Many years ago, this "old turtle" who missed ChinaRen in the first wave of network craze, earnestly learned the lessons of that year, cautiously and quickly established a multi-brand network enterprise "Thousand Oaks Interactive" through equity replacement and self-construction, and became one of the most beautiful network rookies in the domestic network industry at present. Chen Yizhou himself has naturally become one of the people closest to the "super rich".
1969, from Wuhan, Hubei;
1987 was admitted to the Physics Department of Wuhan University; 1993 entered department of mechanical engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and obtained a master's degree in MIT.
After 1995, he joined Altec in the United States to take charge of North Asia affairs.
65438-0997 entered Stanford University to study MBA and electrical engineering.
1999 co-founded ChinaRen company with Zhou Yunfan, an alumnus of Stanford University, and Yang Ning, Chairman and CEO of Chen Ren.
After Chinaren was acquired by Sohu, Chen Yizhou became the vice president of Sohu.
In June 2002, 165438+ 10, Thousand Oaks Interactive Group was established, with its own chairman and CEO, and its websites include DuDu.com, Doodle Accelerator, Maopu.com, uume, China of Warcraft, and 5Q campus area.
20 1 1 On May 4th, US time, Renren Company, a well-known social networking site operator in China, was officially listed on the NYSE, and Chen Yizhou's worth was about181700 million US dollars.
He is a celebrity in the field of internet, and both campus network and cat flutter are closely related to him.
65438-0997, went to stanford graduate school of business to study for MBA and double master's degree in electrical engineering. We know that Stanford and Silicon Valley are closely related, and this stage is the time when "Chief" Jerry Yang and Yahoo attract global attention, which undoubtedly inspired Chen Yizhou. But more importantly, he got to know his later partners, Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning.
Zhou Yunfan graduated from Tsinghua University, and then entered the Department of Electrical Engineering of Stanford University to study for a master's degree. Yang Ning immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was a primary school student in Xi 'an. After that, he obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, and then entered the Department of Electrical Engineering of Stanford University for a master's degree.
Chen Yizhou's evaluation is, "They were the best students at Stanford Engineering College at that time."
At that time, Chen Yizhou initiated an Internet seminar in China. In the process of communication, the three hit it off, and soon reached an agreement and decided to join the Internet craze. The specific direction is virtual community. Of course, this business is implemented in China, and it is developing rapidly.
Chen Yizhou has his own understanding of the virtual community: the Internet is a new type of media, and the virtual community is more in line with the characteristics of the Internet. The way of internet income is nothing more than advertising and direct charging. "Community is the easiest to charge", and community is also a good carrier for future in-depth marketing. At the beginning of 1999, the three men improved their business plan, then visited venture capitalists in Dune Street, and returned to China in May to set up ChinaRen with the slogan "Building the world's largest Chinese virtual community". Chen Yizhou is the chairman and CEO, Zhou Yunfan is the COO and CFO, and Yang Ning is the CTO.
The website name is ChinaRen, but the company name is Shaling Information Technology Co., Ltd. Undoubtedly, Shaling corresponds to sand dunes.
This website is for college students aged 18 to 24. The reason is also very simple. On the one hand, this is the most concentrated group of network users at that time. On the other hand, although this group lacks spending power temporarily, it will become the main consumer in the future.
Around the virtual community, ChinaRen, which emphasizes technology, subsequently launched: home page, games, email, logs, users only need to register once, that is, they can use a variety of functions. More prominent is the alumni record, which is also the initial application of social networks today.
This period coincided with the internet bubble, and ChinaRen also did the homework of burning money. In June 1999, 165438+ 10, he packed the band, held "Cyclone Action in Colleges and Universities" in February 65438+February, and sponsored the Shanghai premiere of Tokyo Raiders in June 2000. From March to March 28, the number of registered users has exceeded 654.
The good times didn't last long, and the internet bubble soon burst. Yang Ning later lamented: I think sometimes the power of the market is very, very huge, just like the power of nature, which is beyond the control of one or two companies or one or two people. Just like the last tsunami in Indonesia, the power of the market, like the power of nature, is terrible.
