What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 393 Takeover Plan
"Would President Xu be that heartless and insane?"

When faced with questions about potential short sellers during the New Year's holiday, Liu Wanying gave a similar response to Yu Xing.

“I’m just guessing, I just feel… something’s off.” Yu Xing couldn’t verify his guess and found it hard to believe, but added, “However, Li Song has a PhD in finance from Columbia University and worked at Morgan Stanley. Judging from that resume…”

Liu Wanying instantly understood what Boss Yu meant. He was a PhD in finance, had professional experience, and didn't lack start-up capital, so he seemed to have the right setup to enter the short-selling business.

If I can do it, why can't others?

Based on the data on paper, this duo should be the ones to overcome the mountain peak!
She scratched her head in confusion, astonishment, and doubt, and said, "Then let's learn from Mr. Xu's paranoia and keep an eye on whether 360 will be shorted. If a new small short seller really comes out and shorts 360, it will be quite obvious."

After pondering for a moment, Liu Wanying guessed, "President Xu has paid too much attention to Guoshan Peak, so she wants to give it a try too? Boss Yu, you've dragged her into this mess."

Yu Xing spread his hands, saying innocently, "How could I be the one leading her? Wasn't it her who insisted on going to Liangshan?"

The two of them stared at each other in silence.

This is strange, but we need to observe it further.

Yu Xing temporarily suppressed the possibility of his successor becoming a shell company and set a time to hold a meeting at the Silicon Carbon Group and Silicon Carbon Data Company to conduct year-end summaries and make plans for the new year.

When he handed over the time to his secretary to arrange, he saw Zhang Yangxu close his notebook but not leave the office, appearing unusually hesitant.

Yu Xing asked, puzzled, "What's wrong? What's the matter?"

Bai Xiaosheng's president's secretary whispered a reminder: "President Yu, where is Bai Xiaosheng's year-end summary?"

Yu Xing suddenly realized: "Oh..."

He thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "We should attend. It's not easy for President Liu. Hmm, you can ask him about the schedule from there."

Zhang Yangxu agreed, walked out of the office with his head held high, feeling that he hadn't let Bai Xiaosheng down.

Yu Xing pondered the reminder from his secretary. Hmm, Bai Xiaosheng, Bai Xiaosheng is still very important.

The funds used to pledge Baixiaosheng shares need to be repaid.

If Bitcoin doesn't see an upward trend in the new year, I might need to pledge the remaining half of my stocks to cope with the funding cycle. Well, I probably won't need to. In any case, the money I used to get through the peak will be enough to pay the interest.

Yu Xing considered the flow of funds briefly, but he was more concerned about the projects he had in hand, as well as the mistakes and oversights of his predecessors in the business world.

On January 6, Carbon Silicon Data Company held a high-level meeting to discuss the development and problems of the past year and the outlook for 2013.

The internal operations at Carbon Silicon Data have just been adjusted, and Yu Xing has been communicating with them frequently recently. The main issue is that the daily active users have not met the target.

According to the original design, the latest trending topics were supposed to reach 1000 million daily active users, but by the end of December, this number had dropped by more than 12%, to only about 750 million.

Yu Xing felt it was passable, but everyone was quite confident about the 1000 million target in the first half of last year. The reason for this was, for the sake of argument, content and algorithm.

In the middle of last month, Zhai Yifei led his technical team in several meetings to discuss and exchange ideas with several senior technical executives who had just transferred from Baidu. They proposed using the Apache Storm distributed real-time computing system for real-time user processing.

The latest trending topics were originally designed to build basic profiles based on user clicks, reading time, and other behaviors, and to introduce features such as keyword matching and category tags to optimize the relevance of content to user interests. However, with the rapid growth of the user base, this system, which batch processes user tag updates on a Hadoop cluster, has become increasingly unreliable, and its accuracy has been slow to improve.

The Storm framework being considered is an open-source framework that was acquired by Twitter in 2011 and can achieve near real-time iterative updates of user interest models.

Yu Xing wasn't sure if the approach they were discussing could work better, but it sounded logically better.

As for the effect...

Yu Xing decided to give Zhai Yifei another six months. If things didn't continue to improve, then the heavy responsibility of technical leadership would need to be taken over by someone else.

However, overall, it is still reasonably satisfactory, with a total user base of over 5000 million, which is comparable to the data from iResearch Consulting. As for WiFi Master Key, it is even more impressive, having achieved 7000 million users with relatively few resources. At the current rate of development, it will become a super app in its older version by the first half of next year.

