At 11 o'clock in the morning on May 12, 2009, Zhang Fumao, who had just moved to a new house, stood alone in his huge new office. Looking down from the height of the 12th floor, he saw the bustling crowd outside the window. Looking around, he saw the parking lot in the distance. The field and Wudaokou are also vaguely visible. He walked from the window to his desk and began to wonder when web games could achieve revenue of over 100 million.
The word entrepreneurship has a certain aura for most ordinary people, but for Zhang Fumao, who is an entrepreneur, it can only be described as "thrilling".
As an entrepreneur, although it is not all smooth sailing, Zhang Fumao belongs to the lucky group. After more than 2 years of hard work, he already owns a company with more than 200 people, and his office has also moved from the original private house to near Wudaokou. In an office building with expensive land, Zhang Fumao still thinks that he does not have the courage to go through such an entrepreneurial journey again.
Mysterious phone call changes fate
Before September 2007, Zhang Fumao had held multiple titles, including the head of marketing business of Kingsoft Corporation, the marketing and operations director of Sina iGame, and he was also responsible for the channel planning business of Shengxuanming Company, the general agent of Sony PS2 software in China.
In September of this year, he founded a company of his own and named it Beijing Youxia.com Information Technology Co., Ltd. This name was not replaced by "Game Valley" until January 2009.
Like most entrepreneurs, finding funds to maintain the company's operations became Zhang Fumao's biggest headache at that time.
"We started our business in a private house in Huilongguan. Although there were only 5 employees at the time, the monthly salary expenditure of nearly 20,000 yuan was still a headache. At the saddest time, I only had less than 3,000 yuan in my bank card. He had no choice but to borrow money from various places in order to make up for his employees’ wages. Although many old friends from Jinshan offered him a helping hand at that time, Zhang Fumao knew that using borrowed money to pay wages would not last long. count.
"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what the next piece will taste like." It seems that no sentence is more suitable to describe Zhang Fumao's dramatic situation than this line in the movie "Forrest Gump".
Just when the company was struggling to survive, a mysterious phone call changed the fate of this entrepreneurial team. Zhang Fumao, who was driving at the time, received a call from the human resources department of Shanda Network, which asked him to join. Since he had already started his own business, he politely declined and did not pay too much attention to the matter. Unexpectedly, a month later, he received another call from Shanda. Different from the previous one, the caller this time was not Shanda’s human resources department, but the person in charge of the 18th Plan. The other party invited Zhang Fumao to Shanda to explain Game products developed by our own company.
"Unexpectedly, the Human Resources Department transferred my resources to the 18th Planning Department. After receiving their invitation, I came to Shanda with the game "Heroes Gate" that was under development at the time." Zhang Fumao recalled.
December 18, 2007 became a turning point in the fate of Zhang Fumao and his entrepreneurial team.
"At first I thought it would be the person in charge of Project 18 listening to me introduce the product, but when I entered the door, I found that Chen Tianqiao, Chen Danian, and Tan Qunzhao were all there, which was really surprising. At that time, someone told me that I could introduce my product. If If you speak well, you can give more lectures; if you speak poorly, you should change to the next one.”
Even Zhang Fumao himself did not expect that the web game "Heroes Gate" developed by him and the R&D team based on the European and American stand-alone game "Heroes" would become Chen Tianqiao's most promising work that day. Two hours later, this work was sold by Shanda for 500 Purchased for RMB 10,000.
"No one thought that Chen Tianqiao was a fan of "Invincible Heroes". When I was explaining there, he kept giving advice and asked us how to increase income and how to prevent cheating. After chatting for an hour, he decided to buy it. For our game, we initially quoted US$1 million, and after some negotiation, we finally sold it for RMB 5 million.”
Declined Shanda’s acquisition invitation
Because of a mysterious phone call and Chen Tianqiao's favor, Zhang Fumao miraculously crossed the financial threshold that blocked many entrepreneurs. After receiving a capital injection of 5 million yuan, he quickly got rid of the dilemma of being constrained by funds all day long.
"Later, we signed a cooperation agreement with Shanda. Shanda handed over the game "Heroes Gate" to us to operate, and then the two parties divided it according to the ratio of 2:8. The operating results of this game were good, and we took 20% The profit share can maintain the company's daily operations, and the company still has a surplus of 5 million yuan in its books. Now it can consider the next development plan. "
The company has enough cash flow to maintain, with millions of cash on the books, and the company has only been established for less than a year. All these achievements are enough to make an entrepreneur feel at ease and proud, but for Zhang Fumao, he thinks There is a huge crisis in conquering the world with just one game. The correctness of his judgment was confirmed a year later by another online game company called Ninetowns. After losing its profit pillar "World of Warcraft", its stock price immediately fell by 25%.
"A successful game company cannot conquer the world simply by relying on one game." After making this judgment, Zhang Fumao immediately began to organize a team to develop the second web game "Huashan Sword", and in "Huashan Lun" Shortly after the "Sword" project was established, a new project team was established to develop the third work "Warring States World".
