Heroes entertain each other Wu Dan: Have absolute love and belief in games, leverage capital only to serve the main business

We really love games, so the capital we can leverage will ultimately serve our main business. In addition to games, our main business is e-sports. We have absolute love and belief for the games on these two tracks. We will only use capital to make these things more solid and better. This is our only core logic.

Original title: 20 billion yuan market value, star investor halo adds hero entertainment, why?

Youth and entrepreneurship are the most popular languages of this era, and Heroes Mutual Entertainment, a company listed on the New Third Board, has two young entrepreneurs: Ying Shuling, the richest man in Shanghai born in the 1980s, and Wu Dan, the 28-year-old president. These two young people joined forces to enter the field of e-sports, attracting star investors such as Wang Zhongjun, Wang Zhonglei, Shen Nanpeng, Bao Fan and Xu Xiaoping. The company's market value on the New Third Board exceeds 20 billion yuan. What is it?

In early June, the State Sports General Administration issued the "Notice on Holding the 2016 National E-sports Open (NESO)". The national level continues to make efforts to support the e-sports industry. Ying Shuling and Wu Dan are pioneers in this industry. On June 16, Heroes Entertainment announced the establishment of Heroes Sports, which was also interpreted by the outside world as another move to develop its efforts in the field of e-sports.

Recently, the reporter (hereinafter referred to as the reporter) talked to these two young entrepreneurs and through their stories, got a glimpse of how the e-sports industry gave birth to a "unicorn".

Ying Shuling: Now is the best era for young people to start a business.

Reporter: President Ying, you dropped out of college to start a business, started a business from an investment bank to a game, served as the president of China's mobile games, and were labeled as the first person in the distribution platform and the father of mobile e-sports. How do you view the current entrepreneurial trend based on your own experience?

Ying Shuling: I think doing what you like is more important than money. Now is the best entrepreneurial era for young people in history. Work hard and you will surely realize your ideals and bring you a good life.

Reporter: From the establishment of the company to landing on the New Third Board, to Huayi's investment and shareholding, Hero Mutual Entertainment has been valued at tens of billions in just one year, becoming a leading e-sports company in China. How did you enter this industry at that time? How did star investors such as Wang Zhongjun and Xu Xiaoping gather on the platform of Heroes?

Ying Shuling: The first is fate, the second is my product layout, and the third is my strategic goals, all of which make me have to enter this industry. In fact, everyone has always been very interested in why a young man can attract so many star investors.

Star investors told me that they voted for me because they were optimistic about my future development and were value investments. The biggest benefit brought to me by winning over these top investors in China is not that it has brought me money, but that these big shots have pointed out the direction for me when encountering industry development opportunities. This also gives me sufficient reasons to believe that there is huge room for development in the future mobile e-sports industry.

Reporter: The e-sports industry has just begun. What role does hero entertainment play in the e-sports industry? Judging from the financial situation of Heroes Mutual Entertainment, how can we leverage the capital market in the future?

Ying Shuling: Heroes Mutual Entertainment hopes to play a role in promoting the development of the entire e-sports industry. We love this industry and we hope that this industry can develop well. Hero Mutual Entertainment currently has a good financial situation and abundant cash flow. The New Third Board is a starting point and a good platform. I think we should do our business well first and use better performance to give back to the investors who support us and trust us.

Wu Dan: E-sports has changed my destiny and life trajectory

Reporter: From the most successful game investor to entrepreneur, what do you think is the biggest difference between these two identities?

Wu Dan: I am not exactly a game investor. I just graduated and joined a game startup directly. That experience changed all my destiny and life trajectory.

The threshold for doing business in this era is high. At the University of Toronto in Canada, I studied finance based on my parents 'expectations. After graduation, although everyone around me at that time hoped that I could enter an investment bank or consulting company and stay abroad to get a green card. But my parents supported me in doing what I liked, so I returned to China and worked as a game planner at Five Minutes, the research and development company of "Happy Farm", mainly responsible for game data analysis. After staying for 6 months, I suddenly realized that the company was not far away. Because I studied finance and had some sense of capital. At that time, this company was bound to the channels Renren.com and Kaixin.com. Someone came to them to talk about investment, but they didn't want it because they thought the farm was doing a good job. As a result, there were competing products, and their share fell sharply.

