转向做风投，腾讯意在成就支付霸主

几年前，中国曾经流行着这样一个笑话：如果有家美国初创公司出了一个很棒的创意，谷歌可能会把它买下。如果某家中国初创公司出了一个很棒的创意，腾讯可能会把它抄过来。

当吴皓被这家中国社交媒体和网络游戏巨头找上门来时，他的脑海里马上浮现出了上面这则笑话。吴皓创立的网上外卖网上订餐平台零号线正在筹集资金，腾讯想要入股。这位32岁的南京创业者说：“起初我们觉得腾讯居心叵测。”吴皓担心，他们公司那些身穿黄色制服，骑着电动车穿行在城市大街小巷的送货员，会被这家拥有130亿收入的网络巨头吸收并抄袭。

但腾讯的风险投资团队不愿放弃。他们与吴皓进行了5次会面，和他在零号线加盟餐厅一起用餐。他们告诉吴皓，腾讯了解这种“从线上到线下”的生态体系，即通过应用，让消费者购买真实世界的商品和服务。腾讯已经投资了类似的公司，比如号称中国版Yelp的大众点评网。他们还向吴皓保证了发展前景，腾讯也许会让零号线直接面对潜在的5亿新顾客，即腾讯庞大的微信用户。

而腾讯没有必要告诉吴皓的是：他们投资初创公司的速度几乎超过了全球所有其他公司。如果吴皓同意的话，零号线将会成为2014年腾讯投资的近50家公司之一。腾讯通常不会径直收购这些公司，但表示将斥巨资支持它们跳跃式发展。

吴皓不想放弃这个机会。今年1月，零号线在融资中收到了由腾讯为首的投资者提供的3000万美元资本。作为回报，腾讯得到了一个将近100万零号线用户纳入该公司网上支付系统的机会，而这正是腾讯应对中国迅速升级的互联网战争的核心战略要素。

中国最大的科技公司如今都处于不确定的转型期。三大互联网巨头——搜索领域的百度、电子商务领域的阿里巴巴和社交领域的腾讯，被合称为BAT——借助自己的核心业务，建立了利润丰厚，价值数十亿美元的帝国。（2014年，百度的收入为80亿美元，阿里巴巴的收入为123亿美元，这两家公司和腾讯一样，都有资格进入美国《财富》500强公司的行列，但还不足以进入全球《财富》500强。）不过，随着三巨头的脚步开始放缓，他们转入了一种新的模式，开始斥资数十亿美元进行创投和收购，借此扩大影响范围，并增加收入。在中国初创公司中担任企业家兼投资者的理查德·罗宾逊如此描述三巨头的行为：“之前的情况是‘我们靠自己就能变得更好’，但现在如果继续遵循这种思路，那就意味着你要落后了。”

在这次热潮中，没有哪家公司表现得比腾讯更加积极。根据另类投资数据公司Preqin的数据，在去年中国金额最大的10起科技类风投交易中，腾讯参与其中的4起，该公司在去年达成48项交易，总金额达63亿美元。从这个尺度来看，腾讯在风险投资领域已经超过了阿里巴巴、百度、甚至谷歌。这种热情在今年依旧不减：截至4月，腾讯又达成40亿美元的交易。

A joke was making the rounds a few years ago in China: If a U.S. startup had a great idea, Google might buy it. If a Chinese startup had a great idea, Tencent might copy it.

That last thought crept into Wu Hao’s mind late last year when Tencent, China’s social media and online games giant, came calling. Wu’s food delivery startup, Line0, was raising money, and Tencent wanted a stake. “At first we were concerned they had ulterior motives,” says Wu, an energetic 32-year-old who started his business in China’s old capital, Nanjing. Wu was worried that his yellow-uniformed deliverymen, who jet across China’s cities on electric scooters, would be absorbed and copied by a web giant with $13 billion in revenue.

But Tencent’s venture capital team pitched Wu hard. They met with him five times, grabbing dinner with him at restaurants on the Line0 system. They told Wu that Tencent understood the ecosystem of “online to offline” companies like Line0—companies whose apps enable consumers to buy real-world goods and services. They had already invested in similar companies like Dianping, the Chinese equivalent of Yelp. They also reassured him about the future, when Tencent might propel Line0 in front of a half-billion potential new customers—the users of Tencent’s gargantuan social network, WeChat.

What Tencent didn’t need to tell Wu was that it was investing in startups faster than almost anyone else in the world. If Wu said yes, Line0 would join four dozen companies Tencent backed in 2014. Tencent didn’t generally buy companies outright, but it had shown it would bolster them with very big checks.

Wu didn’t want to miss his shot. In January, Line0 received $30 million in a financing round led by Tencent. In return Tencent got the chance to add Line0’s nearly 1 million users to its online payment network—the central element of the company’s battle plan in China’s fast-evolving Internet wars.

China’s biggest tech companies are in the middle of an uncertain transition. The country’s three Internet giants—Baidu BIDU 1.65% in search, Alibaba BABA 1.95% in e-commerce, and Tencent TCEHY -1.44% in social networking, known collectively as BAT—each became a profitable, multibillion-dollar empire on the strength of its core business. (Baidu had $8 billion in revenue in 2014, and Alibaba $12.3 billion—making both, like Tencent, big enough for the Fortune 500, though not the Global 500.) But as their growth has slowed, the Big Three have shifted into a new mode, spending billions on venture funding and acquisitions that could help them further expand their reach and their revenue. “Before it was, ‘We can build it better ourselves,’ ” says Richard Robinson, a China-based entrepreneur and investor in startups, describing the BAT’s attitudes. “But now that means you’re behind.”

In this land rush no company has been more aggressive than Tencent. Last year the company invested in four of China’s 10 largest tech venture deals and took part in a total of 48 deals worth $6.3 billion, according to Preqin, an alternative-assets data company; by that measure, Tencent was a bigger venture capital player than Alibaba or Baidu or, for that matter, Google. The deluge continued this year: Through April, Tencent had joined another $4 billion worth of deals.

不过，同样令人惊讶的是，腾讯也积极地与零号线这样的公司进行小额交易，向旅行社和清洁服务公司这类中小型企业投入百万级别的资金。这有点像中国在南海建立岛礁以扩张领土的方式：它看起来显得不切实际，但如果从整个竞争图景和长期的利害关系来考量，则另有一番意味。

腾讯以回避媒体而著称，他们多次拒绝了《财富》采访公司高管的请求。不过通过与腾讯投资的十余家公司的对话，以及与前腾讯员工、顾问和关注该公司的分析师的交流，我们发现了他们的一个明确战略：让财付通统治网络金融领域，借以扩张腾讯的势力版图。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

审校：任文科

以上内容节选自《财富》杂志8月刊，欲查看英文全文请点击此处。

Just as striking, however, is Tencent’s eagerness to make small deals like the Line0 play, investing seven-figure sums in modest ventures like travel agencies and cleaning services. It’s a bit like China’s effort to expand its territory by building islands atop tiny reefs in the South China Sea: It can look quixotic, until you consider the big picture and the long-term stakes.

Known for avoiding the press, Tencent declined Fortune’s repeated requests for interviews with executives. But in conversations with more than a dozen companies Tencent has backed, and with former Tencent employees, consultants, and analysts who follow the company, a clear strategy emerges: a quest to make Tenpay, and by extension Tencent, dominant in online finance.