Du Wei said that the English girl did not reply to her messages all day. She did not reply to her emails or MSN. She was probably focused on being a backpacker and did not have time to go online.
Li Mu also knew that it was useless to be impatient, so he told her to go with the flow. Now he could only wait for the other party to come online to establish contact.
Apart from the MP3 player, Li Mu had a lot of things to do.
First was YY.
Within a week of being online, YY users had exceeded 50 million, and the growth rate was still very fast.
Unlike QQ's so-called 100 million users, YY's user activity was very high.
Currently, QQ had a large number of overlapping accounts and zombie users. A considerable number of people had two or more QQ accounts, and a considerable number of people rarely logged in. On average, they only logged in for more than a week.
In other words, of the 50 million YY users, almost all of them were highly active users on the internet, except for some overlapping accounts.
According to the synchronized data provided by Happy Farm, among the 50 million YY users, 41 million were bound to Happy Farm's ID on Tieba. In other words, there were more than 40 million highly active users.
The 40 million users not only brought about the popularity of the software, but also a large influx of cash from value-added services. In just seven days, YY's value-added services had exceeded 100 million.
Makino Technology's professional estimated that, based on the current user base, YY's monthly revenue from value-added services should be around 200 million. Now, many manufacturers had taken the initiative to contact Makino Technology's business personnel, hoping to get a quotation for YY's promotional resources. They hoped to advertise on YY. Li Mu did not agree. His instructions were simple: YY would not accept any advertising for the time being.
The news that Makino Technology would not accept advertising soon spread in the industry. There were not many fools in the internet industry. Li Mu did not want money that was delivered to his doorstep. It was not because he was arrogant, nor was it because he did not care about money. Rather, compared to money, he cared more about the user experience.
It was rumored that QQ could earn more than ten million a month just by selling advertisements for its dialog boxes. Based on QQ's huge user base and display effect, it was worth the price, or even more. This was also one of the reasons why Teng Xun had never needed financing. It was because it was really good at making use of its existing resources to make money.
Li Mu felt that if he imitated QQ's flashing and changing advertisements on YY's dialog box, it would have a negative impact on the user's experience. It was fine when he was the only one in the market, and the users didn't have much choice. However, when there were competitors in the market, Li Mu didn't want to do this.
Therefore, Li Mu told the business department of Makino Technology that as long as QQ had more than 300,000 daily active users, YY would not consider accepting advertisements.
This message was directly conveyed by the commercial department to the merchants who intended to advertise on YY. It immediately caused a huge uproar in the Internet industry.
Some people said that Makino Technology was too arrogant, while others thought that it was the best choice. Some people said that Makino Technology's competitive methods were too rough, while others thought that this method was the most effective method.
Li Mu's words were equivalent to the request that Liu Yidong made to the book team when he established the JD.com book department in order to suppress Dang Dang. The book and audio department was not allowed to make a single cent of gross profit for the company within three years, or not allowed to make a single cent of net profit for the company within five years. Otherwise, the entire department would be fired.
Liu Yidong's meaning was very simple, and it was the same as what Li Mu was saying now. It was: I can't make a single cent of profit, but I will kill my competitors!
There was no mercy in the business world. A few years ago, the Internet in China competed on who was better looking and who was more useful. Now, what Li Mu wanted to compete on was: who could live longer without hunger, and who could live longer after being stripped naked and thrown into the snow. This would be the model of Internet competition in the next few years. For the Internet people now, this was already a cruelty that they had never experienced before. If the Internet were to wait another ten years, the competition would be even crueler. It would evolve into: everyone would take out all their money and give it their all to see who could attract more people to snatch it, and whoever could give it their all would win. Of course, at this level of competition, both sides would basically be unable to withstand it in the end. Then, they would put away their weapons, shake hands, and put all their belongings together. Then, they would stop giving away their money and start working together to extort money from the users.