Of course, ChinaRen has begun to take shape at this time, and there is still room for mediation. On September 14, 2000, Sohu announced in Hong Kong that it would acquire ChinaRen for 4 million shares, which was worth about 30 million dollars at that time. Shirley Lin, executive director of Goldman Sachs Asia, the largest institutional investor in ChinaRen, said: "We invested in ChinaRen because we are full of confidence in the potential of the Internet market in China and the management of this company, and we are also surprised to become a shareholder of the new Sohu company." Previously, ChinaRen had spent more than US$ 6.5438+million, and the funds could be maintained for one month when it was acquired.
After joining Sohu, Chen Yizhou was appointed as Senior Vice President, but he chose to leave in March 2006. Later, in an interview with China Entrepreneur, he said: "It's not a big shareholder. It's boring to be there all day."
The more important reason is that he has a new opportunity. At that time, online content was not profitable, but cash flow was connected. At the same time, Wuhan is working hard to build an "optical valley". By chance, he met other partners at an optical communication conference in Dallas, USA. Of course, Chen Yizhou is considered to have entrepreneurial experience, so he has the idea of starting a business. At this point, his mood is still "the value of starting a company10 billion".
The service envisaged by Chen Yizhou can increase the speed of dial-up Internet users by 50%- 100% at a cost of $5 per month. During this period, there were 50 million dial-up Internet users in the United States. Chen Yizhou said, "This is a big business." After half a year, the team took out the photoelectric chip, but to put it into use, it still needs to modify the network communication protocol and make improvements on the server side. After that, "9. 1 1" occurred, the capital market became colder, and large companies were no longer interested in equipment improvement.
After that, Chen Yizhou tried to find opportunities on the IP phone, but it was still not smooth. "People always have to go through such ridiculous things to change." After that, Chen Yizhou was dormant for a period of time, during which he read many books.
Chen Yizhou later concluded: "The sooner you make mistakes, the better. When you get old, it will be too late. I am lucky to have failed early in my life, which is good. " In the first half of 2002, Chen Yizhou found that Sohu's share price had risen. However, at this time, his Sohu stock is running low, and "people are not long-sighted". Of course, at that time, the portal website seized the sudden outbreak of the wireless value-added service market.
In April 2007, at the annual meeting of ChinaVenture Capital, Chen Yizhou recalled that period: "I couldn't be poorer in the United States. An angel investor and I ate McDonald's eight times. He eats McDonald's for 3 yuan and I eat 5 yuan. I melted 80 thousand yuan. "
At the end of that year, Chen Yizhou returned to China with a small amount of investment from three angel investors in Texas. This time, the mode was clarified, that is, SMS. He founded Invite SMS Technology Development (Beijing) Co., Ltd. ..
There is an innovation, that is, after users get a page through 18dx registration, if others send text messages or customize services on this page, they will get a share. Chen Yizhou defines it as wireless C2C. However, this model is regarded as a wireless alliance, and it has not developed further with the adjustment of operator policies. Of course, according to the environment, we started the wireless business and began to make profits after half a year.
Chen Yizhou has actually missed the best period of SP growth. His former partners, Zhou Yunfan and Yang Ning, founded Skynet in early 2002. Skynet was formally established on March 18, and received $3 million in venture capital a few months later. On July 9, 2004, Kong Zhong was listed on NASDAQ, only two years and five months before and after.
Chen Yizhou has an understanding that SP will be closely related to Internet content in the future, and the community can create enough content, so he pays attention to the community again. So he founded the DuDu website, drawing on the ideas of similar websites in South Korea. The corresponding company is Thousand Oaks Interactive. This time, the reason is that there are many oak trees on the campus of Stanford University.
In this process, Chen Yizhou gradually noticed the cat flutter and was attracted by its funny features and entertainment style. At that time, the domain name was mopper, and the website had only two servers. Chen Yizhou later told China Entrepreneur that on the balcony of his house, "the stationmaster of the cat poop-poop and I sat alone in the cradle, just like two cats, swinging around for a day, and we were finished." After that, the domain name was changed to mop, which developed rapidly. By the end of 2005, "after more than two years of growth, it is now ranked 45th in the world, and it should be the website of 10 in China. "This has become the new foundation of Chen Yizhou.
