It is said that behind every successful man, there is a woman who works silently, but behind Ma Huateng’s success, there is a man who has been working silently. This man is Tencent’s “second boss” Zhang Zhidong.

Zhang Zhidong is a super veteran who built the "Tencent Empire" with Ma Huateng. He is a core figure in the Tencent system. As a lifelong honorary consultant of Tencent, on November 4, 2021, Zhang Zhidong invested 109.5 billion yuan in His net worth ranks 29th on Forbes' list of mainland China's richest people.

With such dazzling achievements, Zhang Zhidong only wants to be "the man behind Ma Huateng." Apart from his friendship with the same family, this may have something to do with Zhang Zhidong's own personality. For him, instead of dominating the shopping mall, it is better to Work with technical data and carefully polish every Tencent product.

Zhang Zhidong was born in Dongguan, Guangdong in 1972. His father was a top student at Tsinghua University and his mother was a primary school teacher. Living in this family environment, Zhang Zhidong received the education from childhood to adulthood. Very complete.

In a good educational atmosphere, Zhang Zhidong showed his excellent learning talent since he was a child. He was extremely sensitive to numbers and often indulged in various games that exercised logical thinking. After entering elementary school, Zhang Zhidong He began to participate in various Mathematical Olympiad competitions and achieved excellent results.

In order to facilitate Zhang Zhidong's study, Zhang Zhidong's father also bought him a computer. In that era, it was very rare for families to afford computers. It can be seen that Zhang Zhidong's family conditions are considered wealthy.

Zhang Zhidong found it very novel that a square box could contain a vast amount of knowledge. From then on, Zhang Zhidong developed a strong interest in computer principles.

In 1989, Zhang Zhidong was successfully admitted to Shenzhen University. Out of love, Zhang Zhidong chose to study computer science without hesitation.

At Shenzhen University, majoring in computer science, Zhang Zhidong met the man who changed his life's destiny - Ma Huateng.

If Ma Huateng is one of the top talents in computer technology, then Zhang Zhidong is a computer genius at Shenzhen University. According to Zhang Zhidong’s roommate, he stays in his dormitory all day typing code and rarely socializes. Through hard work, Zhang Zhidong became a leading figure in the entire circle of computer enthusiasts in Shenzhen.

In 1993, Zhang Zhidong graduated from Shenzhen University with honors. At this time, all the classmates around Zhang Zhidong joined the army of employment. His friend Ma Huateng also entered Shenzhen Runxun Communication Development Co., Ltd. and started working as a programming engineer. .

Zhang Zhidong did not follow the trend, but chose to continue his graduate studies. During his graduate studies at South China University of Technology, Zhang Zhidong mastered more cutting-edge software architecture application knowledge, and his ability to organize code was also greatly improved.

Three years later, Zhang Zhidong successfully graduated from South China University of Technology and became one of the very few top students with a master's degree in that era.

Hit it off with Ma Huateng

After graduation, many Internet companies approached Zhang Zhidong, including Liming Network, a company with national first-level qualifications for computer information system integration.

Liming Network was one of the top players in the industry at the time. The computer automatic matching network trading systems of Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange were designed and built by Liming Network. China’s securities trading has since become one of the world’s leading companies. The first to realize paperless, networked and fully automated real-time transactions.

There is no doubt that Zhang Zhidong chose Liming Network.

Unlike ordinary employees, Zhang Zhidong is a person who is good at summarizing and innovating. After completing a day's work tasks, he is not in a hurry to get off work, but often thinks about some problems at his job.

He is not satisfied with completing simple work tasks. During work, he often thinks about "What do Internet users really need?" and "How to improve product design? Let users get better results." Experience", "What is the future development trend of the Internet?" and other practical questions.

At this time, Zhang Zhidong had many genius ideas in his mind that were eager to be realized. However, as a new employee who had just joined the company, it was difficult for him to apply the ideas in his mind to the company's large platform.

Zhang Zhidong has always had a dream of "technology changing life" in his mind, but in actual work, no matter how hard he worked, his talents were always ignored. Out of frustration, he had the idea of ????leaving Liming Network.

At this time, in distant Israel, three young Israelis *** jointly developed the world's first instant messaging software (chat software) and named it ICQ. Users can use ICQ to Send messages, chat, transfer files, and more.

Two years later, ICQ, which had more than 10 million users, was acquired by the United States for 407 million yuan. ICQ can be said to be one of the fastest technology tools to create wealth in history.

