Wandering founder Wangdong and his four internet startups

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Wandering founder Wangdong (Sina Science and technology with map)

October 3, China's largest web gaming company, the Forgame group, listed on the Hong Kong Main board, the first day rose more than 32%, the market value of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars. Before that, the company was rarely known as a typical invisible champion. In September 2012, Yin Seng (Jia-zhi-xian) had an exclusive interview with Forgame founder Wangdong, published in the year's Forbes Chinese magazine, detailing who Wangdong was and how he was in just five years From scratch, Forgame quickly grew into a company worth 1 billion of dollars in a highly competitive industry.

Wangdong, a 36-year-old internet entrepreneur, has the ability to attract up to tens of millions of users in just a few months from scratch, and then spend a few more months earning tens of millions of dollars per month.

"He has a very comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the entire Internet and is very hands-on." "To get the" King of the Chinese webmaster "Cai Such a description, is not a generic. Cai is China's most successful domain name operator, but also a successful internet serial entrepreneur, he has successfully launched its Web site navigation website 265 sold to Google, and founded the current largest web game distribution platform 14,399.

Wangdong himself is described: Select a user like products, rapid and large flow, and then quickly make money, I have done this process many times, at ease.

Believe it or not. Take the company Forgame Group, which he is now taking care of, for example. He officially started in 2008, but only in the past four years, the company has become the Chinese web game domain real Invisible Champion-has a user billion, China's top ten page tour inside, Forgame occupies 7, annual income of hundreds of millions of yuan. The most famous company in this field is the Kunlun million peacekeeping fun tour, in 2011, the income of two companies is only about 600 million yuan.

Wang himself did not disclose the company's income directly, but admitted that Forgame's revenues were far better than those of the two companies. Eric Consulting game analyst Cao Di said that he had the information, "Forgame is a research and development as the core competitiveness of the Web game company, in the overall research and development strength and independent research and development of game revenue on the top five Chinese web games and the top three."

Cao Di is based on the current 400~500 developers of the Web game company, in China is already rare, sometimes a web game may only need more than 10 developers can be done, and the forgame of more than 1000 research and development staff.

From the start, Forgame is making money, which may disappoint the venture capitalists who have chased it. Until two months ago, TA Associates, qiming Ventures and ignition Capital three agencies were given an opportunity to send money to the company, investing tens of millions of of dollars and gaining a minority stake in Forgame.

Wangdong said the financing was based solely on future overseas listings and the expansion of overseas markets. "While we are not short of money, we need a high profile and reputation overseas to make it easier to work with overseas giants," he said. We will also invest heavily in overseas markets and mobile internet. He explained to the Forbes Chinese version.

"We invest in forgame, mainly because the web game is getting more and more recognition in the market." "Donshau, Beijing's managing partner for Qiming Ventures, said. After selling its dominant investment in the Web gaming platform game Valley to Tencent (419.2,-0.60,-0.14%, real-time quotes) in 2008, Donshau began looking for new investment targets and selected forgame from more than 20 candidates.

Child's detailed reasons: on the one hand, the last century in the late 90 began to play the game of that generation, to 2009 years or so has been over 25 years old, gradually face the many new topics of life, the time to play the game must be reduced, on the other hand, due to technological improvements, the experience of web games and traditional client As a result, more and more users who used to play client games turned to web games, and some users who never played client games began to play web games.

However, surprisingly, before entering the field of Web game officially, no one in Wangdong and his entrepreneurial team knew the game, and the web game was just a lucrative business for them.

"We analyzed that this field has a lot of money to make, and decided to seize it, then gave himself a proposition composition, we go to play games, to understand the industry, we are a tough team." ”

In 1999, Wangdong, a new university graduate, joined an E-commerce site in Zhongguancun, Beijing, which tried to rival the legendary company of early-stage e-commerce in China, but aimed to sell the mobile phone business with a network of 8848, and successfully won 30 million of billions of dollars in investment.

But the idea was obviously too advanced, because the mobile phone was not a mass consumer product, and the Internet was in its early stages. A few months later, the site abandoned these plans and turned into a traditional chain of retail outlets for offline communications equipment.

"This experience has made me realize that timing is more important than what you do." Wangdong mused.

Later, he became one of the earliest employees of Taiwan's famous digital music distribution company Kuro in the mainland, responsible for the company's marketing work. Kuro is known as the Chinese version of Napster, the latter is a point-to-point music-sharing software, but later in the record company launched a lawsuit against it closed. And Napster to share the music all take a free and different, Kuro in the way of software service fee to each user to charge a monthly fee of 20 yuan.

Wangdong from scratch, helping Kuro establish a set of marketing systems, including payment, advertising, etc.

