“…The website has to spend money on it. I can’t bear to let my children catch the wolf…What does the website rely on? It depends on the click-through rate! As the click-through rate goes up, the next one will follow suit. No matter how much money you put in, you can sell it directly to the next person after adding ten cents..." This is a line from the famous actor Li Chengru in the movie "Big Shot" directed by Feng Xiaogang, which describes China from 1999 to 2000. The bubble economy era when the Internet was burning money like crazy. Zhou Yunfan is one of the representatives of this era.

From 1999 to 2000, the ChinaRen website founded by Zhou Yunfan was the fastest money-burning website in China. It burned about 120 million yuan (15 million US dollars) in more than half a year. In the end, ChinaRen, which had no money to burn, was sold. To Sohu. It is also the movie "Mobile Phone" directed by Feng Xiaogang. The development of text messages and the advanced functions of mobile phone positioning frightened Yan Shouyi, played by Ge You. This time Zhou Yunfan discovered the business opportunities. He founded Kongkong.com and made a comeback, becoming China's "MMS King" in one fell swoop.

Spent 40 million in one day at the age of 25. In July 1999, Zhou Yunfan, who graduated from Stanford University with a master's degree, returned to China with his classmates Yang Ning and Chen Yizhou and founded the ChinaRen website. It was located in a building called "ChinaRen" at the south gate of Tsinghua University. In the office building of "Sancaitang", Zhou Yunfan launched ChinaRen's flagship product "Alumni Directory". ChinaRen quickly became popular because it allowed many alumni who had graduated long ago to reunite, with registered users exceeding 100,000. "Alumni Directory" has also become the website with the largest scale, the most complete data, and the most users among similar products in China. Zhou Yunfan is lucky, he caught up with the good times of China's Internet. In January 2000, the internationally renowned investment bank Goldman Sachs found him and invested US$10 million in ChinaRen, allowing him to quickly develop ChinaRen. In early 2000, ChinaRen ranked eighth among the top ten websites in China, known as the "fourth largest portal". But Zhou Yunfan was also unlucky. At that time, China's Internet bubble had reached its peak, and many websites were facing disaster after the bubble burst. The "new economic heroes" among them were not even aware of it. “The Internet was very popular at the time, and the world’s view on the Internet, including China’s, was that investors didn’t need us (operators) to make money. As long as we spent money to gain attention and make our name bigger, we could find venture capital to raise more money. The money is then listed, and everyone (investors and operators) can make more money," Zhou Yunfan recalled. In fact, Zhou Yunfan's ChinaRen did not burn the most money. The three major portals Sina, Sohu and NetEase burned much more money. However, ChinaRen set a record - it burned the most money, burning it in more than half a year. Lost $15 million. "I didn't feel like spending money at that time." Zhou Yunfan said that in order to grab attention, most of ChinaRen's funds were spent on advertising fees. In the following month, 25-year-old Zhou Yunfan spent too much money. In order to seize prime advertising space on road signs across the country, Chairman Zhou Yunfan fought until 12 o'clock one night and signed a thick stack of advertising bills with a total value of more than 40 million yuan. !"If today's young people spend such a large amount of money in one day, they must be very nervous and very excited. But at the time, it really felt normal. They felt that money was not money, but an illusory thing, so they didn't feel sad when they spent it. Feeling." Zhou Yunfan said. Subsequently, an internationally renowned Internet company approached Zhou and offered $100 million to acquire ChinaRen, but Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning rejected the offer. Zhou Yunfan told reporters: "We asked them to pay US$200 million. At that time, we wanted to spend US$10 million quickly, and we were already very close to negotiating a US$20 million investment with another investment institution. The offer was US$100 million. Not attractive." However, what Zhou Yunfan didn't expect was that his happy time of "spending money to the limit" only lasted less than a year.

Sell yourself to Sohu and learn to compromise

Beginning in March 2000, the global Internet bubble began to subside. Investors began to find that the Internet had no clear profit direction, and they tightened their wallets on Internet companies. The U.S. Nasdaq index, which reflects the barometer of the Internet economy, plummeted all the way, from more than 5,000 points in March to 3,000 points in June, and fell below 2,000 points at the end of the year!

The downturn of the stock market This undoubtedly blocked the way for Internet companies to go public, and financing subsequently became an "impossible mission." Zhou Yunfan's $20 million venture capital negotiations began to be delayed and finally canceled entirely. Correspondingly, the three major portals at that time, Sina, NetEase, and Sohu, had already gone public first and raised funds to survive the severe winter of the Internet. However, ChinaRen, which planned to go public the following year, faced a situation of "no food".

As the major shareholder of ChinaRen, Goldman Sachs gave Zhou Yunfan two options, one is to sell or the other is to close down. In desperation, Zhou chose to sell all the company, brand, and employees he founded to Sohu. In September 2000, Zhou Yunfan signed an acquisition agreement with Sohu. All ChinaRen brands, businesses, and employees joined Sohu in exchange for 12.5% ??of Sohu's total of 4.4 million shares, at a discount of US$7 per share, a discount of US$30 million.