Next 10, How to change

If Thunder is not created, what will be the current shenglong?

Thunder--This in the download market has an absolute monopoly status, and was once seen as the following Baidu, Tencent most likely to become a giant enterprise, has been 10 years old. Today, already has a large user, but in the business is tied to the Thunderbolt, the next 10 years, How to break the bureau "worse, worse" the reality of embarrassment? The head of the Shenglong, there is how to reflect and sentiment. the following is Shenglong Readme.

I often ask myself, if I did not create the Thunderbolt, now I am what kind of appearance? Time often can not afford to cross-examine, 2012, Thunderbolt just 10, for a child, or in the third grade, is the wisdom of open, speculative formation, he may have faded the budding period of green and ignorance, Need to give yourself a plan and a future that you can envision. 10 years ago, I 30, 10 years later, I have 40 perplexed. Although the experience of time will transform itself into a company manager, the so-called insight increased, broaden the horizons, but the mind of the growing confusion, not to see.

I was born in Huainan, Anhui Province, which is an allusion in the "Huai ' an, Huaibei raw orange," the beautiful land. My father is an inventor, he is kind and bad words, but in my eyes almost "genius." He took many international awards, from a common workers into the China to do the space station, the father of the special research spirit and perseverance has given me a great impact, so from the bone, I flow a pragmatic technical worker gene, over the years, this complex has always haunted my heart.

My father later started his own company in Shenzhen Science and Technology Park, so I finished high school in Shenzhen. Then I applied for a chance to go abroad by exchange student, when it was 1992, I was 20 years old.

I finished my undergraduate course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I started off with the economy and then turned to the computer. I have always thought that only technology can change the world, once I most admired two companies are Microsoft [Weibo] and Apple. At the end of 1997, I got a master's degree in computer science from Duke University in the United States, where I met the 3-year-old technical genius Chenghao, and he and I became one of the earliest founders of Thunder.

Tan Chen said, for a while, I don't have much long-term planning. After graduating from college in 1999, I found a job as a software engineer in North Carolina, thinking more about green cards, mortgages, buying cars and the like.

Then I asked my friend to come to Silicon Valley, where the pleasant climate and the soft California sun attracted me all of a sudden. Many people here dream of changing the world even if they are "cock silk". Next door to the first company I served, they placed huge projectors on the second floor and put the most recent key words on the road, which often attracted passers-by to stop. This very creative company is then the famous Google.

Silicon Valley is no doubt an entrepreneurial paradise, and almost everyone is going to be a handful of small companies. Chinese students here are diligent and specialized, and they have become the best in the domestic Internet field. For example Xu, he once sold a car to a friend of mine, we can know, in the future he became the co-founder of Baidu [Weibo]. And Robin Li, who I met in the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineers ' Association, is a less-than-language person we used to explore in a small restaurant about how to bypass the business model of portals that provide services directly to users.

I once thought that peace of mind to be a good engineer is all of life, but those who know friends are coming home, their great success at home to the time ambition I was undoubtedly a vivid stimulus. So in early 2003, Chenghao and I decided to return to business, and their own 50,000 yuan in Shenzhen to set up their own company.

At that time, the venture was full of unease and trepidation, in the mouth of investors, with less professional business terminology to the venture capital organizations to draw a "pie", said we want to do China's largest Internet digital distribution platform. I thought to myself, after getting the investment, when the company achieves 100 million, can be "big company" Lenovo buy how good.

If I were an investor now, when someone came to tell me a story about "painting the pie", I might not particularly believe his portrayal of what he was going to do. Of course, the most I need to see is his spirit and ideals, I think I want to vote for this person, it is necessary to have the ideal, this is very important.

So life is sometimes no boundaries, no design, no rehearsal, if investors have seriously rejected us, conversely, whether there will be the existence of thunder? And some "ego realm" whether I have given up the road of entrepreneurship?

The landing of idealism

As with all passionate entrepreneurs, "ideal" is often the mouth tag of the entrepreneur's initial self-deception.