Recently, Teng Xun was already in a mess because of the birth of YY. They could only watch helplessly as their users continued to disappear. Now that Li Mu suddenly said such a thing, the entire company was shrouded in a layer of haze.
Li Mu's arrogance deeply hurt the entire company, but what really pierced their hearts was the naked reality.
Although QQ had already started to develop the group function and personal cartoon show function, according to the current trend, QQ's daily active users would drop below a million before they could develop the functions. Although the company still had tens of millions in its account, its income was constantly declining. Soon, it would be unable to make ends meet. If that happened, it would not be long before it went bankrupt.
While a group of executives were thinking hard about countermeasures, the representatives of South Africa's MIH Group rushed from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. They, who held 33% of Teng Xun's shares, were really anxious.
At present, Teng Xun's shareholding structure was very simple. The team owned about 60%, MIH Group owned 33%, and the remaining 7% was in the hands of IDG.
However, the 60% of the team's shares were relatively scattered. Even Boss Ma himself did not have such a high proportion of 33%. Therefore, the real major shareholder of the company now was MIH.
Historically, MIH had always trusted and tolerated Teng Xun countless times more than ordinary investment companies. From the beginning, they had a very firm belief in Teng Xun's future. That was why they took 20% of Teng Xun's shares from the eldest son of Hong Kong's richest man, Li Jiacheng, and the rest of the shares from IDG. Apart from going public, MIH had never taken the initiative to reduce Teng Xun's shares.
But … this was f * cking a lifetime ago.
In this life, Li Mu had dug such a big hole for QQ. Seeing that QQ was about to fall into the abyss, MIH could not sit still.
Their representative, a white man named Dean Cooper, arrived in Shenzhen to talk to Boss Ma. He gave a suggestion: QQ must immediately give up profits and sacrifice profits in exchange for users. At this time, they must not focus on money anymore. The more they focused on money, the less they would live. Therefore, MIH's suggestion was: stop all advertising cooperation, give QQ membership and other value-added services for free, or offer discounts at extremely low prices, or think of other ways to repay users. In short, all of these were to make QQ closer to its users.
Boss Ma gave his answer according to Dean's suggestion on behalf of MIH.
"Mr. Dean, to be honest, I'm willing to temporarily give up profits to fight against Makino Technology, but Teng Xun and Makino Technology are different. At this stage, all of Teng Xun's income comes from QQ, while Makino Technology's income comes from Happy Farm. Now, YY has only given up on commercial advertising, but not value-added services. If Teng Xun stops all value-added services and advertising, then the tens of millions of yuan on the books can only last for half a year at most. We need to support a huge team, a large number of servers and supporting bandwidth services, and other miscellaneous expenses of the company are also not a small amount. Without income, we really can't last for long."
Dean said, "Boss Ma, this is also the issue that I'm here to discuss with you. We, MIH, don't want to see QQ collapse, so we are willing to increase our shareholding in Teng Xun at this stage. We have already communicated with IDG to buy 7% of their shares. We are also willing to buy another 20% of Teng Xun's shares from you and your team at a more reasonable valuation. However, we have a request, and that is, all the purchase money must be used for Teng Xun's future operations. You and your team cannot cash out."
Dean said, "Of course, to show our determination to tide over the difficulties with you, we are willing to give an additional 20% of the purchase money to Teng Xun. All of it will be used for future operations."
MIH's meaning was obvious. They did not want QQ to be defeated by YY, which would make their shares worthless. They wanted to take a gamble and lose more. However, if Teng Xun could survive, then MIH would make a huge profit from this investment! That was the true meaning of venture capital!
If Teng Xun was thriving and thriving, it would be almost impossible to get 7% of IDG's shares or more shares from the founding team. Even if it was possible, they would have to pay a very high premium. However, now that they were in a crisis, there was a lot of room to suppress the price of the shares. Even if they could not suppress it too much, they could at least wipe out the premium.