With the rapid development of numerous apps, the 1 million threshold that Ma Chuan previously proposed is no longer sufficient to demonstrate the "super" of a super app, but it is still a gratifying achievement.

The meeting, chaired by Yu Xing, did not exert much pressure; the necessary pressure had already been applied beforehand, so it ended amicably.

However, after the meeting, Zhai Yifei pulled Yu Xing aside for a chat about the use of new technologies, conveying additional information.

"Oh right, Mr. Yu, we have another small suggestion. I wonder... do you have time now?" Zhai Yifei said after finishing discussing the technology.

Yu Xing glanced at the time and pointed outside: "There's still a while before dinner. I don't have any other plans. Let's go outside, have a smoke, and chat."

He didn't know what Mr. Zhai wanted to talk about, but guessed it was either a technical or talent issue.

Last quarter, we poached a group of people from Baidu, and the results seem pretty good; at least it seems to have a significant "catfish effect."

Unexpectedly, Zhai Yifei, while smoking a cigarette, made a suggestion regarding revenue.

"Mr. Yu, the user growth of Universal Key is very fast, and there is something we can do in this area. We have observed the market and think that the router sector still has great potential. We can find someone to manufacture routers and then sell them to users. We can return the money for the machines to them, but they have to buy our financial products, and the money will be returned after a period of one or two months."

"This way, we can promote Wi-Fi, take advantage of the time difference to accumulate funds and earn interest spreads, and we can also develop revenue-generating businesses in wealth management."

Zhai Yifei spoke eloquently, outlining a set of revenue-generating suggestions ranging from traffic acquisition to hardware to financial management.

Yu Xing silently smoked and listened attentively. One moment he talked about how large orders could reduce hardware costs, and the next he talked about how they could cooperate with banks to do wealth management and credit card business.

After finishing his cigarette, he saw that Zhai Yifei had also finished giving his advice, and he had to advise him: "Mr. Zhai, you don't need to worry about revenue. Just focus on doing a good job with the technology."

Seeing his boss's attitude, Zhai Yifei felt both disappointed and aggrieved: "President Yu... we were just thinking of contributing to the company, and besides, is that not allowed?" "It's probably okay," Yu Xingping said calmly, "but it's too much trouble. What's the point of working yourself to death to earn some interest on idle funds, or resorting to financial management and fundraising to pay off other debts?"

“Fundraising is illegal.” Zhai Yifei knew it was illegal, but he was still somewhat indignant. “But the returns on investment can be several percent, isn’t that free money? Mr. Yu, so how do you suggest we generate revenue? Just rely on advertising?”

Yu Xing lit another cigarette and asked in return, "Why do we need to calculate revenue?"

Zhai Yifei: "Huh?"

“WiFi Master Key is the most effective software we’ve launched since the beginning of our software matrix. Even though our resources are always biased towards the latest hot topics, it stubbornly stays in first place. Why do you think that is?” Yu Xing asked.

Zhai Yifei pondered for a moment: "Because everyone's mobile data is expensive."

Yu Xing nodded and then asked, "Do you think data traffic will continue to be expensive?"

Zhai Yifei hesitated for a moment, then shook his head: "It won't stay this expensive, will it? The operators are building infrastructure. If they keep doing this for a few years, the data tariff should become cheaper."

“Yes, the operators will definitely change. Once they change, data will become cheaper, and businesses will also set up their own Wi-Fi networks, including large supermarket chains. Everyone will either use cheap data or have Wi-Fi wherever they go. Will we still need WiFi Master Key?” Yu Xing asked again.

Zhai Yifei felt the logic was clear: "Daily active users will decrease significantly by then."

"So, WiFi Master Key has only one task: don't worry about how to generate revenue for itself, just increase its total user base to 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, or even 5 million. Use this kind of tool-type app to drive traffic to our content app. Once it reaches a certain level, leverage its reputation for driving traffic to find a buyer and sell it off." Yu Xing said calmly, "Whether it's sold to a listed company to tell a story, sold to someone who wants to replicate the traffic-driving model, or sold to someone you imagine who's involved in wealth management and interest-earnings, it doesn't need any outstanding revenue."

"The best time is before the operators launch their speed-up and price-reduction policies. If it's after the policies are implemented, the selling price will probably have to be discounted, but it will still be enough for us to recoup our costs and profits."

Is it easier to acquire 100 million users by selling routers, or by attracting 100 million users through app stores or pre-installation marketplaces?

