How do Internet tycoons choose entrepreneurial partners?

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Before we know it, it is graduation season again. In the green student days, the dormitory is the place where we leave the most memories. We spend at least 40% of our time there with our roommates. What kind of dormitory memories do the Internet tycoons with many academic masters have, and what kind of sparks did they create with their roommates? Xiao Nei will tell you eight stories today.

A good man has three helpers

Starting a business is never something that can be accomplished by a lone hero alone. Even if the bosses have amazing talents, they still cannot achieve great success without the company of wise and capable people. And many of those capable partners who help them succeed are actually classmates or even roommates from their school days.

When it comes to co-founding a business with roommates, I'm afraid everyone will immediately think of the story of Zuckerberg and his three roommates at Harvard who "accidentally" founded Facebook from Facemash. But history is often revised by humans, and Joey Green, who was also a member of the "FB Brotherhood", was unknown for a long time. If Zuckerberg hadn't invited him to join Facebook after "three visits", this genius would probably have been buried in the dust of history because of his father's opposition.

In comparison, Ballmer was much luckier than Green. While studying at Harvard, he also met Gates, a future Silicon Valley hero. Although he could only watch Gates and Aaron, the geeky buddies, show off their power at the time, the two madmen soon became close friends due to their common interests in movies and operas. Like Green, Ballmer did not drop out with Gates because he was reluctant to leave the Harvard football team where he worked. However, after completing his MBA, he still joined Bill. Later, he became president and took over as CEO and reached the peak of his life, but he was sadly dismissed. Now he is the owner of the NBA Clippers, which is a legend.

Good friends in Silicon Valley are so close, and in fact, our domestic ones are not bad either. Wang Xing, known as the "most unlucky entrepreneur in history", is actually not unlucky at all. The reason why he can "win nine times out of nine" is inseparable from the support of Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang, a pair of good roommates who have shared the same dormitory. They have not only made Meituan bigger but also will become stronger and stronger. Xiao Nei found that in the Internet circle, there are quite a lot of brotherhoods that came out of Tsinghua University. For example, Zhou Feng, Wang Xiaochuan, and Xu Chaojun, who were in the computer class of 1996, were packed up and taken away by Chen Yizhou who returned to China in 1998 to join Chinaren. Later, the three of them became the backbone of the industry.

In the Peking University next door, there were also entrepreneurial brothers like the sworn brotherhood in the Peach Garden. Zhang Xiangdong, Deng Yuqiang, and Chang Yingming started from Yanyuan and wrote their own legend in the Internet industry under the name of 3G Portal. However, with the decline of the company, the former iron triangle has changed. In comparison, the bond between the famous "Chinese partners" is much deeper. Although Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang have already founded Zhen Fund together, Lao Yu, who is unwilling to fall behind, also founded Hongtai Fund last year.

As roommates who once lived under the same roof, the relationship is naturally deeper than the water of Peach Blossom Pond. However, starting a business together is no different from playing online games, and the challenges to be experienced are much more severe. Under the influence of contradictions, differences and even conflicts of interest, very few people can go to the end together. After all, all good things must come to an end.

Destiny changed because of that one sentence

Although roommates have the innate qualities to become entrepreneurial partners, very few can actually become partners. Although many people say goodbye to their future bosses after graduation, their words back then inadvertently change the trajectory of each other's destiny.

Recently, I saw that JD.com, which celebrated its 12th anniversary, launched the slogan "No Change", but without Liu Qiangdong's transformation, there would be no JD.com that has remained unchanged for 12 years. Liu Qiangdong once admitted that he applied for the National People's Congress in order to become an official in the future, and choosing sociology was a coincidence. It was this coincidence that determined the change in his life. At that time, one of his roommates pursued a girl for several years without success, but in the end, he was told "I rejected you because I couldn't find a job with sociology". Liu Qiangdong, who was shocked by this incident, then took a minor in computer science, which was the most promising field at the time, and thus embarked on the road of IT.

In a similar situation, Xiao Nei also knew that Zhang Chaoyang had also fallen for a beautiful woman. He was admitted to the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University, the cradle of scientists, with high scores. Later, he won the Tsung-Dao Lee Scholarship as the first place, and was considered the best among the best. But Zhang Chaoyang failed miserably in love, and he was very depressed and lost. His roommate was worried that he would commit suicide, so he told him that he was also in pain after the breakup, but he had to cheer up. From then on, Zhang Chaoyang, who had been working hard all the way, went straight to MIT. Later, everyone knew the story of how he founded Sohu and became one of the earliest Internet trendsetters.

