Top of the big era

During this period, domestic video website companies were listed one after another, and Baidu and Penguin also began to expand into this industry, which made many people in Ziweixing anxious.

This time, Zhou Buqi made everything clear for once.

Ziweixing doesn’t plan to do everything.

The size of a company does not mean that the company is strong. Take Baidu for example. The company is very large, but its real strong business is search. Other businesses may also be able to make money, but they are not high-value businesses. If you can make money today, you may not be able to make money one day.

Ziweixing wants to be a strong company, not a big company.

At least this is the case for domestic business.

You must have strong ability to withstand stress.

Enron was also very strong back then, with a market capitalization of US$100 billion. Something happened and it went bankrupt within half a year. In fact, it was big but not strong, and its ability to withstand pressure was too poor.

That evening, Zhou Buqi, Guo Pengfei and Meng Houkun gathered in private.

Guo Pengfei actually has some doubts about this choice, "Ziweixing only does domestic business, and it's such a big market. One day it will encounter a growth bottleneck."

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "It's still early. WeChat, Toutiao, Weibo, etc., as well as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, still have a long way to go in the future."

Guo Pengfei said: "The capital market relies on telling stories, and storytelling means doing many things. It doesn't matter whether you do it well or not. As long as you do it, you will be sought after."

Zhou Buqi said: "So we have to look at it from a longer-term perspective. We hold so many shares of Ziweixing. What does the short-term fluctuation of the stock price mean to us?"

Guo Pengfei was slightly startled and said "Fuck".

Meng Houkun laughed and said with admiration: "That's right. This is the Boss Zhou I know."

For some ordinary employees, they hold very few stocks, so it is very important for the company to follow the trend. If they follow the trend, the stock price will easily rise sharply in the short term, and they can sell the stock and make a lot of money.

However, for veterans of the Ten School Entrepreneurship Alliance such as Zhou Buqi, Guo Pengfei, and Meng Houkun, this method is meaningless. They hold so many stocks that every time they cash out, they have to make an announcement in advance.

That's it.

If an important shareholder at the founder level wants to run away, it will inevitably cause panic in the market and leave an impression on the market that Ziweixing is telling stories and hyping up the company in the short term with the purpose of pumping up sales. At that time, a large number of people will inevitably follow suit, causing the stock price to plummet.

If you want to keep the stock price stable, shipments must be slow.

For example, Guo Pengfei, if he wants to cash out cleanly, he will have to score at least ten or twenty years.

But how many Internet companies can survive for more than ten or twenty years?

More importantly, it is impossible for Guo Pengfei to cash out Ziweixing's stocks on a large scale. He still relies on stocks to run the company, which means that he may still be an important shareholder thirty to fifty years later.

How can we ensure that Ziweixing will still have strong vitality in a few decades? Can it still maintain a high market value?

Those piecemeal businesses with low thresholds are meaningless.

Maybe you can do it in a short time and make money.

However, under the rapidly changing Internet wave, low-threshold businesses can easily be subverted by new products. These businesses that are large but not strong will not survive for long.

From a longer-term timeline, Ziweixing should still do some strong businesses with core competitiveness, so as to maintain longer-term existence value.

From this point of view, Ali has done well.

Alibaba has acquired many companies and integrated them into its own ecosystem, but the results have not been very good. It has killed all these companies and has been ridiculed by the outside world.

But this is just a failure at the business level.

At a higher level, Ali's goal is to live 102 years.

Alibaba bought these companies not to run them well, but to rely on these companies to strengthen its core position in Tmall, Taobao and Alipay and maintain the longer-term value of these products. As for the other piecemeal companies we bought, how could it matter whether they were alive or dead?

Companies like Youku, Are You Hungry, Word of Mouth, and UC will basically be dead in ten or twenty years if they don’t die today.

For Alibaba, as long as it ensures the strong vitality of its core businesses such as Tmall, Taobao, Alipay, and Alibaba Cloud, it can continue to make a lot of money. If Youku, UC, and Are You Hungry can no longer survive? If they can’t survive, they won’t be able to survive. Just wait until new good companies come out and buy them.

In the end, we need to maintain Alibaba's core business, so we must continue to work together and constantly patch up our core business.

Ziweixing is different from Ali.

The fundamental purpose of Ali's doing this is for traffic. They must rely on traffic to maintain Taobao's long-term vitality.

There is no need for Ziweixing. Several of its products are traffic transfer stations, so there is no need to patch them. They only need to focus on operating several core products. In the future, by selling traffic, it will be like having a cornucopia.

Zhou Buqi said: "Ziweixing's current core product layout is almost complete, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, WeChat, search, Weibo, and Toutiao. These are the only ones. We can make a short video product in the future. What is it like? How many years can fragmentary products like Meitu Xiuxiu, Weidian Mobile Assistant, and Weidian Security Guard survive? That’s almost it! In terms of vitality, it’s the paid products such as Weidian Notes and Weidian Accounts, as well as Weizhi and On-campus Products with certain thresholds such as Internet and micro-dot maps will have a longer lifespan. These are what we need to focus on."

