Ding Lei, Speech by Shanghai Jiaotong University

Good evening! I am the founder of NetEase. Ding Lei, President Fan’s just now I have to point out a little bit of mistakes. I am not a computer major at university, I am studying this microwave communication, and my minor is a computer. So, why do you want to talk about this here? Because there are many students who come over and ask me, the Internet seems to give the computer department a lot of opportunities, then I am not learning computers, then what should I do? I can only be on the Internet. Is there a network connection at the door of the Internet? So I don’t think it’s like this here.

When I entered the university campus today, I saw that there were thousands of students. I was very touched. I felt like I was back to the campus ten years ago. I felt that I was listening to this teacher from overseas when I was in my sophomore year. Experience, the process of studying, give me one encouragement and impact once. I think the past two years may represent a paragraph I wrote on the footprint of my life, but I think that the past two years are good, three years are good. They are very short-lived; including NetEase itself is also very short-lived.

I have been thinking about how a person can succeed and what comes from success; when I was thinking about this, I didn't realize that I was already thinking about it when I was in high school. But I went back and looked at the past fifteen years, ten years, five years, every step, life seems to give me a lot of opportunities, I don't feel that I am very lucky, I am also very hard. I am here to communicate with you. I want to divide it into two parts. The first part is about 45 minutes to talk about my own feelings, and the other part is to talk and discuss with you.

I have encountered many college students now asking me how to succeed after graduation. I am very sorry that I used to test the computer science department of Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology when I was in college. But because of my parents, I can't be a professional. I don't know. I have to fill in this profession to be admitted, so I filled out a communication project. Then, when I finished college in 1989, I was far from knowing how far the map of Chengdu, Sichuan, and Ningbo, Zhejiang, were. But I think all of you here have Sichuan students, and you can enjoy the scenery of this train, which takes about 72 hours. So, one day when I received the admission letter, when I got on the train, I was afraid of the train for four years. Every time I was very crowded, it was very difficult to buy tickets every time.

However, when I arrived at school, I thought this was a very important step in life, because taking college is a very important part of life. Although it has brought you this way, what else can you choose? You can't read it, and I read microwave communication. Everyone knows that it is difficult to read. There are some Boeing listening vectors in it. It is something that I can't understand. However, I didn't give up. I have been learning in college. Minor computer.

The life that the university brought to me in the first year is very exciting and fulfilling. Every day, I go to class. I am very serious about going to class. I go to class every day. This, everyone may laugh, you read, and every day, to take classes, of course, of course, there is nothing to talk about. Because what I want to say is that from the second semester to the seventh semester, I will not go to the first class every morning! But I must also try not to be named!

I think the first confusion that brought me is that the knowledge in the book must be taught by the teacher. This is a question I asked myself. The second one, so many students, after getting up at 7:30, 8:00 Going to class, I see that many people haven’t opened their eyes yet. Is it effective to listen to classes? I have been asking myself these two questions. So I decided to decide, I must start the class in the second class, and start class at 9 o'clock. This is normal. So, don't applaud, I think I have learned a lot here.

Why do I have to go to class at 9 o'clock and go to class at 9 o'clock because I didn't listen to the first class, then I have to do my homework, so I will try very hard to see what the teacher said, I will work very hard. I thought what kind of message the teacher wanted to convey to me. Soon, I mastered a skill. I think this technique is very important to me. I have learned a kind of thinking skills. I will take a homework. You can read the book completely without listening to what others have said, and I can master a course in two weeks to three weeks.

When I came into contact with the Internet, I realized how important this technique is to me, because when the Internet first entered China, no one knew what its underlying layer looked like, and no book was systematically told. The entire structure of your Internet, the software inside, and other things. So at that time, I went online every day to find various keywords to find out what it meant, and then I printed them out and put them in my head to combine. Go to stir.

Therefore, I am going back and looking at it. I have learned in college for four years. Like everyone here, I am capable of thinking and learning. So I am reading very fast now. I usually look from the back. I don’t look from the front to the back. I can’t read the keywords behind me. I’m going to see this description in front of me.

The Internet entered China in 1995. I was in Ningbo in 1995. When I was in Ningbo, I saw the Internet entering China. I think this is an opportunity. [Zhonghua Inspirational Network] What I am talking about here is, however, many of my colleagues around me see the existence of opportunities like me. When I am alone today, I am going out to do the Internet. I have many factors here. In your life, you will also see many opportunities.

