Rebirth of the Wild Age

Just after the Lantern Festival, Ding Sanshi flew to Shenghai and found Song Weiyang who had returned to Shanghai from his hometown in Xikang.

The two made an appointment to meet at Time Café, Song Weiyang sipped the juice and asked, You're in such a hurry, why did you come to me for something?

Two things, Ding Sanshi said, one is to ask you for advice on how to make online games, and the other is to speed up the plan to acquire NetEase shares.

Song Weiyang smiled and said, Didn't you say last year that A Chinese Journey to the West will be released at the end of the year? It's been several months and nothing has happened.

Ding Sanshi explained helplessly: The game studio I bought had no experience in making online games at all. There were too many bugs during the beta test, and the public beta time was constantly postponed. I simply canceled the project before the Spring Festival. Overturned the re-production of Journey to the West 2. Your Legend is too popular, I have to come here to learn from experience.

Song Weiyang said: All products are made in the same way. Identify the target audience and then develop according to this group. A Chinese Journey to the West is a 2D turn-based online game. You can learn more from the successful experience of Stone Age. Summarize what the other side did not do well.”

I'm talking about operation and promotion, Ding Sanshi said, Other game agency companies also learn from Legend to promote Internet cafes, but Legend is the one that is really popular. Even if it is your previous Gods and Demons , now they are dying, I really don't understand the promotion of Legend.

Song Weiyang said with a smile: The core gameplay of Legend is very simple, which is to slash monsters and upgrade equipment. Its essence lies in its roughness and simplicity, which can attract countless Chinese people who have never played games before. Another essence lies in social interaction, that is, meeting friends To slash people, the game environment is a bit like the old Hong Kong movie Young and Dangerous. But the turn-based game Journey to the West is not suitable for the young and Dangerous route, you have to find another way.

Ding Sanshi sat up straight and listened carefully: Tell me.

Song Weiyang said: A Chinese Journey to the West can be made more casual and entertaining, so that it can attract many girls. If there are a large number of female players in a game, why not worry about no male players entering the pit?

That's right! Ding Sanshi slapped his thigh fiercely.

This kind of marketing method appeared very early. For example, dance halls were very popular in the 1990s, resulting in more and more numbers and lower fees. The industry competition is extremely fierce. So some song and dance hall owners came up with a good way to publicize that girls don't charge tickets, and they can go in for free and dance for as long as they want. When the number of girls increases, the men will move on. This pattern quickly spread to the whole country.

Ding Sanshi, who often goes to disco bars, is naturally very familiar with this business model, so now Song Weiyang understands it.

Song Weiyang asked: What about NetEase's stock?

Ding Sanshi said with a wry smile: The stock price has fallen to 16 cents, and a large number of shareholders have collectively sued for the false financial report released last year. Originally, on New Year's Day, NetEase's stock price had returned from 60 cents to 1 dollar, because of investment The news of a class action lawsuit by investors was exposed, and it fell directly from 1 dollar to 16 cents. It has been a month and a half in a row, and the trading volume of Netease stock has been zero. If it continues like this, I am afraid that it will be delisted by Nasdaq.”

With a stock price of 16 cents, we can do it. Song Weiyang was quite happy.

Song Weiyang, Duan Yongping and other friends, together with Jinniu Capital, have acquired 10% of the shares of other shareholders last year, and the price is about 80 cents. It's even better now that the stock price has fallen to 16 cents, which is a great opportunity to buy from the stock market.

In another time and space, Ding Sanshi naturally didn't know Song Weiyang. He found Duan Yongping, a senior at the University of Science and Technology of China during the Spring Festival.

Firstly, he asked Duan Yongping about commercial marketing to prepare for the launch of A Chinese Journey to the West 2; secondly, he asked Duan Yongping for help, spending some spare money to buy NetEase stocks, so as to get rid of the dilemma of zero trading volume.

At that time, Duan Yongping bought a 5.05% stake in NetEase for only 2 million US dollars, and then poured money into it a few months later (the stock price was already close to 2 US dollars at this time), increasing his personal shareholding ratio to 6.8%. A year and a half later, NetEase's stock price rose to $70, and an investment of several million dollars turned into $150 million.

At this moment, Song Weiyang gave an order, and Jinniu Capital immediately went to NASDAQ to scan the goods, and several other friends who were willing to invest also followed suit.

The ever-increasing daily trading volume has caused NetEase’s stock price to grow rapidly, from 16 cents to 92 cents, and its shareholding structure has become: Ding Sanshi (51%), Song Weiyang (11.2%), Jinniu Capital (16.5%) , Duan Yongping (5.5%), others (15.8%).

According to the number of shares held by Song Weiyang and Jinniu Capital, by the end of next year, NetEase stock alone will be worth at least 700 million US dollars.

Historically, NetEase’s share price was not really speculated by Wall Street investors. Due to the negative news of this stock, it has always been regarded as a junk stock, and the stock price has hovered below $1 for a long time. So when the financial report for the third quarter was released in 2002, its excellent performance was immediately followed by many ordinary investors, who bought it like cabbage, and then it skyrocketed nearly 70 times all the way!

Of course, it is also because of the foil of peers that many Internet stocks are dying, and suddenly there is one stock that stands out, and it naturally becomes a firefly in the dark night.

