活動精彩現場。
網易教育綜合 6月5日「斯坦福商學院院長對話優酷CEO古永鏘」活動在北大舉行，雙方進行了充分的交流，並與學生積極互動。
嘉賓介紹：
古永鏘（Victor Koo）, 史丹福大學商學院 MBA '94
優酷土豆董事長兼CEO 優酷聯合創始人
古永鏘是優酷（2012與土豆合併）的聯合創始人，自2005年9月優酷成立以來，他一直擔任其董事長和CEO,在中國的網際網路和相關媒體領域有著十幾年的豐富經驗。
1999年到2005年，古永鏘就職於中國領先的網際網路門戶網站搜狐，幫助網站從一個早期初創的公司發展成為在納斯達克掛牌的網際網路媒體。
加入搜狐之前，古永鏘在美國風投公司富國集團擔任副總裁，負責媒體、娛樂及行業風投項目。
1989年至1992年，古永鏘曾在舊金山的貝恩公司任職。
古永鏘曾畢業於加州大學伯克利分校，獲學士學位，而後在史丹福大學獲得工商管理碩士學位。
加斯.塞隆納（Garth Saloner） 斯坦福商學院院長及Philip H. Knight教授
1978-1982年，加斯.塞隆納獲得三個史丹福大學學位，包括經濟學、商學和公共政策博士學位。 1990年起，加斯.塞隆納就已加入史丹福大學的教師隊伍，並自2009年起擔任史丹福大學商學院院長。他教授管理學、商業戰略、創業以及電子商務課程，並兩次（1993/2008）獲得斯坦福商學院傑出教師獎。 2006年，加斯.塞隆納擔任課程評審委員會並對MBA課程進行了大幅調整。2011年，加斯.塞隆納致力於建立斯坦福發展中經濟體創新研究院，以此來改善全球範圍內的貧困人口的生活。
以下為活動對話實錄：
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Fireside Chat with Victor Koo and Garth Saloner Transcript
Date/Time: Friday June 5, 9:30-10:30am in Beijing, Thursday June 4, 5:30-6:30pm in Palo Alto
Locations: Victor Koo at Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) with Dean Garth Saloner at the Stanford Graduate School of Business campus in Palo Alto
9:30-10:10am: Dialogue between Victor Koo and Garth Saloner through Interactive technology
10:10-10:30am: Questions from audience at Stanford campus in Palo Alto and audience at Stanford Center at Peking University
V: Victor Koo, G: Garth Saloner
G: We will have an interactive conversation about entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneurship scene in Silicon Valley and Beijing and how they compare, so we are looking forward to that conversation. Before I launch in, I thought I』d ask you some questions and we』ll see how time goes, and you can ask me a question or two, and then we will take questions from both audiences and we will take it from there. But before we get started I want to make sure everyone knew your background so if I can do a little introduction, I’m sure most people know who you are. But to give a little bit of a formal introduction, Victor of course is the co-founder of Youku which merged with Tudou in 2012, and he is the chairman and CEO since the company’s inception in 2005. It’s been quite a ride and he』ll tell us more in a bit, but besides this, he has more than a decade of experience in internet and media related activities in China in particular from 99 to 2005. Let’s look backwards in your bio, from 1999-2005 he worked with Sohu, which is China’s leading internet portal, helping it grow to a behemoth media property from a tiny start up, and before, he worked at a venture capital group Wells Fargo Group, and concentrated there on media entertainment and industrial capital projects and before that he was at Bain, and most importantly, after Bain he was at Stanford Graduate School of Business where he got his MBA, having previously earned an undergrad from Berkeley where he was a Regents』 Scholar so really very impressive background and we are delighted to have a chance to chat with you.
V: Last time we chatted was the 20 year anniversary of my graduation at Stanford last July.
G: How was that?
V: It was fantastic. It was great to see all my classmates.
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G: It’s amazing how many people come back for the reunions, even twenty years later, it’s one of the great features of the GSB that people stay connected throughout their lives and careers so thank you for coming out and being a part of that. Let’s start by talking a little bit about the media landscape in China, how is it changing and how do you see Youku’s position in it changing?