Later, at Deloitte, a brief four-month experience became a stepping stone to the real deal. By chance, I met Fang Aizhi, the general manager of Zhenge Fund, which had just been established 20 days ago. I said that as angel investors, you should invest in mobile games, and it will definitely explode. Because social networking sites had a particularly large number of users, I realized that user number was the crucial factor in determining a game. At that time, Apple's mobile phone was already in its third generation, which also meant that the mobile game market would surely succeed. They said they didn't understand, so I introduced a very strong team to them. I really asked Sequoia's convincing game investor Cao Yi to see the project. In the end, he thought the team was worth investing and invested. At that moment, I felt that this might be my opportunity. But these experiences of mine actually pave the way for the present. I have had the dream of starting a business for a long time.

Reporter: How did you get dragged into this? What ultimately made you decide to choose Ying Shuling as a partner?

Wu Dan: In the end, there are actually two judgments. The first is the inevitable result of the development of the technology industry. Any company will fight like a fund. A very powerful company can make its capital play better. It can use various levers to convert more money, allow the invested companies to enter the system, and can get through with the business level, and the capital level can be enlarged more times, etc.

Tencent and Alibaba and other Internet companies have opened a huge gap. The essential reason is that Tencent and Alibaba were both strong capital attributes in that era, and they had the ability to absorb the strongest external things, so they built an ecosystem. The ability to build an ecosystem far exceeds that of other companies.

The second judgment came from having a few conversations with Lao Ying and feeling that this kind of opportunity was difficult to come by. For example, if I want to start a business, I must choose a partner. Strong trust and strong relationship like Lao Ying cannot be replicated.

Reporter: After becoming the president, you will be responsible for product investment and introduction. From the perspective of investors and entrepreneurs, how did you choose projects in the past? How should Hero Mutual Entertainment invest in products in the future?

Wu Dan: Compared with the game investors who started with me during the same era, I am the only one who has ever been in a game company. For gamers of the same era, I may have a stronger sense of business and capital.

In Zhenzhen for three years, I have been investing with the judgment of market sense. For example, when I voted for "People's Shootout", four years ago, in that era, there was still a market where simple casual games and card games were the mainstream."People's Shootout" was particularly complex to operate, and its implementation simultaneously consumed traffic. Especially high. I had a very basic judgment at that time. This is a pure blue ocean. As long as it can be done, everyone will come and play. Because many VCs are investing in traffic companies, future traffic is by no means a limit. Later,"National Shootout" achieved great success. After that, Hero Mutual Entertainment investment will also focus on the main business of "mobile e-sports".

Reporter: The traditional mobile game market is already an era of giant rule. Tencent and Netease account for almost 90% of the market. Last year, too many game companies listed on the New Third Board, but the overall performance is not very good. What do you think of the current market status? How can heroes interact with each other to leverage the new three boards?

Wu Dan: We are looking for blue seas in the Red Sea, or refining a more refined road in the Red Sea. Any industry with full competition will die. For our industry, full competition is okay. These companies ultimately fail because they have no gross profit and no financing ability, and fail because their cash flow is cut off.

However, we have financing capabilities. We are hanging on the New Third Board to ensure that our gross profit continues to decrease and we can develop new ways to maintain a long-term ability to make money.

Nowadays, everyone is emphasizing a word called play capital, and many people also define each other as play capital. But we are not actually a group of people who play with capital, because we fully understand capital and we take capital very seriously. We really love games, so the capital we can leverage will ultimately serve our main business. In addition to games, our main business is e-sports. We have absolute love and belief for the games on these two tracks. We will only use capital to make these things more solid and better. This is our only core logic.

Editor: Nancy