Chapter 924: A huge undertaking, overwhelming
The Internet Conference is the highest-level 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 am on the 2nd, lasted for an hour and a half, and ended quickly.
The lunchtime banquet was scheduled relatively early, mainly because the afternoon activities started relatively early.
After attending the opening ceremony, Zhu Xiang did not leave, but appeared at the lunch banquet. In addition to eating, 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 literary world is unquestionable, but this is the first time that people have linked him with the Internet.
During the meal, Lin Weimin had the leader of the Ministry of Industrial Information on his left and Yahoo's Jerry Yang on his right, and they were chatting and laughing.
Ma Yun came over with a wine glass, smiling, "Teacher Lin, do you still remember me?"
Lin Weimin glanced at Ma Yun, pretending to think, and after a moment a smile appeared on his face. "Ma Yun, remember, remember."
"You have a very good memory."
Jack Ma toasted Lin Weimin with a glass of wine. Lin Weimin smiled and told him about his chance encounter with Jack Ma by the West Lake in Hangzhou many years ago. Everyone present exclaimed that they had a deep connection.
Jack Ma took the opportunity to drink a glass of wine with the people at the table, thus achieving his purpose of toasting.
The people present were all related to the Internet industry and were familiar with Jack Ma. Someone asked, "I heard that your company has raised 5 million US dollars before it was established?"
Ma Yun smiled and said, "It's all thanks to a capable person in my company. He is a top student at Yale University and was a senior executive in an investment bank before coming to me. It's all thanks to his connections."
Lin Weimin joked: "It's not easy. A company that is just starting out can attract such talent. I think Alibaba has a bright future."
After chatting and laughing for a while, Jack Ma tactfully returned to his table.
Lei Jun, who was sitting at the same table with him, looked at Jack Ma with great envy. He was shy by nature, and even though he was familiar with Lin Weimin, he was too embarrassed to go to that table to toast. Another handsome overseas returnee who was sitting at the same table was equally shy as him.
Except for a few tables with senior leaders where the staff levels were relatively concentrated, the seating arrangements for today's banquet were disrupted.
While Jack Ma was toasting, Lei Jun had a great conversation with the handsome guy and felt quite excited inside.
He is a top student at Wuhan University, which should put him in the top tier in the country. He is not inferior to people from Shuimu University or Yan University even when meeting them.
But the handsome guy in front of him was a master's degree holder from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was accepted by Dow Jones & Company on Wall Street before he graduated, and in just three years he became a senior consultant for the company.
In 1997, he joined Infoseek, a well-known search engine company in Silicon Valley, and became a technical backbone of Infoseek until he returned to China this year.
Compared with this handsome overseas returnee, Lei Jun feels a little ashamed and feels like a country dog.
The only thing that makes him feel gratified is the results of his hard work over the years. As the general manager of Kingsoft, he still has some advantages over the returnees who just resigned from the United States and are ready to start their own businesses.
Ma Yun came back and naturally cut into the topic, saying: "Robin, don't work on search engines anymore, come and help me with e-commerce, the development space is definitely much larger than that of search engines."
Jack Ma loves to watch "Water Margin". What he likes most is the scene where those evil stars bow down to Song Jiang. How could he not be excited when he sees Li Yanhong, a returnee with strong technical strength?
Although Alibaba is still small and not well-known, it is not without its experience in recruiting executives from Wall Street, so he was very confident when he extended an olive branch to Robin Li.
Li Yanhong showed a somewhat reserved smile on his face, "I am still more interested in search engines."
Despite being rejected so bluntly, Jack Ma remained expressionless and continued to chat and laugh with Robin Li. Lei Jun, who was standing by, had only admiration for him.
The lunch banquet was not long, but it provided a good opportunity for communication for the many Internet entrepreneurs attending the conference.
However, time is always short. The banquet will end at 12:30, and a summit forum dialogue will start at 1:00 pm at the Yanjing International Conference Center. The first guests today are Bill Gates and Zhang Chaoyang. There will be four more forums like this in the next two days.
In addition to the Yanjing International Conference Center, the Internet Conference Organizing Committee also opened a branch venue at the Yanjing Hotel to hold relatively lower-level events.
The guests participating in the event at both venues are all founders of well-known companies in the domestic and international Internet industry, technical experts in the industry, or research scholars.
As a co-organizer of the Internet Conference, Sohu has obtained the exclusive qualification to broadcast the conference live with pictures and texts. Sohu even opened a special column to report on the Internet Conference.
In addition to Sohu, the Internet Conference has also become the focus of attention 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 coverage is even higher.
Especially for Bill Gates, the world's richest man, the media flock to him and chase him. Any event where he appears will attract many media reporters.