V: I think you look back in the last decade, how media entertainment has been distributed and marketed has suddenly changed, as it has changed from a single screen world to a multi-screen world. Before 2005 for example, most people view video on television screens at home or they go and buy a ticket to see movies but now you are really looking at multi-screen world whether its your mobile screen or tablet, your PC, your interactive television and even considering going to see movies in the cinemas as well as all the outdoor video screens you see, there are so many touch points and form factors in terms of how media entertainment is getting distributed, marketed and promoted. What we are really also seeing is that the way content or media is being created and monetized are also starting to change especially in the last two three years with the advent of mobile stamp. What we think is that going forward in the next ten years, media landscape will again change in interactivity, in terms of not just on demand, but moving from a linear television or linear video age to an on demand on a live broadcast on an interactive basis. For Youku Tudou we started off as a PC platform back in 2005 /2006, Tudou actually started before YouTube was around in the US, when Youku was founded we built our own cloud CDM, probably the first video Cloud CDM in China, and probably even earlier than YouTube because it was not acquired by google at the time. We also created our own content, people see us, or define us like a YouTube or Netflix of China but we are also a studio, we』ve up to date created fifteen movies for example, not just online but in the movie theatres, so that’s very different from video platforms you see overseas. So Garth, Youku Tudou, most people view us as a media platform but more increasingly we are a studio as well, and that’s where you need to be, I think when you look forward in the next five ten years as the media landscape continues to evolve and change in a more multi-screen interactive world.
G: I think that’s a fascinating progression of the industry, and of course we see similar trends over here, and one of the questions I think that is sometimes asked about that is what is going to happen to the scale of investment in content, specifically pieces of content. If you think about blockbuster movies, and you think about the enormous investment that has gone into that, on one hand suggests maybe we can’t see that same scale in the new multi-screen world –the new multi-screen gives us many more touch points, giving us more revenue opportunities and therefore we will maybe see even greater investments, what’s your sense? Do you think we will see as much investment in the individual pieces of content as we have in the past?
V: Well I have seen perspectives on these both in terms of China and US. If you start looking at Hollywood for example, the movies that are successful in the US, Hollywood and globally tend to be on to ends, one is really the big blockbusters, like the Disney and Marvel, The Avengers movies, the other ones are more small productions. Anything in between, I think Hollywood is finding very difficult in this multi-screen world. People either go to the movies for a really big experience, or they watch a small production on demand, across all the different screens, that’s what’s happening. In China there is also an added complexity, because we are in a developing entertainment market, and if you look at a couple years ago, actually the number of screens in China was very low, the box office was very small, but in the last 3-5 years what we are seeing is China’s already progressed to become the second largest box office in the world and the number of screens is growing at a very, very rapid pace. The role of internet in an environment like that is actually quite interesting and dramatic. In the past, if you look at the Chinese box office for
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example, 2-3 years ago, there is a new wave of directors that that started to emerge, if you go ahead and look back at some of the top ten movies in China, especially domestically, before that they tended to be the 『older school』 directors like the 張藝謀, 陳凱歌, or 馮小剛. They tended the same directors that have the top movies, year in, year out, because there are so few screens in China at that point, so producers tend to just want to bet on the big directors. But as we have seen, the proliferation of movie screens in China plus as well as the growth of the internet, more and more young directors are leveraging the internetto produce micro-movies for example. And the power of the internet is that you can actually build a fan base, you can try all kinds of creative concepts all on the internet, and increasingly, as there are more movie screens in China and more venues for movie directors to build a following, and for producers to identify these movie directors through the internet, more and more opportunities surfaced for young and upcoming directors whether its people in our office like in the past, 『韓寒』 or 『 郭敬明』 or actors in the past like 『Cao Cao』 and so forth, those are all opportunities, or even web directors like 「老男孩兒」 (12:09) and 肖洋 So whether it is coming from the internet or other parts of the media, there is no longer the 『old school』 directors that go through traditional training but more and more people are coming to bare in the multi-screen internet age as a fan base can be guarded through reaching all these audiences through the internet.
G: Fascinating. Victor, one of the things that is increasingly happening in Silicon Valley is the advice that many startups are getting, is to think globally from the outside, but on the other hand, the Chinese market is huge- so I’m wondering if the same kind of advice applies in China. I’m interested to hear in general, and with respects to Youku.
V: I really think it depends on the sector in my view. There are certain areas, in terms of internet startups, where it makes sense to think globally from day one, whereas in other sectors it would make less sense. I think if you are building, especially mobile apps, or tools for example, or whether platforms, e-commerce for example, it’s important to start off thinking that way. You may want to start off doing domestic or focus on domestic market first, from platform all the way to thinking about how you will structure the scalability of the platform, as well as the team, you may want to start thinking globally. For Youku and Tudou, we are in the content business, and as content is much more of a local business although we do syndicate globally around the world. So for us, this is more of a process of development. Most of our audiences are based in China, but we do have a lot of overseas Chinese watching Youku and Tudou. We are at this point looking in our development, as we』ve moved from the PC to the mobile transition right now, to look at the potential audience as well. So I would say that for more local, domestically driven sector like content, the international initiative would probably happen later on in development, whereas a platform or tool based startup like 『DropBox』 as an example, then you really should think globally.
