[Global Technology Report Zhou Tao]On October 22nd, Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, attended the 2016 Tsinghua Management Global Forum of Tsinghua University Institute of Economics and Management, and had a dialogue with Qian Yingyi, Dean of Tsinghua Institute of Economics and Management. He shared his own growth experience, the difficulties experienced in the development of Tencent and the story behind the birth of WeChat.
Ma Huateng mentioned that Tencent had three hurdles during its growth. First, when it started its business in the early days, it was difficult to raise funds and had no money to buy servers. The second is the competition with MSN; The third is the appearance of Weibo. "The appearance of Weibo has a strong competitor for Tencent. At that time, three teams signed up to make a product that can solve the problem from PC to mobile, and the last team made WeChat".
For WeChat, Ma Huateng said that WeChat was originally a mailbox. Wechat is actually an email, a short and fast email, but it’s so fast that you think it’s not an email.
Ma Huateng also revealed, "I came up with the name of We Chat myself. At first, I thought of what letter, and I also thought of Q letter. Later, I called it WeChat, We and Micro Homophony, and that’s it."
The following is the dialogue between Qian Yingyi and Ma Huateng:
Astronomy and science fiction lovers; From non-schoolmaster to cross-border entrepreneur
Qian Yingyi: Today is the annual Tsinghua Management Global Forum. At this time every year, we invite an advisory committee member to communicate with Tsinghua students. Last year, Tesla and SpaceX’s CEO Musk were invited. Today, we are very honored to invite another advisory member of our Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Mr. Ma Huateng, the main founder and CEO of Tencent — — This is also the first China entrepreneur invited by Tsinghua Management Global Forum.
Everyone here today is using your company’s products, which neither Apple nor IBM can do. It shows that your influence is very great. I want to start with your growth experience and development. You entered school in 1989 and chose computer major. Why did you choose computer major at that time? How did your college experience affect your later growth? Ma Huateng: I came into contact with computers in middle school, and it immediately became my hobby. The more I learned, the greater the difference. Later, I became more and more interested in college.
Qian Yingyi: Did you take some astronomy courses in college?
Ma Huateng: Not at that time. I read it myself in my spare time, including looking for information about the United States. I have read all the relevant questions.
Qian Yingyi: Did you buy these books on astronomy from abroad? Are you still interested in astronomy?
Ma Huateng: Yes, I have always been interested. It may also be influenced by me. Many of our early founders were interested in astronomy, and some of them invested in building their own observatories.
Qian Yingyi: Does your interest or knowledge in astronomy have an impact on your work or thinking about innovation and entrepreneurship?
Ma Huateng: There is no direct impact. But if you like astronomy, you will feel very small. Maybe we are always an accident in the universe. So if you think about something carefully, it’s no big deal. It’s helpful for you to stabilize your mind and think more openly when you encounter setbacks.
Qian Yingyi: Are you interested in science fiction?
Ma Huateng: Very interested. Science fiction such as three-body has a rich imagination. In fact, the novel describes the current development of science and technology, including some directions of future research and development, which is forward-looking and can be prospected.
Qian Yingyi: Science fiction provides imagination, and the development of some industries needs forward-looking imagination. What did you learn in the computer course at school, which is very helpful for the future? This field is developing very fast.
Ma Huateng: Computers should be very difficult to test in Tsinghua. I believe I probably couldn’t get in if I wanted to test at that time. Studying in college or laying a foundation is very important for future growth. But more depends on extracurricular hobbies. For example, there was a computer virus in the computer room at that time, what was the virus and what was its mechanism. We were interested in studying it, dissecting the virus samples and then understanding them.
These are not what you are required to learn in class. In addition, school teachers will find some projects to do, and some may cooperate with outside enterprises, which is a good exercise opportunity. If these projects are completed from beginning to end, they will exercise their abilities in all directions, which is of infinite value to the future, and it goes beyond what you learn in textbooks.
Qian Yingyi: A lot of training is actually learning outside the curriculum. You are more impressed by this than by your teacher’s class?