' The download tool is not our first direction, ' Mr. Tan said. We initially want to do a distributed storage system to meet the needs of large-capacity mailboxes, a bit similar to the current Gmail, but at that time the general capacity of the mailbox is not very large, do the distributed system of the market is not mature enough. The internet is mainly used in search, portal, IM (instant messaging), download software four fields. In addition to the Download software field no killer operators, the other three areas have "overlord", such as the search domain has Google [micro-blog], Baidu, the portal has Sina, Sohu, IM domain has QQ, MSN and so on.

So we lock the download down to what we're going to do. August 2003, we developed the first download software was born, but feel too bad, no promotion. January 2004, Thunderbolt 2 was born, the new installation of less than 400 users per day.

We think that the basic no, but after three or four months of promotion, the Thunderbolt users began to soar daily to thousands of of the user growth.

Looking back, we agree that Peer-to-peer technology has played a key role. During that time, we thought it was not far from the dream of "changing humanity", entrepreneurs of frivolous and vanity began to swell in the heart, every day our colleagues will be pen and paper to write painting, do a particularly boring but also particularly satisfying things to calculate the speed of the Thunder download, for the human Save the number of hours, The result is a daily saving of 2000 years for human beings.

It was 2008 years before we realized how simple and naïve the various "plans" were. At that time the company has begun to take shape, for the company who will be acquired, how much money, how much they can earn in this inside, has lost the original interest. Instead, I feel that the picture of the future that I have given to investors is getting more and more reliable. Second, the opposite view peers, they or deep, or try, has begun to make money, which gives us a certain amount of pressure, and our ideals can not always float in the sky.

So everything began to become practical. What we are talking about is no longer a big, empty slogan for "changing humanity," but more about business models. At that time, I began to change, starting from a purely technical background of entrepreneurs, to the industrial operators from the perspective of the whole company's development. Then began to from the "ego" of the state of separation, think should be for this industry and society to do something meaningful.

The internet has his attribute: Freenet. It means that the Internet is open, because it is open, it brings the space, so that people can get the freedom of content on the Internet, which is an important reason for the vitality of the Internet. Therefore, I used to understand the Internet is that can not be erected on the internet too many obstacles and constraints, otherwise there will be no open and free environment. The value of Internet companies is that they can help people achieve such freedom.

But the premise is, what does the Internet enterprise rely on to support its existence? So ultimately, every internet company needs a business model. After a while, I just want to understand the truth.

About value and contribution

So we began to plan for the enterprise can make money at the same time embodies the "Thunderbolt value" road.

In the time before and after the start-up, I and my colleagues have countless discussions, the conclusion is that digital distribution will become an important direction of the future Internet. Digital distribution consists of the following aspects: Software, video, music, literature, entrepreneurship, we have to give investors such a "cake", and get favored. The more important question is, how do you achieve such a goal when the investor really gives you the money?

After repeated scrutiny, we will be the Internet video set for the Thunderbolt huge database of a vertical application products, so the Thunderbolt to see the birth.

Network video is undoubtedly consistent with some of my ideas, in my view, the value of the Internet is open, any Internet products, must first conform to the basic human moral and social progress to promote. At that time to discuss with you, the object has a traditional distribution company, have the content of the right people, we speak the point of view, first of all must be the network of genuine promotion and charge of the two things can not be equated, the equal sign is actually to the user painted a very large cage, lost the user, the Internet will not have, So the story behind will game over.

So those of us who do the internet, the first thing to do is to make the distribution of the basic environment, which includes a technical environment, such as: payment, content operation and maintenance, product user interaction, but also including business model optimization and content of the model environment.

Therefore, under such a specific environment, we first promote the copyright trading market. Proud is that the Thunderbolt did the earliest, far in 2007 years, we began with the mainstream of 40, 50 content distribution companies docking, and "Guaranteed + divided" way to cooperate. In order to reflect our sincerity to promote the development of the industry, I remember that we had a solemn ceremony in the Great Hall of the great. 2009 years later, with the international capital market on the Internet video business has a clear understanding, and then a large number of hot money began to pour into the market, the direct result is the price of copyright soaring, two years soaring dozens of times times, the Internet video turned into a game of burning money. As a result, a large number of video companies died.

