What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 424 Support
Weishi was launched in June this year, and now the data for October has really stirred up a storm in the industry.

Especially with references to foreign apps like Vine and Instagram, it's hard not to wonder if another star app is about to make its grand debut.

Furthermore, Yu Xing's previous statements on the show were also brought up, which seemed to contradict his previous statements.

Since Tencent's WeChat couldn't compete with Alibaba's WeChat, has it found a new direction for growth?

This is also a topic of discussion within the industry.

As a direct competitor, Sina Weibo was the first to react, relying on its own successful experience to mobilize celebrities and internet influencers to create short video content, hoping to increase Miaopai's mental presence among users regarding new content.

Even Yu Xing's Weibo account received private messages, some of which were regular invitations, while others were clearly from a human, advising him to stop using the competitor's Weishi.

Yu Xing noticed the private message but did not reply. However, compared to "Weishi", Tencent's less attention-grabbing move did make it a direct competitor to Silicon Carbon Data.

While the industry is still discussing the performance of Weishi, Tencent has quietly launched two other new apps.

One is "Penguin WiFi Manager", and the other is "WeSing". The former is comparable to "WiFi Master Key", and the latter is comparable to "WeSing Together".

Carbon Silicon Data's software portfolio now consists of only three apps. With the release of these two apps by Tencent, along with its existing "Penguin News," the two companies are now in direct competition in the mobile internet field.

The industry hasn't paid much attention to this benchmarking, but there's been a lot of discussion about it within Silicon Carbon Data.

Yu Xing attended the meeting and listened to everyone's ideas.

A significant portion of the emotions are still under considerable pressure.

In the past two years, all we've seen is the spectacle of Tencent and Alibaba confronting each other. But when they actually meet head-on, the other side is still that internet giant.

"President Ge, you haven't said anything yet. What are your thoughts?" Yu Xing observed the reactions of everyone in the conference room and picked out Ge Zhijie, who was now mainly in charge of MusVid.

Ge Zhijie said nonchalantly, "I don't have any thoughts. Come on, let's compete. We've encountered WeChat before."

He then added, "At worst, I'll just be sold to Alibaba again!"

Laughter instantly filled the meeting room.

Ge Zhijie was the technical director during the WeChat era. He followed the company to Alibaba and then moved to Carbon Silicon Data. His words were quite amusing.

“Mr. Ge is right.” Yu Xing laughed along with everyone. “I see some people feel indignant that Tencent is trying to compete with them again, but it doesn’t matter. The market is there.”

The market is there, and there's no reason why only Silicon Carbon Data should do it, but not Tencent.

Seeing that many people nodded, Yu Xing continued, "However, I don't want to sell General Manager Ge to Alibaba again. The situation is different now than when we were making WeChat. These two competing products from Tencent are challengers, and we already have many advantages. Moreover, Tencent's resource allocation is also a problem. It wants to maintain its competition with WeChat while also wanting to create a new content platform like Weishi. It's hard to say how much power it can actually mobilize."

To elaborate further, the pre-installation channels, which have played a significant role this year, are already fully booked, meaning Tencent's new software won't be able to secure similar resources.

Yu Xing offered necessary encouragement and then took a step back, saying, "The mobile internet is developing rapidly, and we have gained many advantages with this momentum. However, those companies from the PC era are slowly coming to their senses. This time, Tencent's benchmarking may not be temporary; it may be the beginning of a long-term competition. We must be prepared for this."

He looked at Yang Zhenyuan, who spearheaded the transformation of silicon carbon data algorithms this year, and smiled, "Fortunately, Mr. Yang and his team's attempt to drive revenue through technology has been very successful, which is the foundation for our long-term competition."

Yu Xing did not disclose specific figures, but the results of the algorithm optimization are still amazing.

In the recently concluded second quarter, the latest trend is that the advertising revenue from the "algorithm recommendation + information flow advertising" model has approached the operating costs such as salaries and servers. Based on this trend, the company is bound to break even this quarter.

Taobao is proposing a new form of mobile internet called "personalized experience for every user," and similar models from Carbon Silicon Data are already showing signs of maturing.

Q2 is close to balance, Q3 will definitely balance, and with the growth in Q4, it is very likely that Carbon Silicon Data will achieve a certain profit this year.

The company can achieve healthy self-sustaining growth, something Yu Xing didn't even manage to do when he was developing WeChat.

In fact, over the past decade or so, from PCs to mobile internet, if Carbon Silicon Data achieves profitability this year, it will be the first company in China to achieve large-scale profitability through pure information flow advertising.

