Dai: The entrepreneur comes with an exclamation point

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Son investment in the oak, so that the domestic Internet community's interest in social networks into a step, but in the domestic Netizen's practical application, BBS is their more familiar choice.

Sing, a software company that is much less interactive than oak, offers the background code discuz! for most of the country's forums. Sing is now becoming more and more familiar to people, but not because of products, but the company was born in the 80 's boss.

Love the Net Family

Dai, born in 1981, Heilongjiang Daqing people. In fact, his parents are all the teachers of Daqing Petroleum Institute.

The hobby is radio, but he recalls that whether it's assembling a radio or a musical doorbell, it's all about a bunch of components that aren't easy to accumulate.

In the second year of Junior High school, the family had a computer that he could start with, AMD's 80386. He then found that the code was an innovative opportunity that was easier to reinvent. He soon became obsessed with computers, and the problem was the result of landslides, which, of course, was difficult to accept for an intellectual family.

Before the entrance examination, his father took him to see the Daqing Experimental High School, which is also the best local high school, the school has a Pentium computer, rather than his previous fiddling with the 386, which inspired his desire to learn. In the cramming, surprise study one months later, he took a higher score than the score was admitted to the high school.

1998, Dai Home in the net, summer vacation he began to frequent the internet, making personal homepage is the application of the idea, Dai Memories, his then personal homepage called "Superman software Studio", is a hotlinking other people's Web site software.

Quite worth mentioning is, Dai occasionally can also write poetry: brother and sister are big, earn a pay bath love, I, still have nothing ...

Soon it was time for the college entrance exam, he was in high school grades generally, but 2000 years that hot summer he was surprisingly adaptable, but also in the final stage, the evil made up a bit, and finally get a good result, although he did not fill the first volunteer Huazhong University of Technology into the take, but entered the engineering, majored in communication Engineering.

Dai University classmate, is now his colleague Xu Guangyuan recalls: Freshman when he is more normal, sophomore time is not normal, junior, is very crazy, they rented a house, senior disappeared ...

Dai found a month to rent 300 yuan house, which makes him a little less binding, learning, is the endless internet surfing. He later said that it felt very good, the house is broken, life is very thrifty, like a scientist, quiet and full, have time to think and constantly make themselves grow.

At the end of 2001, he won the first prize of a web design competition in Harbin, and then interviewed by Heilongjiang TV station. This may further excite his interest in the Web. 2002 Dai created the first work in PHP, Stat therefor, for network traffic statistics.

PHP is the acronym for the Hypertext Preprocessing language (Php:hypertext preprocessor), which is similar to ASP, and is a scripting language for embedded HTML documents executed on the server side. PHP supports almost all popular databases and operating systems, and is now widely used by web programmers.

March 2002, Dai began to develop Crossday kong-based (CDB) forum backstage, June Release 2.0, October 3.0, then renamed the current discuz!. Discuz from discuss, the meaning of the discussion, as for the exclamation point should be some kind of admiration for Yahoo. Of course Dai himself explained that he was amazed at the huge prospects of the internet industry.

Discuz! can let the webmaster simply build a network forum. At this point, Dai is simply a way of sharing software developers, and he uploads the code to each download site and wants more people to use it. So he did, more and more people use discuz! to build their forum, he estimates that there are more than 800 sites using his background, which makes Dai full of sense of achievement.

Young self-employed

Since there are so many people like, and Dai also need to the meaning of this hobby to parents an account, Dai germination of the idea of charges, he put this set of code priced at 500 yuan.

There is no smooth sailing, a long time, Dai did not receive a dime, which also corresponds to the network charging environment. Worse, there have been some abuses on the web, that the software was not developed by Dai, or that the code was inferior in quality. This made the sophomore in the university very distressed, at one point even dared not to surf the internet.

Successful people's thinking has a unique place, Dai decided to raise prices, from 500 yuan to 2000 yuan. In an interview with CCTV's "living room" in July 2006, Dai the following: If I sell 500 yuan, I have to touch four to earn 2000 yuan, if I sell 2000 dollars, I just met a sucker can earn 2000 dollars, so I think anyway also sell not move, still not as high as the price of a little, And this quality is also high.

Very soon, there is a person from Hong Kong to call Dai, willing to pay, but individual places need to improve, after the communication, the man also said that if the time to some, he is willing to pay more money. As a result, Dai completed the task in a week, earning the first 3,000 bucks.

With the network fee environment improvement, willing to pay Dai more and more people, Dai to his discuz! graded, the cheapest is 800 yuan, the highest is 2000 yuan. The characteristics of the software industry soon reflected, a development, unlimited replication, by the end of 2003, Dai unexpectedly received 300,000 yuan.