ICQ’s success story has been noticed by a group of young entrepreneurs struggling in the deep sea of ??the Internet, including Ma Huateng, who is very business-savvy.

"Since others can do it, why can't we do it?" With this idea in mind, Ma Huateng found his old classmate Zhang Zhidong.

"Do you think we can also build an Internet chat tool that belongs to the Chinese people? It would be best to have the functions of sending emails and viewing news. Such a multi-functional social software will definitely attract Many young people. "

Coincidentally, Ma Huateng's idea coincided with Zhang Zhidong's idea. After a long talk, the two hit it off and started their entrepreneurial journey.

Both of them are people with very strong execution ability. They do whatever they say. They quickly organized an Internet entrepreneurial team of their own. This team includes Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Chen Yidan, Xu Chenye, and Zeng Li. Qing, the five of them were later the Tencent Five Tigers.

Each of the five people has their own areas of expertise. Some specialize in technology, some are good at public relations, and some are good at management. The five of them each perform their own duties, which can be called a perfect entrepreneurial team.

In 1998, Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Co., Ltd. came into being.

Five young people *** invested 500,000, with Ma Huateng personally investing the most, accounting for 47.5% of the shares. Xu Chenye and Chen Yidan each contributed 50,000 yuan, each holding 10% of the shares. Zhang Zhidong held 20% of the shares, and Zeng Liqing held 12.5% ??of the shares. This is why the former Tencent Tigers had different values ??later on?

Among these people, Zhang Zhidong has the strongest computer technology ability, and Zhang Zhidong holds the position of Chief Technology Officer of Tencent.

Under the leadership of Zhang Zhidong, in less than a year, an instant messaging software - "OICQ" was born. OICQ copied almost all the functions of ICQ.

In fact, Tencent’s original intention was to build a network paging system and sell it to paging stations. OICQ is just a by-product of the network paging system, which can increase some call volume for paging stations. Bundling the two can sell a good Price.

Tencent has put OICQ online and allows netizens to download it for free in order to increase the user base for the network paging system they are developing.

What is unexpected is that the year OICQ was released, the number of users reached one million. After a period of time, the number of OICQ users increased wildly. In less than two years, its number of users exceeded 30 million.

Even so, Tencent still does not plan to operate it on its own, because the amount of funds consumed in operation is too large. They are only a small company that was established recently and simply cannot afford the funds.

At this time, the paging industry suddenly began to decline. Domestic paging stations continued to close or merge. The general trend of mobile phones replacing pagers was highlighted. Tencent had no choice but to suspend the network paging system it was developing.

At this time, OICQ, a by-product of the network paging system, has become a "hot potato." For the company's future development, Tencent plans to sell OICQ to a company that has the ability to acquire it.

Zeng Liqing once worked at the Shenzhen Telecommunications Bureau. Through Zeng Liqing, Tencent planned to sell OICQ to the Shenzhen Telecommunications Bureau for 700,000, but the person in charge of the Shenzhen Telecommunications Bureau was only willing to invest 500,000. In the end, The two parties failed to agree on the price range and the cooperation failed.

Two years of hard work in research and development was about to come to nothing, and the team was angry and depressed for a while.

"We cannot let our team's research and development efforts go to waste. Since we can't sell it, we will operate it ourselves."

Ma Huateng's plan has been unanimously recognized by everyone. After all, OICQ It is the only product that their team can produce after two years of business.

Ma Huateng decided to run his own business, and Zhang Zhidong has been silently accompanying him. In the following days, in order to maintain the company's normal operations, Tencent began to outsource some work. As a "big brother" in the computer field, Zhang Zhidong He also took the initiative to undertake outsourcing work such as program development and web design.

During this period, Zhang Zhidong was also constantly adjusting the structure of OICQ. From the perspective of real user experience, he designed the OICQ user interface to be very simple, and new functions were also added. More and more The more people enjoy the social convenience and novelty of OICQ, the more OICQ becomes a trend in the instant messaging industry.

Zhang Zhidong has a calm personality, is down-to-earth and hard-working. With him around, the company seems to be able to persevere no matter what difficulties it encounters. Therefore, Zhang Zhidong is also known as the "Dinghai Shenzhen" within the company.

At this time, Ma Huateng was not idle. He was looking for investment everywhere. With perseverance, Tencent finally attracted investment. Hong Kong PCCW and IDG were very optimistic about the future development of OICQ. The two companies Injected US$10 million in capital into Tencent.

