What are the famous enterprises that failed?

Three months ago? 1 business original

Abstract: Tang Yi was born great, but died disgraced, which can only be said to be plain and even tragic. Other dead websites, more or less, will have some assets acquired by other companies, and may have the opportunity to cultivate themselves and return to the rivers and lakes, but Tang Yi has been reduced to the end of auctioning domain names without renewing fees.

1, real kung fu

Case characteristics: entrepreneurs are in civil strife-they can suffer but can't share happiness.

The lesson of entrepreneurs: there are no eternal brothers, only eternal interests.

Lessons from VC: Whether the ownership structure is reasonable is an important basis for judging the quality of a project.

McDonald's and KFC are very popular in China, and food chain stores in China have been outraged, and people are constantly jumping out to challenge foreign fast food. From "Red Sorghum" more than ten years ago to "Real Kung Fu" which is very popular now, "Red Sorghum" has long since disappeared, and "Real Kung Fu" seems to be really kung fu, and there are more and more chain stores.

Just like the name of the company, in August 2009, a real Kung Fu performance broke out at the Guangzhou headquarters of Real Kung Fu, which caused quite a stir in the investment and entrepreneurship circles: * * appointed his brother Pan Guoliang as the "deputy general manager" with Pan Yuhai, the founder and major shareholder of the company, and sent him to work at the headquarters, but after being rejected by Cai Dabiao, the actual controller and chairman of Real Kung Fu, it triggered a fierce dispute.

To clarify the contradiction of "real kung fu" management right, we have to start from the beginning. 1994, Cai Dabiao and his friend Pan Yuhai opened a "168 Steaming Workshop" in Chang 'an Town, Dongguan. Later, it gradually became a national chain. In 1997, it was renamed "Double Seeds" and finally "Real Kung Fu". The ownership structure of Kungfu is very simple, with Pan Yuhai accounting for 50%, Cai Dabiao and his wife Pan Minfeng (Pan Yuhai's sister) each accounting for 25%. In September 2006, Cai Dabiao and Pan Minfeng agreed to divorce, and Pan Minfeng gave up his 25% equity in exchange for custody of the children, so the equity between Pan Yuhai and Cai Dabiao became 50:50.

In 2007, Real Kung Fu introduced two venture capital funds, Zhongshan Linkage, a domestic venture capital fund, and Today Capital, a foreign venture capital fund, with a capital injection of 300 million yuan, each accounting for 3% of the shares. In this way, after financing, the ownership structure of "Real Kung Fu" becomes: Cai and Pan each account for 47%, VC each accounts for 3%, and the board of directors has 5 seats, consisting of Cai Dabiao, Pan Yuhai, Pan Minfeng and VC, each with/kloc-0 directors.

After the introduction of venture capital, it is urgent to build a modern corporate management and governance structure if the company wants to go public. However, Cai Dabiao's efforts to establish a modern enterprise system touched the interests of another shareholder, Pan Yuhai. Under the auspices of Cai Dabiao, "Real Kung Fu" carried out the internal management reform of "de-familyization", replaced some of the original family managers with professional managers, and a large number of old employees left their jobs one after another. The company also introduced about 20 middle and senior managers from McDonald's, KFC and other catering enterprises, occupying most important positions in the company, basically authorized by General Manager Cai, and Pan Yuhai was obviously put on hold.

The contradictions between the two sides have intensified. 20 1 1 On April 22nd, 2008, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau confirmed that Cai Dabiao and others were suspected of misappropriating funds, occupying their posts and other criminal acts, and approved the arrest of four suspects, including Cai Dabiao.

Cai Pan's hard work made today's capital unable to bear the pressure of shareholders and chose to quit. 2012165438+1October 30th, today's capital transferred all the 3% shares of Kungfu held by Today's Capital Investment (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Today's Capital Hong Kong Company) to Runhai Co., Ltd., so far, the shares of Kungfu have returned to the situation of Cai Pan's split.

Three years later, the case of Cai Dabiao, former president of Kungfu, was settled. According to the judgment of the second instance of Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, Cai Dabiao was sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of 14 years for the crime of duty embezzlement and misappropriation of funds. With the final judgment of Cai Dabiao's criminal case coming into effect, the 4 1.74% equity held by Cai Dabiao has entered the judicial auction procedure, and it is rumored that the equity valuation is as high as 2.5 billion yuan.

2. Tang Yi

Case Features: The case with the largest financing amount in the domestic Internet industry.

The lesson of entrepreneurs: No matter how much money you have, you should save money, otherwise winter will be difficult.

