Entrepreneur Bashed by Industry for Receiving Financing by Hacking
On August 15th, an article titled, “Receive Financing from Angel Investor Charles Xue after Hacking into his Accounts, Creating Fair Trade for 1.5 Million Gamers Online” was published on Pencilnews.cn, sparking extensive discussions across the industry.
Pencilnews disclosed in the article how Zhu Pan, the founder of the online trading platform for gamers—4931.com, was able to receive funding from the angel investor Charles Xue through an interview. According to the article, Zhu hacked into Xue’s personal e-mail, Weibo and other personal accounts, forced a meeting with Xue this way, and finally received the investment from Xue.
Furthermore, the article also detailed how Zhu sent e-mails to Lee Kaifu and Xu Xiaoping respectively, and published multiple posts using Xue’s Weibo account, advertising about his own company—4931.com.
However, Zhu’s acts has caused uproar and flame across the industry. Many are furious by his acts and says that such unscrupulous behavior should not be tolerated. Some even questioned whether it was illegal to do so. This afternoon, Pencilnews has also deleted the aforementioned article.
Insiders of the industry publicly questioned the angel investor Xue on WeChat, claiming that his investment has undoubtedly encouraged an unhealthy and immoral practice. “We don’t need any more unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Do we not have enough wirecutters and hackers in the industry?”
Last August, Pencilnews published an article from an exclusive interview with an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur who’s in the business of laundry O2O admitted that, in order to improve his business, he snuck into colleges, snipped the wires off of self-service washing-machines in student dormitories, resulting in a rise in business for him. Understandably, this has sparked massive criticisms across the industry as well.
Tencent tried to contact Xue in hopes of verifying this matter, but to no avail; Xue’s phone went unanswered as well.
The following are the details of Zhu’s acts of hacking and obtaining investment.
The online trading platform for gamers—4931.com, was up and running in April this year. However, the number of users around the time was low. With that, Zhu chose a highly risky path of hacking into the personal accounts of the most well-known angel investor—Charles Xue. “The idea was very simple at that time. I just wanted to advertise about the site through Mr. Xue’s Weibo account.”
After getting access to Xue’s WeChat account, Zhu added him as a friend quickly and bombarded him with a list of messages, all of which were unanswered.
“Why do you have my WeChat account?” In face of Xue’s interrogation, Zhu responded casually, “I hacked into your account.”
Xue was not convinced even for a second, and stopped speaking to Zhu right away. And so, to prove that he was telling the truth, Zhu hacked into Xue’s personal accounts once againand sent emails to Lee Kaifu and Xu Xiaoping. Repeating exactly what he’s done the very first time.
Sure enough, in less than 5 minutes, he received a phone call from Xue. “What kind of rubbish did you just send?” Although Xue was clearly enraged, Zhu was granted a chance to meet Xue in person.
To everyone’s surprise, this act of Zhu’s earned his company a large sum of financing. The next day, Zhu was on a flight to Shanghai. And in just 15 minutes, the investments were confirmed and finalized. The money came in on May 17th.
This article originally appeared in Tencent technology and was translated by Pandaily.
Click here to read the original Chinese article.