Ma Huateng: It will be more useful. Some students are not interested in this kind of extracurricular project.
Qian Yingyi: Are you a schoolmaster?
Ma Huateng: I am not a schoolmaster.
Qian Yingyi: Where do you rank in your class?
Ma Huateng: About 10.
Qian Yingyi: There are more than 10 people, right?
Ma Huateng: More than 30 people.
Qian Yingyi: Attention, more than 30 people rank around 10, and they can do great things in the future. What plans did you have for your future career when you were studying? It happened to be the period from 1989 to 1993.
Ma Huateng: Shenzhen is the window of reform and opening up. We saw others start businesses very early. The entrepreneurial atmosphere here is relatively strong, earlier than other cities.
At that time, my brothers would make some software for us to see, and I was very interested. I will observe the income, demand and realization of this project. In this process, I feel whether I should start a business or not. The reality is still cruel. At that time, there was Zhongguancun in Beijing, Huaqiang North in Shenzhen, and many goods from Zhongguancun were shipped from Huaqiang North. Huaqiang North imports these materials and computer products from Hong Kong and overseas. We talked about being a computer company a long time ago. At that time, the computer company was to help people assemble and sell the parts as computers. It was as simple as that.
Later, I found that the people who do this job in Huaqiang North are those who are not very familiar with this industry and may only have junior high school culture and primary school culture, but they have rich market experience. We graduated from university majoring in computer science, and we may not be able to do it yet. Later, I said, since the competition is not enough, we should go to the enterprise to exercise and then think about starting a business.
Coincidentally, in a bookstore selling computer books, I met a classmate who worked in Runxun. Runxun was the largest private telecom enterprise at that time, and the pager was the BP machine. Because I can write C language, there happened to be a project to be used at that time. I showed it to him and he said it was you. There are still more than three months before graduation, and I will go in for an internship, which will last for five or six years.
In this way, I entered the pager industry. As we all know, QQ first made a network pager. It is also a coincidence, because I started to do computer and communication very early.
Qian Yingyi: Did you write the program?
Ma Huateng: This field is the combination of computer and communication. At that time, people who knew computers didn’t know much about communication, and people who knew communication didn’t know much about computers and networks. I happened to be in the middle, which is also a favorable condition for our entrepreneurship in the future.
Unscrambling Ma’s Guiding Dafa: "Convince people that I have a set"
Qian Yingyi: This is the first time for me to hear the points just mentioned. To sum up, the first geographical location is very important; The people around you are very important, and there are entrepreneurs around you, which has a great influence on you; Third, cross-border is very important. There are those who do computers and those who do communication. You are just in between, and the development in the next few decades is just in the combination.
As you said just now, the original QQ was a pager, and this history is very attractive to us students. You started as a programmer and became an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, manager and leader. There is a considerable leap. We all admire good leaders. For example, Tencent was the first five founders, and they cooperated with each other very well based on trust. Later, you introduced many professional management teams, and they all merged very well. I want to know, how is your personal leadership and style shaped?
Ma Huateng: I am a typical young man in Cheng Xuyuan. I didn’t think I would start a company and lead anyone at all. I just said that I wanted to make a product for many people to use. The first step is to survive. How to survive with my craft first is the most difficult. First of all, you have to think about the first year’s salary. You can scrimp and save, or use your previous savings. But can the money invested by the founder be earned back? This is the most basic thing.
At that time, I didn’t think so much about leadership, because I don’t know if this company can go on. The probability that small enterprises can succeed is very low, less than 5%, and at least 95% of enterprises will die soon. This period is very stressful. Even my parents didn’t think that I, a bookworm, could start a company, but they thought it was impossible. So the first step I said is to find some partners, and they can make up for my shortcomings. In our earliest team, four of them were my middle school or university classmates, and one of them we met at work was in the telecommunications industry.
I’m good at products. I know what I want and how to achieve it. I also have a good idea. Zhang Zhidong is definitely a schoolmaster with strong practical ability; Chen Yidan is from a government department. Although he is not skilled, he can form a team and has experience in administration, law and government reception.