G: (14:59) Certainly by the standard of growth in China you』ve been in the tech sector in Chian for a long time, how would you compare the tech sector in the early days with what you see now. Is this a better or worse time to be a tech entrepreneur than when you and some others got started?
V: I remember last year when I was back at campus, and you were nice enough to give an introduction for my presentation at Stanford about 『Twenty years in China’s internet」, and indeed I graduated out of Stanford Business School in 1994 and moved up here to Beijing almost the same time when the first 3W line got connected to the internet here in China. And when you see the development, as a tech entrepreneur it has fundamentally changed. If you are looking at starting up a company 20 odd years ago, at that point in time, there were a couple of elements of
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starting a company, I would say the following: Market opportunity and market timing 所謂「天時」, team as well as capital，so「天時地利人和」. All those elements are important in terms of starting a business. Back twenty years ago, basically the internet was clearly 『day one』 at that point, even a lot of sectors, I was a private equity investor in a startup company at that point, there were a lot of areas in virgin territory. On the other hand, for you to really raise capital as well as to put together a team, it was actually highly difficult at the time, there were not many people with experience, and the internet, even when we were starting working on portals, and before that working on ZDNet which was a IT vertical website back in 1997, digitally, everybody is doing by learning, learning by doing. But now twenty years later, the environment is completely different. When you look at a campus like this and you look at all the people sitting here, a lot of the companies that have evolved over the last twenty years, they might have started learning by doing, but now you have a lot of practitioners, and with the internet knowledge transfer around the world is instantaneous now, so people learn by doing, but people also learn by absorbing all the lessons from around the world. Whether it is in Silicon Valley, whether it is in Japan or Korea or the other countries where there have been a lot of internet development over the last two decades. Nowadays, getting capital is much easier. I remember twenty years ago we were one of three private equity venture capitalist firms with international backing back then, we are talking about 』94, 』95, very early in terms of internet in China. Now a lot of the reputable Silicon Valley investors are here in China, knocking on entrepreneurs』 door. You look at what’s happening recently on the stock market here in China, all the domestic 「新三板』 all those new stock exchanges there are many, many ways to finance now. As an entrepreneur now, whether it is putting together a team or lining up financing, I』d say it’s much, much easier compared to twenty years ago. But the world is fair. So twenty years later there are a lot of areas in market where there are no longer virgin territory. There were a lot of areas where incumbents and existing players, so in that sense it is harder than 20 years ago. So in some areas it’s easier and some areas more difficult.
G: You』ve spent a fair amount of time in Silicon Valley. Tell us a little bit about how you would compare startup scene in Beijing with startup scene over here.
V: I was having breakfast with the chairman and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman last Friday, and he travels around the world and he looks at the Silicon Valley model and all the different places around the world and he thinks China’s probably the only area around the world where the spirit and the velocity of entrepreneurship is getting close to the US. And that’s his view. And I think India also has a lot of innovation happening but I think the infrastructure and pace of development still, probably comparable to ten years ago here in China. Comparing the two, Silicon Valley role in the US startup scene is a lot more concentrated compared to Beijing’s role in China. In China, I think Beijing is the main hub but you look at other cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou and Shenzhen, even Chengdu you see a lot of entrepreneurship happening around China. So while Beijing is still probably the most important city in terms of entrepreneurship, I think there are probably more centers of entrepreneurship in China versus the US.
G: That’s very interesting, how do you think it will change, do you think it will concentrate over time, or do you think it will become more diverse than in the US?
V: I think it will remain to be more diverse. The different cities actually have different expertise and because of all these startups are growing in different cities, you go to Hangzhou now and basically an area with a lot of e-commerce startups. You go to Shenzhen, and you see a lot of hardware startups, they view startups as 『山寨』 which is copy cats but now you look to Shenzhen
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because there is a lot innovation in terms of embeddable devices as well as next wave of hardware.
G: That’s fascinating. One of the topics that is debated quite a bit over here, is what is the value of an MBA degree for someone who wants to be an entrepreneur. There are many examples that you could go through, of great entrepreneurs without an undergrad education let alone an advanced degree. As someone with an MBA, I’m wondering how did your MBA help you and what advice would you give to someone starting up today?
V: Well if I look at my two years at Stanford for example, I think the first year of business school at Stanford gave me a lot of the core skillsets of really running, leading a business. I remember you were my professor my first semester of Strategy class and I still remember the first class where you talked about Convergence, where it is important in the company’s strategy, where all aspects of the strategy need to be convergent, be consistent and aligned with each other. Those kinds of thoughts stay with me forever. I think my second year at Stanford was very important. I think Stanford is a very unique school because it’s based in Silicon Valley. I remember in all these different classes where you see basically, every week, every day, all these entrepreneurs and all these venture capitalists talking about their success stories as well as their failures. Those things inspire you, those things also give you a lot of reference points in terms of what works and what doesn’t and probably the reason why I am sitting here and why I came back here I Beijing and why I decided to be involved in startup companies and why I started by own company. All those things in that way changes how I kind of led my life but Garth you are also right to say that there are other people who have started companies without an MBA and they can learn by doing and learn by different reference points so I think from that standpoint, an MBA is helpful but I also see a lot of entrepreneurs who can do it without so it really depends on the person and it really depends on where they are in their lives.
