Cao Guowei'S Three Turn

Cao Guowei was the first Chinese to succeed from CFO to CEO, and now he has become a real entrepreneur.

What is the supporting force behind the three turn?

With such a little story, maybe I can see something.

Sina CEO Cao Guowei was selected as the 100 most influential person in the world in 2011.

Also included were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) and Google CEO Larry page (Larry Page).

At this moment, sina is standing with the two giants of the Internet in the world today.

The times said Sina micro-blog has become one of the most open network platforms in China.

In the Chinese Internet camp, since 1998, Zhang Zhaoyang has become the "50 figure of the world in the field of computer digitization". After that, Ma Huateng of 2007, Ma Yun of 2009, and Robin Li of 2010 have won the award of the world's most influential figure 100.

Looking back at the development history of China's Internet over the past more than 10 years, grassroots, rich, angel investment, NASDAQ...

Often become the key word.

The growth story of China's first portal sina is full of upward, leading, loss and breakthroughs.

But Cao Guowei gave the industry many accidents.

The story of sina, many people guessed right at the beginning, but did not guess the end.

Choice

In the 20 floor office of sina, Cao Guowei, a reporter, was busy after sitting at a big desk.

He wore a navy blue suit, but his suit was obviously a yard wide.

During the greeting, Cao Guowei said he lost more than 10 jin after the Spring Festival. The reason is "just want to be lighter."

Of course, in the impressions of his assistant and friends, Cao Guowei is a gourmet.

He knows all kinds of food, but he easily controls his weight.

This very rational person, when facing the important choice of life, "in fact, in a lot of complicated environments, it is very difficult to make a very clear argument and judgement. Big decisions are almost always done by intuition."

In 1999, Cao Guowei chose to come to Sina, but for 33 year old, he was full of chance.

In 1999, Cao Guowei was a certified public accountant of PWC.

That year, Cao Guowei was sent to Beijing to guide PWC in auditing a company.

Only two weeks later, Cao Guowei returned to the United States.

At that time, many Silicon Valley companies had extended an olive branch to Cao Guowei and invited him to join us.

After some consideration, he was somewhat hesitant about how to choose the last two companies.

Meanwhile, Wang Zhidong, the then Sina CEO, is also looking for a CFO, and Cao Guowei is looking for a new job opportunity. He has been in Silicon Valley for 6 years.

Cao Guowei has many options. Two Silicon Valley companies invited him.

Cao Guowei hesitated on the choice, so he consulted an old friend with rich social experience. He was then Sina's chief operating officer, Mao Daolin.

Cao Guowei told Mao Daolin: "I want to change my job. Can you help me see which one is better?"

After listening to Cao Guowei's introduction, Mao found that every choice was very good, but he still suggested that Cao Guowei try Sina.

Cao Guowei thought about it for two days and made a choice to come to Sina to work.

At that time, Sina's headquarters in the United States, in a warehouse office, and the buildings row upon row of Silicon Valley is not comparable.

"I have always felt that in the United States, if the Chinese go up, there will always be a ceiling, at least at that time, and sina is a company that is linked to China."

Although the Internet of China in 1999 is obviously not as impressive as it is today.

Sina, Sohu and NetEase have taken shape. The prelude of Ma Yun's venture has just begun. Tencent's Ma Huateng just developed the predecessor of Chinese based QQ in February.

Cao Guowei became Vice President of finance at Sina.

Six months later, with his promotion, Sina successfully listed on NASDAQ and became the first Chinese portals to be listed in the US.

Sina, which was first launched by Off Shore Company, is a common mode of overseas listing of domestic Internet Co through the holding of listed domestic companies, and is also known as the Sina model.

After Sina completed its listing in 2000, Cao Guowei did not "flash people", but became a hero behind the scenes.

Therefore, the industry has played a lot of labels for him, such as introverted, rigorous, logical and so on. Besides, he is also extremely low-key, and the frequency of interviews is not high.

There was a very interesting detail. He was born in November 10, 1965, but in the multimedia reports, his date of birth is July 1969.

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unsung hero

"I have done more than 3 CFO, which is very rare in general companies.

On the one hand, I am very competent in this position. Every CEO believes that I can do the job well, and on the other hand, I am still valuable to the company.

Cao Guowei looked back at his early years in Sina.

Under the guidance of Cao Guowei, Sina completed the important mergers and acquisitions in Guangzhou and Shenzhen Crillion two wireless value-added businesses in 2003 and 2004 respectively, making Sina one of the forefront in the field of wireless value-added, and gradually making profits from losses.

There is a background that needs to be answered. In 2004, Sina's network advertising appeared a bottleneck. Although it is still growing naturally, it has lagged far behind its competitors, and there is a trend of further deterioration.