Qian Yingyi: Several people are very complementary.
Ma Huateng: Yes. Including Ceng Liqing, who is in charge of the market and looks like the boss, everyone calls him the boss when we go out together. As for me, I hand in my business card, and it doesn’t say general manager, sometimes it says engineer. I am responsible for the technical realization.
Qian Yingyi: Other people’s leadership is visible, but you can’t, but you actually combine these five people and the team behind you very well.
Ma Huateng: The key is to make good use of each of them. The company is sometimes controversial, and we will listen to everyone’s ideas and then try to balance their opinions.
Qian Yingyi: How to balance?
Ma Huateng: There are many contradictions. Often there are more contradictions when the development is not good, and everyone’s opinions will be different. Convince people that I think I still have a set. I mainly listen to you, and then I guide everyone to make him think that the idea is his.
Qian Yingyi: This powerful and leading art makes people unconsciously accept your idea and think it is their own.
Ma Huateng: Yes. Because sometimes management really needs this, my style is not strong, nor is it centralized. Anyway, we discuss with each other. You can ask why not, is it better? He said "that’s right" and soon began to push down by himself. Then, "yes, ok, you do it in this direction."
Later, Tencent’s style was the same, more democratic and diversified, allowing different voices to come out. I think this is a good thing.
Qian Yingyi: As the number one, it’s up to you in the end.
Ma Huateng: Yes, it’s better when it’s critical. For example, it really doesn’t make sense, and you have to do it.
Qian Yingyi: Were you a student cadre when you were in college?
Ma Huateng: No. Chen Yidan, our founder, is the president of the Student Union. When he graduated, he spoke on it and we watched it below.
Qian Yingyi: Can you lead him in the end?
Ma Huateng: No, we work together.
Advice to entrepreneurs: focus on a small pain point; Crossing borders is very important.
Qian Yingyi: Many of Tencent’s products are aimed at young people. You are a very young post-70s, but many of your products are for post-80s and post-90s, and now it’s post-00s. How can you understand these young people and make them like your products? I know you have a team designing, but in the end, you need to decide the direction. How can you keep up with the ideas of these young people?
Ma Huateng: When we started our business, we were still young. At that time, it was no problem to grasp the users. But now that we are old, some products we used seem boring, but later they were very popular abroad, and American teenagers especially liked them. We missed many opportunities, including some emerging multimedia in China, or some community entrepreneurship. Older people really miss the sense of touch of many young people.
Now my solution is, if you can’t solve it yourself, you should let someone who knows do it. You can contact young users more, observe them and understand their needs. You can also invest in such an enterprise by investing. Third, let some younger employees come up faster.
Qian Yingyi: Do you have any institutionalized arrangements to develop opportunities for particularly young people?
Ma Huateng: In terms of talents, we need young people who work harder, or some talents who are brave in innovation to appear. We also encourage internal competition internally. If you have some good ideas, try them boldly.
Qian Yingyi: What’s the role of post-90s and post-00s in your company now? Is the senior management still post-70s and post-80s?
Ma Huateng: Yes, they are basically post-70s.
Qian Yingyi: Nowadays, college students are all post-90s, and many of them are post-90s. There are post-00s enrolled in Tsinghua this year. Your products are especially aimed at young people.
Ma Huateng: We have made WeChat an open platform, so that many young people like the service of this product, which is developed by other companies and can be used in WeChat. This is a solution. We hope to build a new ecological environment through a "small program" in the future, so that others can develop some young people’s products and run in our platform, and we also develop them ourselves.
Qian Yingyi: In recent years, domestic entrepreneurship, especially the innovation and entrepreneurship of young people, has reached a climax. I remember that the last entrepreneurial climax was about the beginning of this century, around 2000. You are the lucky one in that entrepreneurial tide and the idol of young people now. How do you evaluate these two entrepreneurial times and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs now?
