Although Ding Zhenglin came from Sequoia, his point of view in analyzing problems is very objective.
For the Internet industry, Sequoia is indeed too awesome.
Not to mention anything else, among the companies he has invested in, the number of companies that have been successfully listed has exceeded 200. This ability is unparalleled in the field of venture capital.
If a venture capital company invests in a company successfully, it can be said that the venture capital company has a good vision or is relatively strong. But if it invests in hundreds of companies and most of them are very successful, it must be because of itself. The strength is extremely strong.
First of all, if the strength is slightly inferior, how can we invest in hundreds of companies around the world
Secondly, half of the hundreds of companies can successfully go public, but don’t think that the other half of the investments have failed. On the contrary, most of the other half of the investments, Sequoia, have successfully made money. Escaped whole body.
Sequoia is not only good at long-term play in the capital field, but also good at short-term play in the capital field. For example: investing 10 million in a company's Series A, accounting for 20% of the shares, with a valuation of 50 million, and waiting until the company's Series B or Series C financing At that time, Sequoia had already valued the company at 500 million. Although its shares had been diluted in one or two rounds, at least a dozen percentage points could still be retained. At this time, if Sequoia had invested in this company If a company's prospects are not promising and they want to get out of the business, they can use their priority cash-out rights in the Series A financing contract to get tens of millions and get out. Maybe the company will be dead before the next round of financing. All the venture capital funds that could be withdrawn in time were wasted, but Sequoia made tens of millions of profits from this company through its short-term operations, timely cash out, and withdrawal.
Therefore, if the success of a project is measured by making money, Sequoia's success rate is even higher. Half of the companies he invested in can be listed, and most of the other half make money. The overall success rate is extremely high.
This extremely high success rate is not supported by luck or vision, but entirely by strength.
As a practitioner who has been working on the Internet for many years, Li Mu has heard about Sequoia's name quite a lot over the years, and even has some personal experience.
In his previous life, a company he worked for was invested in Series A and Series B by Sequoia. In the end, it was Sequoia who came forward to package the company and sold it to a state-owned enterprise group at a high price. Sequoia patted itself on the back after successfully cashing out the money. After leaving, Li Mu's boss also cashed out, leaving them as old employees. Originally, Li Mu didn't want to resign, but what he didn't expect was that after being absorbed by a central enterprise, the central enterprise sent a boss who didn't understand the Internet at all. Sitting in charge, he put forward all kinds of crazy ideas every day, and changed his orders day and night, forcing Li Mu to resign. When he left, he didn't even receive a penny in compensation.
To a certain extent, Li Mu can be regarded as someone who has been indirectly cheated by Sequoia, but the more he does it, the more he knows in his heart that this company is awesome and can definitely spend the capital, so Li Mu also tends to Take the Sequoia money.
However, the tendency is just an inner intention. Although Sequoia is awesome, Li Mu still has to consider the strength of multiple venture capital institutions, the quotation for Makino Technology, and the specific contract terms to make the decision.
In Li Mu’s view, any capital, including Sequoia, must agree to several prerequisites when investing in Makino Technology: first, it must not interfere with business operations in any form; secondly, it must not invest in any form of direct competitors of Makino Technology in the industry; thirdly, , cannot be cashed out before successful listing.
So, Li Mu said to Ding Zhenglin: "You can choose to make an appointment with Sequoia to talk, and also make an appointment with a few other overseas venture capital institutions to say hello to them. Anyone who recognizes that the market value of Makino Technology is higher than 10 billion yuan, everyone will You can sit down and talk, and if you don’t agree with it, you don’t even need to meet.”
In Li Mu's view, Makino Technology currently has such powerful resources, and its basic market is simply outrageous. Moreover, in the Chinese Internet industry, its advantages are even more obvious. With such a good market, if it is even valued at 10 billion If they don't agree, then there is really no need to meet with such capital.
Ding Zhenglin nodded and said with a smile: "I am most familiar with capital relations. I am familiar with the relatively well-known venture capital institutions. I can directly find the key people in charge. I will follow up on this matter and I will contact you as soon as there are results. report."
"OK." Li Mu nodded slightly: "You are responsible for spreading news to the capital industry. If you meet the requirements, please make an appointment with me for an interview."
Kong Lingyu saw that Li Mu was ready to meet with the capital side, so he couldn't help but ask: "Boss, if our valuation is tens of billions, what is the approximate size of our financing?"
Li Mu said: "My plan is for all existing shareholders to sell 10% in proportion, so the financing scale must be more than one billion yuan."
Kong Lingyu asked subconsciously: "What do we need so much money for?"
As soon as these words came out, everyone else also looked at Li Mu.
Yeah, what do we need money for
Makino Technology’s current team is very large and its operating costs are not low. However, because YY’s value-added services are so good and Happy Farm is a money-attracting tool, coupled with the income from YY’s game hall, the overall cash flow is very healthy. With the capital coming in, everyone can run this large business very well. So when Li Mu wants to raise funds, what is he going to do with the money
Seeing so many people staring at him, Li Mu smiled slightly and said two words: "Burn it."