"We are very understanding of fine operation, from advertising words to the design of the advertising page, the final user into the software registration, to pay, all the design links we are thoroughly tempered, through the rate is very high, we get a user's cost is only 1 yuan, but can earn back 120 yuan." ”

Not long after, Kuro in mainland China has developed 500,000 users, monthly income of more than 10 million yuan. "At that time, Chinese Internet companies had little money, and no one believed we could do it that high. "But unfortunately, by 2004, Kuro eventually failed to escape the fate of Napster, and after losing a lawsuit in his home base in Taiwan, it came to an end."

But Wangdong ushered in his own life turning point, he thought that this turning point and a person, this person is Cai victory.

At the beginning of this year, in a Hutong not far from Beijing Tian ' an alley, tea, Wangdong and just came to Beijing to develop business Cai acquaintance, two people quickly become friends. At that time, Cai had already earned the first bucket of gold through the domain name sale, and began to turn the center of business to the internet operation, its founder website navigation site 265 has obtained the IDG million Yuan investment.

"We're complementary in some ways, like he knows how to get traffic, and I'm good at turning traffic into income." We discuss the topic naturally also inseparable from what is the Internet next a popular opportunity, and finally we invariably mentioned the digital content distribution platform. Wang recalls.

Soon, the digital content distribution platform Zcom was born. It was Wangdong's first personal venture, while Cai played the role of Angel investor.

Wangdong will do in Kuro things again: zcom still use the monthly subscription mode, users need to pay 20 yuan per month of software use fees, you can download unlimited. In less than a year, download times more than 100 million, each month's income over 10 million yuan. In the first two years of its existence, Carlyle and sig were given two rounds of investment of $21 million trillion.

But it didn't. In the 2006, as Chinese operators took control of the charging model for value-added service providers (SP), they were required to be charged by the user's confirmation, which severely hit the past, and also gave users more time to consider not paying.

Zcom has also been hit and has to turn to pure advertising mode, but that's not what Wangdong's team is good at, they're good at charging users directly.

But zcom did not disappear from the market. After a sharp downsizing (retaining only 50 employees), it survived through the advertising model, shrinking to $ hundreds of thousands of a month, but in 2010 it revived as it shifted to the mobile internet.

"It was almost suddenly a sudden fire!" Another spring is coming! This once again proves how important it is to seize the right opportunity at the right time. Wangdong regrets.

For him, Zcom is just a starting point. Zcom as the beginning, Wangdong and Cai together to invest in some companies, the most famous is the United States Mito.

And the core technical team of the US Mito also from zcom, in that thin body action, zcom and Wangdong himself as an angel investor's identity to support the diversion of part of the staff to help them start their own business, resulting in the birth of 8 start-up companies, in addition to the United States Mito, another more successful is the shopping e home, A focus on Taobao shopping guide website.

Strictly, Wangdong's most successful career has been--forgame, and one of the works of the triage operation. Forgame's core assets:

Focus on the development of the web game of the Philippines, its earliest core team also from Zcom, some of them originally in zcom responsible for the paper magazine converted to digital content, a magazine conversion costs as high as thousands of yuan, is a major cost of the company. Fi Ying Another part of the important staff (usually the production leader), is the Webmaster origin (remember Cai is "The King of the Chinese webmaster").

"Traditional client game development is the software company model, a product investment at every turn tens of millions of, take a few years, but once successful, can eat for several years." We are using the Internet model, a few months to complete a product, and much less investment, we are more willing to test the user in the process of continuous improvement, rather than fantasy to make a perfect product. "Wangdong said.

Obviously, the founder team, the core producer's non gaming background, and the deep media background, all let forgame to do these to ease, without the traditional model constraints. In many cases, forgame, like a media company, knows how to throw in the right topic at the right time, causing rapid attention and turning that attention into income.

Currently, Forgame has two game development companies, more than 20 game development studios, with 5 game engines (which means not only the characteristics of different user needs, but also to improve the speed of research and development), so far launched a total of 30 balance page games, each year can continue to launch more than 15 new games.

"But there are some games we are not in a hurry to go public, we have to constantly debug to make it the best experience, on the other hand, we have to wait for a good time to launch, such as some events to inspire people to pay more attention to some kind of game." ”

Forgame has a web game release platform 91wan, which was added to the Forgame family in 2008 through acquisitions.

As early as the zcom era, Wangdong and the company had a fierce competition, and recognized its 85 founder. When Wangdong began to dabble in the game, he persuaded the lad to join the Forgame, who was responsible for the game release business from 91wan.

