1980 My literary era

The Internet Conference is the highest-profile industry conference in China since the emergence of the Internet, and it has received the most official recognition.

The conference lasted for three days. The opening ceremony was held at 9 a.m. on the 2nd, which lasted for one and a half hours and ended quickly.

The banquet at noon was arranged earlier, mainly because the afternoon activities started earlier.

Zhu Xiang did not leave after attending the opening ceremony, but appeared at the noon banquet. In addition to dining, he also cordially communicated with the entrepreneurs present, making many entrepreneurs feel that the trip was worthwhile.

At the banquet, Lin Weimin was also one of the focuses of everyone's attention.

His status in the Chinese literary world, and even in the world's literary world, is unquestionable, but this is the first time that everyone has connected him with the Internet.

During the meal, Lin Weimin had the leader of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on his left and Yang Zhiyuan of Yahoo on his right. They were chatting and laughing.

Ma Yun walked over with a wine glass in hand, a smile on his face, "Teacher Lin, do you still have an impression of me?"

Lin Weimin glanced at Ma Yun, pretending to think, and after a moment a smile appeared on his face, "Ma Yun, remember."

"You have such a good memory."

Ma Yun toasted Lin Weimin with a glass of wine. Lin Weimin smiled and told about the chance encounter between him and Ma Yun at the West Lake in Hangzhou many years ago. Everyone present said that they were destined to be together.

Ma Yun took advantage of the situation and drank a glass of wine with several people at the table, achieving his purpose of toasting.

Those present were all people related to the Internet industry, and they were no strangers to Jack Ma's name. Someone asked: "I heard from everyone that your company has raised 5 million US dollars in funds before it was established?"

Ma Yun smiled and said: "Thanks to a top executive in my company. He is a top student at Yale University. Before coming to me, he was an executive in an investment bank. It all depends on his connections."

Lin Weimin joked: "It's not easy. A start-up company can attract such talents to join. I think Alibaba's future is limitless."

After chatting and laughing for a while, Ma Yun returned to his table knowingly.

Lei Jun, who was sitting at the table with him, looked at Ma Yun with envy. He was shy. Even though he was familiar with Lin Weimin, he couldn't help but go to the table to toast. There were people sitting at the same table who were equally shy. A handsome guy who has returned from overseas.

Except for a few tables with senior leaders whose staff levels were relatively concentrated, the seating arrangements for today's banquet were all disrupted.

During the time when Ma Yun went to toast, Lei Jun had a great conversation with this handsome guy, and at the same time he was a little excited inside.

He is a top student from Wuhan University, which should be in the first echelon in China, even if he meets people from Shuimu and Yan University.

But the handsome guy in front of him has a master's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was admitted to Dow Jones on Wall Street before he graduated. In just three years, he became a senior consultant of the company.

In 1997, he joined Infoseek, a well-known search engine company in Silicon Valley, and became the technical backbone of Infoseek until he returned to China this year.

Compared with this handsome guy who has returned from overseas, Lei Jun feels a little ashamed of himself and feels like a local dog.

The only thing he is gratified about is the results of his hard work over the years. General Manager Jinshan still has an advantage over the overseas returnees who have just resigned from the United States and are ready to start a business.

When Jack Ma came back, he cut into the topic very naturally and said: "Robin, don't do search engines. Come and help me with e-commerce. There is definitely much more room for development than search engines."

Ma Yun loves to watch "Water Margin". What he likes most is watching the scenes where the evil stars from Tiangang bow to Song Jiang after seeing him. How could he not be happy when he saw a returnee with such strong technical skills as Robin Li?

Although Alibaba is still small and not well-known, it is not that he has never recruited Wall Street executives, so he was very confident when he extended an olive branch to Robin Li.

Robin Li had a somewhat reserved smile on his face, "I'm still more interested in search engines."

After being rejected so bluntly, Ma Yun's expression did not change and he was still chatting and laughing with Robin Li. Lei Jun on the side could only feel admiration.

The lunch banquet was not long, but it provided a good communication opportunity for many Internet entrepreneurs who came to the conference.

But time is always short. The banquet ends at 12:30, and a summit forum dialogue will start at 1 pm at the Yanjing International Conference Center. Today’s first guests are Bill Gates and Zhang Chaoyang, like this There will be four more forums in the next two days.

In addition to the Yanjing International Conference Center, the Internet Conference Affairs Group also opened a branch venue at the Yanjing Hotel to hold relatively low-level activities.

The guests participating in the activities at the two venues are all well-known company founders, industry technology experts or research scholars in the Internet industry at home and abroad.

Because it is the co-organizer of the Internet Conference, Sohu has the exclusive qualification to live broadcast the grand event of the conference with pictures and texts. Sohu even opened a special column to report on this Internet Conference.

In addition to Sohu, the Internet Conference has also become the focus of many domestic media in the past two days.

For more than a week, news about the Internet Conference has never stopped in the media. Now that the conference has opened, the media's enthusiasm for pursuing it is even higher.

Especially for Bill Gates, the world's richest man, the media flocks to pursue him. Any event where he appears will attract many media reporters.

The high atmosphere at the China Internet Conference is in sharp contrast to the dismal NASDAQ stock market across the ocean in the United States.

