The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide

Since Xingxing Investment landed in China, its performance in the past three years has been amazing. It can maintain a return on investment of more than 40% every year, far exceeding the rate of return of Xingxing Investment in Americen Branch.

The logic of normal investment institutions is to continue to snowball, continue to dig deep in areas where there have been a lot of successful project experiences in the past, and build a sufficiently thick moat.

Zhou Xin's behavior is purely wealthy and willful.

Of course, the current land finance has not yet exerted its power. There are too many places to spend money at the national level, and the money that can be spent to support the semiconductor industry is very limited. The maximum investment is only 10 billion RMB.

This investment is a lot for China, and it is very high among various key domestic projects. However, if it wants to compete with semiconductor companies in other countries, this investment will only be a drop in the bucket.

Before the birth of the new chip, the domestic media had this discussion about the chip industry:

"Goryeo model? Benwan model? Core technology has become an indelible pain for Chinese enterprises seeking further growth.

Chinese companies that have entered the manufacturing process with cost advantages are facing the crisis of shrinking profit margins: the pain of 3C and 6C certification for home appliance companies, the pain of DVDs that are almost suffocated by core technologies, the burden of increasingly frequent low-end anti-dumping, WAPI The standard was ultimately weak, and the strategy of “exchanging market for technology” did not bring hope to Chinese companies.

On the other hand, against the backdrop of the just-concluded Yanjing International Science and Technology Expo, multinational companies are happily devouring China's feast with their sharp "technological knives and forks"

This shocking situation leaves us with no choice! Not only do we own the market, we also crave technology! Longing to no longer be grabbed by the throat!

But where does the core technology come from?

Basic technology? Direction, are we betting accurately? Can we afford the investment? Standards, do we have the final say? Can we withstand the risk?

Application Technology? Resources, will we integrate them? Perspective, are we sharp enough? Decision making, are we quick? Samsung, can we learn this?

Production technology? Are we really willing to do OEM work? Management, are we perfect enough? Are we very optimistic about the prospects? ——TSMC, is it worth learning from us? "

This was a report from "China and Foreign Magazine" at the time, which expressed dismay at the inability of Chinese companies to master core technologies.

With the rapid rise of Xinxin, this pain is better, causing the Chinese media to focus more on the Xinxin model.

“Can we learn the new core model?

As we all know, Xinxin Group is a comprehensive group in the integrated circuit field founded by Mr. Zhou Xin, the world's richest man and the pride of the Chinese people. It has R\u0026D centers in 14 countries and regions around the world.

Since its establishment, Xinxin Group has had ambitions that far exceed those of Chinese enterprises. It also involves many fields such as chip design, chip equipment, investment in upstream and downstream related enterprises, etc. In 2001, it officially entered chip manufacturing and consumer electronics. These are two areas that require significant capital investment.

A research report from Goldman Sachs Asia shows that according to incomplete statistics, Zhou Xin invested a total of more than 5 billion US dollars in initial capital for Xinxin. In the past 2003, Xinxin Group relied on the global sales of Mphone and the popularity of Bluetooth technology. monopoly, achieving profits close to $1 billion.

Although Xinxin Group has R\u0026D centers all over the world and has production bases in the Lion City, Xinxin Group is an out-and-out Chinese enterprise. It is headquartered in Zhangjiang High-tech Park in Shenhai and has always been rooted in China. Our country's enterprises have failed whether they followed the Goryeo model or the Wanwan model, so can we learn from the Xinxin model?"

Whether it is the media or some forums, there is a lot of discussion about the new core, because its presence is too strong. It is a bit similar to Huawei in later generations, especially after the success of the Xiaomi brand, its presence is overwhelming.

And it provides a large number of jobs. Xinxin’s chip department alone provides nearly 10,000 jobs in China. If overseas jobs are added, the number will be tens of thousands. Xiaomi Electronics has 100,000 jobs. Domestically, there are close to 3,000 jobs.

Precisely because Xinxin has so much to talk about in terms of scale, revenue, profit, management and technology, discussions about Xinxin can often be seen in the media and forums.