"Alternatively, we can directly send out red envelopes to encourage existing users to invite new users, and the money for these red envelopes will eventually be paid for by the new users who are willing to take over the business."

"As long as WiFi Master Key has enough users, the final selling price of this software will be $5 million or $10 billion. It's convenient and secure."

Yu Xing tried to flick the cigarette butt into the trash can, but it didn't go in. He had to take a couple of steps, pick it up, and throw it into the trash can. Then he patted Zhai Yifei on the shoulder and said, "President Zhai, don't worry about revenue. As long as you can do a good job with the technology, everything will be fine for us."

Zhai Yifei was stunned for a moment, then unconsciously asked, "Then who will we sell it to? How will we sell it?"

“Let’s go eat. Let’s call Zhong Zhiling and the others.” Yu Xing laughed. “With hundreds of millions of users, are we worried about not finding buyers? How about selling it to… 360? It’s listed in the US, and the investors there don’t know much about our market. Once they hear that we’ve brought back software with hundreds of millions of users, the stock price might even go up.”

When he mentioned 360, his smile widened: "Well, if investors don't understand it, there's an information gap, and then short sellers might come out to short it. That's how the market works, it goes back and forth."

Zhai Yifei completely extinguished the idea in his mind. Carbon Silicon Data Company's current revenue didn't even cover its costs, but NetEase had previously offered $10 billion to buy it...

WiFi Master Key has accumulated a considerable amount of user data, which has already set it apart from other competitors and given it a clear first-mover advantage. At this rate of growth, 1 million users is a certainty. So, how far away are 2 million users? And 3 million?

He let out a long sigh of relief, still pondering as he followed the boss toward the cafeteria.

Finally, Zhai Yifei sat in the cafeteria and asked the owner, "President Yu, what's this called? Is this called capital operation?"

"Capital operation? It's just like what I did in the beginning, only on a different scale." Yu Xing chuckled, recalling the capital operation of Vania Pharmaceuticals. "That doesn't count, that doesn't count."

However, if WiFi Master Key can direct traffic to Douyin, its value and historical mission will be maximized, and it may not be worse than aggressive capital operations.

Yu Xing pondered for a moment, then waved to Lü Haiying and the others who were looking for him.

Before Lü Haiying and the others could even approach, Ma Nana, the deputy technical director of Lotus Project, suddenly sat down opposite them excitedly.

"Mr. Yu, Mr. Yu, they all say you swindled $3000 million with just one sentence, is that true? Is that really true?" Ma Nana had just heard about a Weibo post about getting investment today and found it unbelievable.

Yu Xing said irritably, "Who said that? Scammed 3000 million US dollars? What do you mean by scammed?"

Ma Nana stared at President Yu: "How did you get it?"

“I told the two CEOs that our Silicon Carbon Group had received help from Lotus Engineering, and that the quality of our cars would be improved to a higher level. They immediately handed over $3000 million,” Yu Xing said with a smile. “You see, that’s basically made back the money we spent to buy your cars.”

Ma Nana asked in surprise, "Really?"

Then, noticing the way Zhai Yifei looked at her as if she were an idiot, she glared at Yu Xing and Zhai Yifei, picked up her plate, and left.

Zhai Yifei said sullenly, "This foreigner has really big eyes."

"Hmm, is it because she has big eyes that she drives fast?" Yu Xing thought for a moment, "Last time we went to the track, it seems like she had the fastest lap time."

Zhai Yifei was somewhat surprised and asked, "She's ranked first? Mr. Yu, what about you?"

Yu Xing, thinking about his seat in the passenger seat, replied, "She and I are tied for first place."

Zhai Yifei was filled with respect. This boss truly embodies the spirit of loving what you do!

Two days later, just before the Spring Festival, Carbon Silicon Data Company received news that the problem had been resolved: Chutian Metropolis Daily was willing to withdraw the lawsuit, reach a settlement, and grant non-public content authorization, agreeing to cooperate for ten million yuan over two years.

At the same time, the company has entered into formal negotiations with Tencent and UC regarding content cooperation, and it is expected that an agreement will be reached before or after the Lunar New Year.

Carbon Silicon Data's cooperation with the three major portals was terminated last October, and it was also sued by traditional media. Now, with new content providers filling the gap, the previous encirclement has been substantially broken.

Nevertheless, Lü Haiying, who is in charge of this area, continues to push forward with the self-built content plan, aiming to gather 20,000 media reporters and 500,000 content creators within two years to completely solve the problems in this field.

(End of this chapter)