In May, 2004, Thousand Oaks launched DuDu Network Download Accelerator, and set foot in the client field.
In July 2005, accel's partners invested $65.438 billion in Thousand Oaks Interactive. Accel Partners is an important American venture capitalist. Just in May, it just invested12.7 million dollars in Facebook.
A month later, Thousand Oaks acquired the dating site UUMe. Its founder Liu Jian became the co-chief operating officer of Thousand Oaks. Liu Jian is also studying at Stanford University, and she is the junior of Chen Yizhou. There is a joke that Chen Yizhou sold an old car to Liu Jian for $6,000, but in the next few months, Liu Jian spent more money to repair the car.
At this time, Chen Yizhou had a theory: his users concentrated in students and young white-collar workers, and more than 80% of community users were located in developed areas of China. The community encourages people to use wireless and client services, which in turn strengthens the status of the community.
Of course, he also emphasized the advertising potential of people-centered communities in the future. In an interview with China Business News, he said: "When a street user in Wuhan surfed the Internet at eleven or twelve in the evening, an advertisement for the Regan Noodles Pavilion next to his home popped up on the webpage. I charge a penny for a bowl of Regan Noodles, which is the ultimate in my ideal online advertising. "
65438+At the end of February, Thousand Oaks announced the merger of Moppet and Donews through 100% share swap. Chen Yizhou later wrote: In the future, Donews and Moppet will become two relatively independent websites of Thousand Oaks Company. The user groups and core values created by the two are very different, and we will never forcibly integrate them.
On March 7, 2006, Thousand Oaks Interactive Group officially announced that it had received an investment of 48 million US dollars. The investment was jointly completed by GA (General Atlantic) American Transatlantic Investment Group, DCM (Doll Capital Management), TVC (Technology Cross-border Venture Capital), Accel Partners and Lenovo Investment. Among them, GA contributed more than half, and GA was established in 1980, with assets under management reaching 8 billion US dollars. Previous investment projects include Lenovo Group, Digital China and Zhongxing Microelectronics. The founder of the intranet is Wang Xing. Wang Xing, 1979 was born in Fujian, and 1997 was recommended to the Department of Electronic Engineering and Radio in Tsinghua University, and then received a full scholarship to study in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the University of Delaware. Wang Xingyu returned to China to start a business in Christmas 2003.
The first project is "Duoduoyou", which is undoubtedly a dating website. Later, it was found that users accumulated slowly.
The second project is "Youzi Map", that is, international students upload digital photos to the website, which is printed in China and mailed to their families. This project has some income. "The time and energy for the three of us to start a business are costly, and its income at that time was not enough to make up for our costs."
Of course, Wang Xing will undoubtedly notice FaceBook in the same period. In an interview with the website in March 2006, he recalled: I saw Facebook in 2004, but I didn't feel anything. I went to see it again in the first half of 2005 and saw nothing.
Then I saw some reports. In the second half of 2005, I went up and took a closer look. I had an experience as a representative of SNS. In this case, in February 2005, Wang Xing's team launched the intranet. The original users came from Tsinghua, Peking University and the National People's Congress. "They have the best network conditions and are easy to promote."
Looking back at Chen Yizhou, after obtaining funds, Thousand Oaks Interactive began to expand rapidly, launching a website 5Q similar to FaceBook, acquiring Renren, and changing it into a classified website similar to Craigslist.
Regarding business diversification, Chen Yizhou explained in an interview with Global Entrepreneur: The second wave of Internet entrepreneurs is definitely more difficult to succeed than the first wave. When starting a business in the last wave, there were vacancies everywhere, so you can take one. There are already several big cities, and they can only be guerrillas. While looking for a few relatively fertile grasslands, they will gradually become small villages and then cities. While looking for other grasslands.
