Chen Yizhou: the idea of quitting the video website is correct.

In winter, Chen Yizhou, an entrepreneur who has been immersed in the Internet for 10 years, is quite a little "yang". This old returnee graduated from MIT and a former alumnus of Zhang Chaoyang, he is still in a red-hot state. In his modest expression, he said, "the ability to make money is not good."

If you draw a line from Chen's experience over the past 10 years, you can see that he is always the most active one in the concept of continuous innovation on the Internet. From record-breaking to portal websites, from wireless businesses to online games and the so-called Web2.0, from a popular video website to a popular SNS, its personal entrepreneurial experience seems to cover all the concepts of the Chinese Internet from the United States, but it is not easy to maintain a strong entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

Zeng Jinghai

In the past 10 years, the history of network entrepreneurship has been quite long. After all, the first wave of Internet companies listed on the market basically completed the entire process from start-up to listing to creating wealth in five years. But for Chen Yizhou, it is just the beginning of a startup story. In 1999, Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning founded ChinaRen record. In 2000, they suffered a network bubble and sold it to Sohu. They left in 2001. This history is widely used in the industry. Today, there are not many people mentioned, but Chen has little memory.

Since Chen's second start-up in 2002, the days of the millennium Oak Group have also experienced ups and downs, winning more than less. From the establishment of the SMS Wireless Alliance, to the merger of modemo and donews, the launch of its own campus network 5Q, the stalls are not small, by 2006, Thousand Oak has nine different Internet brands, the company expanded rapidly, with nearly employees.

Although there is no way out to make money, Chen's financing skills continue to grow. In March 7, 2006, the thousand rubber Interactive Group officially announced that it had received an investment of 48 million US dollars, which was indeed a small number at that time, the company's web personality and Internet businesses that can be covered have basically taken shape, from portal websites, vertical communities to on-demand videos. Chen also made an appointment with the media from time to time, suggesting that after a period of effort, the thousand rubber group can be listed collectively.

However, it was not a long time. Less than half a year later, Qian rubber suddenly announced the layoff of 150 people and cut down video websites and other departments. At that time, the dudu network download accelerator was canceled, such software is in the midst of disputes over rogue software. "It seems that we are right to leave the video website because we cannot make money, and we still need a huge bandwidth investment, millions of dollars in cost, and hundreds of competitors, our once-keen field does not bring in real income, and qianniu will not pay for it any more." Chen Yizhou told the China Business News reporter that the video website patent applied by the company was recently approved, but it is no longer useful.

The multi-party attack has not brought about any unexpected gains. From Web 1.0 to Web, it is almost a tough journey, and the failure of Thousand Oaks is also inevitable.

Another city

Creativity and ideas are indispensable for Internet entrepreneurship. The SNS model created by Facebook in the United States once again attracts domestic Internet entrepreneurs, including Chen Yizhou.

After a series of adjustments, Chen's entrepreneurial focus has returned to the community network. On September 6, October 10, 2008, thousand rubber announced that it had purchased the domain name kaixin.com, which was recently referred to as "kaixin.com ". Later, it also triggered the emergence of a large number of other types of "kaixinnet.

As a result, new challenges are emerging. As a traffic-type website, users log on to the website 10 million-every day ~ 20 million users cannot make Chen Yizhou really happy. The more people there are, it means that the cost of bandwidth and servers has increased significantly. This part of investment has accounted for nearly 30% of the company's spending, but instead it has worked for operators. "This is a hard job, making money slowly, and there is no threshold. There is no other way to do big work, and it is definitely not a profiteering industry ." Chen said, "I can only catch up slowly. The industry is fiercely competitive. Only when the scale is increased and the traffic is large enough can we win ."

Undoubtedly, Chen Yizhou was lucky. Before the financial crisis came, his huge traffic attracted the attention of investors. In 2008, the company received $0.43 billion in capital injection from SoftBank.

How can we convert traffic into money? Chen believes that a good way is to absorb Yilong's shares. This acquisition has finally completed the overall layout of the business architecture, form brand advertisement, online games and e-commerce trigger.

The three carriages are favored by almost all Internet companies in the industry, because only these three businesses can bring real money. According to Tencent statistics, as of January 31, the number of monthly login accounts in the QQ space had exceeded 0.2 billion, again surpassing 0.175 billion of the login users in the same month in Facebook. In February 9, the number of simultaneous online QQ accounts broke through 50 million, both of which are the world's highest record. "Qian Oak is still a medium-sized Internet company. What we want most now is to do this well. It will take at least five years ." Chen Yizhou and his thousand rubber group have to stick to it.