In March 2009, Zhang Fumao received two pieces of good news. One of them is the second game developed by the company, "Huashan Sword", which has become popular. This game, which started operating in February, quickly exceeded 2 million yuan in revenue. Another thing that makes him happy is that the company completed its first round of financing.
On March 12, Zhang Fumao and his company "Game Valley" announced that they had received joint investment from two major international venture capital firms, Qiming Venture Partners and Steamboat Ventures (a subsidiary of Disney). Prior to this, he had rejected an acquisition invitation from Shanda.
"Shanda once proposed the idea of acquiring us. They offered a price in the tens of millions. Faced with this figure, we were not unmoved. But if the management can cash out, what will our employees do?" Company acquisition is obviously not the entrepreneurial success goal that Zhang Fumao originally set.
"Let's look at the data. There are currently 80 million users of MMORPG online games, more than 100 million users of SNS, and 6 million users of casual chess and card games. The total number of users is 240 million, of which 20-30% of users interact with web pages. Games intersect. 40% of users can make it easier for you to accept web games. SNS users can more easily be converted into web game users. Based on this estimate, the number of web game players in the future will definitely exceed 100 million. I am confident about this number. I am very confident. In terms of revenue, web games are now very close to MMORPG revenue," Zhang Fumao said.
Data from Ari supports his view. According to data disclosed by the agency, the development speed of web games will be much higher than that of the online game industry. By 2012, the number of users will increase by 320% and the market size will increase by 231%.
Dialogue with Zhang Fumao: The goal is to enter the top three in the market
NetEase Technology: What mistakes do you think you should not make when starting a business?
Zhang Fumao: There are three mistakes that you must never make. The first is that you cannot make a false product, you must make a product that meets the market positioning. It is impossible to make a good product with just a few planners or artists. A good product requires a complete team; the second is that you must find a good product. There are many examples of excellent products being overtaken by operations if they are run by an operations team; thirdly, good wine is also afraid of being in a dark alley, so there must be excellent marketers to promote it. In addition to these three mistakes, there are other mistakes that entrepreneurs can make, such as trying a new product style. If you find that players are not particularly receptive to it after it goes online, you can make adjustments gradually; and inaccurate advertising. , server instability, etc. It is still possible to correct these problems immediately after noticing them.
NetEase Technology: Since the first round of financing was completed in March this year, what main work has been done during this period?
Zhang Fumao: We haven’t made any changes to our plan after financing. The most important thing is to enrich the product line. The original product line only had one game, so the current product line must be enriched to a certain extent. These should be more complete. planning. Things that were impossible to do before financing can be done now. We have built a studio and another one is in the pipeline.
NetEase Technology: What are the next steps for the product?
Zhang Fumao: There are mainly two products. We will launch a new version of Huashan Sword, named "Huashan Sword 2", but there will be some changes in the gameplay. The other one is a work that we position as a high-quality game. , called "Warring States World", the development cycle of this product exceeds 12 months, and it is what we want to focus on launching. In addition, some action online games will be launched in 2010.
NetEase Technology: From the initial 5 employees to more than 200 employees, what do you feel is most lacking during this development process?
Zhang Fumao: There is still a lack of independent people. These include technical experts on the backend server side. In addition, good game planning industry is very much needed. As the later project team goes online, there will be a shortage of excellent marketers. Finally, we also need marketers who are good at packaging products.
NetEase Technology: You have talked a lot about your optimistic views on web games. Is there no risk in this industry?
Zhang Fumao: The first risk is that good products can easily be copied and plagiarized. Everyone knows that the threshold for web game development is low and more comes from creativity. However, creativity can easily be plagiarized. In addition, there are also security risks. Web games are encrypted. It is more difficult than client-side games, so it will also face threats from plug-ins, private servers, etc.
NetEase Technology: Are there any countermeasures?
Zhang Fumao: First of all, it is like building a building. When the accumulation reaches a high enough level, it will become difficult to copy and copy. We can only rely on us to constantly update our creativity and add new functions. In addition, more security experts will be hired to do some preventive work, such as adding hardware firewalls in the computer room.
NetEase Technology: Are you worried that large online game companies will compete with you for the web game market?
Zhang Fumao: What I am worried about is that their team, technical and financial strength are better than ours, but there are also things that I am not worried about. We are very focused on doing this. All resources are invested in web games. It is impossible for large companies to put all their resources here. Moreover, many employees in our company were once elites of major game companies. Finally, large companies are not very willing to share good products, but we are happy to do some joint operations and have a relatively open mentality.
NetEase Technology: What are the expectations for the future?
Zhang Fumao: The real trigger point for web games to attract everyone's attention should be products that generate a single revenue of over 100 million. Looking at the market now, there is no such product, so it can be said that the market has not really heated up yet. Our goal is to be among the top three in the market. Without this goal, our current income is already very easy, and there is no need to raise funds and build new project teams.