President Ma hesitated for a moment. In the current situation, if he did not fight with Muye Technology, QQ might die. If QQ died, all everyone's efforts would be in vain. After the severance pay for the employees and shareholders, there would basically be nothing left. This also meant that he actually had no way out. In the end, the company would be dissolved and he would at most take a few million and leave. If he took the initiative to attack, in the end, he would at most be laid off and not get a penny. In this case, naturally, he had to fight to the end.
However, if he agreed to MIH's request, MIH would get 7% of IDG's shares and 20% of his team's shares. Then, the shareholding ratio would reach an astonishing 60%. At that time, MIH would be the absolute controlling shareholder. Would he still be able to control the company?
CEO Ma thought for a moment and said to Dean, "How about this? We can discuss the specific financing ratio and valuation in detail. My idea is that if we can negotiate a ratio and price that both parties agree on, we will sign a memorandum first. Then, we will set a warning line for the funds on the books. If the funds reach the warning line, we will transfer the shares according to the terms of the memorandum."
For CEO Ma, he had never been in such a difficult situation since he started his business. Since mid-2001, he had led QQ to climb to the top in high spirits. When he was feeling proud of himself, he did not expect that Makino Technology would suddenly appear and hit him in the head. Although it was a painful blow, it was obviously difficult for him to accept giving up his position as the company's major shareholder just because of the pain in front of him. However, he also understood that if he wanted to transfer the shares now, the valuation would definitely fall horribly. Therefore, he hoped to negotiate the ratio and price now and accept the shares when he really could not take it anymore.
Dean and MIH had also expected CEO Ma to make a similar request. Before Dean came, he had already received MIH's instructions. This time, their main purpose was to help Teng Xun through the difficulties, and at the same time, to ensure that their previous investment would not go to waste. Therefore, if CEO Ma did not want to transfer the shares so early, they would not force him. Everything would focus on solving the problem. Since CEO Ma wanted to set the terms first and then leave some hope for him, MIH naturally would not kick him when he was down.
Therefore, Dean said, "In principle, I can accept your proposal, but I have to report to the company about the specific terms of the memorandum before I can reply to you."
CEO Ma nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. He said, "Don't worry, Mr. Dean. We are old acquaintances, and we are comrades on the same front. I will arrange for you to stay in Shenzhen for the next few days. We can discuss the specific details slowly."
Dean said, "No problem. I will stay in Shenzhen for the next few days."
After a pause, Dean said, "CEO Ma, that was just the first point. This time, I came here because the company has another suggestion that they want me to convey to you."
CEO Ma hurriedly said, "Please say it. “
Dean said, "We have also studied Makino Technology's YY. Based on the opinions of some of our analysts, we hope that QQ can also put more effort into product development. It is best to immediately find a new breakthrough in the product. To be honest, we feel that if QQ only imitates the functions of YY, it will definitely die. Now, we can only focus on developing new products and strive to surpass YY in the product itself to have a chance of reversing the situation."
CEO Ma pursed his lips and nodded heavily.
Of course, he thought so too. However, if they suddenly wanted to develop a new product, everyone was still in the dark. If they wanted to use a new product to reverse the situation, it meant that the new product must be strong enough. How could they find a strong new product idea in a short period of time?
At that moment, Guo Haiming suddenly slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "Boss Ma, do you remember that you had a very powerful idea back then? It was about board games. You said that if we had such a gaming hall and directly integrated it into our QQ, we would be able to beat Lianzhong in seconds …"
Boss Ma stood up abruptly. He really stood up from his chair.
He was also reminded by Guo Haiming. In fact, a few months ago, he had an awesome product idea. At that time, he wanted to imitate Lianzhong and create a QQ game hall. However, because he had a powerful instant messaging software like QQ, he could seamlessly transfer users and their friends to the QQ game hall and use board games to increase the stickiness of QQ users.
It was a pity that he was too confident in the situation at that time and allocated most of the technical development strength to Guo Haiming to create QQ Fishery!
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