2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 424 The Glimpse in Huang Ming's Eyes

"No, no, no, what I mean by 'Internet plus physical stores' is different from his. To put it bluntly, his approach will eventually become a disaster."

"What's the difference? It does serve many small and medium-sized enterprises starting up, helping them move their companies online and significantly reducing their operating costs."

"If things continue like this, it'll be fine, but in the end, all these factories will just be working for him. Is he willing to give up such huge profits?"

"Then how is your idea different?"

“Mine is different, of course. All my technology serves the real economy. Although I also have e-commerce business, I am a vertical e-commerce company. I will not squeeze the survival space of other companies. The data I acquire is also intended to be applied to vehicles and other carriers. In this way, technology serves enterprises, rather than technology dominating enterprises.”

Unsurprisingly, Huang Ming was moved by Tan Jincheng. He was a man with ambition and concrete plans, and his promises were always accurate. Cheng Hao was the same way back then.

He doesn't sell his website directly anymore; instead, he exchanges his shares in the website for shares in ByteDance's advertising platform.
The specific swap ratio still needs to be determined by both parties after an audit. In addition, Huang Ming also needs to resign from his position at the existing website and switch to the role of an investor. In reality, the impact on the website is not significant.

The website is mainly maintained by personal connections, so as long as Huang Ming still has some contact with the website, the business will not be greatly affected. Even if this acquisition results in a loss, it doesn't matter. For ByteDance, the website is just a side project; the main thing is to bring Huang Ming under its wing.

It seems that internet companies often use this tactic. The people they are interested in are often entrepreneurs. Large companies want to recruit them, so they acquire the other party's company and then make them the person in charge.

In reality, many entrepreneurs don't do very well in their businesses, but instead achieve considerable success in their working lives. This also reflects that not everyone is suited to be a boss.

There are many well-known employees in China's internet companies, with "Big Mouth" being the most famous. I won't go into details about him. The person who came later at Xiaomi was also quite impressive.

An excellent management talent is a qualitative improvement for a company. Tan Jincheng is not sure whether Huang Ming can become a qualitative improvement for ByteDance's investment, but he is at least better than the current securities managers.

The brokerage managers poached by the company are fine managing funds and stocks, but they lack investment skills. Perhaps because they've been in brokerages for too long, they have a sense of superiority when leading investments in the primary market.

Many companies would have gone bankrupt if Tan Jincheng hadn't personally intervened, a sentiment echoed by team members and investors.

These days, it's incredibly difficult for companies to go public. Although securities firms don't make the final decisions, they're still the ones in charge. They're used to being the boss and the client, and they're still considered clients at ByteDance, so they can't shake off this professional habit anytime soon.

However, Tan Jincheng didn't care. Every manager needs to have some personality, or even everyone needs to have some personality. Just put them in the right position.

Going forward, investment matters will be handled by Huang Ming, and the secondary market can be left to him.

This year's stock market has been absolutely crazy. The index has risen to 4000 points, and Moutai has risen to around 100 yuan. Tan Jincheng currently holds 10 shares of Moutai, with a cost of 30.38 yuan, totaling a little over 300 million yuan.

The market value has already approached 1000 million yuan. The leaders of Beicang District used to complain about Tan Jincheng's stock trading ability, but they were completely blinded by his talent after the stock market boom this year.

This year's stock market is definitely a hot topic. Many employees at the Flashpoint headquarters are involved in stock trading and discuss stock price fluctuations every day. There are also quite a few who buy funds.

Whenever the stock market is booming, mutual funds are always a hot commodity, and the phenomenon of middle-aged women frantically buying up funds is not limited to periods like 2015 or 2020.

Although internet penetration was not high, the stock market in 2007 was not much less heated than in 2015. In his work, life, and social engagements, Tan Jincheng often heard discussions about stock price fluctuations.

However, the discussion with Huang Ming was about the integration of the Internet and physical businesses. As the discussion progressed, it turned to the boasts of Old Ma, and Tan Jincheng and Huang Ming had some differences in their agreement.

Huang Ming believes that Taobao's actions are indeed a great help to physical businesses, freeing small and medium-sized enterprises and individual businesses from rent. Tan Jincheng, however, does not see it that way, but it does seem to be true at present.