I have seen a book and it is written. . I admire one person, called Moris Zhang, called Zhang Zhongmou. This man was invited by the top government of Taiwan to Taiwan to do the integrated circuit in the 1980s. Today we went to see the island of Taiwan, he is very mature. IC technology capabilities, it is currently the world's largest jingyuan daigong enterprise, that is, you give it drawings, it can be produced, it is completely inseparable from this person.

He wrote in his autobiography that when he was young, he saw the invention of IC, and when he was coffee, others told him, and then invented the integrated circuit, adding a diode and a triode. Together, then put it on paper, and then install it on the development of the integrated circuit; then, at the beginning, we did the same. When we saw the BBS, when we were in China, we thought that the Internet would enter China.

I remember that I told a lot of people to come out with me and engage in Internet companies. I said that I don’t know how to make money or money. I don’t know. So when I graduated from university, I was assigned to Ningbo Telecom Bureau. Now I can say that it is a banking company that many people yearn for. I left and quit my own position. I went. It can be said that at that time, it was called 'sea sea'. Came to a strange city, Guangzhou.

Later, my friend asked me, why did you go to Guangzhou, not to Beijing and Shanghai? I told them a story at that time that I once saw a joke, saying that Guangzhou people and Shanghainese are the comparison between southerners and northerners. If the Guangzhou and Shanghainese have a hundred dollars in their pockets and then go to do business, then the Shanghainese will use 50 yuan for the writer and 50 yuan to open the company; and the Cantonese will ask the students to borrow 100. Money to open the company.

At that time, I was like everyone. I was a very timid person, including I left Ningbo’s telecommunications bureau. I was a bit reluctant. My parents gave me a lot of pressure. Why did you leave, go to a strange city, and then Do a thing that no one else understands? I said that I still have to go to the South to have a look, because this story has inspired me too much! Because a person’s career is to succeed, he must be good at accepting challenges, going, can be bad. In terms of vocabulary, "adventure", this is seen in the entrepreneurs, in any business person.

Two years after I went to Guangzhou, I had the opportunity to get in touch with the Internet and feel the challenges brought by the new economy. So, I personally did not hesitate to lobby the Guangzhou Telecom Bureau, including the Guangzhou office, saying Paying attention to the development of Internet construction, I myself created NetEase in 1997. But everyone must know that NetEase has had a failure before, and I created a network that I am talking about in 1995. Dialing into the server can provide users with modem to access the Internet. The first success is very happy, but it is strongly competitive by the Guangzhou Telecommunications Bureau. The pressure of competition is very big. It is almost that you are on its network. It does not charge money. It says Its billing system was broken, and the result was a very large pressure on our first private ISP.

After one year of operation, it basically ended in failure. The entire company's users are also constantly decreasing. Then, everyone knows that we must be the ISP to rent the special line with the telecommunications bureau. The special line system is not bad, so we have to take care of it. So just like this, watching my company disappear in Guangzhou a little bit, a little shrinking.

I decided to set up an Internet software company. When I first went to the company, I didn't know what the future of the company was. I just thought I had a good idea. Two or three people came to help me. Write a software. I hope that this software will have a lot of use in China in the future, so I opened a company called NetEase. I didn't think I had to open a company myself, because although I wanted to open a company when I graduated from college, many at that time. The classmates wrote in the classmates that Ding Lei had realized his computer company as soon as possible, but after some hardships, by the time of 1997, there was no such thing in your body. It felt that life was too difficult, and one thing to do was encountered. Too many challenges, this is the objective situation at the time.

So before I started Netease, a friend of mine accidentally told me that Ding Lei did you want to open a company in the past; I said no, I don’t have the ability to open a company. I don’t have friends or relatives in Guangzhou, no parents, no relationship. How do you open a company? He said that people like you are doing it in the United States, and they don’t rely on their parents and don’t rely on relationships. Why don’t you try it. I will think too much about it, indeed, why not try it. At that time, I took my money in the bank, about 500,000. The 500,000 is the money I earned after I graduated from the software. I decided to invest and start a company called NetEase.