The new forms of mobile internet have made it possible to achieve commercialization paths that were previously impossible.

Yu Xing believes that as long as the business continues to be validated this year, he will inevitably gain more support from investors, and the complete construction of the business model will bring continuous expansion.

Furthermore, this technological refinement will continue to provide crucial support for the short video trend.

After the meeting on carbon and silicon data concluded, Yang Zhenyuan stayed behind alone.

"Mr. Yang, is there anything you need to tell me?" Yu Xing noticed the slow-moving Yang Zhenyuan and asked the tech expert with a smile, "You don't trust me, do you? Are you worried that I'll sell you out to raise money to build cars?"

Hearing this, Yang Zhenyuan couldn't help but laugh and said, "President Yu, you can't blame us for thinking this way; you have a history of doing this."

Silicon Carbon Data is located right next to Silicon Carbon Group. Employees sometimes jokingly refer to their workplace as a giant blood bank that can be used at any time.

After exchanging a few words, he hesitated before saying something he couldn't discuss publicly: "Mr. Yu, I'd like to ask you to give us some more support."

"Support? Sure." Yu Xing was somewhat surprised, but said without hesitation, "Is the R&D budget insufficient? Do we need to increase it this year?"

Yang Zhenyuan shook his head: "It's not about funding, it's about wanting to poach a few more people from Baidu, they are all very outstanding."

He himself was the deputy director of web search who jumped ship from Baidu last year, and Zhai Yifei, who was one of the first to come, also came from Baidu.

Yang Zhenyuan had just achieved some results and was actually a little hesitant, worried that such a proposal might make President Yu feel that it was too factional. However, after thinking it over, he decided to leave the decision to President Yu himself.

Yu Xing laughed and said, "Sure, Mr. Yang, it's a good thing that someone is willing to come. Hmm, do you want me to make the arrangements or what? There's nothing wrong with that."

Yang Zhenyuan breathed a sigh of relief. Instead of explaining his concerns, he solemnly said, "President Yu, I hope you can take this seriously. There is at least one person I would like you to meet in person. He is Zhu Wenjia, the chief architect of Baidu's search department. He is mainly responsible for the technical architecture of the search engine there. He is very capable. For example, Baidu's search ranking model was developed by him and his team."

Yu Xing pondered these words and asked, "Ranking model? Is it the relevance of search results?"

Yang Zhenyuan smiled and said, "President Yu, if you hadn't studied medicine and had instead studied computer science, you would definitely have become an excellent programmer. That's what I mean. I've talked to him about the latest hot technologies and needs. He is also very accomplished in deep learning models. There will definitely be more and more carbon silicon data in the future, which actually raises the requirements for search. We must do this part."

After saying that, he realized it was ambiguous and added, "What I mean is that we don't want to compete with Baidu externally, but we need to provide search functionality for our own users. How to make the search accurate is actually a technical job."

Yu Xing fully understood Yang Zhenyuan's meaning and nodded again, saying, "No problem. Since you're having a chat, you can arrange a time to meet or talk on the phone anytime." Yang Zhenyuan hummed in agreement, took out his phone, and searched for a number.

Yu Xing didn't react for a moment, and when he saw him hand over the phone, he asked in astonishment, "You're calling now?"

Yang Zhenyuan nodded: "I was afraid you'd forget."

Yu Xing found it somewhat amusing, and could only communicate with the Baidu executive on the other end of the phone based on the information he had just heard from this person.

Being monitored like this while poaching talent...

He didn't actually need to talk about any technical aspects with the other side; he just needed to show his enthusiasm.

After chatting for a while, Yu Xing returned the phone to Yang Zhenyuan.

Yang Zhenyuan noticed that his boss's expression was somewhat subtle, and a sense of unease crept into his heart: "President Yu, what's wrong?"

“Nothing much, it’s just that…” Yu Xing said, not quite able to describe his emotions. “He said he thinks the latest trending topics should form a dual-engine strategy of recommendation + search. Well, it’s quite… straightforward of him to bring that up in the first phone call.”

The saying goes, "Don't speak too deeply with someone you don't know well," so this new strategic idea is truly impressive.

Yang Zhenyuan nodded: "We've talked about this before. Well, Baidu's non-compete agreement is quite lenient. I'll have him come over again."

"Mr. Yang, you've thought everything through, so let's go with your plan. I'm ready to be there to support you anytime, whether it's for a meal, money, or karaoke. Just send me a WeChat message, and I'll be right there," Yu Xing said with a smile.