However, this search process seems to be quite bumpy. On September 27, 2006, Thousand Oaks suddenly announced that it would lay off 150 people, and at the same time, it also laid off video and other departments. Later, in an interview with Beijing Morning Post, Chen Yizhou explained that making micro-video requires huge bandwidth investment, but there are hundreds of competitors, and Thousand Oaks is unwilling to bet on it. "I will use 10 people for three years."
At the same time, the DuDu network download accelerator was cancelled, which is in the whirlpool of rogue software controversy. "I don't do controversial business. This is a place of right and wrong. For Thousand Oaks, the most important thing is goodwill. "
In a recent interview with Donews, when talking about young employees, Chen Yizhou said: I must have let them down. I found the bubble very early, and I shouted out that there was a bubble very early, but I acted a little late. "There is nothing we can do in this industry, that is, a lot of fashionable phenomena. It's better to leave it till the end. Quit early and lose less. " On the issue of listing, Chen Yizhou said: 2008 is a very important advertising year. Since Puffs and DoNews were listed early, we can plan earlier and have a better harvest in 2008.
In April 2007, Global Entrepreneur published the article "A Thousand Oaks Wonderland". "Although Thousand Oaks has announced that its revenue reached 80 million yuan last year," insiders outside the company said that the policy change reduced its wireless business revenue by two-thirds, which directly led to the sudden layoffs of Thousand Oaks in September 2006.
In 2007,165438+1October 24th, Thousand Oaks announced its entry into the portal. Maopu.com's new portal includes three parts: news center, interactive center and entertainment center. Thousand Oaks claims that compared with the traditional portal, the cat-flapping portal will highlight the interactive function.
However, a month later, Thousand Oaks announced again that it would make a second round of layoffs based on cost considerations, and planned to cancel the online business department, and the department responsible for media promotion would also be cancelled.
By June 5438+ 10, 2007, Thousand Oaks indicated that not only the personnel had changed, but also the related business lines would be reorganized, and the corresponding marketing promotion and community support personnel would also be reduced. So the employees who just announced that they have settled in the portal are suddenly faced with an embarrassing situation.
However, in retrospect, 2006 was a lucky year for Chen Yizhou. In fact, since the launch of the Intranet, Chen Yizhou has been discussing the acquisition, but there is no result. During the summer vacation, the campus and 5Q began to confront each other. The campus network was promoted by the university campus ambassador, and 5Q was "user registered chicken legs". Then there was a joke that someone repeatedly registered to get more than 40 chicken legs.
However, in September 2006, due to the unclear business model of the campus network and difficulties in financing, it was finally sold to Thousand Oaks. The industry price is $2 million. At the end of April, 2008, the media revealed that Softbank invested in Thousand Oaks, making Chen Yizhou once again a hot topic in the media. The total amount of this round of Thousand Oaks financing is as high as 430 million US dollars. In addition to Softbank's $384 million investment, there are also strategic investments from Joho Capital and SBI. Regarding Softbank's capital injection, Chen Yizhou explained that Masayoshi Son is consistent with his judgment on the Internet. "We all think that the real SNS is the biggest application on the wireless Internet."
Under the aura of huge capital injection, the previous operation has been logically clear. In the college student market, the figure of 1 1 in 2007 is that there are 2,200 colleges and universities in the campus network, with more than180,000 college students and 9.8 million active users. 165438+1October 20th, the intranet held a press conference, indicating that it is entering the white-collar market and high school market. There is no doubt that this is in line with FaceBook's thinking.
After the capital injection was announced, Chen Yizhou said in an interview with this website: The intranet basically monopolized the college student market, with a coverage rate of 90%. Almost all college students who surf the Internet lie here and like it at first sight. At the same time, it is also vigorously expanding the white-collar and high school markets, and the progress is also very good.
Hongbo, former editor-in-chief of Donews, commented: Considering the gap between intranet and Facebook in innovation ability, expansion ability and development stage, the valuation of intranet is ridiculously high. Of course, since Masayoshi Son is willing to invest at such a price, he will naturally have his reasons.
Before the financing disclosure, Chen Yizhou said at the media exchange meeting: "The battle of domestic SNS is over." The scarcest resource in this industry is users, and the number of users who like to use this service is limited, which may be 20 million to 30 million in China. After the financing was disclosed, he stressed that he thought so even without financing.
