Robin Li: Pioneer of China鈥檚 Information Superhighway

cctv.com 05-31-2004 15:53

鈥淭here is no trying. There is only doing and not doing.鈥 This is the motto of our guest, Robin Li. He is the President of Baidu.com, one of the most popular Chinese search engines in the world, and he has just been named the 11th wealthiest IT Entrepreneur in China. Robin鈥檚 goal in life is to change the world.

Robin Li has a position that many people envy as president of Baidu.com, the biggest independent Internet search engine operator in China.

The buzz surrounding the company comes as it plans to make an initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock market in New York, which some analysts say will result in Baidu being worth as much as US$1 billion.

Pay-offs of stubbornness

Li graduated from New York State University with a master's degree in computer science and then joined the Wall Street Journal's website to develop a real time financial information search system.

He began to work at Infoseek, a big name in the global search engine industry.

When he returned to China in 1999, there were already many Internet portals in the country and building dotcoms had become an important trend .

"As a scientist by training, I am a little bit obstinate and I wanted to know how best I could use my talent," said Li.

The result of his stubbornness was Baidu.com, founded by Li and his friend Eric Xu.

Soon, Baidu obtained the first round of investment of US$1.2 million from venture capital (VC) firms. One year later, four VC companies, led by US-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson and International Data Group, invested US$10 million into the search engine operator.