Yang Zhenyuan was completely relieved and no longer in a hurry. He needed to figure out how to poach the former colleagues he wanted.

Actually, it wasn't just him who wanted to poach people; rather, his former colleagues were all quite eager to do so.

Long ago, Sohu was hailed as the "Whampoa Military Academy" of the internet industry, with many talented individuals moving on to other companies. Now, Baidu is gradually following the same trend, with a steady stream of core employees joining emerging companies such as 360, Gaode, and Meituan in recent years.

Including carbon silicon data, Zhai Yifei and Yang Zhenyuan are also typical Baidu tech people.

Baidu is known as one of the BAT giants, and its position remains very stable. However, as the saying goes, "ducks are the first to know when the river warms in spring," and many employees are increasingly considering trying their luck elsewhere.

Yu Xing praised Yang Zhenyuan's algorithm performance again. After seeing him off, he hadn't walked far when Zhong Zhiling rushed over to his side, clearly having been waiting for a long time.

"Mr. CEO, what do you say?" Yu Xing was in a good mood.

“Brother Xing, Tencent is really targeting us.” Zhong Zhiling said this, then added with relief, “Looking at it this way, MusVid really needs to be launched overseas. If it debuts in China, Tencent’s Weishi will be even more determined to take it down.”

Yu Xing nodded slightly: "It's better to be safe than sorry. If you're saying Tencent isn't keeping an eye on things, all three of our apps have counterparts. If you're saying they are, WiFi Master Key and Karaoke have been online for quite some time now."

Penguins may be acting intentionally or unintentionally, and it's unclear how much resources they will invest, but it's always wise to be prepared for the worst.

As they walked, Zhong Zhiling urged, "Brother Xing, it's time to encourage WeChat. Let's take care of this part first."

Yu Xing glanced at his junior brother: "You're quite vengeful. Find an opportunity. If you don't have one, then wait until Weishi launches the music function, and I'll go to Lin'an to find Alibaba."

Zhong Zhiling thought his senior brother would be all about poise and elegance after hearing the first half of the sentence, but he didn't expect the second half to be the most direct action.

He was about to continue speaking when his secretary, Zhang Yangxu, jogged up to him.

"President Yu, Director Zhu wants to see you and asks when you'll be available," Zhang Yangxu reported.

Yu Xing was a little puzzled: "He had time in the afternoon. Did he talk about something? Should he come to the factory or should we go over there?"

Zhang Yangxu replied, "Director Zhu came over, but didn't say anything."

Yu Xing pondered the question and set a time.

Soon, at 3 p.m., I met Director Zhu Zehui, who was visiting. After showing him around the latest prototype vehicle of the Silicon Carbon Group, I learned what had happened.

"Mr. Yu, will your car be eligible for subsidies next year?" Director Zhu didn't keep him in suspense. "The subsidies from above have been approved, and the city is also studying the joint subsidies for next year."

The newly released policy, "Notice on Continuing to Promote the Application of New Energy Vehicles," jointly issued by four departments, also includes range-extended vehicles in the subsidy program. As long as the vehicle meets the standards, it can receive a cash subsidy of 3.5 yuan per vehicle.

Range-extended vehicles are classified as plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles, with the main requirement being a pure electric range of more than 50 kilometers, which is actually easily achievable.

This type of subsidy is directly allocated to enterprises by the central government, with advance payments made quarterly and final settlements made annually.

In other words, if a consumer pays 3.5 less when the Silicon Carbon Group sells a car, the Silicon Carbon Group will advance the money and then recover it through a grant.

Yu Xing asked, "Is it still cash in the city?"

Director Zhu nodded directly, giving clear confirmation.

Then he added, “It’s not as much as what the higher-ups are giving. If you can get on board next year, the demonstration city will probably give you around 3 yuan. That would be quite a lot. If the Carbon Silicon Group can achieve results first, the support can be more… targeted.”

Adding the local amount, that's a cash subsidy of around 6.5 yuan.

This is not just considerable, it's substantial.

Upon hearing the director's words, Yu Xing fell silent; the more directional support carried a strong implication.

Seeing this, Director Zhu reminded him, "The subsidies from above will be reduced every year, so the sooner you start, the better."

After a moment, Yu Xing sighed: "Director, it probably won't be easy. We can force it, but that would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. I really want to do it... but I can't."

The cash subsidies are so tempting, it's no wonder that so many problems have arisen.

Yu Xing could not receive the support here for the time being, and after a brief internal struggle, he comforted himself that the industry giants could also provide subsidies, so it was about the same.

(End of this chapter)