But in the future, our old man Ma has forgotten his original intention, or rather, that was his original intention. He created a new Tmall, driving out small and medium-sized sellers, and the platform's traffic promotion fees are getting more and more expensive.

The cost of opening a physical store is no lower than that of an offline store. Almost all small manufacturers and sellers have become workers for the platform, severely squeezing their profit margins and failing to generate much revenue for these businesses or create more jobs. Moreover, judging from Tan Jincheng's later online shopping experience, Taobao and Tmall, which initially touted cheap goods, were never truly cheap, and the experience of protecting consumer rights was also very poor.

He deserves to have his market share snatched away by Pinduoduo. Perhaps from the moment he drove out small and medium-sized sellers, it was destined that he would lose his original competitive advantage.

Online shopping can be considered an industry with very low barriers to entry. It's also possible that their core business from the beginning wasn't e-commerce, but financial payments, although their payment software has developed quite well.

Tan Jincheng envisions the internet and physical manufacturing as complementary rather than one industry squeezing out the survival space of another. That's not technological innovation; it's merely industrial transfer at best.

FlashCar doesn't have the ability to change the industry; all it can do is focus on doing its job well, leveraging the information advantages of the internet to serve the automotive industry and make driving a more enjoyable experience.

The envisioned scenario is that Orange Technology will be able to survive by relying on information technology and its accumulated user base, and the data and information technology accumulated by Orange Technology can then be applied to the future automotive industry, and even the current two-wheeled electric vehicle industry.

Intelligent electric vehicles will exist in the future.

The combination of the two companies will generate more profits, produce more cool products, and provide more job opportunities for society. If this can be achieved, it will be a kind of honor.

Unlike other internet companies that only know how to exploit others, Orange Technology and its founder Tan Jincheng had an exceptionally good reputation among the many companies that only knew how to lend money online.

After dealing with Huang Ming, Tan Jincheng returned to Beicang.

After Huang Ming finishes dealing with matters in Shanghai, he will go to work at the headquarters of Beicang Flash, where he will be fully responsible for ByteDance's investments in the field of internet technology.

The investment direction has also been determined, which is to invest in the automotive industry, including the lithium battery industry. The first companies targeted are several automotive media websites, which Huang Ming has been paying attention to for some time.

Regardless of FlashDrive's investment philosophy, Huang Ming himself is quite interested in investing in the automotive sector. He will never start another business, but being an investor is one of Huang Ming's future career plans.

Even before Tan Jincheng came into the picture, he was already planning his career as an investor, with the goal of establishing an investment company and working in venture capital.

Coincidentally, he also values ​​the automotive sector, but he can't afford the large investments due to limited funds. He mainly focuses on startups. Now, with the help of Flash, Huang Ming feels that his investment career can be even better.

When the headhunter extended an invitation to Huang Ming, Huang Ming conducted a small investigation through his own channels into the strength of Flash and Tan Jincheng. From his perspective, Flash was much stronger than he had imagined.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the premise that FlashCheer can successfully develop mobile phone batteries and lithium battery projects.

These two projects are currently money-burning industries, but once they are put into production and industrialized, the benefits will be immeasurable, and the Flash Group will be completely different from what it is now.

The power battery industry doesn't seem to be ready yet, but the government has already planned ahead based on research and the development trend of new energy vehicles. If Flash can become the fifth giant with their technological capabilities, then the future market potential is limitless.

While the future of the power battery business remains somewhat uncertain, the future of the mobile phone lithium battery business is almost clear, with companies both domestically and internationally developing smartphones and increasing battery capacity.

This is almost a predetermined future trend. The number of mobile phones in China is rising rapidly, and FlashPower's mobile phone battery business has no shortage of orders.

By simply expanding its mobile phone battery business, FlashCar's subsidiary, Hangxin New Energy, can achieve rapid profitability. It can be said that the market prospects for mobile phone batteries are greater than those for the electric vehicle industry.

With its three main businesses—clothing, electric bicycles, and mobile phone batteries—all of which are on the rise, how could an investment company founded by such a company be weak?

(End of this chapter)