From 65438 to 0993, Ma, who graduated from the Computer Department of Shenzhen University, chose his own professional route and went to Shenzhen Runxun to develop paging software. After work, the quiet young man's biggest hobby is surfing the Internet. At that time, there were not many people who really understood the Internet in Shenzhen, and Ma was one of the earliest Internet bugs. By chance, Ma saw the ICQ demonstration based on windows system, and he began to think about whether to launch a software similar to ICQ in China, which integrates paging, chatting and email. 1998165438+10, Ma registered his own company with his college classmate Zhang Zhidong, which was the beginning of Tencent. Like other start-up Internet companies, capital and technology have become Tencent's biggest problems. "First, there is insufficient funds. With software, funds can't keep up." They often do a project for their nest, and the horse's business card only says the title of "engineer". At that time, his main business was only to do projects for Shenzhen Telecom, Shenzhen Unicom and some paging stations, and QQ was only a by-product of the company. This company composed of more than a dozen people is pitifully weak, and the difficulty of starting a business exhausted Ma and his colleagues. Ma recalled that there were hundreds of such companies in Shenzhen at that time. He had only one wish at that time, that is, the company could survive. Three months after the company was founded, Ma and his colleagues finally developed the first "Chinese flavor" ICQ―― OICQ, the predecessor of QQ. However, this chat tool, which was popular all over the country and created great wealth for Tencent, did not bring much joy to Tencent people at that time, because there were several similar softwares in China at that time, and there were not many users. No one is optimistic about the OICQ of horses. But stubborn chaozhou people, 197 1 was born and refused to give up. He thinks this chat tool contains huge business opportunities. Ma put QQ online for users to use for free with the mentality of giving it a try, but even Ma himself didn't expect that this unpopular software developed 5 million users in less than a year. A large number of downloads and the surge in users excited Ma, but also made Tencent unable to cope. Because of the increase in the number of users, it was necessary to continuously expand the server. At that time, the server hosting fee of 1,000 yuan or 2,000 yuan overwhelmed the small workshop-style Tencent company. Without funds to update equipment, employees will soon be unable to pay their wages. "We can only use other people's servers everywhere. At first, we just put an ordinary PC in the computer room with broadband conditions, and then secretly put the program on someone else's server to run. " The immediate difficulties forced Ma to transfer his company to others. However, due to the discussion with many content providers, Ma made up his mind to keep this "child" who brought trouble to himself. So he raised money everywhere, and when he couldn't raise it at home, he looked for foreign venture capital. Hard work pays off. After many twists and turns, Ma saw the digital. "They gave QQ $2.2 million, each accounting for 20% of the company's shares." With this money, Ma bought a 200,000-megabyte IBM server for the company. "I put it on the table at that time, and I don't want to mention how beautiful it is." What the horse can't help but recall. However, Ma knows very well that it is not enough to rely solely on foreign venture capital. He began to try to make money from customers, because if each user is willing to spend 1 to 2 yuan, it will be nearly 400 million yuan. Once, he found that there was a service to dress up the head portrait in Korea, so Ma Hua Teng moved it to QQ. He also found internationally renowned companies such as Nokia and Nike, and put their latest products on the Internet for users to download. All registered users can get their free services as always to meet their instant messaging needs. If they want to enjoy more attractive experiential value-added services, they must pay the corresponding fees. This move has enabled Tencent to gradually embark on a virtuous circle of healthy development. At present, this business is growing rapidly, and more than 40% users have tried to buy it. In the first three quarters of 2004, Tencent's profit reached 328 million. In June this year, Tencent successfully listed in Hong Kong, and raised another $200 million. The fragile sapling finally grew into a towering tree.
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