G: When people look at someone who has been as successful as you have, they draw the lines through points of growth and personal success and it looks easy but we know it is actually not that easy. I wonder if you could share with us, one particular challenge that you have faced along the way and how you』ve dealt with it.
V: I remember, like I said in 1994 I graduated and came back here, the first project I worked was in Shanghai this was twenty-one years ago where we were actually negotiating a thirty million US dollar joint venture in Shanghai, it was a manufacturing facility in the northwest part of Shanghai which is still there at this point.Basically it was what they called a Sino-foreign venture dealing with, basically negotiating across the table with fifty year old state-owned enterprise kind of CEOs, and here I am, newly minted MBA and out of the way for a while and my Chinese was actually getting back on track, and imagine having to negotiate basically a contract this thick (motions with his hand), it took half a year, it was a process where I probably got some ulcer from it, so it was a lot of stress, it felt like coming back, being thrown in the sea or the swimming pool but the ability to adapt is always something that you get from that kind of experience, the ability to work with people, the ability to incorporate different kinds of people and the ability to adapt in difficult situations, those kinds of skills are again, learning by doing and certainly one thing I remember and certainly something I don’t even wish upon my worst competitor.
G: I want to make sure we leave time for questions from the audiences, the audience here and the audience over there, before I open up for questions, is there anything you』d like to ask me?
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V: Well Garth, I see you coming to Beijing regularly, and I’m also happy we have a chance to interact. Based on all the discussions you』ve had with 北大, the students here, as well as the entrepreneurs here, what are your observations in terms of the differences as well as what your advice would be for Chinese entrepreneurs? How international should they be? Should they spend time in the states or should they think domestically? What do you think?
G: So I do come to Beijing often, it is a fabulous place to visit because of the hype and the vitality around entrepreneurship and the change at all levels is fascinating to watch. You know, from my perspective, the entrepreneurship scene in Beijing looks a little bit more like the freewheeling early days of Silicon Valley that I still remember. It was less structured; it was fewer set models on how you were expected to proceed, what your bet for venture capitalists ought to look like, it was a little bit more bringing your own stamp to it, I feel that, I see it more in China than I see it now so I think it is an incredibly exciting situation for a young person. I think the opportunities are huge but I』ve always had the perspective that especially young people today, like the young people I see in the audience here, and that I can see in your audience there, are going to have very long careers and this rate of innovation and entrepreneurship and opportunity is not going to go away tomorrow, so you don’t have to think, because if I don’t grab it now, it will vanish. But I don’t think so, I think it will be here for a long time, there is a lot to be done, it’s going to continue,and this is a very good time to invest. There are multiple ways to invest; to invest in your education which won’t surprise you as the Dean of a Business School I think is a great idea, but it’s about an investment in yourself for your whole life, for your whole career. The other way to invest is by getting some diverse global experience, and I would say if you had the opportunity to spend a couple of years in the Valley and learn from what is going on here, it will pay off, it’s another way to get an education, an education in the real world and I think that is something people ought to consider as a possibility.
V: The other question I have is also related to the conversation I had with you last week, is that we have gone through the age of startups here in China and like you said in Silicon Valley a lot of these startups are becoming a lot more scalable or a lot more structured for example. You』ve observed all these startups grow and scale up, over the last years at Stanford as well as in Silicon Valley, so Reid is actually going to be teaching a class at Stanford later on this year about scale-ups, how do you scale up a startup. Now a big internet company here in China, we are talking about in terms of team size, tens of thousands of people, so moving from tens of people, hundreds of people, thousands of people to tens and thousands of people, and you see these very big internet companies, as well as tech companies in the US as well scaling to that and bigger. What is your advice in terms of organizational flexibility because we move in a world where things are faster and faster with the multi-screen I was talking about, and as these organizations grow, how do you keep innovative, how do you cannibalizedyourself, like Apple keeps saying, instead of being cannibalized by new startups?
