Through the ages, those who achieve great things need to experience three disasters. “Last night the West wind wither green trees, alone on the high-rise, looking at the end of the world road” this is the first robbery; “Wear gradually do not regret, for the Iraqi elimination people haggard” this is the second disaster; “He found thousands of baidu, suddenly look back, the man was in the lights dim” this is the third robbery. After thousands of risks, repair is the fruit, there is always. Today we are going to talk about the robbery of financing and look at the pit that the giants have fallen.
Robin Li was born in 1968 in an ordinary family in Yangquan, Shanxi Province, crying. In 1987, Robin Li, who had been fascinated by opera, “woke up” and was admitted to The library and Information major of Peking University with the first place in Yangquan city. He studied in the Computer department of the State University of New York at Buffalo in the United States, and had an internship in Panasonic in Japan. After that, he was employed by dow Jones subsidiary on Wall Street, where he accumulated financial knowledge and contacts. It was Infoseek, a famous search engine company in Silicon Valley, that really enlightened Robin’s business mind. It coincided with earth-shaking changes in China’s Internet industry. In 1999, Robin Li decided that the environment was mature and set out to return to China to recruit and set up Baidu. Even with such a bright gold resume, Li’s road to financing is not easy. At first, the domestic venture capital association has become the newly established their goals, after some talk, Mr Liu to baidu did not have the confidence, the asking price of 1.2 million dollars is enough to risk problem, lenovo afraid and Google in the search field already has a strong influence, the future remains to be seen whether to enter the Chinese market, and “baidu” also just stay in the seed stage, It’s not ready yet. Later, thanks to Li’s perseverance and credibility, Baidu secured its first round of funding from San Francisco venture capitalists of $1.2 million. Nine months later, venture capital firm DFJ and IDG invested another $10 million in Baidu. With a market value of $93.7 billion, Lenovo regrets that it missed baidu and the opportunity to go to the next level by not accurately forecasting the market, not having a deep understanding of the industry and a little bit of courage.
Alibaba
“Today will be cruel, tomorrow will be crueler, and the day after tomorrow will be beautiful, but most people will die tomorrow night.” Say human words: dead knock is victory!
One side of water and soil nurture one side of people, green Hangzhou gave Ma Yun a seemingly unreachable “martial arts dream”, but also gave him unyielding character and always optimistic spirit. In alibaba’s start-up period, because of the lack of manpower, a person would like to break into several people to use, at that time Tsai chongxin has not joined, so the money can only be found by Jack Ma himself. Saw 32 investors even, also had 32 closed doors even, the Lei Jun that holds office of jinshan president sometimes among them. Lei Jun despise Jack Ma, feel Jack Ma blow too hard, is always tens of billions, hundreds of billions of business, talk too passionate, with the same pyramid selling. At that time, the Internet is not as developed as now, smart phones, portable computers are not popular, even if Ma Yun wanted to show Lei Jun his “Taobao empire” can not do, can only talk about soldiers. Another rivers and lakes rumor, Lei Jun in Ma Yun left once said to the assistant: “this person long pointy monkey, a look not reliable!” Like Robin Li, code cloud and other international investment institutions – SoftBank, a total of $25 million in financing, officially kicked off the prelude of China’s e-commerce boom. Now Alibaba’s market value has reached a record high of $470 billion at one point, firmly surpassing Amazon as the world’s largest e-commerce company and giving Chinese people a big boost. And in the program “Yang LAN Interview”, Lei Jun was asked if he regretted that he did not invest in cloud code, Lei Jun wry smile answered this is the most regretted thing in his life. There is a saying that good leaders are excellent speakers. There’s another thing: Judge not from appearances.
How do you know Pony Ma, CEO of Tencent? It’s not going to be one of those “cool, cool, and awesome” memes, is it? (Laughter) He was a programming engineer, and his rich practical experience and management experience cultivated his keen sense of software market. He raised the price of 100,000 yuan to 700,000 yuan, which was the first bucket of gold of Tencent. Like other Internet start-ups, money and technology were Tencent’s biggest problems at the beginning. In February 1999, Tencent developed the first “Chinese flavor” ICQ, namely OICQ, which was well received by users. The number of registered users increased to tens of thousands in a short time. The number of people will continue to expand the server, and then one or two thousand yuan of server management fees are unbearable to the company. In 2000, when the first dotcom bubble swept the Chinese Internet, Tencent entered the most difficult period. Facing financial difficulties, it almost sold its ICQ software to Shenzhen Telecom Data Bureau for 600,000 yuan. The software could not be sold, but the number of users grew rapidly, and the investment needed to run QQ became more and more heavy. So Ma had to go around to raise money. With a business plan of more than 20 pages and six revisions, he began to look for foreign venture capital. Tencent’s development gradually got on the right track, and it was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 16, 2004. Now, its market value is $510.5 billion, surpassing Alibaba. The bloody and tearful history of BAT tells us that even if the company becomes successful in the end, it will also experience a period of dark and obscure days and financial difficulties in the early stage of entrepreneurship, but those who can seize the opportunity and persevere and survive will be the last to laugh. For startups, it’s important to learn some skills to analyze the pros and cons of a project from an investor’s perspective. As an investor, I am certainly willing to invest. Investment is a way of corporate strategy, which can make investors profitable, but at the same time, I cherish money as much as possible. Every day, I face a large number of “invalid” ideas and plans. Investors still prefer projects with potential. Forecasting, data mining and data analysis 1 to 2 years in advance are things that every investment institution enjoys. Investment can promote the integration of enterprises’ resources. If investors can’t make investors feel that investment has risen to the level of enterprise’s macro decision-making, it is difficult to get investment. For example, if the investor is a network security platform company, he may invest in some software team, because their rise can optimize the investor’s existing product line, and even give the investor the ability to compete with the giant, which is very important. So there are two things to keep in mind when looking for investors: 1. Abstract ideas are simply ignored, no matter how fanciful they may be. 2. Look for investment institutions that match your industry, and pay attention to the industry in which investors invest and in which they often invest. As a fellow entrepreneur, Bi you knows the bitterness of entrepreneurship process. Therefore, aiming at the pain point of “empty idea, no product demo”, he launched the “high-fidelity prototype production service package” service, so that the product can be more intuitively displayed in front of programmers and investors, and easily and efficiently capture the hearts of investors.