Back to 1997, I became the originator of online literature

Chapter 457 Mr. Ma! Dare to take a gamble?
Cao Sheng: "I believe that these two gifts I have are worth another 3% of the shares from your company. Would you like to hear about them?"

Ma Huateng was silent for a moment, then spoke again: "Oh? Is that so? You mentioned two gifts that were given verbally? Then tell me about them!"

Cao Sheng recalls that QQ groups were launched around 2003.

So, he decided to talk about this first.

Because he knew that even if he didn't say anything, Tencent would soon come up with the idea, so the idea wasn't very valuable to him.

But if we tell Ma Huateng now, it might surprise her.

This is the information gap.

The impact of a one-year information gap on the mind is roughly the same as that of a ten-year information gap for someone who has never heard of it.

Cao Sheng: "Let me tell you something first! I think QQ could add a group function. For example, I could create a group and add all the classmates to it. I know QQ currently has a temporary multi-person chat function, but I'm talking about a long-term multi-person group. Once someone joins a group, they won't automatically leave the group, regardless of whether the group members are online or not..."

Cao Sheng tried to explain in as much detail as possible.

Ma Huateng listened silently.

After Cao Sheng finished speaking, Ma Huateng remained silent.

Cao Sheng asked, "Mr. Ma, are you listening?"

Ma Huateng said, "Yes, thank you, Mr. Cao, for your suggestion to our company. I personally think it's a good suggestion, but I think it's just icing on the cake and not worth 3% of our company's shares."

Cao Sheng chuckled. "Really? Didn't you see that this feature could give QQ another way to make money? Or perhaps QQ isn't interested in making money?"

Ma Huateng: "..."

A few seconds later, Ma Huateng's surprised voice came through, "Huh? What? You mean this feature can make money? How?"

Cao Sheng: "You can think of specific ways to make money. I've come up with one for you. For example, in a regular group, the maximum number of members is 100. The group owner or other members can spend money to upgrade the group. For example, 20 yuan can upgrade a group to a high-level group with a maximum of 200 members, 50 yuan can upgrade a group to a super group with a maximum of 500 members, 100 yuan can upgrade a group to a maximum of 1000 members, and so on. Do you think this way of making money is feasible?"

Ma Huateng didn't respond for a moment.

They're probably thinking about how profitable this business model would be, and roughly how much money it could earn for Tencent each year.

After a moment, he sighed softly, "Thank you, Mr. Cao. Your suggestion is indeed feasible, but I estimate that there won't be many services that upgrade to 500 or even 1000 people in a large group. I think a group of one or two hundred people is enough for the vast majority of users. What do you think?"

Cao Sheng chuckled again, "Mr. Ma, do you know roughly how many authors write online novels these days?"

Ma Huateng: "Uh? Is this related to what we're talking about?"

Cao Sheng: "Two or three years ago, there were very few authors writing online novels, but in the last two or three years, the number of authors writing online novels has been increasing exponentially every year. Now there are many legitimate novel websites, and each novel website has at least hundreds of thousands of authors. You may not know that these authors have thousands of readers. What I mean is that each author probably has thousands of readers. I personally think that every author hopes to have such a group to gather all their fans. For example, I personally have 100,000? 200,000? 500,000? Or even 1 million fans online. How many reader groups do you think an author like me needs to open to gather enough fans?"

Ma Huateng: "..."

After another moment of silence, Ma Huateng asked, "Mr. Cao, is what you just said true? Are there really that many authors writing online novels now?"

Cao Sheng: "Only more, not less!"

This is a classic case of an expert misleading a layman.

But it's not entirely a hoax.

If we only consider the authors who have published their works on each website, there should indeed be hundreds of thousands of authors at present.

But only insiders like Cao Sheng know the reality: 99% of so many online writers currently have no income, and more than 90% of them are part of the eunuch army. Many writers may have only written a few thousand words and published them before disappearing without a trace.

But when Cao Sheng talks to Ma Huateng about this, he can't tell him the truth.

Anyway, he wasn't exactly lying.

The number of people he mentioned was indeed true.

Ma Huateng: "Really? That's great! I'll look into it in detail later. Thank you for your suggestion, Mr. Cao. However, if it's just this one suggestion, I can only give you an additional 1% of the shares at most. I hope you can understand."

Cao Sheng's second suggestion was QQ Farm.

Although he knew that given the current computer penetration rate and number of internet users in China, now was not the right time to launch QQ Farm.

If computer penetration and the number of internet users are insufficient, even if QQ Farm is forcibly launched, the number of people participating in stealing crops will be too small, making it difficult to establish a culture of stealing crops and significantly reducing profitability.

But he didn't care about that at first.

He only wanted to use this suggestion to get Ma Huateng to give him more shares.

But he just suddenly thought of another way for QQ to make money – QQ Show.

In the original timeline, QQ Show sold skins and items, generating a large cash flow for QQ.

Cao Sheng just realized that QQ groups were launched around 2003, and QQ Show was also launched around the same time.

Even if he doesn't mention it now, QQ will be able to come up with this idea very soon.

Therefore, he temporarily decided to use QQ Show as his second bargaining chip.

