A 29 year old young man is always regarded as a bad "bad boy"". It was this bad kid who started 7 years of business and created two networks worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What kind of inspiration does his entrepreneurial logic give us?
Wearing a T-shirt and jeans, a tall figure, hanging plates, and he will talk to you intently staring at you, as if you were a well-designed program; only the tattoo on his arm before he is distinguished from an ordinary white-collar IT, that is a piece of maple in the dragon and tiger jump. Is his own design pattern, a metaphor for his vision.
This is the 115 Guangdong science and technology limited company chairman and CEO Lai Linfeng, a 29 year old young man. From the start of his business, he founded two hundred million yuan worth of network companies in 7 years, of which 115 SkyDrive has the largest user group, the current number of users has reached 35 million, and at the end of last year to obtain 100 million yuan of venture capital.
In the rise of the Internet wave, in every corner of the world, never a lack of passion, dreams, imagination, ability, perseverance, patience or ambitious entrepreneurs. But why do young people who drop out of high school achieve such success in a short period of time?
In his office, we see a room attached to the fight, and his big desk, in addition to an apple computer, there is nothing left on the shelf; the wall only put a black car model, he believes that his knowledge comes from the Internet, and do not need to take the book to do decoration.
His friends and employees in the evaluation of him, "it was a good programming robot", "is a very rational". He has more than a dozen cars, including Porsche, Mercedes Benz, but he often work until midnight, sleep in a dormitory where the company second days more than 7 points and work together. He always likes to use logic to reason anything that happens, and try to catch the core of things. In the interview process, he often uses "you use logic to reason" as the beginning of a description.
But his love and share his ideas, but also willing to share wealth results with employees. 115 Dongguan headquarters building as a The Inn Boutique and surrounding a lush garden restaurant, there is a staff canteen, a video room, drums, snooker room, table tennis, video games, the roof of the golf course, beautifully decorated rooms, and even Jiyang management staff set up a special image design studio and provide hairdressing services for employees at leisure.
Lai Linfeng has never been a traditional "good child", "seems to be his life portrait buanpailichupai". He told reporters bluntly, he did not go to college, high school was expelled because of a fight. He did not shy away from their careers: 2005 started to assemble a computer store, opened earlier "ylmf" forum became the owners, because the modified Microsoft operating system name. He asked, at the initial stage of China's economy, how many private entrepreneurs did not have the original sin? And from 2009 into the cloud storage market so far, he has never been afraid of facing giant hegemony, because "in the cloud storage field, who are starting from scratch."".
From junior high school, Lai Lin Feng love to see the book is "Jewish History", the Jewish nation strong and respected the power of knowledge gave him a very deep impression. He especially liked to ask the teacher what he said in the way of reasoning, and the teachers thought he was the one hundred thousand "why" of the human body". After high school was expelled from school, Lai Yi, a year of re reading, 2002 went to college, but did not read, he felt so boring, he is a practical person, knowledge can be learned from practice accumulation, especially in the Internet industry is more so.
Also in 2002, Lai Lin Feng first contact to the computer, he soon fell in love with this chat forum community. At that time, he loved to answer questions for friends, met himself, to check the data everywhere, do the test. In 2005, he and his friends in his hometown of Guangdong in Xingning opened a computer assembly shop, and he will open his own name, set up a "wind" forum. At that time he and friends together thousands of yuan money began to start business, rent house only need 200 yuan monthly rent, even BBS server is assembled by itself, than ordinary server cost is lower by 30%.
Because many people reflect the Windows system at the time of complicated installation, not easy to use, so Lai Lin Feng and his last studio partner, Windows system optimization and package, simplifies the installation process, improve the performance of the system, and in the forum for users to download and use for free. He then founded 114 site navigation, navigation website by binding to the operating system, the energy-saving and site navigation station user quantity increase, which has brought considerable network promotion advertising revenue for Lai Linfeng. By 2008, the company's revenue has reached millions of monthly Lai Lin Feng yuan.