"Why can't other companies learn from Xinxin's model and increase investment in R\u0026D?"

This is a red question on Suspicion. From time to time, someone digs it out to answer it.

"It's very simple, because other companies are not sure that their investment will produce results, and they invest money in research and development. Failure is the norm, but this is the case with Xinxin, which is very rare.

For a normal Chinese company, profits are very slim because we have no technical advantages and can only rely on cost-effectiveness to compete for the market. Take TCL as an example. TCL is a listed company and needs to publish an annual report every year. In 2002, the entire TCL Group Revenue exceeds 35 billion yuan, and profit is only about 1 billion yuan.

Moreover, more than 80% of the profit contribution of this 1 billion yuan came from TCL mobile phones. TCL mobile phones sold 6 million units in 2002. Does TCL dare to develop smart phones? The investment in R\u0026D starts from at least 1 billion yuan, which requires all the company's annual profits to be spent. Anyway, as Li Dongsheng, I definitely don’t dare to gamble. This is a road that has never been taken before. What if I fail?

But Zhou Xin doesn't care. He holds tens of billions of dollars and has an invincible record. He doesn't even need to pay a penny when he is optimistic about a direction. As long as he says that I am optimistic about this direction, everyone will send me money, starting from Goldman Sachs. When he comes to Temasek, there are countless top investment institutions that will give him money. There is no need for any PPT, profit model, or even direction, as long as Zhou Xin says I want to invest.

Domestic companies can't compete with Xinxin in R\u0026D. Zhou Xin doesn't care about money. Money is just a number to him. If life is a game, money has no meaning to him. He can spend it according to his own wishes. Invest in research and development.

In addition, Zhou Xin has a sense of smell and intuition for products that are far beyond ordinary people, which makes Xinxin's model almost impossible to copy. To copy the Xinxin model, two things need to be met: the business owner does not care about profits, and the business operator has enough vision.

Most domestic companies are named as technology companies, but they are actually resource-based companies that rely on labor costs. For them, R\u0026D investment is far less effective than buying technology from foreign companies. Copying what others have already done Taking the road to success is always the fastest shortcut.

The founders of domestic companies are best at marketing, resource integration, employee oppression, etc. Their skills are focused on these aspects. It is almost impossible to transform from a resource-driven company to a R\u0026D and innovation-driven company.

Although after the turn of the millennium, business at the national level has shifted from an era that emphasizes politics to an era that emphasizes knowledge, it still takes time for most companies to learn new models."

The answers to suspicions are more superficial. The media can contact more resources and even go to Xinxin Group for actual inspections. The media's perspective is more sophisticated. Not only is it difficult for other Chinese companies to imitate the investment in R\u0026D, but also The internal highly information-based management model and complete welfare benefits cannot be learned.

While other companies are still studying what informatization is, Xinxin is already a highly informatized company, and there are too many leaders.

After Zhou Xin returned to China, both the media in Yanjing and the local media in Shenhai wanted to interview him, but he refused them all because it was meaningless. He was already famous enough and did not need to become more famous.

For Zhou Xin, instead of participating in talk shows, it is better to start a personal blog and update his thoughts on his personal blog, so that he can completely control what he wants to say or not.

But now Zhou Xin doesn't want to think about this at all. He just wants to make trouble. Things he didn't dare to do before returning to China can now be done.

After entering 2004, with the opening of QR code patents, other electronic payment software were also catching up, sparing no effort to compete for NewPay's market share, not to mention many new electronic payment channels emerging.

Of course, because NewPay’s past monopoly was too obvious, NewPay was still far ahead in market share, and the first market share to be eroded was X.com.

Now the market is in a weird circle. Other electronic payment software are engaged in activities. NewPay's market share is very stable and has not lost much. However, X.com's market share has dropped significantly, which is several times that of NewPay.

But Zhou Xin still wants to cause trouble. When he was at Americen, he didn't dare to use Yu'e Bao, a big killer. Now he is not afraid. He will start with Yu'e Bao first, and then borrow the concept of P2P from others. .

