Debuted right after graduating from high school

2007 is coming to an end.

Just when people thought the subprime mortgage crisis was coming to an end, global stock markets began to experience a series of problems.

In the first few months, A-shares fell as a warning, and in November, the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong also fell by more than 1000 points. After emerging markets were successively reaped, US stocks finally showed signs of playing with fire and getting burned.

According to rumors circulating from the American Bankers Association, consumer credit defaults in the United States are worsening, with delinquency rates rising to their highest level since 2001.

With Bear Stearns, one of the five major investment banks in the United States, on the verge of collapse, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also deeply embroiled in the storm, Wall Street experts estimated that the losses caused by subprime mortgages had exceeded $8000 billion. Fan Wumian, through his personal financial account, had already made a fortune by investing in short positions.

After the winter break began, Zuo Ziyan stayed in Europe for a while, helping her parents with some business at their London company, attending a senior's wedding in Sweden, and also doing a short internship at the British fashion retail giant "NEW LOOK" to prepare for starting a fast fashion brand in partnership with Fan Wumian.

She has always had a clear plan for her life, unlike some love-obsessed young girls who only know how to revolve around men all day long.

For Zuo Ziyan, romance is only a part of life. She wants to live a wonderful life of her own, so she occasionally travels or works to enrich herself, rather than trying to spend every opportunity to be with Fan Wumian.

More than two weeks into the winter break, Zuo Ziyan finished her own work and then took the private plane arranged by Fan Wumian to return to Hong Kong to relax and spend time with her family.

Still the same.

On December 30th, Zuo Ziyan returned to Gangcheng and immediately went to meet Fan Wumian to avoid being harassed by her mother at home and missing out on opportunities to go out on dates.

After a thoroughly enjoyable moment, Fan Wumian jokingly ran his fingertips along her sweat-drenched back, saying:
“I usually manage my finances very carefully, spending all my money on investments and financial management. I finally gritted my teeth and made the tough decision to spend more than HK$200 million to purchase a batch of treasures. Before I even had time to feel the pinch, I discovered that I had actually made more than US$240 million.”

"The financial markets next year should be very lively. After Wall Street has reaped profits from other countries, it will not let go of domestic investors, not to mention the hot money attracted to the US stock market by the dollar tide."

"I estimate we won't last until the end of next year. Whether a financial crisis will actually occur or not will soon be clear. In a few months, I'll choose an opportune moment to sell my 25% stake in Paulson's hedge fund, and use the proceeds to buy at the bottom after the financial crisis."

Zuo Ziyan lay in his arms, her breathing still heavy. She turned to pull out a tissue to wipe her sweat and asked:
"You mentioned it during the video call, why do you only buy porcelain? Especially those celestial globe vases?"

Fan Wumian explained:

"I like the shape of the celestial globe vase. The round shape is more pleasing to the eye. Many paintings and calligraphy works that have been around for hundreds of years are particularly fragile and difficult to preserve. Buddhist statues don't have much meaning. After looking around, I think collecting porcelain is the easiest and most convenient."

"I will spend hundreds of millions to acquire a batch of items every year in the future. By the time I am in my forties or fifties, the collection in my private museum will be quite diverse."

"Besides buying these things, what else can I buy? It's hard to find anything I like anymore. I have so many mansions that I don't even have a chance to live in them. I also have yachts and private jets. I'm making money but have nowhere to spend it. It's easy to get depressed after a while."

Zuo Ziyan replied:

“I understand you. Ordinary people are single-mindedly focused on getting rich, but once they actually get rich, new troubles arise. Problems that can be solved with money are easy to handle, but the most troublesome ones are those that money can't solve, right?”

"Gold is valued in times of chaos, and antiques are valued in times of prosperity. It seems that the mainland economy has really developed. My grandfather used to collect things with his friends a few years ago. I heard that at that time, merchants from the north secretly transported a lot of things over, which were not worth anything at all."
“He has a pair of green gourd-shaped bottles that used to be placed next to the Guanyin Buddha statue. He mentioned that he bought them in the 70s for only tens of thousands of yuan, and they have appreciated a lot since then, but I don’t know what dynasty they are from.”

"There was also a blue flowerpot, shaped like a spittoon. We used to grow flowers in it, but my grandfather put it on a shelf and then took it to a bank vault. I guess it was worth some money."

Fan Wumian sighed and said:

"The good old days of collecting are over. In the early years, most people who were willing to invest in the mainland, whether it was doing business, buying houses or antiques, would have made money. Some people couldn't afford houses in Hong Kong, so they went north to Shenzhen to retire, and now the house prices have increased several times over."