Ma Huateng: I think the conditions for starting a business now are much better than those in our previous years. We need capital, environment and talents. Now these big Internet companies are all building an ecological platform on the cloud platform, and the threshold for starting a business is actually lowering, which is a very good thing. Of course, the threshold is low, and the competition for starting a business is more intense, which is more intense than ours, with advantages and disadvantages. Generally speaking, it is still better than our environment.
Qian Yingyi: In this more competitive environment, what kind of thinking mode can make entrepreneurs stand out?
Ma Huateng: First, we should focus on solving a pain point problem. I get letters every week saying what I can do for you. In my opinion, he thinks too much. My suggestion is: you want to be smaller and solve a problem.
For example, can you use your mobile phone to solve the problem of parking and find a parking space? Or other minor problems, such as attendance, school assignments and so on. There are always some small pain points that make you feel inconvenient at ordinary times. Think about whether you can use the Internet to solve this problem. In that case, you have a follow-up in it.
In fact, this kind of entrepreneurship does not need too many people. One person or two people can solve it. When your idea can be verified through the Internet and then gradually expanded, I think this is a direction.
Second, we should pay attention to cross-border. Cross-border is very important. Now, when we talk about internet plus, we are talking more about how startups from all walks of life combine with the Internet to cross-border. Between the two fields — — For example, are there opportunities for cross-border things such as IT and medical care, because it is a blue ocean, the others are all Red Seas, and the subdivision is also a piece of Red Sea. At the beginning, it is often that people who may know this don’t understand that, and those who know that don’t understand this. If you know something about both, you will have a great advantage.
Future innovation includes the transformation of many traditional ventures in the future, which is often cross-border, and this industry will change, not static. If you can seize the opportunity in this, it is a good direction for starting a business.
Qian Yingyi: You will encounter many difficulties and setbacks in any venture. I especially want to know what are the biggest difficulties and problems you have encountered in your venture, or what are your failed experiences? How did you deal with it later?
Ma Huateng: Tencent should have three particularly difficult times from childhood to adulthood. One is that the products we developed were originally intended to be sold to operators, and we wanted to sell many sets like e-mail systems. At that time, those big ISPs and ICP were willing to buy them. But it was later discovered that there was only one set of instant messaging. How can it be sold? And we lost the bid at that time. This is the difference between Internet products and traditional products. Traditional telecom products leave as soon as they win the bid, while Internet products need your constant innovation and maintenance. If you can’t leave after finishing, you will die if no one maintains it.
Many internet companies have encountered similar difficulties, and I believe Baidu is also. Search was originally intended for the portal, but I didn’t expect it to become the portal. At that time, our QQ couldn’t be sold, and it was in our own hands. But users were soaring, and we didn’t have the money to buy servers. At that time, it was very difficult and stressful. If we couldn’t do it, we had to sell it.
At that time, some early friends helped us find investors, one was IDG, and the other was PCCW, giving us $1.1 million each. Later, they sold their shares to South Africa’s MIH.
After investors came in, we didn’t really find a business model. At that time, investors were worried that there was no business model and they didn’t know how to make money. The only idea was to fatten up and sell it. IDG once took us to meet Internet companies such as Sina and started to be interested, but none of them took a fancy to us.
Qian Yingyi: The first difficulty was not winning the bid, and the second difficulty was that people didn’t like you.
Ma Huateng: Scholars despise each other, and IT men despise each other. At that time, some Sina technicians thought that they could make this software in a month without acquisition.
(These difficulties) later forced us to have hematopoietic capacity very early, so we made the first product with the operator at the first time — — Mobile QQ, SMS and computer QQ message interaction, 5 yuan a month. The monthly fee is the first bucket of our income.
At that time, everyone thought they were dead. Our founder is also discussing, and these discussions are still useful. We have made our products more suitable for Chinese than foreign products. At that time, there were several different products in China, including 163 and 169, and a product from the south. We have done a lot of optimization for the special network in China. We will build a point, spread three networks, namely, telecommunications, China Unicom and education network, and make them interconnected. We will concentrate them, so that users can use them the fastest and transfer files the fastest. The word-of-mouth established at that time was that our transmission speed was very fast, which was a great need.