The thing I have to do is to write software and write software. At the time, I was optimistic about the two evergreen trees on the Internet. The first one was the search engine. The other is free mail. And these two things, I did write it; at the time I was very enthusiastic about the search engine to write, I think the search engine is an evergreen tree because of so many websites on the Internet, so much information, so much information. You have to have an entrance to find what you want, and it depends on the search engine. At that time, the Chinese search engine yahoo did not. There were almost no other search engines in China. I spent more than a month with me. My colleagues wrote it out and after writing it, I found it very well written. At the same time, I found a problem. In 1997, there were only 200 websites in China. It was like a person who had 200 books, but he had to be a library. So he was disappointed and could not make money. He could not realize that my software could be Many people serve.

At that time, I was looking at a product, called free mail. I think everyone should have a mailbox on the Internet. This is the most important means of communication for mail communication. Then the school, company or ISP will give you an email when you go online. Who can guarantee that the mailbox they gave you is permanent and free? And at that time, there was a bad problem in China’s mailbox. It was particularly difficult to grab, especially difficult to squeeze. When you called, you said your mailbox address, just in case If you miss a word, you may not receive the mail at all. Like public.fta.net.cn, we were even worse in Guangzhou at that time, public.guanzhou.gd.cn, so it is very difficult to tell others about the mailbox. I will use my brains. After the name is designed, the technology should be feasible. The domain name should be short. The domain name should be short.

I was very naive at the beginning, yes, you can check, there are no short, two English letters, three English letters, four English letters, and we turned over and over again, and we found those meaningful. The domain name is almost registered by the Americans. Two can't think about it. The three can't think about it. There are only four, and four of them are impossible. So I thought about it for about two weeks, while writing software. This domain name thing. Then one day I finally thought that the number of Chinese people is not very good. We talked about the phone number and the number used by the paging station. So I didn’t hesitate to get up, after the three numbers, good numbers related to the number. I remembered it all. After I wrote it down, I felt that this thing must have become a free mailbox, a domain name, and a product. You must have become.

So at the end of 1997, I was going to find someone to do this thing because I didn’t have much money. It was the most difficult time for the whole company. One of the biggest difficulties I had in the past two years, the company had only 20,000. I have a lot of money, and then I have a good idea, but no one can recognize it. All my confidence at that time came from the fact that I think 163.net or 163.com’s mailbox will be a good content for China. .

I didn't know the website when I was doing it. After I finished it, someone told me that I had this website. You can learn from him. So when I did this website, I told everyone that we would like to cooperate with us. This website, free e-mail, almost all people give me a head start, how to make money, money, free things, I said I really do not know how to make money, money, but I told him two things, the first Free mailboxes are sure that many people want one, and they must be permanent; the second one does not have to go to other websites when they go online, but the mailbox must be used, so after you make this free mailbox, this online The click-through rate will be high, and everyone will have to register a message when they use free mail. This information can be used for e-commerce in the future.

Then almost all of my benefits have been returned by others. The first one is that Ding Lei has a high number of free mailboxes. I don’t have advertising revenue. What is the use of me? The second e-commerce is far from China. Far? You can't see it, I don't know, you still go back and think for yourself. So I took this product and talked to people in many telecom bureaus, because I believe that there is only one thing that can be done in China, that is, the telecommunications bureau, because they can guarantee network traffic and hardware, but I am almost hit by them. But, but I have the money and the ability to support a network application, so that time is the most frustrating time, and the company has invested seven months of time and money on this product, so maybe it is luck, In the cover of the mid-November of the US Business Weekly in 1997, there is another cover story about hotmail's website. The cover of its cover story is very cur, that is, hotmail's CET holds a fire extinguisher. Say in front of the computer: "I want to put out the fire, my computer is too hot!".

Just two weeks after the article was posted, the Internet uploaded Microsoft to buy hotmail for $350 million, so at the time someone sent it to the domestic media, the telecoms that I had looked for. The leaders called back and called me. "Hey! How is your product, have you found a partner?" I said no. He said: "Then we buy it!" I said that our products are not sold, as long as they cooperate. He said that they must buy and not cooperate, so I was very embarrassed.

Almost everyone proposed to buy and not to cooperate; they all saw that suddenly a story made them see where the value of a product is, so in the case of last resort, and for the company to tide over the difficulties, I decided to put the product Sold to him, but everyone knows how it happened, how about this website.

