Rebirth of the Entrepreneurship Era

That night, Xu Yiyang suffered from insomnia.

Ma Huateng, who was far away in Shenzhen City, also stayed up all night.

Both of them were in a state of extreme excitement, unable to extricate themselves.

Xu Yiyang felt that as long as he flew to Guangcheng and signed this contract, he would be safe for the rest of his life, even for a few lifetimes.

Ma Huateng felt that he had finally passed the death threshold. If the 4.8 million cash came in, it would immediately help Fujixun out of the predicament, and most importantly, it would also allow Fujixun to develop rapidly.

All in all, congratulations!

Now, the matter of investing in Fujixun is a certainty, and Xu Yiyang believes that no one will stop him at this time.

This staged major victory also gave Xu Yiyang a huge encouragement. It seems that investing is indeed a good way.

So, he couldn't help but think of another domestic Internet giant, Ali.

Tengxun has already invested in shares, can you think of a way to also participate in Alibaba?

In Zhao Quanbin's words, he might as well support Boss Ma.

As soon as he thought of this, he immediately got up, carefully recalled some details of the beginning of Ali's establishment, and drew a set of thinking mind maps on the blank exercise book with a pen.

Later, he recalled the book "Ali" by Duncan Clark he had read, and wrote all the important nodes he could think of on the mind map.

In fact, Boss Ma is a person who thinks foresight and acts after planning.

As early as October 1998, he had already started planning to create Ali.

At that time, he had even decided that the name of the company would be Ali.

In November and December 1998, Boss Ma registered two domain names respectively, the first being alibaba- and the second being .

Why did Boss Ma register these two domain names with online added?

The reason is that the domain name of .com has actually been registered by a Canadian long ago.

Boss Ma was reluctant and did not dare to spend thousands of dollars to buy this domain name. He had no choice but to register two domain names with online addition as the next best option.

In 1998, I thought about the name of the company and registered the domain name in advance. It was not until September 1999 that the company was officially established.

In the meantime, the preparation time alone took more than a year.

So what is Boss Ma preparing for this year?

In addition to the domain name, more is the development direction and team.

Boss Ma had assembled Ali's core team in February 1999.

At that time, Boss Ma was telling his team about the Internet, Silicon Valley, and e-commerce every day.

At the same time, Boss Ma has also started to launch his own website, but he still hasn't registered a company, and has just started a small trial.

In May 1999, he met Cai Chongxin, a high-end talent on Wall Street.

Who is Cai Chongxin?

He was born in Taiwan, grew up in the United States, went to high school and university in the United States, and then worked on Wall Street. At that time, his annual salary was already hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Afterwards, Boss Ma used his eloquence, which could not move eight trains, to recruit Cai Chongxin under his command.

Cai Chongxin is best at the capital route of Wall Street, so the first thing he did when he joined Ali was to register an offshore company and plan a US dollar financing route for Ali.

Domestic Internet companies have always had two currency units for financing.

Some companies announced financing, and in the financing disclosure, the amount was in RMB, but some companies used US dollars.

Enterprises that finance RMB are like Xu Yiyang investing in Tengxun now. Tengxun is registered in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, has no registered offshore company, and is a standard domestic private enterprise. In the past, he invested in it directly with RMB.

The specific operation method is very simple, you can pay Fujixun by yourself,

Fujixun changed the shares to himself.

However, companies financing US dollar capital are another mode of operation.

They will first set up an offshore company in an offshore legal area such as the Cayman Islands, then register a branch in the country, and then use the main body of the offshore company to raise US dollar capital in the hands of multinational capital.

The US dollars raised are placed in the main body of the offshore company and are not subject to the control of domestic foreign exchange policies.

For example, a total of 10 million US dollars has been raised. If the development of the domestic branch company needs 1 million US dollars, the 1 million US dollars will be settled and exchanged into RMB, and the remaining 9 million will be placed in the offshore company. Where do you need to go? .

After becoming bigger in the future, the capitalists of offshore companies can avoid taxes to a large extent.

Moreover, such a structure has another advantage: it is easier to expand overseas markets.

If it is a RMB-structured enterprise, the first difficulty in overseas development is the lack of US dollars. After all, the policy of foreign exchange control is to allow easy entry and strict exit.

Moreover, it will be very difficult for companies with a RMB structure to go public overseas in the future.

So even if a company started with a RMB structure, but later on, in order to grow bigger and go overseas, it will set up an offshore company and introduce overseas capital at a certain period of time.

Later generations of BTA and most of the Internet companies listed in the United States have adopted this route.

Cai Chongxin registered an offshore company as soon as he came up, which also proves that from the very beginning, Ali was prepared to take the US dollar capital route and invest in overseas capital.

And Cai Chongxin lived up to expectations. After Ali was formally established in September, he helped Ali secure $5 million in financing from Goldman Sachs.

As for why Cai Chongxin was able to secure Goldman Sachs' investment, Xu Yiyang has also heard about it.