Compared with the predecessors mentioned above, Liu Zuohu, the founder of OnePlus, was cheated by his roommate but turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Back then, this Hubei boy was a talented teenager with excellent character and academic performance at Zhejiang University. While others were busy preparing for postgraduate entrance examinations and looking for jobs, he had already been recommended by his tutor for postgraduate study. But at this juncture, his roommate stood up to "cheat people", and Liu Zuohu was invited by him to be a gunman to take the exam for him. Unfortunately, he was recognized by the teacher on the spot, and his qualification for postgraduate study was revoked. But because of this, Liu Zuohu, who was unable to study for a master's degree, joined OPPO after graduation at the invitation of his senior, and this is how the current "OnePlus Tiger Brother" came into being.

Xiao Nei also knows a different story about the roommate. When Chen Yizhou took over Xiaonei.com from Wang Xing, he did not consider changing the name because it was a campus SNS website after all. But a small incident later forced him to consider whether to change the name. One time, an employee complained to him that his best friend was unwilling to join the company no matter how he was persuaded because the name "Xiaonei.com" did not fit his white-collar elite status. It was such a ridiculous reason that Xiaonei.com later became Renren.com.

History is always influenced by others, and a roommate's words, whether intentional or unintentional, secretly prompted the big guys to change in the future. And those who accompanied the big guys in the past are now nowhere to be found.

Thank you roommate for not killing me

I remember that in the past few years, campus tragedies caused by disagreements between roommates occurred frequently, so much so that "thank you roommate for not killing me" became a popular online phrase. We will naturally not talk about such bloody topics below, but the "gratitude of not killing" of the big guys' roommates.

With the official release of the top-end version of Xiaomi Note, Lei Jun's previous "Are you OK" storm has finally been covered up. Everyone knows that "Lei Jun" was a top student at Wuhan University and a genius programmer, but few people know about his hard entrepreneurial years before joining Kingsoft. Once, he was editing software until four in the morning, but unfortunately the computer suddenly crashed and the file had not been saved. Because he had to demonstrate it to people the next day, it was too late to rewrite it. Lei Jun was almost stunned at the time. It happened that his roommate woke up at this time and immediately helped him find it from the first sector in the hard drive. Facing the rising sun in the east, all the codes were finally found. It was the programmer roommate who saved Lei Jun, saved Kingsoft, and saved Xiaomi.

Although Nvidia, the former hardware overlord, is no longer so glorious in the era of mobile Internet, Huang's "nuclear bomb" is still very powerful. Even Wang Sicong has equipped a four-card-in-one console. It is said that Huang Renxun and his younger brother were sent to the United States by their parents to board when they were teenagers. The two of them went to a rural school in Kentucky. Unfortunately, the school was actually a juvenile reformatory, and his roommates were all "Nine Dragons" with tattoos all over. But Huang Renxun and his younger brother tenaciously adapted to it. He not only got along well with the "Nine Dragons", but also taught others to read. In the face of such a situation, they were able to escape danger. Tegra's troubles could not shake Huang's strong heart at all.

Huang Renxun was dealing with a bad boy, while Musk was simply a devil in the eyes of his roommates. His roommate at the University of Pennsylvania once described him as "a crazy entrepreneur". Musk first earned income by writing business plans for the company, and then chose to rent out the house he and his roommates shared to others to hold large parties as his initial entrepreneurial project. Such crazy behavior that disturbed the public often attracted the police to stop, and every time the police came to question him, he always responded calmly. Perhaps it was such a calm madman who created Tesla and SpaceX in the future.

Also considered an incredible madman, GoPro founder Woodman is a man of his word. When he said he wanted to make a sports camera with "no focus" function, his roommates thought he was crazy. But he persisted with full confidence, and his roommate Dana not only expressed his understanding but also followed him all the way to start a business. Touched by this, Woodman once said that once he sold any shares of the company, he would give Dana 10% as a thank you. Recently, this ten-year promise was finally fulfilled, and he gave Dana GoPro stocks worth $229 million to repay "the grace of not killing him."

As partners living under the same roof, the mutual assistance between roommates is actually a heartfelt act. Whether it is helping you recover hard drive data or following you all the way, they are not seeking any benefits in return. After all, they are good brothers, and often a look of affirmation from the roommates will make their efforts meaningful.

Although these stories of the big guys in their student days seem very legendary now, they were just like the students who are about to graduate on campus today, just wanderers on the journey of life. With their own talents and extraordinary efforts, they took advantage of the situation and became industry big guys. And these roommates who had wonderful stories with them played the role of catalyst in the dark.

We will meet each other countless times in our lives. Although people come and go, roommates in our school days will definitely occupy a different place in our hearts. Although most of them did not become "big brother catalysts", this group of companions who ate and slept together will definitely make us unforgettable for a lifetime.