By the time this sees print, much will have changed in the life of Joe Chen, MBA ’99, CEO of 1000 Oaks Inc., an Internet holding company that operates several websites in China.
The number of employees at Beijing-based 1000 Oaks will have increased to about 195 from 150 at the end of May (“We hire every other day,” says Chen), he will be in new quarters (double the 10,000-square-meter space he occupied when Stanford visited) and his user base of 10 million plus will have undoubtedly grown astronomically.
If the numbers don’t go up and up and up, it just isn’t China.
This is Chen’s second run at web portals and if he does as well as he did the first time around, he will do very well indeed. Along with Nick Yang, MS ’99, and Yunfan Zhou, MS ’99, he co-founded Chinaren.com—a “communities” portal serving China’s alumni groups. Today it boasts 40 million registered users.
Why do high school and university graduates flock to Chinaren? Chinese institutions, with few exceptions, do not maintain alumni operations.
Chinaren was charging to the top of China’s Internet pop chart when Sohu.com acquired it in 2000. Chen, who remembers how every other business student at Stanford had a business plan in his or her pocket, still savors the memory. “We raised $10 million [in startup funds], sold it for $33 million and when Sohu’s stock was trading at $42 a half year ago, it was worth $48 million!” And even though his baby is grown up and married off, he is ever the proud dad. As host of China’s and probably the world’s largest alumni club, Chinaren maintains its own brand under the Sohu umbrella and continues its longstanding membership in the global Top 25 most heavily trafficked websites.
“I still like communities,” Chen says, recounting how he was drawn back into the segment less than 24 months ago, and why his company started DuDu.com and acquired MOP.com (which came with 9 million registered users).
At DuDu’s Avita page, kids can get into serious role-play creating their own online personas—building up composite facial and physical features, then “shopping” for suitable hairstyles and clothing. The images that young surfers can remake over and over for a few pennies (collected through user accounts at DuDu’s partner telecom providers) become personal proxies for chat-room and e-mail exchanges—mostly, it seems, about how funny everyone looks. Other DuDu subscription services include daily tips on how to handle relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends.
Spending a yuan or two here and there adds up to over a dollar a month per user, multiplied by 1 million users. Chen reiterates that DuDu is still new. Yet, “we’re already earnings positive,” he says. “These two sites [DuDu and MOP] combined are the biggest user community for young people in China.”
“We developed [Avita] in two months,” Chen says. Such a short turnaround from concept to market would be unthinkable in the United States, he adds. By the time the idea was discussed, engineered and financed, the market would be gone. “In China, we just chunk it out. We just do it.” Lower engineering costs certainly help, Chen says, but it’s the potential for growth that really drives this approach.
It won’t be long before these kids will be grown-ups in suits with pockets bulging with credit cards, when online payment should be as common as Beijing’s candy-coated plums. Exactly what Joe Chen will be chunking out by then is anybody’s guess, but undoubtedly it will touch the lives of millions.
