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IT Manager World
Times make heroes. However, opportunities always come to those who are prepared. In 1998, due to the booming development of the Internet, there was a group of young people, almost all of whom had technical backgrounds. It was precisely because they could deeply understand and understand the subversive effect of Internet technology on the world that they could accurately seize opportunities and find the "windows".
In that year, Jerry Yang, a Chinese-American genius, entered China with Yahoo's business, which greatly promoted the development of China's Internet. At that time, Yahoo, founded by Jerry Yang, was already 4 years old and had 167 million pageviews every day. It was undoubtedly the largest website in the world at that time. "Forbes" magazine launched a list of 100 richest people in high technology. Jerry Yang jumped to 16th place with a wealth of US$1 billion, becoming the richest Chinese in the high technology industry.
In the same year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, doctoral students at Stanford University in the United States, reluctantly moved their studio to a garage in the suburbs of California and named the company for Google. Previously, they had been researching and developing in the student dormitory, and jointly developed the Google search engine, which was quickly spread to information seekers around the world. However, because it consumed too much bandwidth at Stanford, the school's IT department kicked them out of the campus.
That year, Jeff Bezos made a decision-Amazon would expand its product categories. In fact, when Amazon was launched in July 1995, Jeff just wanted to make it a professional online bookstore. In June 1998, the Amazon Music Store was officially launched and began to expand across all categories. In just one quarter, Amazon Music Store sales surpassed CDNow to become the largest online music product retailer. Since then, Amazon has accelerated its category expansion and international expansion, becoming the world's largest online retailer.
The Internet not only changed social interaction, shopping and lifestyle, but also changed payment, and PayPal came into being. In December 1998, several young people founded Confinity in Silicon Valley and launched the electronic wallet product PayPal. In 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, and X.com was renamed PayPal. PayPal is currently one of the most widely used third-party payment tools in the world, covering 202 countries and regions, supporting 25 currencies, and serving hundreds of millions of users around the world.
Although technology "leader" Steve Jobs has entered his forties, he is still as passionate as these young people. On May 6, 1998, the second year after Jobs returned to Apple, he stood in the Flintstone Auditorium at De Anza Community College in Cupertino to launch the first-generation iMac. This blue translucent computer historically completed Jobs' important task of reviving Apple's sluggish situation and revitalizing Apple's corporate culture. After two years of huge losses of more than US$1 billion, Apple achieved a profit of US$309 million in the entire fiscal year 1998. Jobs saved Apple, and Apple's spirit of pursuing innovation and perfection returned with him.
In fact, very similar to today’s innovations, a large number of Chinese young people at the end of the 20th century, especially the science and engineering students who went to the United States to accept the baptism of the Internet and entrepreneurial ideas, are looking forward to the rise of the Internet in China. Strive to flex their muscles, they want to become China's Yahoo, China's AOL, and China's Apple.
Returnee Zhang Chaoyang’s Internet dream came true in February 1998. In the third year after he returned from the United States, Sohu.com, the first all-Chinese online search engine, was officially launched under his leadership. Zhang Chaoyang, who was eager for talents, went to Silicon Valley to search for Internet talents, and met Robin Li who was working for Infoseek, a famous search engine company in Silicon Valley.
Robin Li, who had a small calculation in mind, did not follow Zhang Chaoyang back to Beijing.
Later, after lobbying Silicon Valley investors and receiving funds, Robin Li returned to China and rented two rooms in Peking University Resource Hotel. Together with 1 financial staff, 5 technical staff, and partner Xu Yong, a group of eight people founded Baidu.
In June 1998, Ding Lei, a former employee of the Telecommunications Bureau, led the revision of the NetEase homepage that he founded a year ago to a "portal", and the NetEase portal was officially launched. In May 1997, Ding Lei used the money he saved from programming to start NetEase, and boldly used the 163 domain name as a registered trademark. This revision and transformation allowed NetEase to quickly occupy the market and become one of the most famous portals in China.
Wang Zhidong, general manager of Sitong Lifang, went to the United States three times in a row from 1997 to 1998 and met with more than 20 software companies, hardware companies, Internet companies and other various companies. He went to the United States not just to raise money. He had always longed for the venture business model of Silicon Valley and wanted to transform Sitong Lifang into a company like Silicon Valley by changing the shareholder structure of Sitong Lifang. At the end of 1998, Sitong Online finally announced its merger with Huayuan Life Information Network, the largest Chinese website in North America, and Sina.com, the world's largest Chinese portal website, was born.
