Wang Haining’s character evaluation

China’s boss on Facebook

Interview with "Entrepreneurship Nation" magazine/Fang Hao and Zheng Jiangbo/Zheng Jiangbo

The name of this company is Le Elements. He became famous with his fish farming game "Happy Aquarium". To this day, this game still ranks ninth on Facebook's total paid list, with 2.4 million people online every day. Zynga, the world's largest social game company, once copied this game, but it ended in failure. "What kind of company do you want to start with a registered capital of 30,000 yuan? Selling jelly is just about the same." Wang Haining recalled the cold eyes he received when he started Le Yuan two years ago. At that time, they asked about the registration of a business license. The minimum capital was 30,000 yuan, so I applied for one and used the remaining money to pay wages. Unexpectedly, the 30,000 yuan brought a lot of trouble to this small start-up company. "At that time, the bank felt that our registered capital was too small and would not open an account for us. We would not settle foreign exchange for overseas funds. They suspected that we were laundering money." It was March 2009. Wang Haining had just left Renren. Resign.

The "Three Trends" of Social Game Entrepreneurship

"I was the first college student recruited by Chen Yizhou." In 2000, Wang Haining had just graduated from Wuhan University and was recruited by a fellow Wuhan University graduate. Chen Yizhou brought China's Internet, which was still in its prehistoric period. Chen Yizhou was still working on Chinaren at that time, while Wang Haining and Diandian founder Xu Chaojun became Chinaren’s earliest employees. "You will find that miracles can actually be created. As long as you find a group of outstanding people, have ideals and catch the right time, you can do things that change human life." The seeds of entrepreneurship were already in Wang Haining's heart at that time After taking root, Wang Haining started a life as a foreign company executive after leaving Sohu. He worked in marketing and sales for IBM, ICP and other companies for 7 years. "That kind of stable life is really not suitable for me. I prefer I like the Internet, which is full of countless possibilities." So 7 years later, Wang Haining returned to Chen Yizhou's staff. Times have changed, and the original Chinaren has long been replaced by Renren. It was at Renren that Wang Haining came into contact with social networking for the first time. game. Wang Haining served as the director of value-added business at Renren. At that time, Renren did not focus on how to make money. The entire team only had about 20 people and was in the stage of accumulating users. In 2008, Renren achieved rapid development and began to build an open platform. Social games are an important part of social networking sites. However, social games in China are still very immature. There are very few people engaged in this industry. Renren only has Several small Flash games, in order to develop the platform, Wang Haining personally led people to make more than a dozen social games, some of which received good responses, and some failed. "I remember that we had a game in which a gangster boss recruits a younger brother. It was reported by Focus Interview and fined by the Ministry of Culture." This incident still makes Wang Haining dumbfounded. Social games have really become popular in China thanks to "Happy Farm". This is a game that has made countless people crazy. Getting up in the middle of the night to plant vegetables and steal vegetables has become a part of many people's lives for a period of time. part. Wang Haining, who is in the industry, saw the huge business opportunities contained in social games, which also contributed to Wang Haining leaving Chen Yizhou for the second time. This time, he chose to start a new business. He summed up his original departure as being affected by the "three shares" "Wind". The first trend came from the global popularity of social networking sites. With the birth of Facebook, the social kingdom established by Mark Zuckerberg successfully connected more than 500 million people and drew social relationships between them, creating a new system for exchanging information and changing people's lives. lifestyle. In June 2011, people in North America spent 1/3 of their time on social networking sites. You must know that at the beginning of its birth, Facebook was only used as a tool to pick up girls and a platform for displaying personal information. Slowly, the functions of this platform became more and more complete, with sharing and contact functions, and then turned into a real network of friends. The traffic of many video websites comes from reprint clicks on social networking sites. The emergence of small applications and games has further stimulated the development of this industry. People began to enjoy the convenience brought by social networking sites and became accustomed to communicating with friends and competing for achievements through playing games. Slowly, companies like Zynga were born on Facebook. An upcoming social gaming company.

The second trend comes from the popularization trend of social games. Suddenly, like a spring breeze, people all over the country began to steal food. This simple and vivid game made people unable to stop. The most attractive part is its social nature, which is suitable for those who have just come into contact with the Internet and have just learned to log in to QQ. and Sina, a chance for people who are not even proficient in typing to play games. The food-stealing game has been in operation for two years, but the craze remains unabated. There are still 160 million netizens across the country who are stealing food. Most of them are middle-aged women. They are not addicted to high-end large-scale games like "World of Warcraft" all day long. Players are not the kind of IT elites who are armed with Internet thinking. They are the largest group of people in China, and this market is also the largest market. The third trend comes from the promotion of open platforms. Platform openness is an irreversible trend because no company has the ability to provide a truly full range of services. Platforms and application developers are interdependent and have a mutually beneficial relationship. Facebook has made Zynga possible. Without Zynga and other thousands of social game companies, Facebook would not have the scale of development it has today. In China, the trend of open platforms is also blowing fiercely. Tencent and Baidu have successively announced their opening up. The trend of platformization has given social game companies the soil for survival and development. Wang Haining saw these trends when he was at Renren. “Although there are many opportunities to start a business in life, sometimes some opportunities belong to you, and some opportunities belong to others. You will know the opportunity that belongs to you when others don’t know it is an opportunity, and others don’t know it yet. When you understand this industry, you will know the challenges, risks and benefits it can bring to you. Why not go if you happen to understand this industry, have the right team, and the right resources. What to do?" Wang Haining understands "opportunists" this way. "If I had not started my own business right away and had chosen to stay at Renren, it would have been too late to wait until Renren went public. But by then, this opportunity would not be just for me, but for everyone. , I lost the first-mover advantage," Wang Haining said.