We have a chat room. In those days, the chat room played a great role in the cold start of products. Everyone discussed in the chat room and made friends. The second is our avatar, and personalization is also our earlier innovation. Only by solving one pain point with one innovation can you win.
Wechat is actually an email, but it is so fast that you think it is not.
Ma Huateng: A few years ago, after Sina Weibo got up, it began to switch from social media to social networks. At that time, we heard that there was a Weibo in someone’s school to communicate between classes, which was a great crisis for us. It began to cast its net downward, and the first reaction was that we should also be Weibo. But it’s hard. The same product can’t beat the opponent. You can only solve this problem by finding a completely different product. Wechat was born in this way. It is the mobile communication of pure mobile phone. At that time, the burden of QQ was very heavy. To solve the problems of PC and mobile phone terminals, several internal teams were developing, and whoever solved the problem first would win.
Qian Yingyi: It was designed on purpose to make three teams compete with each other? This is your decision?
Ma Huateng: It is true that three teams signed up. At that time, a big problem was solved, how to play from PC to mobile? At that time, Nokia’s market share dropped from 70% and 80% in the previous year. Smartphones such as Android and Apple quickly replaced traditional function machines. Internet companies could survive only if they reacted, but died if they didn’t. We were the first to get this ticket, and those who didn’t get on the boat can’t come back. This is the biggest crisis.
Qian Yingyi: When three teams worked together, they basically started at the same time, and the last one won, and then they merged the three teams?
Ma Huateng: This involves the problem of our internal organizational structure. It turned out that the group had several different platforms to make mobile products, including QQ and our wireless department, which were separated at that time. However, this innate structure is unreasonable. Later, we quickly integrated the traditional mobile phone and PC products that were originally scattered in different departments into one department.
The other is our QQ email team. We came into contact with mobile email very early, and we used BlackBerry. At first, it was only for executives. Later, we thought, can we develop a software in QQ mailbox, so that every employee can easily use mobile email. So there was a small team to develop mobile phone mailboxes. Fortunately, there was this layout, and finally WeChat came out, which was done by this team. At first, the email and client on the mobile phone were changed to WeChat.
Wechat was originally a mailbox. Wechat is actually an email, a short and fast email, but it’s so fast that you think it’s not an email. With this team, our design and development speed is very fast, so it was developed quickly. Zhang Xiaolong led this team, including himself, to have a very good grasp of this product, which is very good.
Qian Yingyi: I didn’t quite understand it, but now I do. A big difference between WeChat and QQ is that WeChat is used not only by the public, but also by elites and executives. When you make QQ mailboxes, you take into account the habits of executives.
Ma Huateng: The main problem is that the user data can’t get up when it first comes out. Everyone thinks this is a simple QQ. The real start is voice, you can talk when you press it, and the recording goes out. This is a function that foreign similar products do not have, including WhatsApp, or the function is hidden deeply. After I found this function, it quickly became popular. It has turned many executives who are not used to typing on mobile phones into WeChat users.
There is also the integration with the mobile phone address book and the import of QQ user data. As soon as you see that your address book friends installed WeChat, you quickly installed it. This is the energy of the social chain.
Qian Yingyi: I heard that you came up with the name WeChat? This name is very good.
Ma Huateng: I didn’t think of it either. At that time, I thought what letter I should definitely call. At that time, Weibo was very popular, and I thought about it every day. Later, I said in the group that it should be called WeChat, so it was decided casually. When the project was established, three teams were doing it at the same time, the QQ mailbox team in Guangzhou was doing it, and the wireless business group was also doing it. Their names were all called WeChat, but they didn’t tell each other about the development progress. The mailbox team made it, and the wireless business group team was very depressed. Their product was later renamed Q letter.
Qian Yingyi: Even in a company, we should do parallel experiments.
Ma Huateng: We later concluded that these internal benign competitions are still necessary. Why did you hit yourself? Often hit yourself, you will work harder, so that the company will not lose some big strategic opportunities.