At this time, Microsoft began piracy attacks in china. He had the idea of transformation, and began announcing that he would stop modifying WindowsXP and turn into an operating system developed with open source Linux. In March 2008, he decided to move his company to the Songshan Lake high tech Zone in Dongguan, where he rented a 5000 square meter building as an office. In August, Hong Lei, the famous tomato garden writer, who was once with Lai Linfeng, was taken away by police. At China, without permission to modify the software to others, so if there is no profit, the conviction is difficult, it is understood that the tomato garden comes bundled with adware also profit, so Microsoft chose him as an example of the object. At the same time, Lai Lin Feng new company in Dongguan has just completed the renovation.
He is not willing to mention too much of this experience in the past, more hope that people will present 115 science and technology limited company and former energy-saving as two different companies, he even from this year fully resigned from all positions for the valuation of nearly two hundred million yuan, the shares of the free transfer to the partners in the past, development and they just focus on the SkyDrive 115. This behavior seems to zhuangshiduanwan that he determined to fight to win or die: since it is difficult to walk in the forefront of energy-saving, rather than withdraw from the non core business and retreat, bet on the cloud storage market growth space is huge.
But he in the evaluation of their careers before, stressed that his team is the operating system of Windows optimization better download on the forum for lovers, also did not insert rogue software in the optimized system, did not take direct profit. Some pirates have sold these optimized systems to disk to sell, or to insert rogue software into the system, which has nothing to do with the forum.
Since 2008, Lai Linfeng has at the same time promote a few big business: open source operating system YImfOS, 115, 115, 114 SkyDrive search aggregation, network navigation, and finally he chose cloud storage as a breakthrough in the future business, and even the original design of the 115.com polymerization search function can cut down, leaving only the function of SkyDrive.
"This is all based on the direct inference." Lai Linfeng said. He divides Internet development into two stages: from 2000 to 2008, the stage of universal computers, and people are accustomed to getting information from the internet. And since 2008, due to the explosive growth of information, data storage, synchronization and sharing as the core of personal data service demand outbreak, cloud storage is the biggest opportunity he can see.
As everyone knows, SkyDrive is a burn project, it includes not only the server hardware cost, and network bandwidth, local server deployment and maintenance cost, and product planning, technical implementation, promotion and other operations. But Lai Linfeng almost put the first pot of gold that he accumulated into this new field. Since 2006, he began to prepare for the cloud storage project, when the 115 SkyDrive launched in 2009, he personally has invested 70 million yuan of funds into the project.
And other colleagues in the data center or mass storage space, Lai Lin Feng says that the basic spirit of the age of the Internet is to share, he hopes to use cloud storage to change the way of information sharing, and other counterparts, another difference is that he is more focused on by the mobile phone terminal to website promotion.
Entered the 115 SkyDrive interface, as a community website. Its page description is: more than 8 million of the circle of friends, keep in about 110000 circles, chat about 3000000 topics, share 3000TB resources. Here integrates the cloud storage, instant messaging, micro-blog, circle, group, application market and many other functions. People can manage their personal data in this website, share videos, music, text, pictures, games, no longer need to share a bunch of links, or for a long time to let the other receives a batch file, just click, the system will you want to share the content uploaded to the Internet. And through the mobile phone or email will send to your friends to share code. When you reply to this message to confirm the sharing, it will automatically generate an account, login view will automatically activate. In this viral way, the number of users of 115 SkyDrive quickly broke by 30 million in March this year, is the largest number of Chinese users up to now SkyDrive.
Everyone is their own way for passengers on the network is a kind of connection and response. In Lai Linfeng's idea, in the future, people can go to the movies according to the recommendation of friends, according to the friend's online shopping records to buy things, according to the recommendation of friends, to see a piece of text or video. Wherever you go, you'll release your location, upload a picture, and bring your relationship with SkyDrive to arrive somewhere at a time.
115 SkyDrive, like Google+, looks like a box, but it can be loaded with a lot of content, it will greatly change the convenience and accuracy of people access to information. 115 SkyDrive provides entertainment, music, video, in order to better retain users, but the core has changed the sharing mode, is the carrier of "cloud life". To share the social positioning, and enhance user stickiness, while the cloud has inserted the "wind" of the wings, can fly swiftly from other competitors in the quagmire of losing money earned "flow".