Just chatting.

After resting and taking a shower, we'll discuss the positioning of fast fashion brands.

Fan Wumian suggested that she rely on factories in mainland China and initially focus on developing markets in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States.

Unfortunately, as a major textile-producing country, the domestic market is too competitive, with clothing stores everywhere, making it difficult for a new brand to establish itself. It's better to try your luck in the international market.

It's not too late to enter the mainland market a few years later when the mainland economy takes off and purchasing power increases. By then, Zuo Ziyan's fans will have entered society and begun to take control of their own finances, which will help directly shape a mid-to-high-end brand image.

I slept soundly until dawn.

When Fan Wumian woke up, Zuo Ziyan had already gone home and sent a text message saying that she was going to accompany her parents to visit their mansion on Tai Long Wan Road, which was under reconstruction.

After washing up, he continued browsing the internet and saw that Zhang Yuqi had sent him a still from "The Empress of China" on QQ. Her body was shaped strangely by the straps, and her skin was fair and tender.

Fan Wumian just smiled after reading it, thinking that many people were thinking about taking the long way around, but unfortunately the long way around wasn't so easy to take, as it was already crowded with people.

There's also Baby Yang, who proactively created opportunities even when none existed, sending him a message in advance to wish him a Happy New Year. Her social media profile is full of her beautiful photos, and her face is indeed very photogenic.

I didn't want to chat with anyone today. After harvesting and watering the crops, I tried out a few new mini-games from Tencent. Then I suddenly remembered something and started looking for new online games that had been released or were in the planning stages.

Occasionally screening games helps Tencent acquire them at bargain prices and seize the "luck" of other game companies in advance.

A few months ago, Fan Wumian couldn't find any good projects to invest in, and this time he returned empty-handed again. However, after reading the introductions of a few games, he had the idea of ​​investing in and developing a tower defense mobile game.

Judging by the timeline, the second iPhone 3G and the App Store will be launched in a few months. At that time, the mobile game market will rise, which will contribute a lot of cash flow to Tencent and help it get rid of the negative impact of the financial crisis ahead of time.

Fan Wumian casually sent an email to the senior vice president of Tencent in charge of the gaming business. Then, he checked the latest situation of Alibaba Group and was surprised to find that a senior executive of Microsoft Group had publicly stated yesterday that they were studying the possibility of privatizing and acquiring Yahoo.

To my recollection, Microsoft did indeed make an acquisition offer to Yahoo worth over $400 billion.

It's unclear where Yahoo's board of directors got the confidence to decisively reject Microsoft's offer, only to sell itself at a rock-bottom price in the end, making them a laughing stock.

Fan Wumian has changed many things, and he's unsure if Yahoo's board of directors might suddenly go crazy and decide to sell the entire company. After carefully assessing the potential impact of the whole affair, Fan Wumian feels the problem isn't too serious.

After all, Microsoft values ​​Yahoo's search engine and advertising business, and is unlikely to be very interested in Alibaba. Even if it does acquire Yahoo, there is a possibility that it will choose to divest its Alibaba shares and sell them to Alibaba to cash out and recoup its investment.

If Yahoo's board of directors rejects the acquisition again, then in Fan Wumian's view, the best time to make a move is likely to be at the beginning of the full-blown financial crisis.

At that time, the market will be in a state of panic and will lose confidence in the future. In order to recover funds or reduce losses, the Yahoo board of directors may readily agree to sell Alibaba shares to him.

Buying it would be great, but if the negotiations fall through, the funds can be invested directly in companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Fan Wumian felt there wasn't much difference; it was all about taking money from foreigners.

Therefore, he maintained a calm attitude and slowly finished his work before looking up information about the latest developments of "multi-rotor drones".

Last time, Wang Tao, the founder of Dajiang UAV Company, accidentally crashed his product into Fan Wumian's car. At the time, he wondered why Fan Wumian was playing with helicopter model aircraft instead of multi-rotor drones.

After finding some information, Fan Wumian discovered that the market size of this industry was really too small. In 2005, the German company Parrot launched the consumer-grade quadcopter MD4-200, and the publicly displayed sales were only 250 units, which was even smaller than the scale of helicopter model aircraft.

The drone market has a huge future potential, but right now it's just a niche toy.

Realizing he had overestimated Wang Tao's resources, Fan Wumian decided against wasting his brainpower on setting him up. Instead, he made a call to his secretary's office, requesting to acquire the company and technology founded by Wang Tao, and to provide him and the company's technicians with a HK$100 million salary pool, which Wang Tao could allocate as he pleased.

