Rise and Fall of Yu Zhihong - An Entrepreneurial Story That Touched China

Author: Zhu Yingshi / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: But unlike Shi Yuzhu, he was just an ordinary person who developed a new product through education and a passion for technology, thereby achieving success, founding his own group company. This is simply a standard model of "knowledge changing fate." For this reason, people are inclined to accept the media's title of "China's Bill Gates" for Shi Yuzhu, and his entrepreneurial story has been reshaped through repeated into a "startup myth." The beginning of this "myth" was Shi Yuzhu, 27 years old, and 4,000 yuan in funds. In July 1989, after Shi Yuzhu came to Shenzhen, he returned to his familiar Shenzhen University, secretly "sneaking into" the student dormitories to live and "sneaking into" the computer room to borrow the school's computers to write programs. However, Shi Yuzhu was no longer a student at Shenzhen University, and soon, the computer room administrator discovered him, and he could no longer use the computers there. Therefore, he had to find a school office equipped with computers through acquaintances and "work" when others left and use the computers when others were not using them. Under such conditions, he developed the M-6401 desktop text system. After nearly a month of effort, he not only solidified the fonts, expanded the character set, and added batch processing but also solved the problem of what-you-see-is-what-you-get interfaces. He integrated input, layout, editing, and printing into the same interface, with all functions displayed in Chinese window menus. After comprehensive compression, he ensured that large characters had no jagged edges and small characters had even strokes. He was confident that M-6401 was a mature product. Shi Yuzhu compressed his software into a card that could be installed in a computer. This is how the name "Chinese Card" came about. With the product, Shi Yuzhu needed a company to sell it. He partnered with three other partners—Qian Yu, Jiang Junman, and Cai Wei—using his 4,000 yuan to lease the Computer Service Department of Shenzhen University's Science and Technology Industry Company. At this point, Shi Yuzhu began to show his courage. Since the company needed computers to operate and Shi Yuzhu no longer had money to buy more, he came up with a solution: he purchased a computer worth 8,500 yuan from a computer company for 9,500 yuan, with the condition of deferred payment, paying 9,500 yuan half a month later. This was equivalent to renting the computer for half a month at a rent of 1,000 yuan. After obtaining the computer, the second thing Shi Yuzhu did was advertise. He still used the same method to buy the computer: deferred payment. In the end, IDG invested, and the Computer World newspaper, which had long been renowned in the IT industry, agreed to his request to publish a half-page ad, with the ad fee payable half a month later. Shi Yuzhu bet that he could sell the software within 15 days. Due to the urgency of the situation, the ad designed by the later marketing-savvy Shi Yuzhu was very simple. On August 2, 1989, in Computer World, a half-page ad space was printed with only one large line of text: "M6401, a historic breakthrough." In the following time, the only thing Shi Yuzhu could do was wait. If there were no orders within 15 days, Shi Yuzhu might have had to go to a computer company to work to pay off his debts. Of course, this did not happen. On the 13th day, Shi Yuzhu finally received two orders, totaling nearly 20,000 yuan in sales revenue. These 20,000 yuan can be considered Shi Yuzhu's "treasure chest." After that, Shi Yuzhu reinvested all his income into advertising. Like a snowball rolling downhill, M-6401 brought Shi Yuzhu increasingly higher income, and four months later, their operating revenue exceeded 1 million yuan. In January 1990, Shi Yuzhu decided to develop the upgraded version M-6042. They leased two student apartments at Shenzhen University, prepared 20 boxes of instant noodles, and locked themselves in for 150 days. The result of this five-month "concentration camp-style" life was a more powerful M-6042 Chinese Card. But for Shi Yuzhu, the cost of M-6042 was not just 150 days of closed research and development. When he finished M-6042 and returned to his temporary residence in Shenzhen's Anbao Building, he found his home empty. His wife had left him. After more than two months of negotiation, Shi Yuzhu failed to win his wife back, and they divorced. No one knows what impact this event had on Shi Yuzhu, but soon after, he registered his own company, named "Giant." Originally, he wanted to register the company in Shenzhen, but the Shenzhen Industrial and Commercial Bureau refused to register the name "Giant," so Shi Yuzhu registered the company in Zhuhai, which happened in April 1991. Although the company was registered in Zhuhai, its de facto headquarters remained in Shenzhen until July 1992. The full name of the new company was "Zhuhai Giant New Technology Company," with a registered capital of 2 million yuan and 15 employees. Shi Yuzhu explained the company's name: "IBM is internationally recognized as the blue giant, and I named the company 'Giant' to be China's IBM, the giant of the East." However, before becoming China's IBM, Shi Yuzhu had to solve the urgent problem before him: the impact of competitors. P