Hong Investment Co., Ltd. and Beijing Sitong Group Company jointly established Beijing Sitong Information Technology Co., Ltd., and He Yan was the earliest core management personnel of Sitong. Si Tong Li Fang has a strong technical background. He Yan are both well-known programmers in China. Coupled with the background of Stone Group, this advantage makes its financing smoother. 1997 10 sitong Li Fang received $6.5 million in venture capital from three venture capital enterprises: Walden Group, Bank of America Rothschild Company and Ivanhoe International Group, which was the first venture capital obtained by the domestic IT industry.
On April 29th, 1996, Shi Lifang started construction of the first Chinese website. At that time, Xinyi Multimedia Group founded by yan wang and Li (now vice president of Sina) was integrated into Stone, and Stone set up an international network department mainly composed of them to build a website srsnet.
Received HK$ 5 million in seed money from Stone Group. Due to the strong R&D team and original products, the company's assets and income grew rapidly. Before the second fundraising, the company's asset value has increased to $8.5 million. During the period of 1997, Stone Li Fang obtained the second venture capital of 6.5 million US dollars jointly invested by three international venture capital companies and Stone Group, thus completing the international transformation. 1998 10, Stone Cube merged with Huayuan.com, the largest Chinese website in North America, and became one of the major multinational companies in the Internet field. In the same year 12, Sina.com, the world's largest Chinese portal, was launched, which accelerated the listing of the company on NASDAQ in the United States and made the company one step away from successfully realizing venture capital.
Four-way benefit formula of seed stage and founding stage
Stone is a fast-growing venture capital company located in Zhongguancun, Beijing. Stone Group and Hong Investment Co., Ltd. jointly invested and established on June 20 14 at 5438+0993+February 65438 * * with a registered capital of HK$ 5 million, mainly engaged in the development, production and sales of computer software. Wang Zhidong manages foreign software companies in strict accordance with their business models. Since its establishment at the end of 1993, Sitong Cube has gone through several stages: from 1993 to August 1995, Sitong Cube has gradually established its position in the increasingly competitive software market, transforming its developed products into commodities to occupy a certain market share in order to expand the company's influence. This process is very difficult.
Microsoft introduced the Windows95 operating system,
It is an important turning point for the benefit of the Quartet. 1995 In the second half of the year, Stone Li Fang continuously launched 32-bit RichWin series software. The OEM strategy in the market has also achieved initial results, including HP, Compaq and other manufacturers have also begun to use OEM four-way cube products, and four-way cube can be regarded as the first merchant in China to adopt this strategy. 1996, this product occupied 90% of the domestic PC Chinese platform pre-installed software market, retail market and ISP market, 80% of the writing recognition market and 60% of the communication hardware manufacturers. Dozens of large online service providers and government departments in Chinese mainland, as well as brand-name machines such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Motorola, Compaq, Lenovo and Tongchuang, have pre-installed the Chinese environmental system software of Sitong Cube, with a coverage rate of over 70%.
Facing the booming computer software industry at home and abroad and the increasing demand of software market, Stone Li Fang is very clear about its development direction and pays attention to the perfection and advancement of software design. RICHWIN is a multi-platform system software based on Windows95, WindowsNT, IBMOS2WARP and so on, which represents the highest level of international Chinese platform system software. In this environment, the developers of Stone Li Fang have adopted a series of new software technologies, such as system engineering and knowledge base, providing a good use environment and development environment for ordinary users and professionals. The appearance of this "environment" has created a new era of plug-in Chinese platform.
Stone Li Fang also attaches great importance to attracting a group of domestic first-class software developers, and at the same time forms a cooperative partnership with Institute of Mathematics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and employs famous mathematicians and academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, professors Yang Le, Wang Yuan and Lu Qikeng, as company consultants. Chen Jingrun, a famous mathematician, was also a special consultant of the company.
Hard work pays off.
The achievement of the above results has greatly increased the value of Sitong Cube as a venture enterprise. According to the assessment, the total assets of Stone Li Fang Company at this time have reached more than 8 million dollars. For long-term consideration, Stone Li Fang Company decided to seize the opportunity and launch the international transformation plan. In a short time, it has integrated capital, obtained strategic investors, accelerated the development of enterprises, and prepared for listing in the international financial market in the future. Looking back, Stone Li Fang's decision at that time was completely correct. Its decision-making level has taken a new development step of the company at an appropriate time and in an appropriate way. 1July 1995, Wang Zhidong went to the United States for the second time.
Just look at Morgan Stanley Bank, which once listed Netscape. Wang Zhidong signed an agreement with the bank's Robertson Stevens Company (RSCO) and formally hired it as the company's investment consultant, making suggestions on the company's development strategy and organizational structure and assisting in its implementation. According to the suggestion of RSCO investment experts, Stone Li Fang decided to immediately expand the shareholder structure, and like most software companies in Silicon Valley, it absorbed international high-tech venture capital banks as new shareholders, laying the foundation for the company's products to enter the American market, further develop international cooperation and finally realize the company's long-term goals. From the end of 1995, Stone Li Fang entered the second development stage, and the operators made full use of the opportunity of cooperation with venture capitalists and investment bank experts to comprehensively reorganize and adjust the business plan, development strategy, management structure and product strategy of Stone Li Fang.
At the beginning of 1996, Stone Li Fang formulated its first business plan.
Strive to develop new business directions. From 65438 to 0996, Stone Li Fang began to implement the Internet strategy, which originated from the great influence of the Internet witnessed by Wang Zhidong's three trips to the United States, including the appearance of Richwin For Internet and the opening of the online website in Li Fang, which had a very significant impact on the company's future. Stone Li Fang, with its far-sighted strategic development strategy, set foot in the world-famous Internet industry and launched RichWin for Internet, the first Internet platform in China, which built a smooth bridge for China's information superhighway to connect with the world. This is a Chinese platform specially designed by Stone Li Fang for online users. Its unique and successful functions such as automatic identification of multiple internal codes and real-time switching greatly facilitate the use of users in China. 1May, 1996, several ISPs and ICP in Hong Kong and the United States found Stone Li Fang and hoped Stone Li Fang would provide a simplified version of RichWin. The full version of RichWin is unnecessary for Internet applications. Stone Li Fang wisely signed contracts with these ISPs and ICP to provide them with a simplified version of RichWin, which netizens can download at will on overseas Chinese websites. Like Netease, Sitong Li Fang coincides with the principle that the Internet is free. Thus, free service is the only way for entrepreneurs to start a business on the Internet in the early stage of their business.