For American venture capitalists like De Fengjie, the bigger difference between the China market and the American market is that China enterprises are mainly entrepreneurs. This means that even if venture capitalists choose the right market, they are wrong about the people. "It is difficult to make a big improvement by hiring a CEO from outside, as in the United States."
Although the reasons for this phenomenon may include the market sensitivity of entrepreneurs, the immaturity of professional managers and the imperfection of contract system, the rules of the game in the venture capital market are basically the same: core entrepreneurs "allow or even welcome" VC to help enterprises formulate strategies, adjust management teams and open up markets, but "it is difficult to tolerate changing themselves." At least at this stage, "entrepreneurs are the protagonists of enterprise development, and investors can only play a supporting role to a large extent." It is not difficult to observe that most of the successful enterprises supported by venture capital in China are directly led by their founders, which may provide a footnote for this statement.
"We mainly help entrepreneurs to formulate and implement correct strategies from all levels to promote the development of entrepreneurial enterprises." As the main representative of investor DFJ, Jixun Foo, director of Baidu Company, said, "We have been discussing Baidu's business model with Robin (the English name of Li Yanhong) and others." Although Baidu once occupied 80% of the domestic search technology service market, after the second half of 2000 and the low tide of 200 1, only a few large portals such as Sina and Sohu were left in China that could afford this price. "Moreover, Baidu will inevitably be restricted by these entrances in terms of service scope, mode and revenue sharing." After a series of small-scale attempts, 200 1, 1, Baidu decided to learn from the experience of Overture (also invested by DFJ, Yahoo acquired Overture in 2003 for163 million US dollars) and take bidding ranking as the main profit model. "After choosing a new business direction, we asked Robin and Eric (the English name of Xu Yong, another founder of Baidu) to do it." Timothy C. Draper, the founding partner of DFJ (investing in Overture on behalf of DFJ) also personally went to China to introduce the practices and experiences of Overture to Baidu.
At the same time, DFJ ePlanet Ventures also actively promotes the synergy between portfolios: ChinaRen founded by Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning (later acquired by Sohu) is not only an early customer of Baidu, but also a joint venture between Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning when they left Sohu to create Kong Zhong again. Previously, Silicon Valley Power and Baidu * * * investor pension capital also contributed to the cooperation between the two sides to launch the "power engine".
"At that time, Lu Jian, CEO of Silicon Valley Power, made our products recognized by the market. Now his own medical website is still cooperating with Baidu to bid for the ranking. " Li Yanhong said. According to the statistics of Alexa 2003, by the end of 2003, Baidu had established its absolute leading position in the search engine market in China and became the second largest independent search engine manufacturer in the world.