Pony Ma on Founding and Origins

Pony Ma — founder profiled in the Chinese Founder Ledger — is documented as follows: shenzhen University computer-science graduate who co-founded Tencent in 1998 with four classmates, launched the OICQ messaging service that became QQ, and continues to lead the company as chairman and CEO of the Shenzhen-based technology, gaming, entertainment and financial-services conglomerate. The profile is grounded in the 2 sources indexed for this founder.

Ding Lei belongs to Group 3 - Internet 1.0. The Internet 1.0 group covers founders who built China's first generation of consumer-internet platforms in the late-1990s and early-2000s dot-com era — search (Baidu), e-commerce (Alibaba), portals (Sohu), gaming and portals (NetEase, Tencent), security software (Qihoo 360), and smartphones-plus-software (Xiaomi) — a cohort shaped by the 2001 WTO accession and the PC-to-mobile transition.

Inspired by the Israeli-developed ICQ instant-messaging service, Ma's team launched OICQ (Open ICQ) in February 1999 with a Chinese interface, which gained over a million registered users by the end of that year and later became QQ.

Ma's first job was at China Motion Telecom Development, where he developed pager software for a reported $176 per month, before co-founding Tencent in 1998 with four university classmates.

Co-founded Tencent in 1998 with four classmates and led the company's development of the OICQ/QQ messaging product in 1999.