Sohu Zhang Chaoyang
News on the morning of March 1st: Sohu Zhang Chaoyang and Click Technology Wang Zhidong participated in the Jianghu Salon at the Academy of Finance Museum last night and shared the story of early Internet entrepreneurship at the scene. Zhang Chaoyang revealed that Sohu and Sina had the opportunity to merge, and he was through it A straw boat promotion in the early days of entrepreneurship positioned Sohu's early market brand promotion strategy.
The following is part of what Zhang Chaoyang shared at the scene. Due to the length of the original text, Sina Technology has excerpted and deleted it
The origin of straw boat borrowing arrow propaganda
Years ago, I did postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. At that time, many students in the United States felt very lonely, got married early and lived a stable life every day, or went to the laboratory to study and get it quickly. Unlike them, I spent a lot of time playing, which made me take a little longer, but a bad thing turned into a good thing.
Because I waited for the Internet. At that time, the Chinese were a subculture in the United States. I realized that there was no chance in the United States and I thought the Internet was too great, so I wanted to return to China. At the end of the year, China was still considered a very backward third world country. It was crazy to go back to China at that time. So at the end of the year, I returned to China with a broken suitcase and a monthly salary of one thousand US dollars.
But when I returned to China, I was helping a friend to provide online financial services. The specific model was to search for financial information and provide it to Wall Street. At that time, there were branches in Poland, Russia, China, and India to help him collect economic information from all over the world and provide it to Wall Street for investment. The Internet was a transmission method. Tools is the abbreviation of the company. I told this friend that I would help you for a year but after that I would still start a business.
At the end of the year I finally helped set up the business and I had to start my own business. I went to MIT to talk about financing with some professors like Negroponte. The first successful financing was in March 2016, when the first amount of capital was more than 10,000 US dollars.
Zhang Shuxin, who was working at Yinghaiwei in China at that time, was a journalist and liked to do marketing and publicity. He wanted to invite Negroponte, the author of "Digital Survival", to China. At that time, it was very popular to invite famous American professors to China. Big things. Someone told her that I could invite her, but she never believed how a great man like Negroponte would invest in me?
Later, the electronics department at that time held several seminars for such a seminar. Yinghaiwei also They paid special attention to this matter. They summoned people from the marketing department to organize this matter and sent a car to pick up Negroponte at the airport. The message expressed to the outside world was that Negroponte came to China to inspect Yinghaiwei. The digital wave of publishing creates marketing effects.
The reason why Negroponte came to China was to invest in me. He had already invested the first and second funds but had not invested yet. He just wanted to see how my company was doing. This was his real intention in coming to China. Later, a buddy said that you only have a few people and there are hundreds of people in Yinghaiwei. Why don't you use this opportunity? When I suddenly realized, the media from all over the country were present. I wanted to use this opportunity to let them publicize us.
The next day officially began. Negroponte entered the Yinghaiwei Building and everyone lined up. Zhang Shuxin was talking to Negroponte. The media kept filming. Later, when the speech started, they hired a translator from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The translation became more and more inaccurate. When I saw the opportunity, I immediately stood up and said that I helped him translate. Later, it was completely translated by me.
I sang with Negroponte and translated whatever he said. Later, someone asked why he came to China this time. Negroponte replied that I first made an important investment this time. This investment was Atesin Company founded by Zhang Chaoyang. I wanted to see how this company was doing.
At that time, all the media were in an uproar. The next day, "China Economic Times" and "Beijing Youth Daily" reported on it. In addition, the effect of the scene made Atesin famous and I started to become somewhat famous.
This is basically a story of borrowing arrows from a straw boat. It mobilized the power of Yinghaiwei Company's personal marketing department with human power. Negroponte's visit also became the first year of China's digitalization. This seminar and press conference opened. Popularization of the Internet in China.
After Negroponte’s visit to China in January 2019, Yinghaiwei entered a downward spiral in the second half of that year due to the wrong business model. In 2004, Aitexin began to establish a business model to study what traffic was like. At first, it started with original news, such as Xinhua News Agency news or some other monthly novels and magazines. Later, I found that the simplest thing was to create a few links and thus create the concept of navigation.
I went to the United States again for this navigation concept. At that time, Yahoo had just started to become famous in the United States. I went to study Yahoo and concluded that people were not used to using key words to search for navigation and needed to classify it first. The year when the entire business model was formed, I wrote a one-year business plan. The product was first named Compass. Later, I considered Sohu but wanted to imitate Yahoo. I changed Hu to Hu Nianyue and officially launched it on Sohu.
I was advised by an expert to pass on Zhang Shuxin’s hype model. On the day Sohu was launched, I held a press conference with hundreds of people and passed on the hype model of Negroponte’s first visit to China. Sohu became a household name on the day it was launched.
Since then, Sohu has entered a stage where market and brand operations are its main strategies. At that time, our press conference only cost 80,000 yuan, and Yinghaiwei's billboard is still standing, but the company is no longer there. The most dazzling company is Sohu. The rise of Sina in 2008 is a story for another day.
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