How was Tencent QQ born? What did Ma Huateng do? Two lessons for entrepreneurs

Everyone is familiar with QQ. It has accompanied the growth of a generation and brought us indelible memories. Although WeChat has completely replaced QQ, its former glory cannot be concealed anyway. The fat penguin does not seem to have gone far. It always comes to you and greets you casually: "Hi, how are you?"

Professor Wu Xiaobo used the phrase "unclear start" to describe the early days of Tencent, which I think is also very suitable for the start-up of QQ. When QQ was first created, it was called "OICQ", which means "Chinese Internet Pager" in Chinese. Its logo was not a fat penguin, but a pager.

Before OICQ, there were already instant messaging tools in the world. The earliest one was ICQ, which was founded by three retired Israeli veterans. In March 1999, it was acquired by Americans for US$407 million. After that, a Chinese version of CICQ appeared in Taiwan, and a similar ICQ-like program, Internet Wizard, appeared in Nanjing. There was also PCICQ from Guangzhou Feihua. Does China need a fourth instant messaging tool? This was the focus of debate among the founders of Tencent.

In the early days of Tencent, the most urgent task was to find work to do and increase the company's revenue. There were already companies in China doing this, and they started earlier. The most terrible thing was that they didn't know how to make money from this thing. Not only would it waste time to do this project, but it would also burn money. What could it do? Several founders had fierce debates and disagreements over whether to do OICQ, and it was difficult to form a unified and effective opinion. At the critical moment, Ma Huateng's role as the core leader stood out. He intuitively felt that this project was feasible and should have a market, so he decided to raise it first against all odds. It didn't matter that he raised it, but he raised a small giant, which became half of Tencent's support in the future.

I have a friend who started a business in partnership with others in his hometown. The model is that the two people jointly invest and make decisions. At the beginning, the operation was relatively smooth and they made a lot of money. However, with the continuous involvement of peers, the living environment of the partnership business was squeezed smaller and smaller, so the two had serious differences in the way of operation: the friend was cowardly and conservative, and advocated changing the way of operation, and constantly accumulating and increasing income in a "snowball" way. The partner was more powerful and adventurous, and advocated taking loans to expand the scale. When no consensus could be reached, the strong party won, and the two borrowed money from the bank and began to expand. Due to lack of experience, small pattern and lack of thinking, they suffered a huge loss in the end and had to run away. If the two could unify their thoughts, make the right choice, and go on firmly, they might have done well and would not have ended so tragically. From this, we can see how important it is to make the right decision!

During the Long March, in such a difficult time, the first thing the cook thought of when he opened his eyes in the morning was not what to eat, but "Where to go today?" Direction is more important than eating and hard work at any time, and the correct direction is often in the hands of a few key people.

Revelation 1: In a team, there can be many people involved in planning and discussion, but there must be someone who can make the final and correct decision. At critical moments, it is always the key few who play a key role.

After that, Tencent, which had just been established, led a team led by Zhang Zhidong to develop OICQ. How did OICQ carve out a path and catch up with ICQ when ICQ had already entered the Chinese market and had three Chinese versions?

To sum it up in one sentence: identify your opponent's weaknesses, find your own methods, and determine your own direction.

Micro-innovation is made in technology. ICQ users in the United States use their own home computers to access the Internet, while most Chinese people go to Internet cafes to access the Internet. ICQ stores user content and friend lists on the computer client, while OICQ moves the friend list from the client to the server, avoiding the loss of user information and friend lists when changing computers in the Internet cafe. The software size has also been reduced, and UDP technology (User Datagram Protocol) is used in the transmission protocol, which greatly saves server costs and improves operating speed.

In addition, we pay great attention to customer experience and adhere to the principle of "small steps, fast progress, trial and error, and iteration", constantly discovering and fixing bugs, making user experience the fulcrum for prying the "Archimedes lever".

Later, as the number of OICQ users soared, more and more money was invested. They could not find a charging model and had no money to buy servers. They felt that they could not hold on any longer. In order to find money, they even signed a gambling contract with IDG. Gambling contracts are very dangerous and some may be traps. Didn’t Zhang Lan of South Beauty encounter a "barbarian at the gate"? If it weren’t for the efforts of Tencent people and their unremitting negotiations with venture capital companies, Tencent QQ would have died in 2000 without the investment from IDG and Yingke. This may be the most difficult moment in the history of Tencent QQ.

The subsequent debut of "QQ Show", "Happy Farm" and "QQ Games" all demonstrated the tenacity and wisdom of Tencent people. Tencent QQ has topped the list again and again, making domestic and foreign peers take notice.

I have a childhood friend who does foreign trade business in Shanghai. Affected by the domestic epidemic in 2020, there was basically no income in the first and second quarters. In the third and fourth quarters, due to the outbreak of the epidemic abroad, many foreign factories were closed, production capacity declined, and the number of imports from China soared. One day, I called him to ask about his operations in the second half of the year. He told me that he was losing money in the second half of the year because the surge in exports brought about a sharp increase in shipping costs, and many orders were signed before. Naturally, he could not make money if the freight increased. In this situation, he still persisted, perhaps waiting for an opportunity, perhaps waiting for a change in the overall situation, but he never gave up. I think this is a good quality, and he will definitely persist until the clouds and fog clear.

The second revelation: Persistence is a good quality. If you make every effort to solve objective problems, nothing will be difficult. There is always a way to solve a problem, and there is always an excuse if you don't want to solve a problem.

Tencent's story is very inspiring. I just understood a little bit and expressed some of my feelings. Please forgive me if there are any mistakes. I would be very grateful if you can resonate with me!