Start the mobile Internet era in advance, use the dividends of the mobile Internet era to push back the financial crisis of 2008, bring out Yu'e Bao and P2P, and inflate the bubble. With this combination, when the crisis breaks out, it will be better than The original time and space was much more serious.

Another hidden trick is to wait until 2008. After the concept of Bitcoin was proposed, there was a lot of publicity, expressing optimism about this thing, and adding virtual currency to the bubble, the bubble was completely alive.

Of course, Zhou Xin will not brag about or speculate on virtual currencies. He will promote blockchain, use blockchain technology to jointly launch digital RMB with China, and use digital RMB to launch currency bridge projects to bypass the limitations of Swift.

Everything starts with the launch of Yu’e Bao.

"Peter, I think now is a good time. NewPay has nearly 100 million global users. We can launch some financial products for customers to choose from."

Using traffic to bring goods to financial products, this method does not need to be mentioned by Zhou Xin. Peter Thiel has mentioned it to Zhou Xin before. He wants to put some funds and financial products from Wall Street on it, which is equivalent to NewPay taking a cut of the management fee. Cheng, as an intermediary.

However, they were rejected by Zhou Xin. The reason for the rejection was that they did not have the energy and time to judge the quality of financial products. Once losses occurred, users might point the finger at them, which would bring crisis to the promotion of NewPay.

Today is different from the past. NewPay's position is now strong enough, and what Zhou Xin plans to launch is a very low-risk currency fund.

After Zhou Xin outlined his ideas on the phone, Peter Thiel became excited. He realized that this was another classic Newman-style idea, leveraging the maximum benefits at the minimum cost:

"Boss, although I have said it countless times, I still think you are a genius.

What we thought before was to put some funds, trusts, options and other products on NewPay for sale. NewPay is equivalent to a booth.

But the money will not reach our hands, and we have no room for arbitrage. But now it is equivalent to NewPay launching its own currency fund. Users automatically transfer the balance in their NewPay account into our currency fund, and users enjoy interest income. We have massive With cash, as long as liquidity management is done well, we can fully carry out arbitrage operations.

This is much more profitable than simply collecting management fees. "

Zhou Xin said: "We have to promote monetary funds, and we have to charge management fees. These two points have no impact.

What I want to do is to first cultivate users’ habits through monetary funds and make them accustomed to managing money through NewPay, and then launch the ‘financial management counter’ you mentioned before. "

NewPay has been involved in the supply chain finance business for a long time. They do supply chain finance not only between China and America, but they also do this business in Europe.

Because they are engaged in supply chain finance, NewPay will do some investment business, so they obtained a fund license very early, and they can use it now.

NewPay is now not so much an electronic payment company as a comprehensive financial services company, more like a combination of early Ant Group and supply chain financial institutions.

Zhou Xin continued: “This project is called Yu’E Bao, which gives users a hint that they can put all the balance in their NewPay accounts into it.

After the launch of this plan, we will definitely face pressure from Wall Street, and we will take advantage of the trend to launch NewPay on the market. NewPay has developed for so many years, and it is time to go public. With the help of Yu'e Bao, NewPay can have a good price for its listing. "

Peter Thiel was in a daze on the other end of the phone. He recalled the time when he first agreed to Zhou Xin's acquisition. The electronic payment company he founded at that time was called Confinity. The merger of Confinity and NewPay allowed him to acquire NewPay. options.

Although Peter Thiel's options have long been diluted to less than 1% with NewPay's several rounds of financing, even an option of less than 1% is worth one billion US dollars according to the current market valuation of NewPay.

And Peter Thiel believes that after the launch of Yu’e Bao, NewPay’s valuation will exceed 100 billion.

He felt in his heart that choice was more important than hard work. If Zhou Xin's merger proposal had not been agreed at that time, even if Confinity had achieved the second place in the field of electronic payment, his net worth would never have expanded so fast.

"Boss, I will make arrangements as soon as possible. I estimate that it will be launched in October this year. In addition, we need to communicate with other shareholder representatives at the board of directors in advance."