Different from the past through the flow of advertising revenue profit model, this time Lai Linfeng is 115 SkyDrive chose "free +VIP user fees, with differentiated services, profit model. Grassroots webmaster origin, let him put the user experience in the most critical position. Just as dedicated to do energy-saving, Lai Linfeng at the forum has made more than 2000 posts, often in line with users; 115 in the SkyDrive circle, also can easily search to Lai Linfeng the circle, he initiated a lot of topics, will respond to the questions of what he saw. While the 115.com experience almost every month there are new products or technology upgrades, such as the recent 115 SkyDrive teamed up with Meitu Xiu Xiu, launched online convenient editing function of beautification pictures.
At the beginning of 115, SkyDrive's most attract users, in addition to the high-speed download, synchronization function and convenient registration (email or mobile phone number only choose one), is a large 15GB of free storage space, and every day in "shake" of the game, but also get tens of megabytes to hundreds of megabytes the new space. Other SkyDrive, such as Sina, micro-blog's Micro disk is free 5G space, HUAWEI is only for specific mobile terminals to provide 16G space. This makes 115 SkyDrive quickly accumulated the largest user group in china.
115.COM also launched the first mobile phone number (UID is the abbreviation of UserID, can be uniquely identifies the object) login SkyDrive, user information security. Now, 115 SkyDrive client can support Windows and iOS mobile terminal version, and Android, Symbian, blackberry and other series of mobile version, users can share files and retrieve passwords through mobile phone number, "these two functions are the first launched in the industry."."
Just as the rise of video sites, now cloud storage based on content regulation also began to attract the attention of relevant departments. The 115 SkyDrive in early April this year began a large-scale content cleaning, mainly use the system to automatically identify and filter the public share infringement or adverse content in the file, and strengthen the website backstage and intercept keyword filtering function. Just like people don't step into the same river for the two time, Lai Linfeng doesn't want to go into the gray area of intellectual property again.
In addition to their 70 million yuan initial investment of SkyDrive in 115 at the end of last year, 100 million yuan Lai Lin Feng also introduced the first round of financing, and the proportion of 115 of SkyDrive's user fee has been maintained at around 1%, to calculate the VIP user fee year minimum 180 yuan / year, revenue is expected to reach 100 million yuan. The investment VC asked him to maintain an average annual growth rate of 50%, but he casually said that the number of users of 115 SkyDrive was 20 million at the end of last year, now more than 30 million, and it is expected to reach 100 million by the end of the year. This year will also launch the enterprise version of SkyDrive, in addition to covering white-collar workers, he will also those who have no computer, used to go to the Internet cafes blue collar crowd included in the fight for the category, "let them in every Internet cafe to download things can be permanently preserved in their SkyDrive".
From the beginning of this year, cloud storage has become a field of giant fighting, Baidu, HUAWEI, Google, China Telecom have entered, and the number of users of similar Jinshan, cool disk as SkyDrive has exceeded ten million, Chinese SkyDrive operators once more out of dozens of. Have a first mover advantage and financial support, Lai Lin Feng is not afraid of giants to enter the market. Because cloud storage is not like instant messaging, portals, games, e-commerce, search for these products, as long as there is a large number of users of the platform, you can copy rough copy. It needs a large server, the background and development of precision tacit understanding of the team, even if the 115 SkyDrive all existing data completely open, other people still copy past and digestion, at least 8 months, and the investment is not less than 100 million yuan of funds. And the Internet giants have different sources of income, not necessarily like 115 SkyDrive so full investment, focusing on doing a differentiated user experience.
In some sense, Lai Lin Feng giants to enter more hope, to better the education market, will this piece of cloud storage is still in people's cognitive wilderness areas into fertile soil. Speaking as Clinton once said, "The process is the product", doing a lot of pioneering undertaking, the result is important, but the process is the product of thought, is a new value, so many looks not utilitarian results to become so important.