Dai faced graduation and employment in 2004, when a company offered to hire Dai, which would be equivalent to a year's worth of software, but Dai felt that his value should be higher and that he was young enough to try because he could still afford to lose.

In this way, the students are still Dai decided to go to Beijing to start a business, of course, Beijing is the center of the Internet, has the most customers. After three weeks on the run, Dai obtained the business license of "Beijing Kang Sheng Century Technology Co., Ltd", and later renamed it the Sing of today, or Comsenz. Puzzled by the taxi too expensive, and the bus cost time, he quickly bought a car, a car and two computers is sing century company's assets.

Looking back he needs to solve his graduation problems. In the University of four years, he has accumulated three disciplinary action, 15 examinations failed, but the appearance of sincere, quite a good child image of the Dai or moved the teacher, eventually to graduate. Of course, the social environment is also improving the latitude of young people with their own ideas.

Free charge

After starting a company, the first problem is hiring, Dai admits it's a big challenge, and at first, it's not easy to find the right person at the start, the price is right, and finding the right person is still difficult, so he treats hiring as a daily job. Keep seeing people, leaving a rare fit.

The October 2004 Sing Century server was attacked, and from October to the second year of April, the entire site has never been opened. Until today Dai is still confused about who the attackers are. Why so persistent? Fortunately his model is software rather than web site.

After the initial stage of entrepreneurship, 2005 is a year of great growth, sing century expanded to more than 60 employees, income of about 6 million yuan.

December 12, 2005 Dai made an important decision to free discuz! and declare open source. Open source, in general, is not just about access to the source code, it must be allowed to be published in a compiled form.

Open source means that the business model of the sing century has undergone major changes, from serving midrange customers, to the commercialization of technology products, to the transformation of services at both ends, to high-end commercial web sites, to revenue through technical support, and to the low-end, which is designed to increase market share.

From an outsider's point of view, it will still be confusing, but for a person in this environment, it may not be hard to come up with this decision. June 2007 in the interview with Tencent Technology, Dai summed up: found this kind of thing the ceiling is very low, for example, we surveyed all the Chinese community, BBS, blog market, software platform at that time the highest ceiling is 10 million annual income, When we were more than 6 million, we felt like we were going to hit the ceiling the next year ...

Free, the user grew rapidly, according to the Sing century statistics, a new increase of 1000 users a day, so that discuz! users quickly reached 300,000, the general view of China's network forum for 700,000, then the discuz! architecture services half of the Chinese Network Forum.

The income of the transition is still a problem, about half a year's time income plummeted, reduced to less than the original 10%, Dai concluded: In 6-8 months of time for a company's survival is very challenging, but if able to survive, relative to the future of the road I feel more and more good to go.

Dai further pointed out: "In China there is a very important factor, is conducive to open source, that is, the disregard of copyright." For some users, in this case, the so-called closed-source software and open source software sharing is the same, but the closed-source software will give customers a sense of insecurity.

Do not doubt the feasibility of the open source model, open source model allows users to accumulate costs close to 0, if the more people use open source software, they are more familiar with the software, the corresponding function requirements will be more, in turn, create more business opportunities.

Since 2006, Comsenz with the PHP language development company Zend co-founded the Phpchina community, the aim is to promote open source concept. After the Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou and other regions set up a branch.

As far as financial results are concerned, time is still to be tested, but in terms of business models, investors are already interested. Of course, the sing century is in a good environment for 2006 years, and everyone is talking about Web2.0. Since people have not yet found the specific profit model of social network, the related software development is the people's interest.

Dai later wrote in a blog post: "You have all the ingredients, and still rely on luck, and we actually do not have all the factors."

VC Story

2006 New Year's Eve, the eve afternoon, Dai waiting for the fax machine, waiting for the return of the fan. Dai recalls the mood at that time, the world's most well-known venture Capital one of the Sequoia, unexpectedly also will recognize us this kind of grass-roots enterprise, I am happy and nervous waiting ... That day, I waited.

Sequoia is Sequoia, Sequoia Capital was founded in 1972, is the world's largest venture capitalist, the investment of Apple Computers, Cisco, Oracle, Yahoo, and the most important Google, according to statistics, Sequoia Investment Company's total market capitalisation than the Nasdaq total value of 10%. September 2005 Shen with Zhang Fan to establish the Sequoia Capital China Fund (SEQUOIA) and obtain local decision-making power and management rights.

In 2000, Zhang Fan, aged 28, joined the DFJ Global venture capital fund in the United States. Zhang Fan has invested in the air network, the media and so on, as a director of Baidu. Zhang Fan, 36, is confident of the Internet, once he said: "It seems to me that there is no problem investing in the internet right now, and for a long time it will be a good time to invest in the Internet." ”

Another investor is Zhou as an angel investor. The exact number of the first round of investments was not disclosed, estimated at millions of dollars. There are rumors that because Zhou 祎 early entry, so the return is quite abundant.