Qian Yingyi: Because every innovation is uncertain and difficult.
Ma Huateng: If you don’t do it, competitors or people in the industry will always do it.
How China’s Innovation "From One to N"
Qian Yingyi: In March this year, we invited the author of "From Zero to One" to give a special lecture in our college, which was very wonderful. He particularly emphasized "from zero to one". I also have a conversation with him here. From the case of China, I found that in fact, we can’t talk too much about "from zero to one" because many innovations in China are "from one to n". China’s n is very large. Moreover, "what is zero" and "what is one" are difficult to define.
For example, QQ gets a lot of inspiration from ICQ. For other examples, we can also cite Alibaba, Baidu and Didi. People think "from zero to one" is great, but it is easy to ignore "from one to n". Not all people who do "from one to n" can succeed. In this "From One to N", there are many innovations that are suitable for China market, China culture and China’s special industrial structure. Tencent is particularly outstanding in this respect. You have been inspired by some products, but now you have made far more than those before. Can you share with us here?
Ma Huateng: The whole Internet in China was indeed the earliest. Because the United States is the center of the global Internet, basic product innovation was first put forward by the United States, which is a very strong advantage, and it is not only Asian countries that are backward, but also Europe. However, it is very different when it is applied to the local market, and the culture in China is very different. And frankly speaking, the same model has started a lot at the same time in China. When an idea comes out, in less than two weeks, dozens of teams start working at the same time and start doing it. The domestic track is very crowded, which is the most difficult. At this time, more innovation is often needed. This kind of innovation competition is fierce, far exceeding that of the United States.
Some enterprises have already started to go to sea, and you can see that companies in China far surpass those in the United States. You can’t go far just like the original model, and it will start to be different after two or three months. Only by adding many new, unique and innovative points can you win this competition. Taobao and Baidu can grow up in this way. There are more innovations in WeChat. You can see that WeChat has done a lot of things, and now it is also seen overseas, and sometimes it is reversed. This is because the competitive environment in China is fierce and the product iteration speed is very fast. As you can see, the whole industry can be integrated with WeChat, including WeChat official account, QR code scanning and various life services. The street can be connected with various industries by scanning the QR code. This combination was only started three years ago, including mobile payment. Three years ago, when we started to do it, we encountered fierce competition from Alibaba’s Alipay, and grew up quickly, opening up the market and letting more people use it.
However, there are a lot of subsidies here. Didi and Kuaidi’s massive subsidies in those years played a great role in users’ habit of mobile payment. China’s environment will lead to faster innovation iterations. Let’s talk about the whole ecology of internet plus. At present, China is relatively original and leading.
Qian Yingyi: This year is particularly interesting. Many articles have appeared in the mainstream media in the United States, talking about China’s innovations, including WeChat, and even American companies are imitating it. Facebook added take-out to Facebook last week. The previous apps in the United States were all single functions, and WeChat was a comprehensive function. Now they are also adding them.
One day when I was walking near Tsinghua, I saw an old lady selling watermelons hanging a sign on a tree. I told this example to Americans, and they knew how powerful WeChat payment was.
This is very interesting. I suddenly feel that although the United States is very active in the Internet industry, China is also very active. In this competition and this round of innovation, it seems that Europe or other previously advanced regions in Asia have not kept up?
Ma Huateng: On the whole, China is still a little earlier than Europe.
Qian Yingyi: Europe is particularly lagging behind?
Ma Huateng: Europe basically uses American products directly. But we can’t be complacent. After all, this is an innovation in application, and the gap between many innovations is still very large.
What is the next innovation?
Qian Yingyi: In terms of applied innovation, China is ahead now, but the basic innovation is not very ahead.
Ma Huateng: The future is like artificial intelligence, including autonomous driving and robots. The future leading strength of the United States in this respect is still very strong. For such a long-term technological change in the next 20 or 30 years, it should be laid out in advance.