Guo Pengfei looked at him deeply, "No wonder you don't support Weidian's security products to start a war with Baidu and Penguin. You are retreating."

"It's not about retreating, it's unnecessary. It affects reputation and is a waste of manpower, material and financial resources."

"Aren't you afraid that your judgment will be wrong?"

Guo Pengfei asked.

Zhou Buqi said: "It can't be wrong!"

Meng Houkun frowned and said: "Your idea is right, but who can guarantee which business is a strong business and which business is big but not strong? How can we tell? Maybe the security product business is a strong business."

Zhou Buqi was full of confidence, "The basic logic is the same. Now they are offering Baidu Anti-Virus, QQ Security Guard, etc., which are all free products. How can they become stronger? We are not making enterprise-level anti-virus software. This business is If it can be done, and combined with Ziweiyun's safety protection project, this will be a strong business."

Guo Pengfei pondered and said: "So bring in products related to strong business and separate out products that are big but not strong."

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Yes!"

"How to divide it?"

"Either like YY, go public independently. Or find an opportunity to sell it."

"Sell?"

"For example, we have two products, Weidian Mobile Assistant and 91 Mobile Assistant, with 70 to 80 million users. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, there will definitely be more and more users of these two products. Tool-type products , the most popular in the early days of the mobile Internet."

Zhou Buqi had already communicated this point of view with Fu Sheng, and Fu Sheng had already packed up and set off to the United States to conquer the new world.

Guo Pengfei still didn't quite understand, "Who are you selling it to?"

Zhou Buqi said: "Internet products are ultimately about traffic, but Alibaba lacks this."

"Well..." Guo Pengfei suddenly realized, "This is really the case. If the mobile users of 91 Mobile Assistant reach 200 million, and the activity of this product is often very high, it means traffic. After Ali bought it, on 91 Mobile Adding some Taobao advertisements to the assistant will be a strategic supplement to their strong business."

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "Yes, that's what it means. Let alone 200 million users, even if there are 100 million users, it can still sell for 1 billion US dollars. If you have money to make, why not make it?"

This is really not an exaggeration.

In 2013, Alibaba was interested in acquiring Wandoujia. At that time, the scale of Wandoujia was less than 100 million, but it demanded a sky-high price of US$1.5 billion. Boss Ma thought it was too expensive, and Alibaba had not yet gone public at that time, so he put it on hold.

By 2016, the installed capacity of Wandoujia had reached 500 million, and Alibaba bought it for US$200 million. The reason why the price plummeted was because by 2016, Apple, Google, and Facebook had all launched boycotts. The era of tool-based products was over, and the best opportunity was gone.

But even though it bought Wandoujia at a low price of US$200 million, Alibaba suffered a big loss in this matter and did not borrow much of Wandoujia’s traffic at all. It’s useless to have 500 million users, it’s just dead.

The Internet is changing too fast. Even if such a large but not powerful product has a huge scale of hundreds of millions of users, it is very likely that it will be used up in a short time.

Zhou Buqi continued: "Alibaba has no traffic, so sell 91 Mobile Assistant to them. Baidu is busy making security products, and obviously does not pay enough attention to the mobile Internet. When it is discovered that it has fallen behind, Baozhun will have to buy it at a high price. When the time comes, Weidian will If we sell the mobile assistant to them, it is estimated that we can earn US$1 billion. We need to ask them to change the name from Weidian Security Assistant to Baidu Security Assistant."

Guo Pengfei said angrily: "Just think about good things!"

Zhou Buqi said: "Anyway, that's what it means. We must constantly strengthen our strong businesses. If we need to make acquisitions, we can decisively join them. Then we will find ways to separate out those businesses that are large but not strong."

Guo Pengfei remembered something, "By the way, I almost forgot, Wang Xiaochuan asked me to tell you something."

"Oh? What is?"

"Search immediately, do you remember?"

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Well, Deng Pingpong did it, the national team."

Guo Pengfei said: "It seems that there was a big technical problem. There were a lot of illegal web links on it. It was very serious. It was even worse than Google back then."

"..."

Zhou Buqi didn't know what to say. Although the Internet technology is now very mature, search is still considered a high-tech field. It can't be done by just pulling together a team.

Guo Pengfei said: "There is a second national team that is about to end. The domain name has been applied for and they found it. It is called Pangu Search."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and said nonchalantly: "Search is Ziweixing's strong business and core business. If you do your best, the sky will not fall."

I was watching the Barcelona game last night and noticed that there were entertainment promotions on the stadium advertisements. It's not a Hollywood movie, it's a Korean girl group show. It’s really cool, Fenmo is really popular in Europe.