In 2005, Cao Guowei was assigned to be responsible for advertising business. In the second quarter of that year, Sina opened up the gap with its competitors.

At that time, it was a particularly difficult period for Cao Guowei. "After IPO, when I was CFO, I used to do back-end management. In 2004, when I was COO, I managed the front end and the back end. These two roles had division of labor and conflict, such as management, marketing, performance, financial management, risk control and cost expenditure. These are contradictory."

Cao Guowei said.

Cao Guowei's assistant, Liu Yunli, who has worked for Sina for 10 years, seems that Cao Guowei in CFO stage is a bit stingy. The approval of many projects is rejected by him.

At that stage, Cao Guowei successfully resolved the grand attempt to control Sina from the stock market.

"I remember very clearly that that night, the volume of sina's stock surged, with about forty million shares trading volume.

It was new year's Eve, February 8th was new year's Eve, and the second day I was taking my family to Australia for a holiday. When I was in Sydney, I received a call from Chen Tianqiao.

Cao Guowei recalled the scene at that time.

The grand Chen Tianqiao told Cao Guowei about this. It spent $230 million in the grand market and acquired about 19.5% of sina's shares in the two market, becoming the largest shareholder of sina.

Chen Tianqiao's call let Cao Guowei leave his wife and children, and immediately returned to the board to discuss countermeasures.

At 22 pm on the fourth night after the grand surprise, Cao Guowei formulated the "shareholder purchase plan" (the "poison pill plan"), successfully boycotting Chen Tianqiao's sneak attack.

If the grand takeover of more than 0.5% stake in Sina, it will start the "poison pill."

Other shareholders of sina will have the right to buy ordinary shares at half price, thereby diluting Sina shares, while holding shares of sina will also suffer losses.

"If a company has no obstacle to control another company from the two level market, it shouldn't happen."

He told reporters.

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Go to the front desk.

In the China Internet Corporation camp, Sina may be the most concerned one, and there is no shortage of news.

In 2006, Cao Guowei was pushed to the front desk behind the scenes.

In May 10th, a news conference was underway on the 20 floor of the ideal tower in the northwest Fourth Ring Road, Beijing. The main character was Cao Guowei. The host explained the theme of the conference in a sentence. "According to Mr. Wang Yan's recommendation, the board of directors agreed that Mr. Cao Guowei would take over Sina CEO."

At this new meeting, Cao Guowei was described as "rational and likes to talk with numbers."

When asked about some details of the CEO that year, he said, "I only remember one thing. After I became CEO that day, Citibank's analyst gave a report and upgraded the stock of sina company. I am a little bit impressed, otherwise I have no impression."

Cao Guowei's power change does not seem so obvious to the new conference, "it's not who will choose me to do CEO, but whether I decide whether to do it or not. If I want to do it, it must be me."

Cao Guowei considered this for half a year, and he took the plate.

Cao Guowei's prudence, tracing back to the past history of sina, may be able to find some clues.

Sina's CEO is always challenging because Cao Guowei's previous CEO, Sha Zhengzhi, Wang Zhidong, Mao Daolin and Wang Yan, could not escape the fate of "two years" when their performance was bad.

The industry generally believes that this is related to the decentralized ownership structure of sina.

In the past CEO of sina, Wang Zhidong's departure is the best way to explain the logic of Wall Street.

When Sina went public, shares fell to $1 in the winter of the Internet, and Wang Zhidong's strategy was to remain unchanged.

In the face of more than one doubt from the directors, he was very angry. "Sina has 110 million dollars in cash, at least at the current rate of loss for 5 years."

"We've got tens of thousands of money to make a name for Wang Zhidong". Duan Yongji's words are enough to say "CEO is waiting for a turn, not a logic acceptable to investors".

Looking back at the history of sina, perhaps we can understand more deeply why rational Cao Guowei spent half a year thinking about whether to take Sina's CEO post.

"I know, in fact, you have done CEO, not a problem you can do, but you have to bear the greater responsibility; you can not say that today I tried it, I did not do well, I was gone, it is very irresponsible.

So you have to be clear about whether you are willing to shoulder greater responsibilities, which is to carry the future of the company.

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Sina 10 years

But in the 2009, the outside world's view of sina was revised bit by bit.

First in May of that year, Sina micro-blog launched. At that time, the industry thought micro-blog was not much news, but Sina's extension of future product line was the most.

That year, the most sensational thing was Sina's MBO.

Here is a background to be answered.

In April 2008, Duan Yongji stepped down as chairman of the board, and the industry's evaluation of it was "deep in the sea and wealth in technology."

Duan Yongji resigned from office, Wang Yan returned, acting as chairman of the board.

In some IT observers, this means that Cao Guowei has taken full control of sina's overall situation and cleared the obstacles for the management's MBO ahead of schedule.