Lessons from VC: Victims in the Age of "Turtle" and "Concept"

In the internet industry, the life and death of a company is hard to attract people's attention, but this company is undoubtedly an exception: it used to be an upstart, born with high profile; It accomplished nothing, even the domain name was auctioned off. This company is Tang Yi.

1999 On the eve of the bursting of the first Internet bubble, Tang, who just got an MBA from Harvard Business School, founded the company, and his "dream team" consisted of five Harvard MBAs and two University of Chicago MBAs. With attractive business plans, Tang Yi obtained two financing of about 50 million US dollars from two famous American venture capital companies, DFJ and Seve Rosen. Today, it is also one of the largest private financing cases in the Internet field in China.

Tang Yi claims that it is not only an Internet company, but also a "lifestyle group". It is committed to creating and introducing international advanced lifestyle products through Internet, retail and wireless services, and fully serving the so-called "Huang Ming Generation E" aged 18-35, which defines China's economic and cultural future.

Tang Yi. Com was born overnight, and quickly attacked cities and plundered land in universities, and quickly "burned money" across the country: Tang Yi not only established branches in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but also recruited soldiers and launched large-scale publicity activities in various places. At the end of 2000, the cold winter of the internet suddenly came, and more than half of the 1 billion Tang money was burned, still unable to make a profit. 2006 54 38+0-2003, Tang Yi continuously cooperated with professional companies to launch handbags, backpacks, condoms, underwear and other daily necessities, which were sold online and offline at the same time, and also quietly tried mobile phone wireless service. In the following two years, Tang Yi, who lived on SP business, only made an impression on users by becoming the official news release website of CET (CET-4 and CET-6).

In September 2005, in order to cooperate with the popular Web2.0 at that time, Tang Yi decided to completely overthrow the previous development model and launched a personal virtual community website named hompy.cn. Subsequently, except for a few pages such as E-mail, all other pages and traffic were transferred to the new website hompy.cn by E-mail, and the once popular E-mail website was transformed into a new web2.0 website. In 2006, it sold its best SP assets (authorized resources) to Qihoo Company at a low price of $654.38 million+00,000, trying to make a final struggle against hompy.cn. However, when hompy.cn closed in 2008, Tang Yi Company was just an empty shell. The former "dream team" also chose to leave after the company burned all the money.

In May, 2009, the domain name of etang.com was auctioned in public without renewal fee, and the bidder finally won it at the price of 35,000 US dollars.

Tang Yi was born great, but died disgraced, which can only be said to be plain and even tragic. Other dead websites, more or less, will have some assets acquired by other companies, and may have the opportunity to cultivate themselves and return to the rivers and lakes, but Tang Yi has been reduced to the end of auctioning domain names without renewing fees. Tang Yi has made no contribution to the Internet in China, but his only contribution may be that he provided an extremely failed investment case. Is a noble born with a golden spoon, tens of millions of dollars in funds only for a sigh.

3. Shangyang Technology

Case characteristics: the case with the largest amount of first-round financing and the largest number of joint investors in China.

The lesson of entrepreneurs: it is not terrible to be defeated by the market, but it is terrible to be disintegrated by yourself.

The lesson of VC: The executives of big companies are not necessarily the leaders of start-ups.

Shangyang Technology was established in early 2003, and has been shrouded in dazzling aura since its birth.

First of all, the founder and CEO of the company is Zheng Changxing, the former chief operating officer of Netcom. Among the management team are Mao, former vice president of Huawei and general manager of network products department, all of whom are rich children;

Secondly, at the beginning of its establishment, the company obtained initial financing of US$ 58 million from many well-known venture capital institutions, including US$ 0.8 million from Walden, US$ 0.0 million from DCM, US$ 7 million from IntelCapital and US$ 5 million from NEA. Other investors include Sycamore Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Jerusalem VenturePartners, Sumitomo Group's investment company Presidio Venture Partners, STAR Venture, Hitachi, Itochu, Shanghai United Investment Co., Ltd., etc.

Shangyang Technology was selected as one of the top private enterprises in Asia 100 by the famous American magazine RedHerring. Its goal is to become a leading NGSP provider in the field of communication and open a new era of "free communication without borders". The main business is fixed-line value-added solutions, broadband wireless solutions and enterprise communication solutions. At that time, telecom operators were also preparing to do a big job in value-added services-China Telecom's "Internet Star", China Mobile's "Monternet" and China Unicom's "Unicom Unlimited", which provided a huge development space for Shangyang Technology. Although Shang Yang has several good core businesses, such as UU language letter, he failed to seize the market opportunity. More than two years later, due to poor management since the establishment of the company, Zheng Changxing was forced to "take classes", Shangyang Technology laid off a large number of employees, and its business began to transform from a former equipment solution provider to an Internet value-added service provider. In the market, it not only competes with multinational giants such as Microsoft MSN, Skype and Googletalk, but also faces challenges from instant messaging tools of domestic enterprises such as QQ, Sina, Netease and 263. In the end, the business of Shangyang Technology did not "rise" like its name, and finally its dream was broken and it withdrew from the market in 2006.

