Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

{Time: February 18, 2003}

{Location: Mountain View, California}

Reid Hoffman graduated from Stanford University in 1990, where he received a Marshall Scholarship and a Dinkel-Spear Prize, and received a bachelor's degree in formal languages ​​and cognitive science.

Hoffman can be regarded as a comprehensive talent. After graduating from Stanford University, he went on to obtain a research master's degree from Wolfson College of Oxford University.

Hoffman held the position of senior vice president during his time at Beiba. He was responsible for all external relations of Beiba, including payment infrastructure (visa, mastercard, ach, wellsfargo), business development (bibi, Intuit and others), government

(Regulatory, judicial) and legal.

It can be said that in addition to his harmless smile, this fat man also has sufficient abilities that he has experienced in the past 10 years.

So he was able to quickly understand Ning Zimo's idea after Ning Zimo finished explaining the idea of ​​[Senior Programmer Incubation Center] and mentioned cross-shareholding.

It is different from the double-foreign combination of Chen Shijun and Sachs from [myspace] company, and the double-internal combination of Pan Yu and Paul from [acs] company.

Hoffman and Levchin are an internal and external combination within LinkedIn, but they often fail to play the role of 1+1=2. Because Levchin is a purely technical talent, but Ning Zimo is the

The existence of an incompetent coo squeezes his living space.

Ning Zimo did not consider this when he came up with several projects at the beginning. However, in the communication after the project was launched, Hoffman had realized that it was indeed a bit unfair to only place Levchin in the winning projects.

A waste of an old friend's abilities.

So when Ning Zimo's proposal for a "Senior Programmer Incubation Center" was first proposed, although Hoffman didn't think anything of it at first. But after hearing Ning Zimo's suggestion about cross-shareholding, he thought it was a good idea.

A good idea.

"In the past two days, we will find time to hold a skrpe network meeting with Pan Yu and others to discuss Ning's ideas about the [Senior Programmer Incubation Center]." Hoffman said, pulling Levchin along, "There are still many details waiting.

Let’s go talk.”

"Well, I also think my idea of ​​tying everyone together at the beginning was a bit abrupt." Ning Zi nodded silently.

But to say it is abrupt,

Is it really an honest mistake?

Not really,

Because such a group of big guys can't be let go. Although it is of course a waste to let everyone work in pairs to work on a project, Ning Zimo couldn't find a better way at that time, so he could only

They are all included in the [bing ecological chain].

As long as we separate the projects as early as possible and bring together these great people from the past and present colleagues to work in one direction, then this detour will be worthwhile.

So whether it was because of his own dark thoughts or because of Hoffman's understanding, Ning Zimo still solemnly sighed to a few people, "It's really an honor for me to be a partner with you guys who have a tacit understanding."

Ning Zimo's little thoughts were not known to everyone, and a few people just smiled, and then Hoffman said:

"We can use resource replacement to implement the interaction between LinkedIn and MySpace profiles. And Fengyu's SEM advertising system is so easy to use, so your Bing search needs to speed up the progress."

"Well," Ning Zimo nodded and said, "After I'm busy with Lingying and myspace these days, I'll find time to go to Germany."

"But bing is a different thing after all, so don't be too anxious." As Hoffman spoke, he pulled several other people to sit around Ning Zimo.

Reaching out to take the report in Ning Zimo's hand, Hoffman raised the report in his hand and said, "According to your promotion plan, our initial 2 million yuan of funds will not be able to last for too long. If we continue to develop, we are afraid that we will have to carry out the second round of operations."

A round of capital increase.”

According to Ning Zimo's plan just now, Lingying will spend 300,000 in advertising fees per month. However, Lingying's initial investment is only 2 million US dollars. After including labor and other expenses, the remaining funds of Lingying are not enough to support it for a long time.

But among the group of people sitting here, who doesn’t have a net worth of millions? Especially the two people who led the victory, Hoffman and Levchin, probably have more cash than themselves.

Ning Zimo smiled, "The development of skrpe has shown everyone a different path. Although capital intervention can indeed bring us a lot of benefits, at least in the past two years, we do not need to consider introducing capital at all.

.”

Ning Zimo does not refuse the participation of capital. After all, capital injection still has many benefits, especially the considerable improvement in reputation. But the past two years are indeed not a good time for financing.

"Well, I think so too." Hoffman curled his lips and said, "Our funds are enough for us to last two years. I don't believe you can't find a reasonable profit model within two years."

"Hey, you said that, I'm under a lot of pressure." Ning Zimo leaned back with his eyes wide open, his exaggerated expression immediately made everyone in Beibao laugh out loud.

It took a long time for Hoffman to stop laughing.

Raising his chin at Chen Shijun and Sachs, Hoffman winked at Ning Zimo and said, "Since the matter of winning is over for now, you'd better talk to Chen and Sachs about their side of things first."

The topic was immediately brought to [myspace] by Hoffman, which was also one of the purposes of Ning Zimo’s visit to the United States.

Ning Zi looked over silently and saw Chen Shijun hunched over and moved forward.

"You told us that the main affairs of [myspace] are all external. At present, Sacks and I are actually handing over the coding work to the team and asking them to implement it according to the prototype interface you made.