G: That’s a great question and I think it’s a tremendous challenge. One of my colleagues here at Stanford, Charles O』Reilly, actually teaches about culture and growth, when he does, one of the slides that he puts up, he puts up a slide that has the names of, in the United States, very famous companies. And you look at the list and you say, 『wow that’s fabulous』. And he says 『what do these companies have in common?』 And the answer is they are either dead or they’re dying. There’s a long list of household names, of companies that you really would have said these are the mainstay of American society and they’re gone and why are they gone? They are gone because they couldn’t adapt. And so that’s the challenge. The challenge is of course, in order to scale and beat the competition you have to be very good at what you do, and to be very good at
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what you do, you tend to become very routinized, very inward focused, very focused on mechanisms to get everything perfect and right but those very mechanisms that you employ to make you better at what you do, also make you worse at innovation and change and so when something huge comes along, you can’t pivot and so some young agile startup comes along, and eats you for breakfast and we see that time and time again. So I think the challenge for a company that scales, is to try to capture the DNA of its youth and take the ability to innovate at the same time do what it needs to do for the existing business. You have to great at the existing business and also have to keep that rogue DNA which is hungry for new markets and opportunities and change, it’s not easy. The other thing I would say is, in general, the challenge of scaling is filled with risk and difficulty. There are many reasons why you might die as a young company, and that’s what startups focus on, but if you are lucky enough to get through that, there are lots of reasons you can die because you don’t know how to grow, and so it’s a separate set of skills. So back to the previous question, I actually think one of the reasons to invest in education for an entrepreneur, whether it is an MBA degree or whether its learning from well run, well managed, established companies, is you need to understand what it takes, you need to have a vision of what your company’s going to look like not just through the good years of success, but once you scale and it’s a different skill set. It’s impressive to me how many founders have scaled with their companies, you’re an example; Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Bell, these are folks who started when their companies were in its infancies, and they figured it out, they figured out how to manage through very size, but it’s not easy and so taking the time to learn about what it takes to manage a mid-size company and a large company, even when you are small I think is very important.
G: Let’s take some questions from the audience.
V: Garth, I have one last question. We are here at 北大, and I understand Stanford does not have many campuses like the one at北大, I wanted to ask you about why the Stanford Center at北大and your objectives for it? That’s my last question.
G: So the Center there is the only center Stanford has of its kind that Stanford has. We do have other facilities around the world where we do undergraduate programs but this is the only Stanford where we have this. We have invested in this kind of technology that allows us to share experiences like this across the distance. The reason to start with a center like this in Beijing is because of the incredible importance of China both today and in the future of the world economy. It is hugely important now, it’s a growing importance. And for our students, our students have to be students of the globe, they will manage global businesses, they will compete with global businesses, so if I can give to them, to understand the markets which are going to be increasingly important for them in the future so that’s why we have events like this, so our students can become informed about what is going on in China, about the opportunities in China, about how to be successful in dealing with China and also for us to increase our reach. As an academic institution our mission is to education future leaders, at the GSB, our mantra is 『change lives, change organizations, and change the world,』 and we want to have the opportunity to touch those people, wherever they are, who have the potential to really be leaders in their own society and their economy. I had the opportunity to meet with the Igniters in the room when I was there last year, so hi everybody, glad to see you again. But we are just delighted to have the opportunity to attract people of this caliber and share with them some of what we have learned at Stanford about entrepreneurship and innovation. So now can we go to some questions? We will take some questions from here and from there, and we will both have to repeat the questions. So I』ll take the question from here and I』ll let you take a question from there.
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Question 1 from Stanford campus in Palo Alto: The question is from a student from our MsX program, which is our one year program for students who have, on average a dozen years of experience, and he’s someone who was a venture capitalist, you were a venture capitalist, and yet you made the transition from VC to entrepreneurship, and he’s interested in how to make that transition and what advice would you have for somebody like him, who is interested in making that transition.
V: Well I was only a venture capitalist for about four/five years, and like I said the early days of doing venture capital in China basically was not purely in venture capital. For four and a half years I was involved with kind of three state companies, you spend about 6 months investing, doing the due diligence, negotiating the deal and getting the investment done and then you spend a year operating. So out of the four and a half years, I was actually involved in three projects where, for example, I was a General Manager of a magazine, because we had a media business, that was a partnership with and Ziff Davis and Times Warner and so forth, doing 9 magazines and 200 books a year, so I was selling advertising on a publication which at point was 10,000 circulation which is nothing. Now on Youku Tudou we have over five hundred and fifty million users on our platform across screens, and so when I talk with my advertising team, who are like 『it’s so hard to sell,』 I say, 「Ok, I』ve sold an ad on a magazine that only ten thousand people have seen, and you are telling me, on a platform with five hundred and fifty million users, it’s hard to sell. Are we on the same page here?』
Question 2 from SCPKU in Beijing: Thank you very much. I am an alum of the university. I wanted to ask, as you develop your business, in the past and in the future, what are the two or three things that you keep in mind to help develop a good business model not only to create value but to capture value which is characteristic of the Chinese market.
