At the beginning of May, Tencent’s market value broke through the $300 billion mark, becoming the first market value of BAT and the most profitable Internet company in China. In less than a year, Tencent’s market value has increased by more than 70 billion US dollars. It has become the world’s largest social empire alongside Facebook.
Tencent’s QQ, WeChat and other products have almost wiped out all users with social skills in China, and have also shown a strong and almost dominant force in the fields of games, communication and entertainment.
Many people ask why such an 18-year-old company, which started as an instant messenger, is so powerful. What enabled it to get out of the embattled situation a few years ago, quickly transform and grow into "another company"? What did it do right in strategy, management, employment and culture to create Tencent today?
Teacher Wu Xiaobo said "This enterprise is too complicated" when she talked about "How Tencent grew up" on Dragonfly FM. I investigated 100 middle and senior executives of Tencent before and after, and did some research outside. It took a total of six years before and after writing this book. Eighteen years ago, Tencent may have started from a mistake and embarked on a counterfeit road. It has been on the edge for a long time, and now it has gradually grown into a HK$ 2 trillion company, which is still in the process of continuous iteration. "
Although "How Tencent grew up" is only 140 pages, Wu Xiaobo spent five hours on Dragonfly FM telling about this legendary enterprise. This paper deeply analyzes Tencent’s legendary road from the following aspects: why is the complicated relationship between Tencent, China Internet and horse webmasters, who invested in Tencent, the profit dilemma of QQ, Tencent’s battle of ·MSN in 2004, the battle of games in 2008, the battle of 3Q in 2010, and the shift of focus: seven weapons from QQ to WeChat and Ma Huateng. Let every deep user of Tencent products gain insight into its growth logic and better understand the ins and outs of product presentation. Learn more about the overall situation and future trends of Internet in China.
Wu Xiaobo said, "Tencent has a lot of experience to learn from today. It can be said that these ideas and experiences have made Tencent today, and I call him the seven weapons of Ma Huateng".
First, product minimalism
Tencent pays great attention to details, and it is very light, small and simple. It is said that many employees of Tencent often receive emails from Ma Huateng at one or two o’clock in the evening, saying that the color of a product is wrong and there are half a byte in the byte. Ma Huateng insists on several points in product design: First, don’t force users. Second, don’t harass 99% users for 1% demand. Third, the faint art, point to stop. Fourth, don’t deliberately cater to the younger age.
Second, the user-driven strategy
In 2004, everyone talked about platform traffic, but Ma Huateng was talking about user experience. The concept that products are driven by product managers has only recently been recognized by everyone. In the past, they were all driven by traffic and mode. Xiaomi’s strategy is a typical product manager logic, which is driven by capital and product managers. Capital, culture and platform basic ability constitute the bottom of the team.
Tencent has a mechanism-the 10/100/1000 rule. The product manager should do 10 user surveys every month, pay attention to 100 user blogs and collect 1000 user experiences, which was a rule set 10 years ago. At the same time, Tencent also has a research institute specializing in user feedback.
Third, the internal horse racing mechanism
All the senior executives in Tencent are playing, and it is very sad to be in Tencent without meritorious military service. Always in constant adjustment, a powerful department becomes a business group, and the departments that can’t be reorganized. Believing in the management mode of the US military, the commando team similar to "operation mekong" engages in blasting, translation, wireless communication and snipers, and everyone has their own expertise to accomplish the common goal. All Tencent’s mobile games are first killed internally, and then tested internally, publicly and experimentally. If you do well, I will give you the traffic.
Fourth, the trial-and-error iterative strategy
"Small step iteration, trial and error running" is the eight-character formula for the survival of all Internet companies including Tencent. In the user-driven market environment, we should open ourselves up, don’t want to do it all at once, and be brave in trial and error. Trial and error is actually an ability. QQ was very imperfect in the early days, and it was iterated every two weeks, so was WeChat.
V. Ecological cultivation mode
In 2011, Tencent proposed opening up. After the opening of QQ and WeChat, the two words that Tencent said the most were purification and ecology. The reason why purification is emphasized is the re-imagination of this enterprise organization model, and what to do in the face of uncertainty. It is not another taxi company that subverts the taxi company, but Didi taxi. It’s not another Weibo that subverts Weibo, but WeChat.
All Tencent’s strategies are based on coping strategies in the face of uncertainty. At the end of 2013, Ma Huateng had two very important viewpoints: First, connecting everything. Second, internet plus.
VI. Capital integration ability
What is Tencent’s openness? One is traffic and the other is capital. Traffic is a resource, and resources can be turned into funds. Tencent is a listed company with a large amount of cash reserves. The first action of Tencent’s opening up was to do Q+, and then set up billions of industrial M&A funds for investment. Participate in the capital market in the form of investment.
Seven, focus on the initial heart of entrepreneurship
Since 1978, the first batch of entrepreneurs in China started their businesses for survival. Entrepreneurs like Lu Guanqiu are township entrepreneurs, with low educational level and powerful destructive power.
The second batch was in 1984, when China began to reform its urban system, such as Liu Chuanzhi, Wang Shi and Zhang Ruimin.
The third group was people in the system who were disappointed with the system after Deng Xiaoping’s talk in South China in 1992. The fourth batch is the wave of Internet entrepreneurs like Ma Yun and Ma Huateng, no longer for food and clothing, but for love. These people are very young. Ma Yun in 1964, Zhang Chaoyang in 1964, Li Yanhong in 1968, Ding Lei and Ma Huateng in 1971, Liu Qiangdong in 1974 and Wang Zhidong in 1966. They are now in their 40 s and 50 s, and they still maintain their initial intention of starting a business.
As the first paid program created by Dragonfly FM and Wu Xiaobo Channel, "How Tencent grew up" exceeded expectations in terms of both the number of listeners and the income. Become the first "explosion" in the paid boutique area. Since then, Jiang Xun, Feng Lun, Liang Hongda, Liang Dong, the complete works of Jin Yong’s martial arts, The Notes of So Many Crimes and other paid content have been launched. Among them, the paid program of Taiwan Province aesthetic master, poet and writer Jiang Xun has been online for one month, with more than 30,000 subscribers and revenue of nearly 2 million yuan.
"A lot of professional content is the biggest advantage of dragonfly FM." According to the person in charge of Dragonfly FM, the platform has included the contents of more than 3,000 radio stations and more than 1,000 university radio stations nationwide, aggregated more than 9 million hours of audio programs, and reached a strategic cooperation with Chinese Online Group, and obtained the right to make the content created by 17K Novel Network and Tangyuan into audio works.
It can be said that 2017 is a great year for content entrepreneurship, and various content platforms such as video, WeChat official account and audio have sprung up, and more and more people are beginning to realize the popularity of audio content payment. A person related to dragonfly FM said, "We hope that users who buy paid content are customers who really have demands for audio content. Buyers will carefully think about whether they really have this demand, and listen carefully after purchasing and gain something. There is no shortage of information in this world. What is lacking is screening. Paid audio will allow users to obtain higher quality content products in a shorter time. "