CEO, product manager, HR

“Many people in the office like to keep fish, and many people use fish as their screensaver. Since so many people keep fish in the office , can this kind of behavior be turned into content on social networking sites?" Wang Haining said. The Internet is a reflection of real life, and the best theme for social games is to bring the things people like to do in life to the Internet. The game "Happy Aquarium" is based on such a simple idea. The game mode is very simple, with only two ways to play: feeding your friends' fish and raising your own fish; the initial profit model is also very simple: selling fish. Le Elements has sold 5 million fish on Facebook, with each fish priced between 10 cents and $1. Slowly they added more props, including seahorses that can automatically feed fish and fish food that can make fish grow quickly, etc. In the three months since it was launched on Facebook, in order to make it easier for users to enter the fish farming game, the team has been optimizing the game almost every day, and every day has been a sleepless night. Now the update and maintenance of the game have become the most important daily tasks of the Le Elements team. Le Elements has a slogan: What we do is services, not products. Wang Haining often compares his own game creation to opening a restaurant. He said: "If you open a restaurant and 2.4 million people come to your restaurant to eat every day, and your dishes do not change throughout the year, the restaurant can run well. ?" Therefore, the service industry has become Wang Haining's new positioning for Le Element Company. He regards making social games as filming a TV series, with new plots in each episode; as "If You Are the One", with each issue having new plots. Different male guests. Driven by this kind of product thinking, "Happy Aquarium" has released about 250 versions in the past two years. Basically, there will be a new gameplay or functional improvement in three days. At the beginning, the game "Happy Aquarium" was just about raising and feeding fishes. As the game continued to be updated, not only more props appeared, but also new functions such as the treasure exchange system and the Lianliankan app were created. , these are constantly radiating the vitality of this "old" game. After a series of changes, "Happy Aquarium" is completely different from what it was two years ago. It has become an extremely rich game with higher playability. Sex games.

"Through constant stimulation and gameplay updates, our game sold 10 million US dollars in virtual items in two years. Its high sustainability was an important reason why we chose this product at that time and insisted on operating it." Wang Haining said . Before making "Happy Aquarium", Le Yuan Yuan's road to social games was not smooth sailing. They had also had failed works, no one cared about them, and the revenue was bleak. "After one or two months, when the game's retention rate and number of active users have not reached expectations, we must give up decisively." Wang Haining did not have any luck with the hard work, because he knew that an entrepreneurial team could not afford , especially on a highly competitive platform like Facebook, if a game does not become popular immediately, the chance of turning around is almost zero. "Two years ago, when our peers were making social games, a team of 20 people made four products, but now the companies that can survive are usually companies with 20 people investing in one product." Wang Haining believes that social games require focus. , a good product must be cultivated intensively, and the value generated in this way is far more than what can be obtained from a multi-pronged approach. This can be seen from his work on "Happy Aquarium". Two years have passed since this game It is still operating, with new changes every day, giving users new feelings. "The cost of Chinese technical talents is lower and they have more experience. If a game from Le Element is placed in 12 countries around the world, earning a little in each country can ensure the company's profitability. However, if a Japanese game is placed in Vietnam, it may not be able to Making money is the advantage of the cost structure of Chinese companies. "Wang Haining is very good at using existing advantageous resources. Relying on high-quality games and low operating costs, Le Elements experienced explosive growth in the first year of his business. Profit was achieved within the month, and a year later the team of 25 people could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. However, if you want to make more high-quality games, you must increase capital investment and expand the team size, so They ushered in their first investment at the beginning of their business: after just two weeks of negotiations, DCM invested US$5 million in Le Elements. In fact, Wang Haining’s true identity is not only CEO or product manager, but also has a title: HR. "I personally recruited 30 of the first 50 people in the company." Wang Haining sometimes looks less like a CEO and more like an HR. When Le Element was first established, there were only 6 people. These 6 people made a game called "Happy Aquarium" in two months. The game earned 20,000 US dollars in Russia in the first month after its release. Some of them are the former CTO of MySpace, and some are the technical backbone of Renren's backend game development. "Jobs said, 'The first 10 people in the company determine the development of the company.' I think he is right." There was a person who had just resigned from MySpace and took offers from many big companies. Later, he chose Le Elements because Wang Haining made him a list, which clearly stated the revenue forecast of the game in the next year, how many people can be hired, how much money can be earned, how much it costs, how much the network cable costs, how much the electricity costs, and how much the water costs. . "If Haidilao's customers are attracted from table to table, then our employees are also attracted one by one." In order to find talents, Wang Haining also did something similar to visiting thatched cottage three times. He once hired an engineer from a well-known website three times. After eating, I hoped that he could work at Le Element. Finally, when the person agreed to join the email, the whole company cheered together. Several members of the initial team of Le Elements are all backbones from Renren and MySpace. It can be said that they are the only social game company in the world with a strong social network background. Such a group of industry elites gathered together to become the largest Le Elements company. the driving force. Just like a person who can cook eats in a restaurant and understands how the food is made, Le Elements understands social networking sites, from the backend operations to the front-end news, notifications and other specific applications. This is also the reason why they started their business in the early days. The advantage that distinguishes them from other social game companies is that they will pay more attention to users' behavior on social networks and their commitment methods on social networks, including some characteristics of the social networking sites themselves.