Although, after a rough ride, Chen Yizhou's conclusion is still a little early ... At first, people didn't pay attention to this social networking site with the domain name kaixin00 1, but later the invitation links from instant messaging software and emails from all over the world finally prompted people to experience it. Later, I was attracted by friends buying and selling and parking games, and I soon enjoyed it. In order to get more virtual coins, I quickly joined the team that warmly invited my friends to join.
Since May, the curve of kaixin00 1 has been rising on alexa, a traffic statistics website. People are full of curiosity about this "test" website. Its address is Room 306, North Building, Xinya Building, No.63 West Fourth Ring Road, Haidian District, Beijing. This is a four-story building with some old buildings. No matter from which angle, it can't be linked with Kaixin.com, a website that has changed the content of lunch break for urban white-collar workers.
Of course, it was pointed out that on Facebook, prototypes can be found in friends trading and parking games, namely, the components "friends for sale" and "parking wars". On the other hand, in friends' business, some interactive ways are ambiguous, which makes people daydream or is an important part of attracting people's attention.
Wu Jiong, an investment partner of Northern Lights Venture Capital, revealed to the media that Northern Lights Venture Capital will provide Kaixin.com with $4 million to $5 million in venture capital ... "This is only the first venture capital. According to the model of the Northern Lights, we will continue to increase venture capital. " In fact, in September, according to alexa's statistics, Xin Kai's traffic has caught up with the school.
Although the business model of social networking sites is still in the process of exploration, the usual experience of the Internet shows that if a road can easily get a lot of traffic, it is relatively easy to profit from it. It is pointed out that parking games are related to automobile brands, so the introduction of house-buying games can also be combined with the promotion of real estate brands.
Also in September, at the China Internet Conference, on the rise of Kaixin.com, Chen Yizhou said: We compete in different fields. I think the biggest feature of Kaixin.com is that he invented two online games that white-collar workers like to play. There will be many such companies in the future, because its barriers are not high and it is easy to imitate.
However, since then, Thousand Oaks has surprised everyone. Thousand Oaks confirmed that it has purchased the Xin Kai domain name, but said that it has no plans to use the domain name. Four days later, Thousand Oaks launched Kaxin, which is similar to Kaxin 00 1 in both promotion mode and specific content. IT commentators changed their minds and called it "a fake version of Xin Kai". Later, this led to the emergence of a large number of other "happy networks".
As far as "shanzhai" is concerned, Chen Yizhou responded, "If Xin Kai is a shanzhai version, Baidu must say it is a shanzhai search." As for the positioning of campus network and Xinkai network, he explained: This kind of play is equivalent to having several game machines in Starbucks. Coffee drinkers can definitely play games. The two are not completely in conflict.
Different from Kaixin.com 00 1, Chen Yizhou, which has achieved financing, is facing the pressure of making profits through online games. "At present, we can live well by advertising. The community-based game was put forward three years ago, so we have been doing it for a long time. Now the game department is already the largest team in the school. "
The campus network officially launched the new logo, and announced its new positioning as an "interactive communication platform". The target age of SNS has expanded from young people to all ages. Chen Yizhou emphasized that "the ultimate goal of the school is to enlarge the advantages of a strong user base to the limit and build an interactive communication platform, which will become a part of the daily life of all netizens." 201565438+1October 2 1 News, according to the Wall Street Journal, Renren Company invested 40 million dollars in Motif Investing, a stock exchange website company, which is the latest move of China social network to bet more on financial technology startups.
Motif Investing, headquartered in san mateo, California, USA, runs a website that allows users to establish, share and invest in a basket of stocks of established categories, such as online games, precious metals and socially responsible company stocks.
By the end of 20 15, the website had about120,000 users, and the procedure fee for purchasing a specific basket of stocks was 10 USD.
As part of the investment agreement, Renren founder Chen Yizhou will join Motif's board of directors.
20 15 12 16, attended the opening ceremony of the second world internet conference as a guest.