The high spirits at the China Internet Conference contrasted sharply with the bleak Nasdaq stock market in the United States across the ocean.
In fact, the negative impact of the Nasdaq stock market crash has only just begun to emerge in the United States. The domestic Internet industry and public opinion are not so sensitive to this aspect. When the Internet Conference is held, everyone is still immersed in a scene of prosperity and peace.
For three consecutive days, television stations and newspapers maintained a very high level of exposure in their coverage of the Internet conference, attracting the attention of many people.
On the Internet, the attention and discussion are even higher.
Internet users in this era are still a relatively trendy group, 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, discussions about the Internet conference are very heated.
However, no matter how grand an event is, it will eventually come to an end.
On May 4th, at 4 p.m., the meeting was held at the Yenching International Conference Center again.
Compared with the opening ceremony, there were slightly fewer guests present, but the atmosphere was still warm.
The three-day industry conference was attended by representatives of the most well-known domestic and foreign companies, the most authoritative scholars and institutions. Everyone spoke freely and discussed here.
Verbal clashes spark ideas, and every exchange and dialogue is a brainstorming session, allowing people to appreciate the most cutting-edge technology and the most trendy ideas in the entire industry, which is worthy of the name of this grand event.
Now it is finally time to say goodbye. While everyone is reluctant to leave, they are also looking forward to the next conference.
The procedure of the closing ceremony was similar to that of the opening ceremony, and the closing speech was delivered by the Vice Prime Minister in charge of the State Council Office.
After the vice prime minister finished his speech, 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 successively by Zhu Xiang and Bill Gates at the opening ceremony, his name was also frequently mentioned 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 mention Lin Weimin's name from time to time when communicating with others publicly or privately.
Now, Lin Weimin has finally appeared. As the behind-the-scenes promoter of this Internet conference, everyone has accumulated great curiosity about her during these three days.
Lin Weimin has always been known as a writer in the minds of Chinese people. His works are sold well overseas and have won numerous awards.
This time, he suddenly made a stunning turn and became the most prominent figure in China's Internet industry. This strong contrast made countless people curious about Lin Weimin.
Although the guests were curious, Lin Weimin would not give them any explanation.
His speech on the stage was serious, not much different from the vice prime minister's speech before him. Until the end, when all the official language was finished, Lin Weimin showed a relaxed smile on his face.
"Okay, now that I have finished my polite remarks, I will now announce two things."
After hearing what Lin Weimin said, everyone present immediately became interested and looked at the stage with serious expressions.
"As everyone knows, our Guowen Group has been focusing on investing in the domestic Internet industry in the past two years, and has achieved fruitful results, including Sohu, NetEase, Joyo, Rongshuxia...
But in my opinion, this is far from enough. The domestic Internet industry has just started, and at this time, Nasdaq, the weathervane of the Internet industry, suffered a stock market tragedy of 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 US market and investors since the mid-1990s. In other words, the bubble in the Internet industry was too big, which ultimately led to such a tragedy.
The United States is a global leader in the technology and Internet industries, driving the development of the Internet industries in many countries around the world. Influenced by the U.S. stock market and investment community.
For a long time to come, the Internet industries in countries around the world will usher in a financing winter, including our Chinese Internet industry.
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 the Chinese Internet industry develop better and with 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 500 million US dollars.
We hope to invest all of this capital into potential Chinese Internet companies in the next three years, and strive to cultivate globally competitive companies in the Chinese Internet industry.”
With a loud "boom", the venue with hundreds of people below the stage was plunged into a huge sound field.
500 million meter knife!
The numbers that Lin Weimin uttered shocked everyone present.
China's Internet industry has only been around for a little over five years, and only in the last three years has it received venture capital from foreign investment institutions.
There are hundreds of Internet companies across the country, but only a few can actually obtain venture capital, especially from strong foreign investment institutions.
It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that we can count them with our fingers, but if we count carefully, there are only about 20 to 30 companies, and all of these companies participated in this conference without exception.
Lin Weimin said that Guowen Group established an investment fund of 500 million US dollars. What does this mean?
Sohu raised less than US$75 million in four rounds of financing before its IPO. Sina and NetEase also raised several rounds of financing before their IPOs. The total financing of the three portals was nearly US$200 million.
This has accounted for the vast majority of financing in China's Internet industry in recent years.
The amount of financing raised by many other websites such as Dangdang, Alibaba, Joyowang, 8848, etc., may be more than a dozen, but not as much as the above three alone.
500 million US dollars, which exceeds the total amount of venture capital ever obtained by China's Internet industry.
The work is so grand and awe-inspiring.
(End of this chapter)
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