At that time, "Dad Ma" was still an unsuccessful serial entrepreneur. In 1995, Jack Ma was "infected" when he came into contact with the Internet for the first time when he was on official business in the United States. After returning to China, he resigned and concentrated on starting a business. He established China's first Internet commercial company and launched the China Yellow Pages. He went to various ministries and enterprises in Beijing to sell door to door, but rarely Someone is willing to foot the bill. At the end of 1998, Jack Ma decided to leave Beijing and return to Hangzhou to continue his business. In this way, Jack Ma and his team collected 500,000 yuan and continued to think about the Internet at Jack Ma's home in Hangzhou. Alibaba was born the following year.
Shenzhen, which is more than 2,000 kilometers away from Beijing, continues to be bathed in the spring breeze of reform in this young city. In 1998, a programming engineer named Ma Huateng and his friends founded Tencent with 500,000 yuan, mainly developing paging software. In February 1999, Ma Huateng developed OICQ, which was later renamed QQ. Although it is considered to be an imitation of the foreign chat tool ICQ, we have to admit that the popularity of this chat software has quickly made ordinary people know what the Internet is, and has also popularized the Internet in China.
Similarly, there is a young man in Zhongguancun. After graduating from Renmin University, he did not follow the wishes of his parents and has been doing a decent job with a high salary in a foreign company. Two years later, in 1998, he resigned from a foreign company. I quit my job and started selling CDs in the Computer City. That small counter in Zhongguancun was the original appearance of JD.com, and the young man handing out leaflets on the streets of Zhongguancun was Liu Qiangdong.
Liang Jianzhang, who was the technical director of Oracle China at the time, could not suppress his excitement either. From 1997 to 1998, the Internet began to rise in the United States, and many startups suddenly emerged in Silicon Valley. This craze gradually spread to China, and Liang Jianzhang also had the idea of ????starting a business. After finding Ji Qi and Shen Nanpeng who had studied and worked in the United States, the three hit it off and Ctrip was officially launched in May of the following year.
Chen Yizhou, who is studying for dual master's degrees in MBA and electrical engineering at Stanford University, launched a "Stanford China Internet Forum" this year, and met Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning during the communication. The three decided to join the Chinese Internet boom, and their specific direction was virtual communities. In May 1999, the three returned to China and founded ChinaRen, with the slogan "Building the world's largest Chinese virtual community" and targeting college students aged 18 to 24. At that time, almost every Chinese college student had a ChinaRen account.
Chen Tianqiao’s Internet dream was also planted in 1998. This year, the former Fudan figure has worked in Lujiazui Group for four years and became the company's first secretary. The biggest attraction of this title for him is that he can play online games on the Internet 24 hours a day in his boss's office. However, this year he decided to resign, and a seed of the Internet sprouted in his heart.
The following year, Chen Tianqiao took the first pot of gold earned from the bull market and founded Shanda Network.
1998 is the sixth year of Lei Jun, China’s first-generation programmer, at Kingsoft. This year, Lenovo Group invested US$9 million to purchase shares of Kingsoft 30, becoming the single largest shareholder of Kingsoft. After Kingsoft was reorganized, Lei Jun became CEO. Kingsoft is a software company, but Lei Jun saw that the Internet was gaining momentum. As a result, Joyo.com, a subsidiary of Kingsoft that provides IT information and software downloads, transformed into a B2C e-commerce website.
At the same time, with the ideal of "allowing Chinese people to surf the Internet in their own mother tongue", Zhou Hongyi, a software engineer of Founder Group, founded 3721 in his small house in October 1998, pioneering Chinese Internet services. the first of its kind. The website real-name service brought by the "Chinese keyword search" technology covered more than 90% of Chinese Internet users at that time, with more than 80 million daily uses, and had more than 600,000 corporate customers, occupying 40% of China's paid search market. share.
Today, 20 years later, when the entrepreneurial wave sweeps across the land of China and laments that the entrepreneurial crowd is too young, looking back at 1998, that was the era when young people’s dreams were truly realized——
Ding Lei was 26 when he founded NetEase. Three years later, in 2000, NetEase went public in the United States, when he was 29 years old. In 2003, Ding Lei became the richest man in China at the age of 32;
Similarly, Chen Tianqiao founded Shanda at the age of 26. In 2004, after Shanda was listed in the United States, 31-year-old Chen Tianqiao became the youngest richest man in China with a net worth of 9 billion yuan and became the idol of countless entrepreneurs;
Ma Huateng was 28 when he founded Tencent. In 2004, he led Tencent to be listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the 2014 3000 Chinese Family Wealth List, Ma Huateng topped the list with a wealth of 100.7 billion yuan.
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In the lists of listed companies on various stock exchanges, Chinese Internet companies are definitely a beautiful sight; in various rich rankings, Chinese entrepreneurs have also become a A force that cannot be ignored. Chinese Internet companies have become an important pillar of China's economy in the past 20 years and have also become the main force for Chinese brands to collectively go overseas.
Author丨Bian Wen
WeChat editor | Zhou Xingru
Review editor | First month
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IT Manager World
Technology drives business change