In August, the famous American venture capital magazine "RedHerring" will sing to be selected for 2006 years unlisted "Asian Hundred Science and Technology innovation Enterprise". This is a hallmark of innovation companies ' attention to the capital markets.

Sing's second round of funding was noticed in March 2008 as it involved Google's market disclosures, and the second round of investment was actually completed in 2007 and the number remains open. The money involved has been removed from the Sequoia Capital China Fund (SEQUOIA), as well as morning Hing Ventures (Morningside Ventures) and Google.

Morningside Ventures is a venture capital company of Morningside Group, and Morningside Group is a diversified investment group founded in 1986 by the Chen clan in Hong Kong. The Chen clan founded the Hang Lung Group in Hong Kong in 1960. Morningside Ventures began investing in High-tech, media, communications and bioengineering projects in mainland China in 1992.

As for Google, which invests 1 million dollars, Dai explains that Google is a strategic investor whose financing is only part of the financing.

[Financing experience]

In April 2008, the third Chinese webmaster Conference "How to get Investment" theme Forum, Dai talked about personal views: how much you want to make money. What are the benefits of making money? Our investors teach me a point of view, no desire is steel, VC will not die, money, vote I was your opportunity, very lucky, but do not vote I do not care.

And before that, he accepted the NetEase Business Report interview on the second round of financing, said: Because we measured, the last time the money, our one-month cost of 2 million or 3 million of the scale, this disclosure of the money can probably let us spend 3 years or so, if the profit situation is not very good.

When it comes to the question of whether performance guarantees are involved, Dai replied: No. Because we had a prerequisite when we talked, we were doing something that was ideal, and it could cost us a little longer than the average company ... We can guarantee that, regardless of the performance requirements, we will ensure that our team is full, or 120%, fully committed to this matter.

Community Driven mode

Under the support of funds, sing to create the products are increasingly rich, except discuz! there are ecshop independent shop; Ecshop Community Edition Ecmall Independent online e-commerce platform; Supev av podcast system; discuz! NT, this is a forum, like album, Space and aggregation forum platform; Supesite Community Portal System; X-space Community Blog System.

In addition to Ucenter home, the site can build a friend relationship as the core of the Exchange network, publish the log, upload pictures and share information with their friends, discuss topics of interest to quickly understand the latest news of friends.

The Ucenter User Center is a more interesting product, with an "interface" that can be easily modified to hook up with Third-party network applications from any other platform. Ucenter's original goal was to become a bridge between the Sing's products, through Ucenter, to integrate the products, to achieve one-stop user login and to interact with other data in the community.

Customers involved include Sohu, NetEase, mop and so on. These commercial websites still need professional technical teams to help them share part of the work.

The revenue of software is only one aspect, a foundation, which makes Dai can play the role of "water seller" in the social network craze. In addition, venture capital Hope, based on a wide range of applications platform, sing create a more imaginative profit model, which is called "You Marketing" Community marketing business, and related Insenz Community marketing platform.

Dai explains: To put a bunch of similar sites, like talking about cars, I pack up 1000 bus stations and find a big advertiser to talk about, such as BMW, and let them vote for the community. What we do is not a small site can do, small sites and big advertisers talk about advertising, talk about money, unrealistic.

The outside world may have overlooked the progress of Sing's creation, according to Dai's own introduction, since the second half of 2007 has been launched, to March 2008 seven months, already has 7 million or 8 million of income.

The study, published in 2007, said 36.3% of Chinese netizens spend 1-3 hours a day on BBS websites, with a daily visit of more than 6 hours, to 26% ... (The number of active users seems to be higher than the impression, but the fact is that Chinese Internet users like BBS.) ) reported that the main reason for using BBS sites is to seek solutions for problems, to conduct general discussions and to seek information and share life experiences. 61.7% users before engaging in the purchase behavior, would like to ask other BBS netizen opinion.

To sum up, the Dai are actually building a BBS living environment, as he said: "I have a friend who might have bought a cell phone, bought a cell phone in the community, and then pushed it to me and he shared his feelings, and he thought the phone was worth it." If I see these, I will think, he felt good things, he thought that the shop is good, why do I also go to Taobao search? Such e-commerce transactions, in fact, will be born in Ecmall.

Since 2006, sing has been promoting the "China Internet Webmaster Annual Meeting", by 2008 is the third session, this activity should say has won the attention of many media. Although this annual meeting has the public interest nature, but through this activity, sing or promotes the product, has confirmed the brand, simultaneously strengthened with many stationmaster's contact. They are becoming more and more adept at promoting.

Sing to the latest propaganda that they already have 70% of the market share.