V: Before I get to business model, I would say there are some thoughts that cross my mind when I first started thinking about starting a company that still benefits me at this point. I think it is very important, in Chinese I say』跟喜歡的人做喜歡的事兒』. You want to be doing something you love with people you like, that’s one very important thing that continuously inspires me and my team. We consistently say this when we interview someone and lo and behold a lot of people say they decided to join our company because of that line. Of course we do something fun so that helps. The other thing is make sure you do the right thing at the right time. There are a lot of smart people and a lot of market opportunities out there when you think of business models, I would say 『天時地利人和』, people can identify a lot of market opportunities but make sure you are doing it at the right time and window. If you are too early, you will probably get eliminated, if you are too late, you’re not going to be the leader of the game. If you look at video for example, all the leaders all opened up between 2005 and 2006 and there really is a window and you want to make sure you are at the right window. Because a lot of people are smart and realize video is potentially a big business, but if you did it in 2010, even people as bright as Mark Cuban for example, broadcast.com people, when the broadband was not at that speed, the user experience is no good, and if that’s the case there is no reason for you to start a business at that time. So timing is very important. The other one, if you are talking about Chinese context or other reason or sign for me is a television show in 2005 called 「超女」 Supergirl, in the US it is something like American Idol, it was really the first show of convergence where people are using mobile phones to vote using the internet to spread the show virally. Although people were still watching on television, you were seeing all these multi-screens interacting with each other, that was really the time to think about the interaction between the multi-screen. A lot of people know us as Youku Tudou but when we first started the company, it was called OneVerge, converging into one. In Chinese it’s
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called 『合一』. 合一means converging into one, 多屏合一，三五合一coming together and converging into one,合作的意義是cooperation，一人一口，合，sharing，so all these things come together, it goes back to the whole convergence idea that we talked about in Garth’s class now, twenty-one years ago. It’s about how all things converge; whether its technology trends, whether its content trends, or even in China regulatory trends, you really have to add another layer in consideration comparing to starting business anywhere else in the world, as regulations is a very important part of the dynamics of the business model here in China. When all these trends converge in the right time window, that’s when you should press the button. So those are some thoughts and suggestions.
G- Question 3 from Stanford campus in Palo Alto: The question is from Fiona who is an student over here and she observes that you are experienced both with the startup model and the search fund model and she wonders whether you think this is a good time for search funds in China and how you would think of the search fund model in Beijing.
V: That’s funny; I think I am qualified to answer that question because we actually started as a search fund. When we first started the company, people know us as Youku, there was actually no Youku. Basically we started with a very small core team and a very small pool of money, and so in that way, is it very similar to the search fund model of The Valley, so basically in Chinese it’s called裸婚 or 裸創it’s like a silent company without a business plan, without an idea or an office. So we would meet at restaurants and banks and recruit people from banks. We would use restaurants as our meeting rooms to discuss before we started the company. When I left my last position as the president of Sohu I took a sabbatical in 2005, it was very important actually. Before you start a company I would always suggest that people should not leave a job or leave business school, and don’t take a break before you start a company because it is a very engaging and involved process as you can imagine, starting a company. Especially as a founder you are not only responsible for yourself, but also your team as well as your partners and investors, you want to make these decisions very sensibly. So the benefit of having at search fund is that you start small, you basically really think through for a short period of time what you are actually doing. We gave ourselves a year but we actually decided within 6 months. When I was thinking about starting a company there was actually three areas I was looking at back in 2005, they were, besides video, online education and online payment. Even before we started OneVerge, at the time, online payment, if you weren’t based on the large e-commerce platform, you are not going to be a leader in online payment and in 2005, doing online education was too early, which proved to be the case. So when we decided on online video we actually took about six months to decide what kind of product model. We had three different models at that point and that’s why search fund is very important. Instead of jumping into deciding what we wanted to do, we spent the time as a search fund before we started developing the product. Basically whether we wanted to go straight to live broadcasting or do a 『super girl』 show I was actually talking about, actually interacting, or building actual web-based services for television stations which in the US would kind of be the Bright Cove model, live-broadcasting would be kind of the U-Stream model, but we decided instead to do the on-demand which is kind of the YouTube / Netflix model which turned out to be the right one. The search fund gives you the benefit of having some startup fund, having a core team, and giving the opportunity for you to really sit back to reflect and think. Now that was back in 2005 and 2006 and I would say back then, 『 say before you do,』 but now I have a different perspective a decade later, now we are in the mobile multi-screen age, where you have to變想邊做, you have to think as you do. So if someone were to start a company now, especially in
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mobile internet, I would say it really depends on time window. If there is an opportunity that is starring you in the face, and is something that is really urgent, and you are starting to see companies starting in and around your ideas, don’t think, just do. So basically the time period of innovation has shortened because of the multi-screen. It’s very important in this kind of age to retain flexibility or learning by doing. So I would always suggest, and even going back to the first question, how to maintain organizations, to be vital and innovative, we are on the process of our company to breakup our company into smaller units and really telling our teams to really start running before and not to sit down and think too much which was my advice to my team, even a couple of years ago. I actually made a point, a year or two ago, and explained to the team, 『forget all the things I said during the PC internet age, we』ve entered the mobile internet age where the rules have completely changed, and these are the areas where the rules have completely changed. Search fund in 2015, if you think you are in an area where there is some leeway in terms of time, you can take the 3-6 months to think, but if you are in a highly competitive area, then forget the search fund phase and jump right into it. So we are in a different age now.