Shangyang technology has fallen to this point. According to informed sources, there are management problems. First, the company focuses on research and development, ignoring the market, and the market can't catch it. In terms of research and development, the first financing is used up, and there are not many decent products; Second, the company's internal gangs are serious and the business department is fragmented. At the same time, the "composition" from top management to employees is extremely complicated, including "turtles" and "terrapin", some from state-owned enterprises, some from foreign companies, some from start-up companies, some from Fortune 500 companies, and even the old employees brought by Huawei's management team have been staying in Shenzhen.

Chen of Walden International has rich investment experience in the investment field, and Zheng Changxing and others are star-rated and practical management teams. The large capital injection of more than a dozen well-known investment companies is enough to illustrate the space and attraction of China's communication market. Together, these positive factors can better reflect the pity of this case.

4. Blog network

Case Features: The Flag of China Internet web2.0

The lesson of entrepreneurs: don't underestimate the late-comer advantage of giants.

The lesson of VC: Choose the right runway and choose the right athletes.

Fang Xingdong's name is absolutely resounding in the internet circle of China, and he is known as the "internet standard bearer" and "the father of China blog", which has made indelible contributions to the development and popularization of Internet Web2.0 in China.

In 2002, Fang Xingdong founded the predecessor of Blog Network (Blog China). In the following three years, the website maintained a monthly growth rate of more than 30%, and its global ranking soared to more than 60. In 2004, it was awarded an angel investment of $500,000 by Shanda founder Chen Tianqiao and Softbank Safran partner Yang Dong. In September 2005, Fang Xingdong raised $654.38+0 billion from the famous venture capital companies Granite Global Ventures, Mobius VentureCapital, SoftBank Safran and Bessemer Venture Partner, which triggered the investment boom of China Web2.0. After that, If VC active in China doesn't know the terms such as Blog, Podcast, RSS, P2P, etc., it is a sign of backwardness not to watch blogs, podcasts, videos and make friends.

Subsequently, Blog China changed its name to Blog. com, and declared that it would be a blog portal, claiming to be the largest Chinese blog site in the world, and also shouted the goal of "surpassing Sina in one year and listing in two years". So in just half a year, the number of employees in Blog.com has expanded from more than 40 to more than 400. It is said that 60%-70% of the funds are spent on employees' salaries. At the same time, it also spent a lot of money on video, games, shopping, social networking and many other projects, and tens of millions of dollars were quickly squandered. Blog network started a violent personnel turmoil that lasted for three years. Almost all the top executives have been lost, and Fang Xingdong's own CEO position has been replaced by the decision-making team. By the end of 2006, the number of employees in Blog.com had been reduced to more than 40 at the beginning of financing.

Blog network is not only facing the break of capital chain, unsustainable operation, but also shrinking business and a large number of users losing. In order to get rid of the predicament, in 2008, blogs plans to split its blog China and Blog into two independent companies, and then turn to high-end media and SNS respectively. However, in June+10 of the same year, Blog.com was caught in a crisis of layoffs and bankruptcy, and announced that all employees could leave their jobs freely or stay unpaid, which was considered to be the same as the direct announcement of dissolution by Blog.

In fact, as early as shortly after Blog.com's financing, Sina launched a high-profile blog beta. By the end of 2006, the blog power of portal websites represented by Sina had completely surpassed that of emerging vertical websites such as Blog.com ... Then, blog became the standard configuration of almost any portal website, and the portal website easily copied the road that Fang Xingdong had painstakingly explored and opened up. Later, Facebook, campus, 5 1 and other SNS social networking sites began to make a splash, which had an impact on blogs that could not be underestimated. The attention of netizens and the capital market have also begun to neglect blogs.

In addition, both Fang Xingdong himself and people who are familiar with him agree that he is a scholar or a scholar, not a business leader who is familiar with management and strategy, and has no ability to control a team with hundreds of people and tens of millions of dollars. As a product of the Web2.0 era, blog is undoubtedly a great leap forward in the development of the Internet, leading the Internet into the self-media era, and blog itself is a success. But for the blog network, it makes investors' dollars go up in smoke and leads the pioneers of Web2.0 to become abandoned children, which is undoubtedly a failure.

5、PPG

Case Features: The hottest case of venture capital in China.

The lesson of entrepreneurs: one of the purposes of starting a business is to make money, but not just to make money.

Lessons from VC: In due diligence, the investigation of human nature is the most difficult and important.