"Burn it?"
"Yes, burn it!"
Li Mu said categorically: "All financing scale of more than one billion yuan will be burned within a year. As for where to burn, my temporary idea is: globalization accounts for at least 50%, new business research and development and expansion account for 30%, The R&D team accounts for 20%.”
With the phrase "globalization accounts for at least 50%", everyone understands it.
Li Mu's idea of globalization is the same as the previous battle against Teng Xun. The main purpose is to avoid its edge and sneak past Chencang. As for how YY can achieve the goal of globalization, Li Mu has already set the core strategy, and it is better to use social networking To use games as your trump card, you must first attract users in overseas markets and, within the carrier of social games, subtly allow users to accumulate and develop their own connections.
The English version of Happy Farm, Town-Of-Paradise, has now been developed. The next step is how to promote this game to overseas markets.
When Kong Lingyu heard that Li Mu wanted to use at least half of the C-round financing for globalization, he couldn't help but ask him: "Boss, since so much money has been deployed, should we also do something about our next globalization strategy?" adjustment?"
Li Mu shook his head: "It's better to use Happy Farm to open up the situation. If you have more money, use it to invest in promotion and operation."
Speaking, Li Mu introduced in detail: "Promotion is the fastest way to burn money. If you have more money, you can invest in more online and offline advertising in overseas markets. This is the most direct way of promotion; As for operations, everyone can then start thinking about how to use a certain cost to achieve results that are much higher than the cost."
"For example: after our Happy Farm is launched in overseas markets, we can continuously hold player competitions in overseas markets, allowing users to develop their own towns desperately. The one with the best comprehensive points within the specified time wins, and the winner can get points. With a cash prize of 10,000 US dollars, this competition is held every week;”
"For another example, we can carry out some special tasks and activities based on Western culture, such as: the task of planting pumpkins on Halloween, the task of raising turkeys on Thanksgiving, and the task of planting Christmas trees at Christmas. Each special task has specific competition rewards. It can be a car, a family trip, or cash or other rewards. In short, if we have money in our hands, as long as the money is spent effectively, we can spend it without any scruples."
When Kong Lingyu heard this, he was secretly stunned. Li Mu really had too much confidence in Happy Farm. In this case, most of the funds still have to be invested in the game Happy Farm. Can it really be stable
At this time, Li Mu said again: "By the way, there is one more thing. I have been thinking about whether Happy Farm can have a client? In the future, the structure of our game will become larger and larger, with more and more elements. Various tasks and plots are becoming more and more abundant. If we still use flash as a carrier, it will become more and more troublesome in the future. The repeated loading of materials will also cause more and more serious requests for our server bandwidth. Instead of doing this, we might as well put it With PC gaming, not only can the overall sophistication of the game be improved, but the speed of the game and the pressure on bandwidth can also be reduced a lot."
The current Happy Farm is a real web game, that is, a page game. To put it bluntly, a page game means that there is no need to install any software and materials locally. All materials are requested to be loaded online to the server. If you often use the same computer, Caching can solve part of the problem, but every time a user changes a computer, he or she needs to reload the necessary images, sounds, and special effects materials. As game materials continue to improve, this test on bandwidth is getting bigger and bigger.
However, if the game is turned into a terminal game, one of the biggest benefits is that a considerable part of the materials can be installed locally through the installation package. If it is also a copy, when the web game user enters this copy, all the elements in the copy will basically be The game can only be started after loading online. However, when a client game user enters the copy, most of the materials are directly called locally, and the demand for bandwidth is much reduced. If the game content is updated, the client only needs to complete a routine update and the game will be Installing the updated materials locally can solve the problem at once, which is extremely convenient.
Moreover, since web games are limited by bandwidth, cache, and memory, it is difficult to achieve refinement. If it is more refined, it is much worse than most client games, let alone those very powerful large-scale games.
Due to the multiple revisions of Happy Farm, the addition of industries, maps, friend transactions and a large number of task systems, it is no longer the most basic Happy Farm that can only steal food. It is now approaching an online game. , upgraded and expanded version of "Harvest Story".
Because of this, Happy Farm’s current game content, connotation and playability are very large, which is enough to support its transformation from a web game to a client game. Moreover, since Happy Farm is a development-type Q-version cartoon game, it The requirements for graphics, sounds, and special effects will not be as high as those of large games. Even if the graphics are guaranteed to be exquisite, the requirements will be much lower than those of ordinary games. After the PC game is implemented, the size and running performance requirements of the entire client will be It is also relatively low in client games.
Although terminal gaming will increase the user's cost of use, Li Mu knows very well that only terminal gaming, Happy Farm, or Paradise Town's future development space can achieve a qualitative breakthrough.
…
PS: The second update has arrived. It seems that I will have to work hard until after two o'clock tonight, but since I promised, I have to fulfill it no matter how late it is! ! ! Keep asking for monthly votes! ! !
(End of chapter)