Reborn in 2000 as a scholar

It's hard to imagine that the Penguin Empire, once one of the three giants in the Chinese Internet world, was once in such a downturn.As the founder of Penguin Empire, Pony once hoped that several million yuan would sell the instant messaging software that was the cornerstone of Penguin Empire, and he would do other things.Of course, it's fortunate that he didn't do this, otherwise netizens across the country would not be superstitious about forwarding messages to the group on his birthday to receive virtual currency.Even in 8102, there are still such obsessed and unrepentant netizens who firmly believe in it.From this, we can get a glimpse of the pony's status and influence in the Internet world.

As for meeting such a down-and-out Pony in Hong Kong at this time, the only possibility is that his plan to seek financing in Hong Kong failed.For an opportunity to participate in Penguin tomorrow, if Lin Jinqi gives up, he will definitely spend the rest of his life in regret.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Pony?" Just when Pony was lamenting that this trip to find financing was not lucky, a sunny boy suddenly appeared in his sight. "My name is Lin Jinqi, and I have used your software. I also developed a software myself, so I really want to chat with big guys in the circle like you."

"We can't talk about big guys, everyone promotes each other." Most Internet entrepreneurs in this era are still humble and have a strong atmosphere of software engineer circles.If you say you develop software, most Internet entrepreneurs are willing to chat with you. "I guess you're still a student, right? I don't know what software you developed? Maybe I've used it before."

"Well, I'm still in high school. The software I developed is called Optimization Wizard, which is similar to Super Rabbit."

Pony was only polite. After all, the boy in front of him was still a student, and he didn't want to dampen his interest.As a result, after Lin Jinqi reported his software name, Pony realized that he had made a mistake.Because Pony has really used the optimization wizard, and plans to study this software.But like everyone else, he was smitten by the software's almost miraculous encryption shell.If it was just polite, when Lin Jinqi said that he is the developer of the optimization wizard, Pony has already treated Lin Jinqi as a person of the same level as himself.

After all, there are no secrets in the circle. In addition to being the developer of the optimization wizard, Lin Jinqi is also the owner of the Hi123 website, which is also known to most people.As for the Hi123 website, it is said that many venture capitalists have listed it as a key focus target, and they are ready to follow up investment only after advertisers can agree with its traffic and advertising concept.

The design concept and code style of the Hi123 website can be said to have set off a small trend in the entire Internet circle. Countless web designers regard Hi123 as the coding bible of the Chinese Internet world.It’s just that the owner of the Hi123 website has very strict control over advertisements. Which website is full of forced-click advertisements such as pop-up windows, floating, and couplet-following?However, Lin Jinqi is well aware of how harmful such advertisements are to users, and he is not one of the three major portals now, so Lin Jinqi can only give users a clean website in this Internet era where advertisements are developing savagely.

There are only three advertising spaces on the homepage of the entire website, and these three advertising spaces only have a banner at the bottom of the page, and the other two advertisements are only half-width.At the same time, Lin Jinqi's homepage does not receive any FLASH advertisements, and even the number of frames of GIF animations and the file size of the entire image are limited.However, because of this harsh restriction, the opening speed of Hi123's homepage has always been very smooth, so more and more users have stayed here.Although Hi123 has no advertisements on the surface, Pony knows that the ranking order of the website and the recently launched "Must Install" column can be exchanged for money.This is an unspoken rule of the industry, and Pony will not expose it.

"So you are AKL2000!" Pony said Lin Jinqi's network code name.

A is the first letter of Andrew, the English name that Lin Jinqi used most in his last life, K is the first letter of his nickname Kylin (Kylin) he used to play games, and L is of course the first letter of his surname Lin, and the last 2000 is Commemorate the year you were born again.In the early days of the Internet, this combination of English and numeric code names was common.

"I only heard that you were a student before, but I didn't expect you to be a high school student. This is really a boy born from a hero!" Pony admired Lin Jinqi's talent very much.

"Did Mr. Pony come to Hong Kong to seek investment opportunities?" Lin Jinqi asked directly without going around in circles with Pony.

"How do you think I came to Hong Kong to seek investment opportunities?" Pony also became a little interested and couldn't help asking.

"Now domestic instant messaging software has entered the Warring States era, and whoever has money can live to the end." Lin Jinqi said sharply, "In terms of domestic software, your OICQ, Lianzhong's GICQ, plus TICQ, PICQ and so on. Everyone is like a group of sharks trapped in a small pond. Whoever is the strongest can survive. At the same time, ICQ, MSN, AIM and other foreign real-time software predators will enter the market at any time. Do you feel frightened? What? The most important thing is that you can’t guarantee that Netease, Sina and Sohu, the three major portals, won’t one day take their fancy to the instant messaging market and enter this already messy market with their huge user base. We all know that instant messaging Communication software must have a future, but the problem is that instant messaging software is dark now, and tomorrow will be even worse. Even if you hope the day after tomorrow, do you think you can survive today and tomorrow?"