The opportunity of sina MBO started in the merger of sina and sub public in 2008. This is a case denied by regulatory authorities, and mergers and acquisitions have not been realized.

Jiang Nan Chun told Cao Guowei that, as a founder, if the company is still operating independently, he wants to increase more shares in the sub sectors.

"This touched me."

Cao Guowei later said.

So, after Jiangnan Chun announced the increase of 3 of the shares, Cao Guowei also announced Sina's MBO plan.

Sina will issue 5 million 600 thousand shares of common stock to its Invest-holding Company, with a total purchase price of about $180 million.

He said in an email to his employees, "from today on, we will realize the pformation of our role and face our future with the mentality of an entrepreneur."

Since then, Sina management headed by Cao Guowei has become the largest shareholder of sina, which means that sina will end the state of decentralization of shares, and management really has the right to speak in the board of directors. This is also the first case of China's Internet MBO.

Looking back now, Cao Guowei felt quite moved.

He told reporters, "in the past, the decentralization of shares or the lack of sufficient control over stock ownership is very unfavorable to the formulation and deployment of sina's long-term strategy. CEO is more just looking at recent profits, or because of recent pressure, it can not handle the long-term layout.

Therefore, it was considered that if Sina continues to do so, it should think of changing Sina's ownership structure and management control. "

All say that character determines destiny, Cao Guowei is no exception.

The native Shanghai people are extremely competitive in their bones.

When he was in junior high school, he chose to go to the best middle school in Shanghai, Shanghai middle school. When he was in college, he chose the most difficult subject in liberal arts, Fudan journalism.

In the year when Cao Guowei graduated, there were only 150 graduates from journalism department in the country. Later, he went abroad with his girlfriend and chose the accounting major of Dezhou University in the US.

The story is written here, perhaps better understand the path curve chosen by a professional manager.

Of course, Cao Guowei is not a legendary mythical figure.

When he was very tired, he also had the idea of taking a step back.

He thought about leaving and investing.

But for Cao Guowei, leaving is also a difficult task. "I think I am responsible for this company. In fact, I am in the office almost every day, it is very difficult to go away."

With the success of sina MBO, some critics say that as the most successful professional manager in China's Internet industry, Cao Guowei is one of the biggest winners of the Internet in 2009.

In the 2009 year of CCTV's economic figures, he is also the only award winning Internet entrepreneur.

That year, in addition to MBO, Cao Guowei also made a sensation in the industry.

In October 16th, China real estate information group, a joint venture between Sina and Yi Ju, was officially listed on Nasdaq, and its market value approached Sina after its listing.

It is equivalent to rebuilding a Sina in terms of market value.

According to the insiders, in 2009, Cao Guowei solved two big problems in Sina's development. MBO solved the historical problems of sina, and IPO's listing provided Sina with the future.

Start again

Two years after micro-blog launched, it finally exploded the trend of China's Internet. Of course, Wall Street was also very optimistic about micro-blog's prospects. Sina's stock rose to more than 100 dollars, and time honored Cao Guowei in 2011.

"Time" said that in 2009, sina CEO Cao Guowei saw an opportunity to seize the opportunity in the situation which was not very favorable, and launched Sina's own micro-blog.

Today, Sina micro-blog has become an extremely influential service, which Cao Guowei calls "Twitter and Facebook hybrid".

At the end of February this year, the number of sina micro-blog users reached 100 million.

Users include celebrities, athletes, scholars, artists, and ordinary netizens.

Cao Guowei seized the opportunity. "Micro-blog, we recognize this direction is a very promising product. If we want to make it stronger and bigger, we must put down our income and profits and go all out to do it. That's why micro-blog can grow up, and on the other hand, it is the judgement of the trend."

Speaking of Cao Guowei's Sina track, Yu Feng, founder of Yu Feng foundation, told reporters that Cao Guowei was China's first CFO successfully pformed into CEO, and now it has become a real entrepreneur.

What is the supporting force behind the three turn?

With such a little story, maybe I can see something.

On 2009, the thirty day of the new year, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Cao Guowei was still at the office. Liu Yunli wanted to greet the boss and go home.

Cao Guowei was a little drunk at that time. Liu Yunli poured a glass of water to his boss and asked, "are you all right?"

Liu Yunli didn't go home early that day, and talked to Cao Guowei for a long time.

To this day, his impression of Cao Guowei's words is still profound.

"In fact, a lot of things must be faced with optimism. There are many things that you are anxious to pursue in a crazy way.

More often, be serious. You just have to face it seriously.

As for the outcome or failure, you can't control it.

But in the process, you are actually learning and learning to enjoy the process. "

"In his words, he is not for the growth of personal wealth, or for how much money he has to earn, or for what fame he has to do.

"What kind of responsibility is there? What kind of result should be done?" he did with such an attitude.

Liu Yunli told reporters.