This also has a lot to do with Ding Sanshi's operation. Since the news of false financial reports was exposed, he has fully reduced the amount of advertising to start saving, and at the same time adopted a very conservative financial report method. To what extent? Montnets business requires funds to be included in the income. Even if the point cards in the chat room and games have been sold, the money will be seen in the account, but the point cards will be included in the account received after they are used up.

After A Chinese Journey to the West 2 made money, Ding Sanshi immediately paid the shareholders' class action settlement fee in one lump sum. This news attracted a small range of American shareholders' attention. Then, taking the opportunity of releasing the financial report, he elaborated on NetEase's conservative financial statistics method, and sincerely apologized to the American stockholders, guaranteeing that NetEase will not have such a thing happen again in the future.

In an instant, the performance, attention, and reputation improved, and the stock price immediately soared crazily.

Different from Ding Sanshi's conservatism, both Sina and Sohu chose to brag, and their financial reports were more radical than the other. Throughout 2002, NetEase hardly advertised on a large scale, and Ding Sanshi disappeared from the public eye; while Sohu and Sina took advantage of the opportunity to advertise frantically, as if they felt that NetEase was dying, and they rushed to seize the vacant space. market share.

At the first West Lake Lunjian, several major Internet leaders said that the environment is not good, and Internet companies need to calm down and practice hard. But only Ding Sanshi and Ma Xiaoyun did this, and the others either left their jobs sadly, or they were still doing the same things they did during the dot-com bubble.

Zhang Chaoyang is still floating, constantly appearing in the public eye, and all kinds of advertisements are flying. However, this approach has also achieved results. Firstly, Montnets’ revenue keeps rising, and secondly, Sohu’s stock price remains stable. Basically, there is no financial pressure, but the disadvantage is that it has not yet found a future core business.

In other words, Sohu's core business also has alumni records that were renamed Renren by Song Weiyang himself. However, the operating cost of Renren.com is very high, and no suitable profit point has been found for the time being, so that other shareholders have no confidence in this, and have repeatedly asked Zhang Chaoyang to abandon the Renren.com project.

If it weren't for Song Weiyang's persistence, with Zhang Chaoyang's character, maybe he would really give up, or stop investing a lot of money.

It can also be said that it was kidnapped by capital, which is the case with Sohu in history. Many projects that will make a lot of money in the future, Sohu started to work very early, but halfway through, they found that it was too expensive. Under the huge pressure of the board of directors, they gradually abandoned it halfway.

Of course, Zhang Chaoyang also has a big problem. From the beginning, he likes to hype and gain attention, and he really regards himself as a big star. Especially after 2008, Zhang Chaoyang's personal prestige reached its peak. Sohu's performance and stock price both surpassed Sina for the first time. For the next year, Zhang Chaoyang played around in various ways, and even refused to answer calls or text messages from executives. His subordinates took care of it, while he went to climb mountains with celebrities, play yachts, have parties, even appeared on the cover of fashion magazines, and even held private parties on the top floor of Sohu Building.

Over the past year, a large number of Sohu executives have left, such as Gong Yu, who later founded iQiyi, who was serving as Sohu's chief operating officer at the time.

Zhang Chaoyang found himself completely surpassed by his opponent. Then he frantically cracked up again. In order to increase profitability, the user experience of Sohu's products was extremely poor. Under such circumstances, he made himself depressed, and the company slipped into the abyss without returning.

During the years when Zhang Chaoyang was floating in the clouds, Sohu's coo, cfo, Sohu Video's CEO, Sohu.com's editor-in-chief and other executives resigned one after another. Youku, iQiyi, Kuliu, Miaopai... The founders of these companies all left Sohu. This is only in the video field, which shows that Sohu was full of talents back then.

This is all for the future. From the current point of view, apart from hype and lack of determination, Zhang Chaoyang is generally quite normal. Sohu's number one general, Gu Yongjiang, also cooperates with Zhang Chaoyang tacitly. The two are working together to survive the cold winter of the Internet.

Song Weiyang will not take any action yet, if Gu Yong will resign like Yuan Shikong did, then he will stand up and express his opinion. At that time, Song Weiyang might take Zhang Chaoyang out of the picture, or directly force him to resign, so that this guy can reflect behind closed doors for a while.

People will change slowly, and those who are not determined will become stronger.

Take Baidu as an example. In the first few years of Li Yanhong’s founding, he delegated all kinds of power to his subordinates. He only focused on the general direction. But later, the consensus in the Internet industry is: Baidu only has a No. 1 person, and there will never be a No. 2 person. Baidu's CEO has become a joke.

Well, Baidu has already started to be a search site at this time.

When Li Yanhong first founded Baidu, he had been doing search services. To put it bluntly, he was providing search technology to other websites. Perhaps because it has accumulated enough funds, Baidu is now starting a comprehensive transformation and is competing with Ding Ming's Sogou for business, but it is still regarded as a little brother for the time being.

...

Jinniu Capital did not spend too much money to acquire NetEase shares. Under Song Weiyang's instructions, most of the spare money left by Jinniu Capital was used to buy Amazon's bottom, and soon became a small shareholder of Amazon with a 0.58% stake.

When Amazon's stock price recovers, this tiny 0.58% stake will only earn a lot more than investing in NetEase.

Just when Taurus Capital was hunting for bottoms, Song Weiyang successively held conference calls with the executives of the major companies in which he held shares to discuss the development direction for the new year, and then went straight to Huadu to be a teacher in the emba class.

Many students of Jinniu Business School are looking forward to the arrival of Dr. Ma.