The Golden Age of WEB2.0 entrepreneurship is about to pass

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For a long while, Che Hui decided to leave the net he had founded more than two years ago. For this but 29 years old, but participated in Baidu start-up phase of young people, life is like a circle. When he left Baidu in 2003, he was already one of five members of the company's technical committee. 2005, he started entrepreneurship, Angel funds from Baidu co-founder Xu, partner is Baidu's another former colleague Lin Chenming.

At the beginning of their business, they tried to develop a video playback speed-increasing technology according to their own points of interest. But as the project deepened, and the rapid rise of an American video site called YouTube, they decided to join the larger game. But not coincidentally, a see network did not usher in "American Idol" type of rapid take-off. Earlier potatoes, Youku and other rivals than a net to get more money and users. And the video of the server and bandwidth requirements are extremely high area, so that a network of funds is very tight.

If Baidu's early growth experience taught Che Hui what, that is, in the continued adjustment of strategic direction. Aware of their presence in the Red Sea, a technology-conscious team transition into the community area, while shutting down the video business. New goal: MySpace.

But just like the top 3721 founders, Qihoo Chairman Zhou 祎 commented: "Now China I estimate at least 200 websites are currently learning YouTube, 500 sites are learning MySpace." See the net seems once again wrong. Later, they make a business direction adjustment every once in a while: from providing custom wallpaper, to the recently developed client track of tracking network information. Che Hui said, sometimes, he would ask himself: if he insisted on doing video playback speed technology, today will not be different?

There is no answer. But what is certain is that even if the net becomes "China's YouTube", the days may be just as bad. One of the current leaders in the field, Tudou, has raised 85 million of billions of dollars in four rounds of financing, but a clear and sustainable business model has yet to emerge, and too complex a shareholding structure to make its future hard to ponder: is it as profitable as Sina to be divided by its shareholders? There are rumors in the industry that recently, at Tudou's board, Wang barely spoke. And with the relevant policy departments of the video site supervision of the strict, the status of legalization has become a difficult leap. In June, My network, which financed more than 30 million dollars, was suddenly closed for 38 days.

In any case, for Che Hui, the likelihood of creating a Baidu in the next few years seems to be getting smaller. In the May 2008, after several lobbying by the Thunder co-founder Shenglong, Duan eventually became the head of its Beijing Technology Center – in the eyes of some shrewd venture capitalists, the Thunder, 51.com and Net network were the only three possible heavyweights of the online start-up since 2005.

This judgment may not be agreed by everyone. If the first wave of internet entrepreneurship, the birth of Tencent and Baidu two market capitalisation of more than tens of billions of dollars of companies, Sina, Alibaba, Sohu, NetEase, Ctrip, Shanda Six companies with a market capitalisation of more than 1 billion dollars, I am afraid the most optimistic prophet, also dare not declare today, five years will have similar size of eight Chinese web 2.0 companies.

That is the real problem. It has been thought that the Web 2.0 era will create more top companies and more wealth, people seem to have little doubt that the internet industry will be like cars, home appliances and other industries into a century-old industry, which means that after the Web 2.0, there are 3.0, 4.0 ... But there are two factors that make all sorts of ideas seem naïve.

First, there is still a big difference between China's income model and America's. If every user group in the United States is large enough to be able to feed itself through online advertising, in China, which is far from mature in the online advertising market, the new media form of Web 2.0 is difficult to accept. And the other models: wireless value-added services have been almost controlled by telecom operators, online games is an independent system, not suitable for each company, E-commerce is still not scale.

Second, although entrepreneurs inevitably see themselves as more innovators, established websites that created and laid down barriers in the past 10 years before 2000 have already formed an oligopoly. Unlike America's internet giants, they rarely acquire, preferring to follow up after a successful product model has been created by the latter. The number of flexor, at home has a great influence of the network companies include at least Sina, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Sohu, NetEase and so on.

There were those who thought they could be subversive like Google pried Microsoft. For example, Xingdong has tried to blog China beyond Sina, but when the blog this model has been proved to have the market, Sina, Sohu, Tencent and other intervention, so that blog China inevitably become backward. No one knows whether the same fate will fall on the head of a video site built on huge sums of money but still fragile.

"The last wave of entrepreneurship, where all the open space, you take a piece on it." But now, there are several big cities, we can only do guerrillas, while looking for a few pieces of relatively fertile grass, gradually become small village, and then become a city. While looking for the other meadows. In an interview, Chen, founder of the Oak Group, said to global entrepreneur. His judgment is correct, but even so, Thousand oak still go a lot of detours, until this year, Chen finally settled in the net, and therefore financing 430 million dollars.

But this may also be the last window of opportunity. "The school and 51 are in the case of Tencent has not paid enough attention to the situation, but from this year, Tencent will certainly adjust the strategy here," said Qi Tiger founder Zhou to this newspaper.

July 24, 2008, when global entrepreneur interviewed Ma, asked the founder of Tencent, who steered the 15 billion dollar market capitalisation, what business he would choose to enter into the market if he started his business today. His answer is: "I can only do what I am interested in, a little bit of exploration to do, not to consider the outside world." "The reason is that the network's core products-portals, instant messaging, search engines and e-commerce-have been divided, there are only two: video and SNS, but also has a high threshold." Ma admits: "Now many people still want to build 1 billion dollar company on the network, already more difficult." ”

Perhaps more worrying than a company's gains and losses: is the entrepreneurial age in China's internet industry about to end? If the oligopoly is set, the new business model is murky, and China's internet users reach the tipping point of 500 million in 3 years, it is hard to imagine that there is more room for business in the future, in accordance with the existing play-the localization of the American model. At least for now, The vast majority of venture capital organizations no longer regard the network start-up companies as their own research focus.

Into the 2008, although there are still start-up companies, such as Baidu's former CTO in the end of 2007 Love network, internet veterans Xie in 2008 to build a network, but obviously, whether from the number of start-up companies, or the enthusiasm of investors to look at, and 2005, 2006, far from.