And the two of us are indeed busy with external affairs, and like you said, we often go to nightclubs to invite musicians, models, and singers to set up homepages on MySpace to attract beautiful girls and fashionistas to join the community, but it seems that what we do

The effect is not good. Even if Kelly can rely on her network to help us, so far, there is still little effect."

When Chen Shijun saw Ning Zimo looking over, he couldn't wait to talk about the problems he encountered after [myspace] went online. Ning Zimo listened quietly and knew the problem halfway through.

[myspace] is different from [Lingying] which is oriented to the professional social field. [myspace] is a dating community for all Internet users.

But because of the broad audience, it is difficult to target a specific group of people to carry out promotion work. So Ning Zimo, Chen Shijun and Sachs talked about the key point of entry early in the morning, the trendy group. However, Chen Shijun and Sachs could not fully integrate into the nightclub style.

, so that this plan is simply useless to the two of them.

The reason why [myspace] in the previous life is suitable for this path is entirely because the temperament of the two founders matches the temperament of the nightclub. Because Anderson, one of the founders of [myspace] in the previous life, was a genius full of hippie style when he was young.

Anderson dropped out of high school and joined the hacker and rock circles. At the age of 24, he decided to return to school and was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in English and rhetoric. After graduating from college, he joined a rock band and even ran a pornographic website.

In the summer of 2000 in his previous life, Anderson joined the sales department of xdrive, the network disk company where DeWolfe worked. DeWolfe was the boss of the sales department at the time. However, the Internet bubble hit and the entire sales department was laid off, leaving DeWolfe unemployed.

Wolf took Anderson and some former colleagues to establish responsebase in Santa Monica, a seaside town in Los Angeles.

Responsebase's business on today's Chinese Internet is probably a marketing account matrix + purchase volume + rogue plug-in company. Their main battlefield at that time was spam. The company sent a large number of spam emails to users, with contents ranging from credit cards and other financial products to "How to Look Good"

"Higher", "How to Date a Pretty Girl" and other chicken soup e-books to remote monitoring software.

For them, the freedom they advocate is "whatever you want to see, and no one's computer has secrets! Remote installation ensures safety."

In September 2002, listed company eUniverse acquired DeWolfe and Anderson's response base for US$3.3 million in cash and US$3 million in performance commitments.

The reason why euniverse acquired responsebase is because they have similar temperaments. Euniverse's business can be compared to Zhou Hong's 3721 in China. They produced a large number of rogue plug-ins such as "double network speed" and "mouse pointer", and spam email marketing services for

Corporate business is a great complement.

Hackers, rock and roll, love affairs, and rogue software. Officially because they had such experiences, the two founders of [myspace] in their previous lives were able to carry out the preliminary publicity work of [myspace] in nightclubs with ease.

They hang out in nightclubs, invite musicians, models, and singers to set up homepages on MySpace, and use their style to attract many beautiful girls (and erotic workers) to join the community, making music, rock, erotic photos, and hippie style a community

Early core vibe.

But what do Chen Shijun and Sachs have? Both of them are over 1.7 meters tall, and their looks are not good enough. Let alone them, even if I can be considered a handsome guy, I have dated several girlfriends in these two lives.

.But compared with Anderson, who has experience in nightclubs, I'm afraid he will be trashed!

Ning Zimo can't go to nightclubs with Chen Shijun, Saxophone and the three of them to slowly gain experience, and then follow Anderson's old path, right?

As a reborn person, although it is refreshing to think of this approach, is it too much of a waste of time?

Fortunately, I am fairly well prepared.

But looking at Chen Shijun, Ning Zimo suddenly wanted to laugh. Because the key lifeline for [myspace] to move forward lies in the hands of Jennifer, whom he fears the most!

So, after sorting things out in his mind, Ning Zimo simply scanned around.

After attracting the attention of the four people in the office to himself, Ning Zimo said:

"In May this year, I hired Jennifer from Beibao."

Sure enough, as soon as Ning Zimo said the name Jennifer, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chen Shijun's body shaking involuntarily.

Holding back her laughter, Ning Zi said silently, "Jennifer has an economic company called [Celebrity Project]. Last year, the technical Internet celebrities they recruited played a key role in the promotion of skrpe."

This Wednesday, Jennifer will bring her team here. At that time, she can introduce the influencers whose skrpe overlaps with Lingying to Lingying as promotion resources."

Turning to look at Chen Shijun and Sachs, Ning Zimo continued, "Last December, Jennifer had already started to recruit fashion, music, and model celebrities. Their goal was celebrities below the third tier who were well-known in a specific range.

These resources will be directly connected to myspace."

Amid everyone's doubts, Ning Zimo explained, "You have all used blogger, and you know what the blogger model will bring to people. Now, the blogger model will be transplanted to Lingying and MySpace. I will not discuss this matter.

If you participate, Jennifer will contact you directly.

She will be fully responsible for the specific affairs of how Lingying and myspace connect celebrity resources. This method will bring great benefits to myspace in particular. It will definitely attract people's attention and explode on myspace in the short term."

"So you were already prepared?" Hoffman said in surprise.

Ning Zimo smiled enigmatically, and raised his eyebrows deliberately, "Yes, I have been prepared for a long time. Now, it is time for Jennifer to show off her skills."