This means that after acquiring Wang Tao's company, a total salary budget of HK$100 million will be allocated for next year. Wang Tao can decide how much annual salary he will receive, and then distribute the remaining salary to others.

The reason for this decision was that Fan Wumian valued Wang Tao's importance but was unclear about the abilities of the other employees.

To avoid employing idlers for nothing, for the time being, we only need to win over Wang Tao and let him assess which R&D personnel are needed under his command and how much value each person's workload is.

Fan Wumian's people contacted Wang Tao, who agreed to the acquisition without hesitation, demanding that the principal and interest of the professor and his friends' investment be returned, and offered Dajiang Company a price of 100 million RMB.

Rather than an acquisition, it's more accurate to say that Wang Tao couldn't withstand the pressure of starting a business and willingly wanted to be recruited, thus beginning to work for Fan Wumian.

Few people bought the unmanned aerial vehicle flight control system he developed, and Dajiang Company was on the verge of collapse. The market was so small that there was no hope. Compared to failing in his business and losing everything, it was definitely more secure to work a high-paying job, especially since he could earn hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars a year and still do what he loved.
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They reached an agreement over the phone.

Afterwards, Wang Tao couldn't wait to share the good news with his parents, which thrilled the elderly couple who were starting a business in Shenzhen.

Others may not know Fan Wumian's strength, but his parents do business in Shenzhen. How could they not know about behemoth companies like Tencent and Bosera Asset Management?

Followed by.

Wang Tao then contacted his mentor, Li Xiangze.

After hearing the whole story, Professor Li said with a pained expression:
“I also own shares in the company. Your decision was too arbitrary. Shouldn’t you have discussed it with me beforehand? Mr. Fan is optimistic about your company, which means he thinks it has potential. He probably realized that drone aerial photography would be helpful for filming movies and TV series. Your best option should be to seek financing, not to acquire the company outright and work for someone else.”

Wang Tao laughed awkwardly and said:
"Actually, I did consider seeking financing, but the market is so small that we can't even make a pie in the sky. We can't just say that we'll take over the market in the future and make hundreds of thousands in profit a year, can we?"

"I've been running my own business for over a year, and I really can't see a clear future. If I try it out until the very end and then decide to work for him, he'll probably not need me anymore. By then, the money you invested, as well as the money my friends and I invested, will all be wasted. It's better to pay back the investment while I can."

"Thank you for your continued support, Professor, but a salary of several hundred thousand a year is too much from President Fan."

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Professor Li Xiangze wanted to say that he lacked ambition, but then again, the drone flight control market is indeed small, and even if a certain company succeeds in the future, it may not be the company founded by Wang Tao.

Like many people in Hong Kong, Professor Li believed that the technical teams in Europe and America were the most capable, and that his initial decision to invest in Wang Tao was merely a gamble.

As for when to say what, apart from Fan Wumian, no one has been able to predict the potential of the drone market.

Because the market size was too small, missing out on this small project with little prospect wouldn't be too much of a pity for Professor Li Xiangze. He felt that it would be good to be able to recoup his investment.

The HKUST professor sighed and pressed for an answer:
"Whatever. My income is only a few hundred thousand a year, it would be a pity to miss such a job opportunity. Have you asked what would happen if the project failed? What if Mr. Fan invests recklessly and then doesn't care? What will you do in the future?"

"We haven't had a chance to discuss this in detail yet. I was just thinking of asking for your opinion, Professor. I'll go and ask you later."

Wang Tao didn't think that much about it.

After all, if he could take 50% of the salary pool, that is, receive an annual salary of HK$50, it would be equivalent to the income of an ordinary person working for more than ten years.

Even if they are laid off after two or three years, they can stay at home for twenty or thirty years without having to worry about food and drink.

People's appetites are always growing step by step. Right now, Wang Tao just wants to do what he is interested in and earn more money to support himself. It is hard for him to have unrealistic ambitions.

Zhang Yiming, the founder of Douyin who was recruited by Fan Wumian earlier, was similar. He was content to be a programmer, earning an annual salary of over one million yuan. He only hoped to work hard and earn more money. He would never dare to quit his job and start a business.

They were completely unaware that Fan Wumian had stolen their "luck," and instead felt quite grateful for the company's cultivation, believing they had met a mentor, demonstrating a strong sense of initiative.

Take Tudou.com's short video business as an example. Zhang Yiming's team just updated an algorithm, making the personalized push function more and more advanced, and even better than YouTube.

(End of this chapter)