李彦宏青春的第一桶金简史

在那不起眼的纽约州立大学计算机硕士楼里，一个名叫李彦宏的年轻人梦想着成为科学家。然而，他很快发现了一个事实：在高科技公司工作，不仅能为他带来知识，还能给他带来财富。他首次尝试是在IDD公司担任高级顾问，那里的老板Larry从交易中获得了数百万美元，这让李彦宏深刻理解到创立高科技公司可以获得巨大的成功。

随后，李彦宏帮助《华尔街日报》网络版开发软件时，他发现了一种新的搜索方法，但当他将这个想法呈现给道琼斯时，却被冷漠对待。在一次会议上，他遇到了Infoseek公司的首席技术官William Chang，后者邀请他加入并共同开发第一代搜索引擎。李彦宏充满激动地投入到工作中，与代码共舞。

但是，当Infoseek被迪斯尼收购后，对搜索引擎领域没有给予足够支持，Lee felt lost. He decided to start his own venture and returned to China, inviting his friend Xu Yong as a partner. They received $1.2 million in funding from two investment institutions.

Baidu's initial business model was similar to Inkotomi, which provided search services to portal sites during the booming period of the internet. However, in the competitive Chinese market, this model lacked confidence. When Inkotomi was acquired by Yahoo for $2 billion in 2002, this model became more questionable.

To enhance competitiveness, Lee decided to replicate Akamai Technologies' CDN business model by distributing nearby servers to reduce network traffic pressure for websites and improve download speeds. Before the internet bubble burst, Baidu fortunately received a $10 million investment. At that time, Lee realized that Chinese companies could no longer afford search services but would choose cheaper data products; he then decided to mimic Verity's service for American big enterprises.

However, by 2002, this strategy had become increasingly bleak just like Baidu's cash flow situation. From 2001 on, Google began gaining attention with its paid advertising model appearing in search results; inspired by this trend, Lee chose a paid advertising strategy despite being heavily questioned at board meetings.

After continuous adjustments and directions of development towards correct paths finally made Baidu profitable starting from 2004 and went public in August 2005 effortlessly creating numerous millionaire investors compared with Lee's difficult quest earlier on.

How did Li Yanhong earn his first pot of gold?