Looking back at the development history of China's Internet for more than ten years, grassroots, wealthy, angel investment, Nasdaq? have repeatedly become keywords.

The growth story of Sina, China's No. 1 portal, is full of upward progress, leadership, loss, and breakthrough.

But Cao Guowei gave the industry many surprises.

Many people guessed the beginning of Sina's story correctly, but not the ending.

Let’s take a look: Choice In Sina’s 20th-floor office, the reporter saw Cao Guowei sitting behind a large desk, busy.

He wore a navy blue suit, but the suit was obviously one size too big.

During the chat, Cao Guowei said that he had lost more than ten kilograms after the Spring Festival. The reason was that he wanted to be lighter.

Of course, in the impression of his assistants and some friends, Cao Guowei is a gourmet.

He is familiar with all kinds of delicious food, but he can easily control his weight.

When this very rational person faces important choices in life, in fact, in many complex environments, it is difficult to make a very clear argument and judgment, and big decisions are almost always made based on intuition.

Choosing to come to Sina in 1999 was full of chance for the 33-year-old Cao Guowei.

In 1999, Cao Guowei was a certified public accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the United States.

That year, Cao Guowei was sent to Beijing to guide PricewaterhouseCoopers' audit of a company.

Just two weeks later, Chao Guowei returned to the United States.

At that time, many Silicon Valley companies had extended an olive branch to Chao Guowei and invited him to join.

After thinking about it for a while, he was a little undecided about how to choose the last two companies.

At the same time, Wang Zhidong, then CEO of Sina (also the founder of Sina.com), was looking for a CFO, and Cao Guowei was also looking for new job opportunities. He had been in Silicon Valley for 6 years.

Chao Guowei has many choices, and two Silicon Valley companies have invited him.

Cao Guowei was hesitant in his choice, so he asked an old friend with rich social experience for advice. He was Mao Daolin, the then chief operating officer of Sina.

Cao Guowei told Mao Daolin: "I want to change jobs. Can you help me see which one is better?" After listening to Cao Guowei's introduction, Mao Daolin felt that every choice was good, but he still suggested that Cao Guowei come to Sina to try.

Cao Guowei thought about it for two days before making the choice to come to work at Sina.

At that time, Sina was headquartered in the United States and worked in a warehouse. It was incomparable with Silicon Valley, where buildings are row upon row.

?I have always felt that in the United States, if Chinese people want to move up, there is always a ceiling. At least at that time, it was very obvious, and Sina is a company connected with China.

?Although, the Chinese Internet in 1999 was obviously not as prosperous as it is today.

Sina, Sohu, and NetEase are beginning to take shape, Jack Ma's entrepreneurial journey has just begun, and Tencent's Ma Huateng just developed the predecessor of QQ based on Chinese in February.

Cao Guowei became Sina's vice president in charge of finance.

Six months later, under his promotion, Sina was successfully listed on Nasdaq and became the first Chinese portal to be listed in the United States.

Sina pioneered the listing of domestic companies through offshore companies, which has become a common model for domestic Internet companies to list overseas, and is called the "Sina model".

After Sina completed its listing in 2000, Cao Guowei did not "step aside", but became a hero behind the scenes.

Therefore, the industry has labeled him restrained, rigorous, and logical. In addition, he is extremely low-key and does not give interviews very frequently.

There is an interesting detail. He was born on November 10, 1965, but in many media reports, his date of birth was July 1969.

The hero behind the scenes? I have been the CFO for more than three terms, which is rare in ordinary companies.

On the one hand, it shows that I am still very qualified in this position, and every CEO believes that I can do this job well. On the other hand, it shows that I am still valuable to this company.

?Chao Guowei looks back on his early years at Sina.

Under the leadership of Cao Guowei, Sina.com completed the important mergers and acquisitions of two major wireless value-added business companies, Guangzhou Xunlong and Shenzhen Crillion, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, putting Sina at the forefront of the wireless value-added field and gradually moving from losses to profits.

There is a background that needs to be explained here. In 2004, Sina's online advertising experienced a bottleneck. Although it was still growing naturally, it was far behind its competitors and had a tendency to worsen.

In 2005, Cao Guowei was assigned to take charge of the advertising business. In the second quarter of that year, Sina widened the gap with its competitors.

That period was a particularly difficult period for Cao Guowei. After the IPO, when I served as CFO, I focused more on back-end management. After I concurrently served as COO in 2004, I managed both the front-end and the back-end.

There is division of labor and conflicts among roles. For example, in charge of marketing, you need to achieve performance; if you are in charge of finance, you need to control risks and costs. These are all contradictory.

? Cao Guowei said.