PPG was established in June 2005 and sells shirts through the Internet. The concept of belittling assets and reducing circulation links, coupled with the indiscriminate bombing of TV and outdoor advertisements, quickly established PPG as a market leader, and the world was full of "Yes! PPG "slogan and Daniel Wu confident smile.

In the third quarter of 2006, PPG received the first round of joint investment of US$ 6 million from TDF and JAFCO Asia. In April 2007, PPG received the second round investment of10 million USD. In addition to the first round of additional investment from TDF and Gifford Asia, it also introduced KPCB (Kleiner Perkins), the largest venture capital fund in the United States, which is as famous as Sequoia. In 2006 -2007, e-commerce was very popular in VC investment circle, and PPG was one of the best and an absolute star project. Countless peers envy these venture capitalists who are fortunate enough to invest in them.

At the end of 2007, PPG began to be exposed by the media, such as arrears of payment and quality complaints. However, PPG is still sought after by several venture capital institutions. Sanshan Investment Company repelled other competitors and invested more than 30 million dollars in PPG. Sanshan Investment claimed to choose PPG because it was optimistic about its market, model and team, and revealed that PPG had planned to be listed on NASDAQ in early 2009.

In 2008, dozens of imitators such as VANCL and You Shan. Com and CARRIS appear in the PPG model. PPG not only lost its position as an industry leader, but also lost its lawsuit and executives. Some even say that its founder, Li Liang, absconded with the money. Li Liang said that he went to the United States in mid-2008 to prepare for the opening of American companies, and has never appeared in China since then.

At the end of 2009, the business myth once known as "Dell of clothing industry" and "model of light company" was finally broken like a soap bubble. PPG headquarters has long been abandoned and in a mess. The court enforcement ruling posted on the wall shows that PPG has closed down, and many consumers can't get the goods after paying, so they angrily call PPG a "cheat brother". As a result, the only thing that can be called "assets" of PPG-the registered trademark "PPG", was ignored in the auction. PPG has accumulated about $50 million in investment from the above-mentioned well-known venture capitalists, and completely closing the door also means that $50 million will be wiped out. Sohu IT once selected the website with the worst investment in recent five years at the 2009 Internet Conference, and PPG ranked first, which became the biggest investment joke in China Internet in recent years.

Afterwards, someone revealed the real reason for the failure of PPG: the founder Li Liang went public as an e-commerce, but the supporting logistics and warehousing were all his own company, or indirectly related to him. He keeps making money for these companies, and investors' money enters his own name in disguise as expenses. All the money has been transferred, and so has Li Liang. From the beginning, he made money in a premeditated and prepared way. He is smart, diligent and has enough execution, but his starting point is not pure.

Vanke Eslite, one of the imitators of PPG model, has developed very well. It can be said that the vitality of PPG mode is beyond doubt. The business model is a part of a company's success, and more importantly, it is the trader who realizes this business model. The failure of PPG is the fault of people, not the fault of business model.

6. Interactive media in Asia

Case Features: The first China mainland enterprise listed in Japan was ordered to withdraw from the market.

The lesson of entrepreneurs: shareholders of overseas listed companies are not as easy to bully as domestic shareholders and VC.

The lesson of VC: Since IPO is the best exit channel, it should be cashed out as soon as it goes public.

As the first mainland enterprise in China to be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Asia Interactive Media Co., Ltd. was delisted on September 20th, 2008, which produced greater influence and popularity than when it was listed 1 years ago, and constituted the worst influence of China companies in overseas capital markets in recent years. A heavyweight by-product of this incident is that Zhang Fan, the co-founder of Sequoia Capital China, who led the investment in it, suddenly left his job and even left the VC industry.

In 2002, Cui Jianping founded Beijing Kuanshi Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Kuanshi Network") and began to engage in TVPG business. In July 2004, Asia Interactive Media, the overseas holding company of Broadvision Network, was established in British Bermuda. Asia Interactive Media claims to be "the leader in providing cross-media platform TV program guide solutions in China", and its sales revenue is mainly TV advertising agency business, supplemented by TVPG (TV program guide) and EPG (electronic program guide).

In June 2005, the company was invested by Sequoia Capital. Following Sequoia Capital, Asia Interactive Media has successively absorbed Singapore Nomura Securities Company (holding 38.89% of the issued shares of the company), Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Company (1 1.88%), Dentsu, the largest advertising company in Japan (2.70%), NTT Mobile Communications Company, JSAT, Itochu Corporation and so on. Before listing, Sequoia Capital accounted for 1 1.56% of the company's total share capital, and Zhang Fan was also a director of Asia Interactive Media. In fact, Asia Media is the first domestic investment project led by Sequoia Capital China.