But the decision I made at the beginning was a very big decision in my life, because I set up Netease to want to be a website, but my software means that I want to be a software company. So when I wanted to set up a software company, when I decided to sell this email as software, its value was very low. At the same time, I also told me that if I want to set up a software company, I must help the customer. The website is built, so that you can sell the second set of software, the third set of software; very lucky 163.net success, less than two months, Beijing's 263 came to call, they have to buy a set, I said That software is very expensive, I said to be 100,000 US dollars. He said that it is impossible, China's software is sold like you, 100,000 yuan is about the same. I said yes, you have to know that our software can run on dozens of machines and is a decentralized system. Finally, they persuaded them to buy the benefits of the value of the product itself. 163.net is booming in Guangzhou, so 263 is also quickly ordered from us, so our company transformed into a software company in early 1998 and began to sell software copies. In June of 1998, we had sold nearly ten copies, and 8 of Netease earned 5 million yuan.

At that time, the development of the Internet gave us another opportunity. I thought it was very strange. The pageview of our personal homepage was higher every day. At that time, someone told me that someone started to want to buy advertisements on the Internet. I was at that time. I wonder if our company should start to transform. Because we have good technology and have a good sense of the Internet, can we become a "portal" company on the Internet? But you have to know that being a portal company is a very risky thing because of your The source of income changed from software revenue to advertising revenue, and at that time, it was almost rare to advertise on the Internet; our colleagues did not agree, saying that you are crazy, the copy of this software is so good, money, a CD goes in, comes out It’s 100,000 dollars; he said that you want to turn the company into a big monster that eats money.

In fact, the portal company needs a lot of hardware, and it needs a lot of content, but you don't necessarily see the money for this advertisement. I said that no matter what, I decided to do it. I said that you have to look at a company for two years. Where is the development of three years? You can’t see where a company is now. I said that you have to know China’s two years and three years. In the future, there will be a lot of people on the Internet. If there are 10 million users, if you click on it, there will be 10 million page views, and the value of your advertisement, or the potential value, will be huge. Therefore, our company relies on soft money to transform into a company that is a portal. Therefore, our company maintains the development of a website without risk capital injection. At the same time, some people, my colleague told me that you This move is a very tricky one.

So in the one-year operation of the website, but when our company expanded to 60 people and 100 people, I have no management experience at all, so the biggest challenge I faced at that time was how to manage and manage six. Ten people or a company of 100 people, and how to manage companies in Beijing and Guangzhou, I tell you that there is no big flaw in it, I don't think that I will be in charge of myself, but the only thing I have is that it is technically realized. So, after our Netease company arrived in Beijing, from April 1999, from 2 people to the present, that is, in April of 2000, there were about 160 companies. There are a lot of roads in the middle. I am here to tell you. A very interesting thing, how the management of this company is formed.

In fact, when a person arrives in Beijing, he is afraid of anything. So many strangers, and your company is not famous in Beijing, and there is not much money, and to run such a big company, my first method is to find someone. Looking for the most important person, I will find someone who can help me finance. I will not finance myself. I never know every step of financing, what negotiation, I have never had this experience, so I need to find someone first. Help me talk about financing. I was looking for it. At that time, it was very interesting. There were a lot of investment banks looking for me. They wanted to bring our company to market. There are a lot of people coming to me, then I think one person is very good. He often calls me and then helps me. I later found this person and talked to him for a long time; because he also thinks the company is too small, he is on Wall Street. I have been engaged in banking for five years and my income is very good. He also considered it for a long time. In fact, we talked for two months. He decided to come to our company, so this time we have this first overseas study. When people come in, I feel that many things are very easy after he comes in. I basically handed over the money and financing to him. I never considered how much money my company has, but he can do his best. I talk about the value of the company.

So I think when the company is going to be big, you can consider whether to give some of the power to others completely, so that you can get away from doing something that you are good at. I think this is a very important aspect. Then, our company came in a lot of employees. I also gave some of the power to them to let them think and work, and I can have more time to think about the development of the Internet.

In the past two and a half years, starting from the website, I have been thinking about what kind of website China needs for the Internet, so in addition to the free e-mail, I also made a virtual community, the first Chinese network. At the auction, we and the Great Wall Computer first auctioned on the Internet, the first entrepreneurial competition, etc., there are many ideas. I think China is a very big market in the Internet field. I think many of my classmates are Internet enthusiasts. You may ask where the Chinese Internet is in the future. Then I will tell you one. Things, the Internet has just emerged with commercial value in 1993, then you know that in 1993, in addition to the Internet, the most important thing is technically what happened.