In fact, the negative impact of the Nasdaq stock market crash has only just been revealed in the United States. The domestic Internet industry and public opinion are not so sensitive to this aspect. When the Internet Conference was held, everyone was still immersed in singing and dancing.

For three consecutive days, TV stations and newspapers maintained extremely high exposure to the Internet Conference, attracting the attention of many people.

On the Internet, the level of attention and discussion is even higher.

In this era, Internet users are still relatively trendy people, generally with high education and high income. They are more interested in this conference that may affect the future direction of China's Internet industry. In various forums and chat rooms, there are many comments about the Internet conference. The discussion remains high.

However, no matter how grand the event is, it will eventually come to an end.

On May 4th, at 4 pm, it was the venue of Yanjing International Conference Center again.

Compared with the opening, the number of guests present was a little smaller, but the atmosphere was still warm.

The three-day industry conference was attended by the most well-known domestic and foreign companies, the most authoritative scholars and institutional representatives, where everyone spoke freely and discussed.

The exchange of words creates sparks of ideas. Every communication and dialogue is a brainstorming experience, where you can appreciate the most cutting-edge technology and trendy ideas in the entire industry. It lives up to the name of the grand event.

Now it's finally time to say goodbye. While everyone is reluctant to leave, they are also looking forward to the next conference.

The process of the closing ceremony was similar to that of the opening ceremony. The closing speech was delivered by the Deputy Minister in charge of the State Council Office.

After the Vice Minister finished speaking, Lin Weimin finally took the stage.

During the three days of the Internet Conference, Lin Weimin rarely participated in activities, but his name could be heard almost everywhere in the conference.

Not to mention that he was mentioned one after another by Zhu Xiang and Bill Gates at the opening ceremony. His name was also mentioned frequently during Zhang Chaoyang’s dialogue with Bill Gates at the forum.

Ding Lei, Lei Jun, Zhu William and many other heads of Internet companies invested by Guowen Group also mentioned Lin Weimin's name from time to time when communicating with people in public or privately.

Now, Lin Weimin has finally made her appearance. As the driving force behind this Internet conference, everyone has accumulated great curiosity about her in the past three days.

Lin Weimin's image in the minds of Chinese people has always been that of a writer. His works are best-selling overseas and he has won numerous awards.

This time he suddenly made a gorgeous turn and became the most popular figure in China's Internet industry. This strong contrast made countless people curious about Lin Weimin.

The guests were curious, and Lin Weimin would not give them any explanation.

His speech on the stage was serious, no different from the speech of the previous deputy prime minister. Until the end of the official speech, Lin Weimin showed a somewhat relaxed smile on his face.

"Okay, now that we've finished talking about the situation, let's announce two things."

Hearing what Lin Weimin said, everyone present immediately became interested and looked at the stage with serious expressions.

"As we all know, our Guowen Group has been focusing on investment in the domestic Internet industry in the past two years, and the results have been fruitful. Sohu, NetEase, Joyo.com, Banyan Tree...

But in my opinion, this is not enough. Now that the domestic Internet industry has just begun, at this time, the Nasdaq, which is the vane of the Internet industry, suffered a stock market tragedy with a sharp decline.

Various professional institutions in the United States have pointed out that this round of decline in the Nasdaq Composite Index is directly related to the crazy pursuit of the Internet industry by the U.S. market and investors since the mid-1990s. In other words, the bubble in the Internet industry is too big. It was so big that it finally led to such a tragedy.

The United States is a leader in the global technology and Internet industries and has driven the development of the Internet industries in many countries around the world. Influenced by the U.S. stock market and investment community.

In the next long period of time, the Internet industry in various countries around the world will usher in a financing winter, which also includes our Internet industry in China.

But we firmly believe that the Internet industry will be the most promising emerging industry in the next half century.

Therefore, in order to help China’s Internet industry develop better and higher quality in the future.

On behalf of Guowen Group, I hereby announce that we will formally establish the Guowen Group Internet Investment Fund, with a scale of US$500 million.

We hope to invest all of these funds into potential Chinese Internet companies in the next three years, and strive to cultivate globally competitive companies for the Chinese Internet industry. "

With a "boom", the venue with hundreds of people in the audience fell into a huge sound field.

500 million meters!

The numbers spit out from Lin Weimin's mouth shocked everyone present.

It has been just over five years since the birth of China's Internet industry, and it has only been in the past three years that it has received venture capital from foreign investment institutions.

There are hundreds of Internet companies across the country, but there are very few companies that can actually obtain venture capital, especially from powerful foreign investment institutions.

It may be an exaggeration to say that counting on one's fingers is a bit exaggerated, but if you calculate carefully, there are only twenty or thirty companies. All of these companies participated in this conference without exception.

Lin Weimin said that Guowen Group would establish an investment fund worth US$500 million. What is this concept?

Sohu raised less than 75 million US dollars in 4 rounds of financing before going public. Sina and NetEase also raised several rounds of financing before going public. The total financing of the three portals was nearly 200 million US dollars.

And this has accounted for the vast majority of financing in China’s Internet industry in recent years.

The amount of financing of many other websites such as Dangdang, Alibaba, Joyo King, 8848, etc., may not be as large as the above three alone.

500 million US dollars, exceeding the sum of all venture capital investments ever received in China’s Internet industry.

His handwriting is so big that he can swallow up mountains and rivers.