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Tencent: The Extraordinary Story of a Chinese Internet Enterprise
This is the story of an Internet giant that most of the world has yet to find out about. Started in 1998 in the Chinese southern city of Shenzhen, Tencent is today one of the world’s largest and most successful technology companies. Founded by Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) and four friends, Tencent first launched its QQ instant messaging tool that became a huge hit in China. Under Ma’s leadership, Tencent has since moved into web portals, social networks (WeChat), multi-player games and e-commerce, making the company today an Internet powerhouse and China’s number one brand. Ma himself was hailed by Time magazine in 2014 as one of the world’s most influential people. Through unique and unprecedented access to the company and other key players, this book examines the incredible rise of Tencent, and gets inside the company’s truly innovative thinking and approach to technology and business.
- GenresBiography
336 pages, Hardcover
Published June 11, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 27, 2025
The fifth book about Chinese businesses.
Ma Huateng had a customer-centric mindset early on when writing software or developing his applications. He always asked himself how to make the software, applications, and products he created have broad appeal and bring real value to Chinese users. (QQ, WeChat, and WeChatPay were born).
Wow! This is a different mindset compared to most people who studied programming or computer science in his time. Most of them only focused on showing off their advanced knowledge to compete with each other.
Throughout the success of social networks QQ, WeChat, WeChatPay, Tencent Gaming, Tencent Entertainment,... he always leaned towards that way of thinking. A mindset focused on customers and the Chinese consumer experience helped him defeat the global giant Microsoft in his own market, catch up with his much larger competitor Alipay, and dominate the PC and mobile game industries.
In addition, he also carefully learned from his mistakes. Legal disputes or actions to suppress smaller and weaker competitors when entering the cybersecurity market caused 360 Security Guard to sue him for copying and monopolization. Although he won legally, he made a serious public relations mistake, causing the company to immediately fall into a developmental crisis. However, he quickly learned from this, transforming Tencent from a closed fortress into an open source platform where he and his executives held 10 public discussions, inviting experts and users from various industries to listen to their opinions.
Tencent then changed 180 degrees, forgetting temporary wins and losses, focus on developing the internal strengths of the entire market, and further, reach out globally, Tencent - from a strong competitor in all fields to a major player in the investment industry, strongly investing in key areas and publicly investing and supporting based on the entire ecosystem. Unicorns like Didi, Meituan, Mobike, Riot,... 2017 was the IPO time for major investments, opening up an era of strong development, penetrating every corner of society.
Tencent Gaming is the company's trump card when going global. They chose to copy, and then leverage their superior ecosystem to go further. Indeed, I have used many games published by Tencent but didn't know it.The more pieces of information I put together, the wider the picture becomes, and the greater my "ignorance" feels.
Compared to the hot period of software and technology development or training in this field, Vietnam is indeed far behind China of more than 10 years ago.
When will a Ma Huateng who studied Computer Science at Shenzhen University more than 25 years ago appear in Vietnam? The fierce competition every minute in the vast market makes Chinese entrepreneurs truly strong. I must add Tencent to my watchlist.
Ma Huateng had a customer-centric mindset early on when writing software or developing his applications. He always asked himself how to make the software, applications, and products he created have broad appeal and bring real value to Chinese users. (QQ, WeChat, and WeChatPay were born).
Wow! This is a different mindset compared to most people who studied programming or computer science in his time. Most of them only focused on showing off their advanced knowledge to compete with each other.
Throughout the success of social networks QQ, WeChat, WeChatPay, Tencent Gaming, Tencent Entertainment,... he always leaned towards that way of thinking. A mindset focused on customers and the Chinese consumer experience helped him defeat the global giant Microsoft in his own market, catch up with his much larger competitor Alipay, and dominate the PC and mobile game industries.
In addition, he also carefully learned from his mistakes. Legal disputes or actions to suppress smaller and weaker competitors when entering the cybersecurity market caused 360 Security Guard to sue him for copying and monopolization. Although he won legally, he made a serious public relations mistake, causing the company to immediately fall into a developmental crisis. However, he quickly learned from this, transforming Tencent from a closed fortress into an open source platform where he and his executives held 10 public discussions, inviting experts and users from various industries to listen to their opinions.
Tencent then changed 180 degrees, forgetting temporary wins and losses, focus on developing the internal strengths of the entire market, and further, reach out globally, Tencent - from a strong competitor in all fields to a major player in the investment industry, strongly investing in key areas and publicly investing and supporting based on the entire ecosystem. Unicorns like Didi, Meituan, Mobike, Riot,... 2017 was the IPO time for major investments, opening up an era of strong development, penetrating every corner of society.
Tencent Gaming is the company's trump card when going global. They chose to copy, and then leverage their superior ecosystem to go further. Indeed, I have used many games published by Tencent but didn't know it.The more pieces of information I put together, the wider the picture becomes, and the greater my "ignorance" feels.
Compared to the hot period of software and technology development or training in this field, Vietnam is indeed far behind China of more than 10 years ago.
When will a Ma Huateng who studied Computer Science at Shenzhen University more than 25 years ago appear in Vietnam? The fierce competition every minute in the vast market makes Chinese entrepreneurs truly strong. I must add Tencent to my watchlist.
February 9, 2022
#The Legend of Tencent.
#Humbleness is the reason why I love Tencent but hate Alibaba(lupine company culture). Sometimes I really hate orators, never turn words into actions, although I know they are vital in certain occasions.
#I like the company but not the book.
The most ridiculous thing I have even done LOL:
I left a company job allowing me to access, extract, analyse all dating, chatting, interacting data and do experiments on 1.2 billion users, implement some kind of 'random sampling' and... enter a program doing experiment on University students and generalise it to population.
#Humbleness is the reason why I love Tencent but hate Alibaba(lupine company culture). Sometimes I really hate orators, never turn words into actions, although I know they are vital in certain occasions.
#I like the company but not the book.
The most ridiculous thing I have even done LOL:
I left a company job allowing me to access, extract, analyse all dating, chatting, interacting data and do experiments on 1.2 billion users, implement some kind of 'random sampling' and... enter a program doing experiment on University students and generalise it to population.
August 12, 2022
Having tried to find good resources for understanding Tencent for a while.
This one is the best so far.
This one is the best so far.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews