By 2005, Penguin had already begun to make its mark, especially in the online instant messaging industry, where it held the vast majority of the domestic market share.
Yet many people still believed the company's future was worrying and that it could never compare to internet giants that had already grown powerful, such as Sina, Alibaba, and Baidu.
Because instant messaging software companies like Penguin faced a very serious problem that had yet to be solved.
How to monetize traffic!
Penguin's "predecessor," ICQ, had been unable to solve that problem, so it could only "sell itself" to another company.
Although the price had been quite high, reaching two or three hundred million US dollars, that also suggested the ceiling for the online instant messaging industry was only that high...
No matter how one looked at it, Penguin was inferior to ICQ.
Leaving aside who had launched first and who had copied whom, ICQ had swept the world in terms of popularity!
Penguin, meanwhile, could only remain "cooped up" within China...
So many people were not optimistic about Penguin's prospects.
Only Wang Ye had firmly believed in the company. Every round of Penguin's financing had been led by Polar Bear Investment Company, which had also given it a high valuation!
By the time Wang Ye came to Shenzhen, Polar Bear Investment Company had long become Penguin's largest shareholder, holding nearly 60 percent of the company's shares!
And that was after several rounds of financing...
So when Wang Ye said he was Penguin's largest shareholder, he was not exaggerating in the slightest.
Pony Ma and the other founders now held far fewer shares than Wang Ye.
Pony Ma only held 12 percent of Penguin's shares, while the other founders held even less—none of them individually had more than 5 percent!
The entire