Qian Yingyi: What thoughts or actions does Tencent have in this regard? I know that based on cost considerations, the research institute was cut off before. Now, as you said, what are your plans for basic research on technology?
Ma Huateng: What were the mistakes in our past development? A research institute was set up, and they competed with our business group (BG) to make products, and the products they made were not competitive. We began to think about the significance and ways of being an independent research institute. Finally, it is found that doing research still needs to be close to the battlefield. If it is too far away from the platform resources such as QQ and WeChat, many things can’t be done. So later, the institute was divided into three parts and given to three BG’s respectively. Some of them went to WeChat; There is also the Youtu team, which is doing image recognition; There are also teams that do search. Later, when the search was sold, they were integrated into the back-office business department. Now this team has been taken seriously again, because AI is very important, and they have set up an AI lab. We will recruit a large number of talents in this field in the future.
Qian Yingyi: So you also attach great importance to AI now.
Ma Huateng: In fact, we have done some things in the past, but they have not been applied to our products. Now we need to have group and company-level AI laboratories to make some more forward-looking products.
In addition, we have found a better way to cooperate with universities such as Tsinghua. In 2011, we started to establish a joint laboratory with Tsinghua, and many innovations came from the cooperation with Tsinghua. For example, the street view entrance, we first made a street view in the map. Street view should blur the license plate and people’s faces, not invade privacy, and not photograph the license plate. But what about a lot of pictures? We worked with the research team in Tsinghua, and the professor took the students to research and develop with our team. Later, this problem was solved. There are many other functions that teachers and classmates in Tsinghua have achieved together with our team, including LBS, accurate positioning of IP addresses and so on.
In fact, there are still many black technologies in the future, which must be realized in cooperation with universities. We don’t have to study it ourselves, we have to open it up.
Qian Yingyi: Like Google now doing driverless cars, Facebook doing virtual reality and VR, which is very different from their original products. The innovative research you are doing now is still related to your current products. Tell me about your idea. Did you make a very different product?
Ma Huateng: Yes, it is hard for me to say whether it is successful or not. I will keep this opportunity and encourage internal competition and innovation, or I will give them this opportunity. There are also some companies that we invest in, which are doing strong business like O2O, so we will not do it and leave it to them.
Qian Yingyi: What do you think will be the next innovation that will affect the world after WeChat?
Ma Huateng: I don’t know now, but I am thinking that every big change is accompanied by changes in the terminal. The PC to the mobile phone is actually because the smart phone is up, and everything is different. In the future, for example, glasses VR and AR. Many VR players may get dizzy after playing for up to 20 minutes, and they can’t stand it. They may not be able to continue to do it, but some plug-in AR players may know your history and related information when they see your face. If terminals like this become more and more popular, the new scene changes, which will lead to great changes in door-to-door service. I think AR is a very good new terminal with future growth.
However, it will also bring many problems, including privacy issues. In some occasions, it may not be allowed to bring a pair of glasses, etc. These will all cause problems, but this direction is still very good.
Qian Yingyi: This direction is the future direction. You have talked so much just now, and we are inspired by many details from the growth experience to the development of Tencent. You will be 45 years old in another week. We congratulate you in advance. At such a node, it has become the company with the highest market value in Asia this year, which is also the pride of Chinese. Qian Yingyi: Looking back on 45 years of life, do you have any feelings?
Ma Huateng: We are still on the road, and we are still pushing forward. This is a process. We are lucky to be able to do something in China when it is developing at a high speed.
Internet companies in China or Asia should be global, and it is not easy to make some achievements. Among the top 10 Internet companies in the world, there are 6 in the United States and 4 in China, but not in other countries. Why do you think this is the case? Thanks to the booming economy in China, we used to talk about the demographic dividend, which is almost used up. The demographic dividend may be gone, but there is an upgrade in consumption. The industry is constantly upgrading and upgrading, and there are plenty of opportunities.
After we change the family planning policy, there will still be a wave of demographic dividend in 10 or 20 years. You can still seize it and see what changes will happen to the needs of the next wave of young people.
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