"Forgame has created a model for the development and distribution platform that will make its business base firmer." "Despite the potential competition of 4399 to some extent with 91wan, Cai is still a language of praise."

In fact, Cai and Wangdong are both friends, investment partners, and maintain a strange and rare cooperation: CAI in Forgame no shares, and Wangdong no shares in 4399, but whenever Forgame launched a game, 4399 will be like their own game to promote.

Because Cai is resident in Xiamen, Wangdong sometimes represents CAI to attend some of the 4399 important events, and even the media will Wangdong mistakenly thought to be the president of 4399.

"As long as we join hands, we can easily make a product of tens of millions of users." Wangdong not conceal his self-confidence.

He doesn't boast at all. Each forgame of the game the average life cycle is nearly 3 years, one-month peak recharge to reach 2000~3000 million, and can stay at the peak of 6 months, one of the products even to achieve more than 75 million records. The total monthly income of the company's paid users ("Arppu") is about 300 yuan, the monthly pay rate of 5%-10%, while the second quarter of the grand game of the main client game is only 90.3 Yuan Arppu.

Who else can say that web games are not as profitable as client-side games?

"We find that those who really pay are small business owners, but they don't have much time and don't expect them to know more about computers," he said. In the client game there are tens of thousands of rich people who spend a lot of money, but in the web game, is a hundred thousand of people hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are truly powerful. ”

But Wangdong is reluctant to comment on the data, saying he prefers to keep a low profile, because he does not want to be stared at, nor do he want to worry about some distribution platforms, because some platforms will be afraid of the larger content quotient, and thus will be on the platform to Prevent. As for his quick access to traffic and the secret of converting it into income, he summarized the following:

"Our secret is to grasp where the greatest traffic comes from, we relatively, compared to the grassroots, with the personal site is very close, we found that most of the traffic or from the search engine, we spent a lot of time to study the search engine, understand its characteristics, so that we design a site, will meet these characteristics, It will soon be able to get 100,000-level traffic from search engines free of charge. We also attach great importance to the Web site navigation, can not enter its homepage, we are very important, we do this by subdividing. ”

However, one thing is not replicable, is when Wangdong started in 2008, the Web site navigation has not realized that they can make money, which allows Wangdong to obtain a large number of free traffic, so as to obtain a very high starting point. Over the past two years, the Web site navigation website in the popular E-commerce market, the cost is also rising. In addition, it is Wangdong's grassroots characteristics, so that it attaches great importance to the user experience.

"The most fundamental is the product itself, is not to solve the user's needs." We put in a very large market promotion cost, in doing this, in the process of accumulating a lot of experience, we know how to put a new product quickly to the market, how to use the free flow of the first access to users, and then rely on these free flow accumulation, slowly the number of users to enlarge. ”

But Wangdong really bullish is the mobile internet, he thinks there is the next Tencent and Baidu Place, and the reason is very simple, end users 80% of the time will be spent on mobile internet equipment business, and his experience is, where the user, the money is there. At this point, he and Cai again thought together. He said the two will not be ruled out to continue to work together to invest in potential companies.

Donshau not worried about Wangdong's ability to make money, he is worried that forgame can keep people, can continue to make a good game. Because the threshold of the web game is not high, but it seems very easy to make money, which makes many excellent employees unavoidably eager to start.

"Fortunately, their headquarters in Guangzhou, the temptation will be much less." In addition, the market sensitivity of forgame is sufficient, which allows it to adjust to the user's behavior at any time, which will improve the success of the product. "Donshau said.

And Wangdong thinks he has a hand in keeping people. Every employee on the first day of entering Forgame, will be involved in the actual combat of a project, he does not believe in the form of training model, and more willing to find potential in the actual combat prospects, to help them set up a studio, hone their ability, due to forgame a set of mature market operation system, This allows it to help employees grow at the fastest pace.

"But it also makes us pay a lot of tuition fees, and if we cut this off, our short-term net profit margin will immediately increase by 10%, but in the long run the investment is worth it." ”

In the first ten years, Wangdong is a typical workaholic, the biggest fun every day is lying in front of the computer, staring at the changes in indicators, find problems and find solutions, less than two o'clock in the morning hours, rarely with family and friends together.

But in the last two years he has found a balance: he has to work before 9 o'clock, a week to spend a day with his family, and more opportunities to communicate with friends. He also has a hobby to ride a bicycle, the farthest time is to ride from Beijing to Tianjin. He says all this has been caused by a decline in energy, and because he has found a long-term direction of struggle.

"There are at least thousands of web game development teams in the market, but it's probably about 20, and we want to be a new generation of cloud based game symbols, like Shanda is the symbol for client-side games." ”

This article source: Forbes Chinese website