When Cai Chongxin was working at Morgan Stanley in 1999, on a plane from Taipei to New York, he accidentally met Lin Xiaru, a Chinese executive of Goldman Sachs Capital, and established a friendship.

Because of such a relationship, Cai Chongxin found Lin Xiaru to operate and invest in Ali at the beginning of his business.

In September 1999, under Cai Chongxin's matchmaking, Lin Xiaru went to Hangzhou to meet Boss Ma.

Later, she decided to invest five million dollars in Ali.

In return, she asked for 500,000 shares of Ali, which is 50% of the shares.

In other words, Ali's valuation at this time is 10 million US dollars.

Giving 50% of the shares in the angel round sounds exaggerated, and many people will scream impossible when they hear it, absolutely impossible.

But unfortunately, this is all true, and this is the real operation of Boss Ma.

Therefore, compared to the 40% sale of Fujixun's Angel round, Boss Ma is even better.

When the matter developed, it was Lin Xiaru's company that took the initiative to reduce the shareholding to 33% for better operation, and the remaining 17% was invested jointly by several other companies, but the valuation was still 10 million US dollars.

In the end, in the fall of 1999, Goldman Sachs Lin Xiaru led several investment institutions to share 50% of Ali's shares with 5 million US dollars.

It was precisely because of this that Xu Yiyang concluded that even if he approached Boss Ma with the equivalent of RMB and begged to invest in him, Boss Ma would not be able to take it.

Because RMB capital has run counter to his company structure and development philosophy, and is completely on the same path.

After the five million dollars arrived, immediately after, in the first quarter of next year, Ali raised another 20 million dollars from Sun Zhengyi.

Moreover, Ali is not Boss Ma's first entrepreneurial project.

Before that, he had already operated two projects, one of which was Yellow Pages, so he could be said to be an old gun in China's Internet industry.

Therefore, Boss Ma has a very high starting point in all aspects.

Even if Xu Yiyang already has a net worth of more than 40 million, even if he is richer than him, it is still difficult to find.

You can't even touch it, let alone invest in him.

After analyzing so much, Xu Yiyang thought in his heart that he might as well give up this unrealistic idea. Fuji Xun's 40% is enough for him to lie down and win in more than ten years.

However, after he changed his thinking mode to consider this issue, he suddenly had a different kind of inspiration.

Boss Ma's starting point is indeed very high, and he really can't catch up.

However, if he can't catch up, can he lower his starting point?

Generally speaking, if you want to buy a thousand-mile horse, you can’t afford it if you don’t have so much money. You can only go home and save money, or you can settle for the next best thing and buy an ordinary horse or even a donkey.

However, looking at it another way, I can still find a way to make these Maxima worthless!

If you can't afford a Maxima, you can find a way to discount the legs of the Maxima.

If the legs of a Maxima are broken, it may not be more expensive than a healthy mule.

If you could buy a thousand-mile horse with a broken leg for the price of a mule, and then heal its leg, wouldn’t it still be a thousand-mile horse?

Of course, the strength of the discount must be mastered.

When it was hit lightly, it got up and bumped twice and then ran away;

If it is hit hard, it may not be able to get up in this life.

Therefore, only when others lose confidence in it when it is just about to hit, and it is not to such an extent that it can never get up again, can it let itself take advantage of it.

Hitting tools, hitting techniques, and hitting strength are all important and need to be handled carefully.

As a result, a wave of strategic planning for a squatting boss took shape in Xu Yiyang's mind.

The first step in planning is to buy the Alibaba domain name first.

However, he didn't buy this domain name to sell it to Boss Ma, but to make him feel uncomfortable in the future.

The Alibaba domain name has always been in the hands of a Canadian, and Boss Ma has been reluctant to do so.

Xu Yiyang found the contact information left by the other party, and sent an email to the other party, expressing his interest in purchasing the domain name Alibaba.

Due to the time difference, the other party happened to be in the daytime, so he quickly sent him a message back, telling him that the domain name was priced at $6,000 and no counter-offer was made.

In two or three months, Boss Ma will buy this domain name with a gritted teeth and stomped his feet.

So Xu Yiyang didn't even think about it, and directly asked the other party how to trade in RMB if they didn't have US dollars.

The other party gave him the contact information of an intermediary, which can accept remittances from China Mainland's RMB account, and then settle the payment to the seller in US dollars, but the intermediary's requirement is that a 20% service fee must be charged.

Ten thousand U.S. dollars, about 82,800 yuan, plus 20% service fee, it will cost one hundred thousand.

However, Xu Yiyang didn't even think about it. He directly communicated with the intermediary through emails. After confirming the details of the transaction, he planned to go to the bank to transfer money directly the next day, and take down the Alibaba domain name first.

Winning the domain name is only the first step in the Long March.

How to discount the horse legs of the Chollima requires a lot of effort!

In fact, the real breakthrough point is not the domain name, but a key person, Lin Xiaru.