Since then, Tencent got rid of the trouble of insufficient funds and began to embark on the normal development track, but Tencent also paid the price of 40% of its shares.

40% of the shares may be a growing pain, but this pain also allowed Tencent to successfully stand at the forefront of the Internet business, grow rapidly, and complete the internal revolution of Tencent in a timely and tortuous manner. sexual transformation.

With sufficient financial support, Zhang Zhidong and Ma Huateng began to expand the company's scale from a small workshop with only 5 people to a medium-sized company with more than 1,000 people. Tencent only used In less than 6 years.

In 2004, Tencent was listed on the Hong Kong Main Board and became one of the many successful people in the field of IT entrepreneurship.

Of course, Tencent’s first venture was not smooth sailing. They also encountered legal disputes.

As the saying goes, a big tree attracts attention. Since its design and development, OICQ has catered to the love of the vast majority of young people in China. In 2000, it already occupied 90% of China's instant messaging market share, and no one can shake its position.

Just when OICQ was planning to take off further, a lawyer’s letter from the other side of the ocean caught everyone off guard. AOL in the United States stated in the lawyer’s letter to Tencent that ICQ is a registered trademark of AOL. Tencent's OICQ has infringed AOL's trademark use rights.

Therefore, Tencent's OICQ must change its name, otherwise it will inevitably face legal disputes from AOL. OICQ is originally an imitator of ICQ, so OICQ's name change has become an inevitable situation.

What’s more, OICQ at that time used well-known cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and The Smurfs as avatars.

If just having similar trademark names will lead to prosecution, then using someone else’s anime character as an avatar will definitely lead to prosecution. In order to stop losses in time, Tencent decided to remove all foreign anime avatars from the shelves.

After several months of repeated design and modification, Zhang Zhidong finally decided to rename OICQ to QQ, and changed the original anime avatar to a cartoon image designed by himself, which is the red-faced OIC that everyone is familiar with today. Image of little penguin in scarf.

Zhang Zhidong’s idea was unanimously recognized by everyone, so OICQ was officially renamed QQ in 2000.

As the times develop, user needs and user experience are also constantly changing. By 2004, although QQ at that time had developed very well and had more and more functions, QQ also encountered problems with The original ICQ had similar problems when it was developed, that is, bloated functions and reduced user experience.

In order to solve this problem, Zhang Zhidong plunged into the work team to improve the QQ structure. In Zhang Zhidong's view, only products with good user experience can continue.

Therefore, in these years, although Zhang Zhidong has been worth hundreds of millions, he still focuses his life on improving QQ’s new functions.

Finally, in 2011, Tencent launched the mobile and simplified version of QQ "WeChat", and Tencent was able to reach a higher level.

From a small entrepreneurial workshop to the current large-scale "Tencent Empire", Zhang Zhidong has played an indispensable role. Zhang Zhidong's contribution to Tencent is undoubted. The QQ infrastructure he built more than ten years ago remains to this day. Still in use.

For the development of Tencent, he often stays up late and works overtime, specializing in solving various technical problems and improving Tencent's technology upgrades. It is precisely because of Zhang Zhidong's innocent heart that he does not seek fame and fortune. Only then can Tencent's technology department develop into the strongest in the industry.

Zhang Zhidong is a purely technical talent. Nice cars, beautiful women, and luxury houses are not attractive to him. Along the way of entrepreneurship, he has always maintained his original intention. "Technology changes life" is what he has always been pursuit since then.

As Tencent’s second largest shareholder, Zhang Zhidong appeared on the 2020 Forbes China Rich List with a net worth of 130.1 billion in 2020.

But these seem to have little impact on Zhang Zhidong. His life is still business as usual. He drives his more than 200,000 yuan Polara to and from get off work normally every day. Zhang Zhidong has a simple personality and no leadership airs. He looks different from ordinary employees. There is no difference.

In 2014, Zhang Zhidong resigned as the chief technology officer of Tencent to give opportunities to more young people, but this does not mean that Zhang Zhidong left Tencent.

Today, Zhang Zhidong, as Tencent’s lifelong honorary consultant and honorary dean of Tencent College, is still “the man behind Ma Huateng.”

As the domestic Internet industry becomes more competitive, Tencent may face more opportunities and challenges in the future. As the company’s technical veteran, Zhang Zhidong still plays a pivotal role in Tencent.