There are many exquisite and elegant villas on both sides of California highway, which was one of Zhu Min's dreams when he first came to the United States to study for his doctorate. However, when he succeeded in his first venture and had the money to buy the villa here, he found that he was not in the mood to enjoy such a villa, but was wondering how to introduce his products to the world.
At the age of 36, as the first batch of overseas students sent to Stanford University in the United States, Zhu Min first came into contact with computers. Five years later, he started to set up two IT companies in the United States, promoted his products to most Fortune 1000 companies, and used his position and influence in the United States to build an international platform for China enterprises.
20 1 1 The Blue Book of Overseas Chinese found that today, companies founded or CEO by overseas Chinese account for about one-third of the total number of companies in Silicon Valley. The great contributions and achievements made by overseas Chinese in Silicon Valley have not only greatly changed the "rigid" impression of Chinese in American society, but also greatly enhanced the international image of China.
Silicon Valley Venture Capital
In Zhu Min's view, the idea of starting a business in the United States stems from the entrepreneurial atmosphere in Silicon Valley. "In Silicon Valley, the evaluation and recognition of a person is very simple, just based on whether you have started a business or not. If you are just an executive of a large enterprise, although the salary is also very good, you are embarrassed to say hello to people, for fear of being looked down upon. "
Stanford University, where Zhu Min is studying for a doctorate in engineering economics, is located in Silicon Valley, where thousands of new technology companies and elites from various countries gather. Thanks to the educational environment in the United States, he was encouraged by the school to participate in practice, so he worked at IBM while studying and accumulated a lot of practical experience, so he entered the IT field.
In this fiery entrepreneurial environment, in 199 1 year, Zhu Min started his first venture in his garage and founded FutureLabs. The main product is the "conference demonstration exchange system" based on the Internet. However, apart from the general difficulties in starting a business in the United States, the greater difficulty is that although the American society is diverse, it is not easy for a China person to integrate into such a society, especially the mainstream society, and it is even more difficult to find an American to invest in you.
Zhu Min recalled that Americans didn't vote for him at first, but his products attracted a Singaporean to take the initiative to act as his angel. However, at that time, he didn't understand that this software needed the support of the Internet, and FutureLabs was ahead of the Internet. At the same time, FutureLabs has been struggling in the shadow of IBM and Intel competitors. It was not until 1996 that Quarterdeck bought FutureLabs for130,000 dollars that Zhu earned the first pot of gold on the road to entrepreneurship.
When * * * traveled around the world with his founder and girlfriend with a large sum of money, Zhu Min was lying in bed thinking that although he could almost eat and wear for the rest of his life, he did not achieve the success he wanted, that is, to introduce his products to the world.
Start a business again
So Zhu Min came out again. He found an Indian partner, Soubrat Eya, and co-founded WebEx, a software company focusing on video products, providing network conference software services and support. At this time, it was more and more accepted for international students to start businesses in China, and Zhu Min got $7 million from American venture capital for the first time.
Zhu Min also hit a wall many times on the road of finding investment. As soon as people heard that his competitor was a big company like Microsoft, and Microsoft provided similar products bundled with browsers for free, they thought he was crazy. He got a second investment of $30 million from a former product manager at Microsoft. "Only he really understands this product and knows the difference and value between our product and Microsoft's original product."
In 2000, WebEx was successfully listed on NASDAQ, beating Microsoft's Netmeeting and Placeware, and developed into the most powerful network interactive service and network conference center system service provider in the world. Zhu Min also became a famous American scientist by inventing "Internet-based real-time interactive multimedia communication technology" and holding more than 20 patents. This technology is called "the revolution in communication history" by IDC, a famous IT consulting company.
In 2007, WebEx's share price reached $56. In March of that year, WebEx was acquired by Cisco at a cash premium of $3.2 billion, which made Zhu Min famous. M.taiks.com's outstanding achievements in innovation and entrepreneurship have made Zhu Min enjoy high popularity and prestige in Silicon Valley and become a model for overseas students and entrepreneurs in China. What makes Zhu Min more gratified is that 80%~90% of Fortune 1000 are using WebEx products.
In Zhu Min's view, the growth of entrepreneurial team needs two kinds of running-in. One is the running-in of the market: what the market needs, what products should be provided to serve this market; The second is the running-in of team members: what kind of team is needed for products, and how to seamlessly connect team members to provide the best products to the market.
restart
Influenced by Silicon Valley culture, entrepreneurship has become Zhu Min's spiritual pursuit. After returning home, Zhu Min has no energy to start a business, but he is very willing to use his successful entrepreneurial experience to help young people embark on the road to entrepreneurship.
In fact, when he was still in Silicon Valley, Zhu Min began to set foot in the investment field after his successful venture. In 2004, as the sole investment partner of NEA, the largest early venture capitalist in the United States, in China, he helped NEA successfully invest in SMIC [0.39- 1.28%], Spreadtrum Technology, Red Kids and other projects.
In 2005, Zhu Min and NEA*** co-founded Cyber China Investment Fund, and talked about the current and future investment fields. Zhu Min said that the investment fields are mainly located in education, training, finance, medical care and other fields related to consumer services in China based on Internet and IT technology.
Now Cybertron has directly invested in dozens of enterprises and entrepreneurs in China, including China Green Line, Chint Solar, Spreadtrum Communications and so on. According to Zhu Min, many of Cybertron's investments are angel projects, including Spreadtrum communications and spotlight technology [17.92- 1.54% research report]. Two entrepreneurs of spotlight technology once took a piece of paper to Zhu Min's home, because they finally found out that Zhu Min was their hometown and wanted to support them in starting a business. "I listened to their ideas and said maybe you can, so I invested $500,000 in them. Now that the company has been listed on the Growth Enterprise Market, $500,000 has become a return of more than one billion. "
Another successful case is Chint Solar. Zhu Min introduced that the founder of Chint Solar is one of his classmates. Cybertron invested from scratch. After 3-4 years of development, it has now reached the scale of 300-400 million, and this year's sales may exceed 500 million.
As an experienced person, Zhu Min said that if there are suggestions for entrepreneurs, first of all, starting a business is very hard, and you should be able to enjoy both pain and happiness. Secondly, you should have lofty ideals and passion to start a business, and at the same time, you should establish a culture in which enterprises enjoy themselves. Third, you should persist, persist. "Many times, it is not your competitors who beat you, but yourself."