In fact, that year, there were three factors in the Internet. The first one was the emergence of high-speed data machines, and the windows system and browser of personal computers began to appear, which brought the first era of the Internet. I think the future of the Chinese Internet is because in 1993, I may be the first moden to use 28.8K. When there was a story happening around me, I saw in a magazine in the United States that the 28.8K moden can be used in the United States. Then you need to know what concept 28.8K is. It can be transmitted in one second. 3K files come over; such high-speed communication, because I know in the work of the telecommunications bureau, this is definitely different from our current telephone communication, which may bring human progress, a digital communication era.

At the beginning, I told this matter to our chief engineer. I said to help me. I ordered two 28.8K modems from the United States. I want to do a test and do a file transfer test. He said that you have made a mistake. I can only pass the 9600 rate on the telephone line. How can I pass the rate of 28.8Kmoden? I couldn’t convince them at the time. I brought a pair of modems back to me by my friend. I immediately transferred this 28.8K between Shenzhen and Ningbo. The data, I probably passed the half-day effort, I feel very stable, I thought that the era of digital communication should have arrived, so it is because of this confidence, but also because of their own mastery of the technology itself, I think the prospect exists. .

So in the future, especially in 2001 and 2002, I think there will be some changes in the Internet, that is, high speed, we are talking about the emergence of data machines above 7M, it will bring us some more The opportunity, I will tell you a very simple example, you may listen to CD at home, you like to listen to CD, then you have to go to the street to buy one by one, then have you ever thought if you use 7M moden If you can use this one or two seconds or ten seconds to download to the audio-visual equipment in your home on the Internet, you can pay a little bit of money.

So I think in the next era, due to the arrival of broadband networks, the requirements for Internet sites will increase, and will definitely not be limited to the current text and pictures; the prospect of another network, I think, our Chinese network. It will be very promising. When China was not popular online five years ago, someone once asked me how big the Internet is in China. I gave him a very simple answer. I said that you know China. How big is the market for pagers? At that time, the mobile phone was not the biggest. Later, he went back and thought about it. Now someone asks me, is China probably the largest Internet market in the world? I said that you are going to see Chinese mobile phones. How high is the usage rate.

Therefore, we have proved this in the past decades of telecommunications construction, that is, our Internet market must be the biggest, then how to do some real rooted companies on China's Internet, I The personal feeling is that you must think about it, think about what others want, and the second one must be pragmatic and do something more realistic. These two things I think are the most important factors.

A person who can't think about it won't have much innovation on it. Netease's innovation in the past two years depends entirely on our thinking about the Internet, so we can be the first virtual community in China. Come out and take a person who doesn't think about it. There won't be much innovation on it. Netease's innovation in the past two years depends entirely on our thinking about the Internet, so we can be the first in China. A virtual community has come out and achieved great success. Now, Netease's chat room has a maximum of 10,366 people every Saturday night. Have you seen a big chat system like NetEase on the Internet? With more than 10,000 people chatting and having a pleasant chat, the community sometimes poses a big challenge. When the population of this community is very large, people inside will often fight, just like the BBS of Jiaotong University. If there are a lot of people, there will be a lot of gunpowder smell, so it is very important how you plan the ideas of everyone inside.

Of course, I saw that the theme of the speech on the front of the cloth was "Dialogue and Dream". Then, before I finished my dream, I was talking about a little personal thought. I think the university age is very important and important. I miss it very much. My college time, when I was studying at university, I also had dreams, so I wrote my dreams on paper, that is, when I graduated from college, I told others that I hope to set up a "Ding" computer company. Because there is no name, so others talk about the "Ding" computer company. Under such dreams and expectations, in the four years of the university itself, thinking about knowledge and life, I can use my own 500,000 in the fourth year after graduation. The renminbi went to create its own company, and without any background in studying abroad.

For me, although I had a little realization of my wishes four years ago, six years ago and ten years ago, I don’t feel that I am very satisfied. I sometimes think more, sometimes I am at night. I think you can do something on the Internet. This is also a problem that I am confused. You can create something very interesting in China's Internet. It is also a question I think about. The next time I am. Leave it to talk to everyone, thank you!