Question 4 from SCPKU in Beijing: Since everyone wants to start their company, that means resources are relatively rare and the opportunity cost is very high for example. It is very hard for me to get the right people, especially the people who can do IT, who can do UI, who can do design, who can do marketing, and the opportunity cost is very high for them. So I’m wondering, as you have a long career and experience in Sohu and in VC, do you suggest for young generations to get some more and more resources and experience in big companies and startup ten years later or just do it now?
V: The question is as experienced executives, the opportunity costs are high to start a company especially someone experience versus someone younger in their career whether they should stick around at an established company for a longer period of time or not. My answer is that there are successful examples for both. If you look at the first generation of tech companies in The Valley, they talk about Oracle, Larry Ellison said, 『if you graduated you’re a failure, that’s extreme basically you don’t even go to work, just get out of school and start a company. Now it all goes back to the idea of market window. If you have an opportunity with a market window that is already here and now and you are really passionate about it, then you should make the leap. So its really about the opportunity you are picking, whether it is further down the road or whether it is here and now. This is my third startup company, the first I actually started myself, I was involved with startup companies in the past. And I would say the experience I have garnered over the last couple of startups have helped us (Youku) make less mistakes. You will still make mistakes, you will probably make fewer mistakes than those that do not have the experience but I would say it is not necessary to be honest. If you are really, truly passionate about it and you have a really adaptive personality and you surround yourself with people that are complimentary to you and that you do listen; it’s very important for an entrepreneur to have very strong listening skills, then even if you are young in your career if the market opportunity is there and you are passionate about it, you should go do it. I remember a conversation I had with my dad a long time ago; I did all these crazy things which appeared to be big bets at the time. When I got out of San Francisco I was actually alone starting a company, and I had to write a big check, as I decided not to go back to the company I was working for, so I was in debt, so I had to ask the new company, which was the venture capital firm to lend money to me so I could get out of my previous job so I could join the new company so you take these big risks. My dad said, 』Well you know the opportunity costs when you are younger is actually much lower. As you grow over time your opportunity costs is only going to get higher.」
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G: We have time for one more question which we will take on this side.
Question 5 from Stanford campus in Palo Alto: The question is about monetization. The observation is, you look around at companies that appear to be thriving that are well known, you think of pinterest, you think of Spotify, lots of users, lots of activity, very little revenue. What do you think of monetization in this environment?
V: Well as you scale your company, monetization is clearly very, very important. I think it is important not to be stuck or fixated on just one. You shouldn’t stay in one place, as a entrepreneur you should have a business growth pattern and time. At any certain period in time you want to have a core business but you always want to have new businesses in the pipeline and when you look at the internet for example, you can either get revenue through consumers, through small or medium sized enterprises or through big advertisers. Youku / Tudou is very much in the process of diversifying our revenue to consumers and I think in the multiscreen age it is actually much easier. With the mobile screen, unlike the PC screen internet I basically have a proposition: all screens now are distribution channels and all content is actually stored. Now think about that for a minute. Everything you see on the screen going forward, are monetization opportunities. You can buy whatever you see, the mobile screen is a device that is an inherent payment gateway, whether here in China or in the US. In the PC age, actually TVs are worse, they are completely linear it’s not interactive, but you go to the PC, it’s somewhat interactive, but in China where there are very little credit cards, payments are much harder and there are barriers to monetization as well. But as you move to the mobile internet and the multi-screen internet, the touch points are the different parts of the day where you are reaching the consumer, which besides sleeping; you will always going to be with your phone. Whether it’s your mobile phone or your tablet, or interactive TV or PC, there are many, many more opportunities you are reaching your end consumer, there’s a payment gateway and all the things you are delivering to them whether you’re a video platform like us or a social platform or even an app or tool, there are many ways to create monetization opportunities and its important as a founding team to think outside the box. And to think to use these tools and with access to consumers, and access to payment how do you think of new monetization models. Now we enter in the age of what I call O plus O, people talk about O2O but its online plus offline so as an online platform you are always thinking about how to extend your business model to the offline world, and if you are an offline company, you should think about how online platforms can help you monetize in the offline world. So now you have a fundamental mix of tools to monetize and this is something that really emerged in the last two years. We are moving very aggressively to diversify our revenue streams and that’s why right now our revenue has been growing for the last four five quarters, every quarter, and that’s because we are actively thinking of business models, actively thinking of ways to monetize and ways through different screens and different opportunities here with us through the multi screens and the online and offline world.
