Later, Mr. Ma worked as a software developer for a paging and telecommunications company. But after making a lot of money trading stocks in his free time, he founded Tencent with his boyhood friend Zhang Zhidong. It was one of the first companies to offer instant messaging in China. But in the early days, profits were hard to come by.
数据挖掘交友
“They didn’t really have a revenue model, and they didn’t know how they were going to make money,” said Shirley Yeung, who was among the first to invest in the company for PCCW, the Hong Kong telecom operator. “They were a bunch of young techies working in a crummy building but passionate about creating something new.”
数据挖掘交友
In 2001, the company got a big infusion of capital from MIH, a division of a South African media company called Naspers. MIH paid $35 million to acquire about 50 percent of the company.
Tencent’s fortunes improved later that year when the company teamed up with China Mobile, the giant state-owned mobile operator, to forward Internet messaging to mobile phones.
“That was our first bucket of gold,” Mr. Ma said.
数据挖掘研究院
By 2004, Tencent was making a handsome profit on revenue of more than $130 million and Goldman Sachs was brought in to take the company public in Hong Kong, where Tencent’s offering raised $184 million in June 2004.
Since then, the company has been on a tear. Other big Chinese Internet companies, like Sina, Sohu, Netease and Baidu, are trying to keep pace. And so are the American Internet companies, like MySpace, which is looking to enter China’s market. 数据挖掘实验室
But Mr. Ma is not standing still. “There are a lot of opportunities in the market now,” he said. “The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.”
数据挖掘论坛