But at least I think we these companies, not only Thunder, in 2009 to do the concerted efforts to the Internet some content, more concentrated music, film and television, to the legitimate road, which can also be regarded as a major contribution to the industry.

So, now take the thunder of the copyright issue, I think it is a pseudo proposition. Thunderbolt is just a tool to provide downloads, like a highway repaired, someone along the highway to pick someone else's oranges, can only say that the people who pick oranges have moral problems, on the contrary, you can not blame the highway should not repair the problem. In fact, we have been committed to the promotion of genuine content, we will spend hundreds of millions of yuan each year to buy video copyright, but also for the high cost of copyright unbearable. So far, our input and output are far from proportional, even the colleagues, including me, believe that it is unrealistic to rely on video advertising to get a lot of revenue at this stage, but "just for money" and "positive push" is a matter that needs to be understood separately.

Once missed and chased

I always thought that there was a stubborn and reserved side to my character. I am willing to devote a lot of time and energy to the things I am interested in, on the contrary, I will resist, be negative, or even repel the things I am not willing to do. As a business leader, sometimes you need to have multiple faces and identities, and I'm sometimes too blunt.

When I started my business, my wish was to retire at the age of 35 and travel around the world, and when I was 35 years old, I found out that retirement was just wishful thinking, so I planned to retire at the age of 40. Now the 40-Year-old has arrived, on the contrary, I have grizzled, premature. So I set myself a 45-year-old threshold.

I am constantly looking for such a balance, and sometimes I would think that the Thunder missed those opportunities and nodes, is it really and my character has some kind of subtle connection?

In the game of this matter, let me have some reflection and thinking.

Before and after 2006, the Internet game market began to break out, the most typical representative is grand. Our board is very far-sighted, they come up with a detailed report and prove that there will be a lot of segmentation of internet business, and suggest that we seem to be able to consider turning to games.

Objectively speaking, I endorse the recommendations of the Board of Trustees, but I do not fully accept the concept of "transformation". Game company that year the most successful is Shanda, NetEase such company, the Internet is an oligopoly market, any vertical field inside, you must do the top three have meaning. But in the top three, only the first place to make a lot of money, very very influential, second to third place although alive, but will be more uncomfortable. At that time the grand has been done very much, we may have done nothing but grand.

At that time I think is, the Thunder into a user platform, and then implement vertical application on the platform, this time to do some of the game obviously against my original intention, so the heart some resistance, how can the Thunderbolt become a game company?

However, this entanglement was later proved to be biased in understanding, and then we saw the growth of Tencent. Relying on the user's platform, Tencent developed a variety of games, soon in the internet to stand out, or even more than a grand, and in the evaluation of Tencent, the user did not regard it as a "game company." This thing gives us great inspiration, we analyze, why Tencent do the game can do big, of course, in addition to his own game itself, it also has a very important reason is that it has a large user's member pay platform, can be implemented in the member platform vertical application, in fact, the Thunderbolt is completely can do so.

So in 2009, we started to go two lines, a line of team to do the game, a line of the team to do the membership, we have never wanted to be a separate game company, I hope that these two lines will one day produce intersection.

But this is a need to accumulate. Tencent has actually been a member since 2000, but until 2006, its members were just over 1 million. That is to say, Tencent's membership has grown so smoothly for a long time, but from 2006 to 2009 Tencent's paid membership soared from 1.2 million to 12 million, from 2009 to now more than 20 million.

Slightly gratified that, after nearly 3 years of cultivation, by the end of this year, our membership will reach 4 million, we have finally established a "paid Membership + network advertising" business model. Today, millions of of paying members support the Thunderbolt's downloads, gaming and video business, contributing more than half of the company's revenue. Our goal is that in the next two or three years, paid member users to break through 10 million. But some regret that we missed the best time node.

IPO gains and losses

My understanding of the Thunderbolt is that we are a company with the characteristics of Southern enterprises, we are not good at publicity and packaging their own, love do not love to say.