Pony's heart skipped a beat, he had to admit that Lin Jinqi's words were correct.At any time, communication is a rigid demand of human beings, so on the Internet, there will certainly be no market for software based on communication needs.But the problem is that in China, where the Internet has not yet been widely popularized, e-mail seems to have met most of people's communication needs.But for instant messaging software, hope is certain, but the days ahead don't seem to be that easy.

"Mr. Pony, why don't we find a place to chat, how about?" Seeing Pony's downcast expression, Lin Jinqi knew that Pony was actually very disappointed with his software, but Lin Jinqi didn't want to let him give up on Penguin.

"Okay, let's talk about the future of Huaxia Software." Pony thought that since he couldn't find a suitable investor, it would be good to listen to other people's opinions on his software.After all, many things will lose judgment because of being in it.

The hotel where Lin Jinqi stayed had an attached coffee shop, so Lin Jinqi and Pony found a relatively secluded corner and chatted over coffee.After chatting about the current situation of Internet entrepreneurship in China, Lin Jinqi suddenly said: "Mr. Pony, if I guessed correctly, your coming to Hong Kong to seek investment should be very difficult, right?"

"Why do you think so?" Pony is not only a software engineer, but also a qualified businessman.Under no circumstances should a merchant give the impression that his goods are unsalable, even if he has long since despaired of doing so.

"Isn't this simple? The investment community currently only regards the Internet as an extension of traditional media, so their valuation methods for Internet products are also based on traditional media." Lin Jinqi said with a smile, "Either you are a pay TV station, It can generate value by itself; either you have a large number of advertisers like free TV networks, so investors only have two criteria for judging your software, or your software can be sold at the same price as Microsoft's Windows or Office, or There must be advertisers like Yahoo or AOL. But the problem is, they ignore the most important value of Internet products, that is users!"

Lin Jinqi is very clear that no one cares about the value of users in the current Internet world, because they think that since users can go to you, they can also go to me, so the number of users is not very meaningful.However, as the major Internet giants began to build their own closed-loop ecology in the later stage, and opened up all their products horizontally with "one-stop account", they knew where the value of users was.Why is Tencent Games invincible?The reason is simple, they have 6 million QQ users.If people internally divert users at will, no matter how rubbish Tencent's game is, it can instantly gain attention.

At this time, Pony did not expect what the user value meant, but rather wanted to cash out the penguins.For a period of time, Penguin, the number one instant messaging software in China, suddenly had countless advertisements on its interface, which directly affected the user's usage speed; at the same time, users were forced to pay 2 yuan to use Penguin.These two almost suicidal operational strategies almost killed the penguin, but the penguin's enemies were stupider than the penguin at the time.Seeing the penguins committing suicide there, one after another imitated the penguins to play suicide.What's even more funny is that the penguin just planned to hang himself, and all the penguin's enemies committed suicide there.Seeing others killing him, Penguin suddenly came to his senses and did not commit suicide.Otherwise, the Penguin Empire is really impossible.

"Users? The problem is that investors can't see the value of users, so what can I do?" Pony said rather frustrated.

"If I can invest, how much stock can you give me?" Lin Jinqi suddenly said, "Not only can I provide cash as a share, but I can also find a profit path that belongs to Penguin. I want to know, how much is all this worth?"

"Mr. Lin, I know you are an excellent software engineer and web engineer, but I don't think you are an excellent software operator." Pony said, "It's not that I look down on you, but that software development, operation and marketing have never been It is three relatively independent blocks. Even if you can coordinate the overall situation, you cannot be amazing in more than two fields. Of course, if you are willing to invest, I welcome it, after all, I am also I came to Hong Kong to seek cooperation opportunities.”

"Mr. Pony, I think you should have heard some news? Mr. Gates of Microsoft flew to China half a year ago, and after he returned to the United States, the development of Microsoft's new operating system has accelerated a lot," Lin Jinqi said. .

"I've heard the news. It's said that Mr. Gates found a great person in the mainland to help him see the development route of the new operating system." Pony said.After the news came out of Silicon Valley, it quickly spread in China.At first everyone thought it was a legend, but they didn't expect Bill Gates to admit it in private. Pony suddenly realized something, "Wait, you want to tell me that you are the person Mr. Gates consulted?"