G: We saw this play out before in the dotcom boom where it was an extreme version, where it was get eyeballs at any cost and don’t worry about monetization later and life is certainly easier if you can monetize along the way right, because the it gives you the long way to figure out new ways to monetize which is what you are talking about, you have the luxury and the position because you are already monetizing, but I think for some of these companies where they don’t have a monetization model and it becomes harder and harder over time. I think Pinterest is an example of a company that could have a great monetization model because to your point, everything you see there can potentially be an ad or click through to a purchase and so many
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groups so it has monetization written all over it in principle, but the longer you wait to turn that switch on, the harder you make life for yourself because your funding will only survive for so long.
V: Actually one of the lessons I learned from a monetization standpoint, is obviously you don’t want to start thinking about it right away but don’t think about it too late. Because where it is consumers, or other ways of monetization you actually need to get your other side (consumers) us to it, so there is actually an evolution to that. So there is a danger to monetizing too late.
G: It’s very easy to get use to free. Free feels very good. But free will not lead to a good bottom line in the long run.
V: At least it should be 『free-mium』 (free-premium).
G: So Victor, you are so generous with your time, and we know you had a long trip into today, so we are doubly appreciated. I think it is an incredibly privilege for us, both on this side and your side to have the opportunity to spend this time with you. You are a great alum of the GSB and we are very proud o what you have accomplished and thank you for being with us today,
V: Thank you guys.
End
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史丹福大學商學院
史丹福大學商學院（GSB）已經在管理學教育領域確立了全球領先的地位，教職隊伍中擁有三位諾貝爾獎得主。史丹福大學商學院的教學以旨在培養有見地、有原則的全球領導者而聞名。自1925年創建以來，史丹福大學商學院不斷創新課程，招賢納士，建立了一支緊跟前沿研究的師資隊伍。多年來，在組織生態學，組織行為學，政治經濟學，人事經濟學和經濟發展學等學術領域的發展進程中，其教學人員已成為業界翹楚。
史丹福大學商學院公共管理項目創建於1971年，成為了公共行業和政府之間的橋梁。此後，全球管理項目於20世紀90年代初建立。早期的創業課程在20世紀80年代推出，隨後於1996年創建了創業研究中心。20世紀90年代，隨著網際網路經濟矽谷周邊地區創造出前所未有的熱潮，史丹福大學商學院創建了電子商業與商務中心，宣布該中心將存續五年，此後該課題將融入課程體系中的方方面面。今天，GSB擁有創業研究中心，社會創新中心、全球商業與經濟中心以及領導力發展與研究中心。
史丹福大學商學院鼓勵個人設想各種可能性，並通過有原則的領導和創造性地解決問題實現這些設想。學院因管理和領導力項目而享譽全球，在使人們有所轉變並使其改變生活，改變組織，改變世界方面積累了經驗。MBA課程的錄取率為6％，在商學院招生中稱得上精挑細選。
通過參與項目，不僅可以結識史丹福大學七大院系的世界級師資力量和最優質量的學生，還可接觸到各類校友、業內專業人士、全球高管以及更為廣泛的國際社會。高度協作的文化，配以優選學生的戰略性低入取率，史丹福大學借鑑矽谷的能量創造了一方嚴謹的學術環境和令人信服的學習經驗。學院各個項目中的課程包括批判性思維研討會和工作坊，設計思維方法來鼓勵提出創造性的解決方案並在小團體中培養領導力。史丹福大學的MBA項目既囊括了必需的全球經驗同時也提供量身定製的課程，旨在最大限度地發揮每個人的背景和經驗。
由於以下幾項得天獨厚的原因，史丹福大學商學院是學習和踐行企業家精神的理想之所：
● 可以使用和訪問史丹福大學世界一流的教育資源和學院；
● 位於矽谷的中心位置；
● 傑出且聯繫緊密的校友網，教師網，學生網。
自2009 年以來，加思·塞隆納（Garth Saloner）擔任史丹福大學商學院第九任院長。他曾先後擔任主管學術事務的高級副院長，研究和課程開發主任以及企業家研究中心主任。塞隆納主任的職業生涯以其執著的實幹精神而聞名，經常教育學生要以全局性經濟視角去思考和行動。他的學術興趣集中在組織經濟學，反壟斷經濟學，戰略管理，競爭策略和企業家精神這幾方面。