Background
Wang Yan was born in Beijing in May 1972 in Beijing, China. His father was born in Paris, France to an intellectual family.
延 汪
Wang Yan was born in Beijing in May 1972 in Beijing, China. His father was born in Paris, France to an intellectual family.
After graduation from high school, Wang went to France. In 1996 he was a student of the University Panthéon-Assas in Paris, France. He received a degree of the Bachelor of Arts in the sphere of Law.
While Wang was working on his law degree in Paris in 1993, China underwent a tremendous change with the emergence of the first generation of entrepreneurs taking the lead in China’s economic development. Wang began to feel the urge to return to China and pioneer his own venture. After two years, a visit to China in which he saw the dramatic changes taking place in his hometown Beijing reaffirmed his intentions. Fueled by his entrepreneurial spirit, Wang initiated a ‘multi-national’ Entrepreneur Liaison Group with two other like-minded individuals, one from Shenzhen, and the other from Beijing, with the internet as the most common communication vehicle for these three young enthusiasts.
Foreseeing that the internet would become the most crucial communication vehicle in the world, Wang realized that ‘there would be no greater business opportunity than utilizing the Internet to introduce China to the world’ (Wang, 2005). So in 1996 he and his friends co-founded SRSNET, one of the first Chinese commercial websites, which became the prototype of Sina.com. The speedy growth of this internet venture led to the merger of SRSNET.com and SinaNet.com in December 1998 and the founding of Sina. com, a global Chinese online community.
With the goal of creating the best internet company in China, running Sina.com has led Wang Yan to grow and mature from an ambitious young entrepreneur to a seasoned businessman. Although the company’s fame spread quickly across the globe, Sina was not profitable for the first eight years. Wang understood that from the business perspective, the company had not been successful. So he sent an internal memo to all Sina employees when he first took over as CEO, stating that ‘I am confident that if there is one Internet company that can become profitable in China, it will be Sina.com.’ Under his leadership, Sina has expanded its core competencies from news reporting and internet advertisements into internet search engines and e-commerce. However, Wang also firmly believes that the importance of maintaining the leadership position for Sina.com far outweighs its profitability. The key to Sina.com’s success is to maintain its market share.
Quick to identify the right opportunities, Wang has carried out large-scale financing and acquisitions since he was appointed CEO. Owing to his successful strategies, Sina issued some US$100 million corporate bonds on the NASDAQ market, acquired Shanghai Fortune Trip and Shenzhen Crillion Corporation, partnered with Yahoo! to enter the online auction business, and launched a game portal service in association with the Korean game portal company Plenus in a bid to develop new revenue lines in tourism, wireless value-added services (VAS), and online games. Sina has become the leading provider of internet content service and wireless VAS in China, the revenue of both ranking top in the industry. Sina’s share price has soared to over US$40, more than double its IPO price, and its quarterly fiscal revenue has kept growing.
Yan dedicates himself to Sina Yangfan Foundation in providing educational resources for underprivileged children in rural areas of China.