions after they become bigger.

Acquisitions can help you find new directions, can help diversify your business, and if the acquired company and your original business can help each other, it can also help the business of different parts of the enterprise to develop synergistically.

Therefore, make good use of the power of capital. ”

When everyone expressed their advice to China's Internet practitioners from their own perspective, Zhou Xin finally concluded: "What everyone said is very good.

It's all about experience.

Jerry expressed his own lessons and told everyone that they need to be wary of investors and seize the initiative by looking for profit models, and Wright immediately told everyone that they need to use the power of capital to help enterprises grow.

Of course, every time Bill talks about innovation, I have seen the word that appears most often with Bill on news websites in China is innovation.

Of course, innovation is very important, the Internet can not exist today, it is inseparable from the innovation of countless practitioners, innovation is the inexhaustible driving force for the development of the Internet.

What I want to give you is confidence, and just the four of us said that there is a bubble on the NASDAQ. ”

It's more 4k first.,It's going to be more 4K tonight.,That's 8k.,Although this chapter is in the morning.,But it's still 2k more!

Ask for a subscription, mainly have a meeting on Saturday morning, and then go to work tomorrow, and I really can't get up at six o'clock in the morning.

(End of chapter)