But when the words were about to come out, he decided against saying them immediately.

"Thank you, Mr. Ma. I believe my second suggestion is worth 2% of your company's shares. But please forgive me for not telling you now. After all, once you give me this kind of creative suggestion, you will immediately understand. Even if you don't give me shares, I won't be able to take back the idea I gave you. Don't you think so?"

Ma Huateng: "..."

Ma Huateng's silence once again proved that he was not good with words.

After a long silence, he spoke again: "I understand Mr. Cao's concerns, but if you don't speak up, how can we determine whether your second suggestion is worth 2% of the shares? I hope, I hope Mr. Cao can also understand my difficulties."

Cao Sheng: "I've already mentioned one of the two gifts, which has proven my sincerity and the value of my gift. Now it's up to Mr. Ma to see if he's willing to take the gamble on my second gift. I can guarantee that the value of my second gift will far exceed that of the first gift, and it should be able to help your company turn a profit and truly become profitable! I wonder if Mr. Ma is willing to take the gamble?"

In Cao Sheng's memory, although QQ Show had simple functions, it accurately hit the nail on the head regarding young people's love of showing off.

In addition, QQ Show is not expensive, so many users pay to purchase it.

Many young people want to have a cool QQ avatar.

Some sleazy and shameless people are willing to spend money to buy QQ avatars for girls in order to pick them up online.

Therefore, this may have truly achieved the goal of low profit margins and high sales volume.

The key point is that Tencent doesn't need to pay any costs, and almost all the money it earns is profit.

When Cao Sheng was reading online novels about entrepreneurship, he saw that some of the works mentioned that QQ Show enabled Tencent to find a way to make money, with annual revenue in the hundreds of millions.

This quickly made Tencent rich.

At this moment.

Pengcheng.

At the headquarters of Tencent, Ma Hua Teng sat in his boss's chair, frowned after listening to Cao Sheng's words, and pushed up his glasses.

His expression was hesitant.

He's really not good at negotiating business.

Reason told him: he couldn't gamble with the company's shares so easily. If Zhongyuan Yidianhui was trying to scam him, he would be completely fooled once the shareholding agreement was signed.

Moreover, the current value of 2% of Tencent's shares is not low. It should be worth tens of millions of RMB.

If someone were to gamble with that many shares, that would be a truly extravagant gamble.

However, what Cao Sheng said on the phone was indeed very tempting to him.

What suggestions do you have for making QQ completely profitable?
Did Cao Sheng's second gift really have such a miraculous effect?

is it possible?
After hesitating for a long time, no decision was made.

He forced a smile and said, "Mr. Cao, could you give me two days to think about this? I can't give you an answer right now."

Cao Sheng: "Sure! Of course."

Ma Huateng: "Thank you! Thank you."

……

After ending the call, Ma Huateng sat in his chair in silence for a long time before picking up the landline phone on his desk and dialing his secretary's number. "Summon all senior executives of the company for a meeting, immediately!"

……

Huizhou.

Cao Sheng remained seated on the banks of the Xin'an River, fishing. He stared at the motionless float on the water, his brow furrowed. He wondered, "What's going on? This isn't a good omen, is it? In movies and TV shows, after a business negotiation, shouldn't the fishing tycoon immediately catch a big fish? Does this indicate a good outcome to the negotiation?"
Why is the float not moving at all when it comes to mine?

He frowned as he recalled the times he had sat by the river fishing after his rebirth, talking on the phone with people... It seemed that he had never caught a big fish.

"This...is not artistic at all."

He gave a self-deprecating laugh and muttered to himself.

Unconvinced, he sat by the river for over an hour, but the buoy on the water remained completely still.

This left him speechless.

Reason told him: the New Year had just passed, the weather was so cold, and the Xin'an River was so vast that the fish density in the river must be very low, so it was normal that no one was taking the bait.

But a voice inside me kept saying: This is not a good sign, it has no artistic sense at all!

……

That night.

Magic City.

In a movie theater screening room.

Wearing a black fisherman's hat and a white woolen scarf that covered half of his face, Fan Jinsuo took a break from his busy schedule and sat in a seat in the back row, watching the plot on the big screen with surprise.

She was reading "Drishyam," a novel written by Cao Sheng.

She hasn't been in the industry long and isn't very famous, but she's always very busy with work, and socializing is part of her job.

Therefore, she rarely has time to go to the cinema to watch movies.

Even though she had heard that "Drishyam" was written by Cao Sheng and starred Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung, it didn't entice her to the cinema.

It wasn't until recently, when more and more domestic media reported that the film's box office in mainland China had exceeded 4000 million, that she finally couldn't resist taking the time to go to the cinema to watch it.

For her, even if she gave her first time to Cao Sheng, even if Cao Sheng wrote the screenplay for this film, even if the film stars Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung...

Even with all that, her attraction remained the same.

Only exceptionally high box office numbers can entice her to the cinema.

At this point, the movie was only halfway through, and there was still a long way to go before it ended.

But she has gradually come to understand why the movie has received such high praise.

This is actually a high-IQ crime movie.

The murderers were the protagonist's wife and daughter. The protagonist, who fabricated evidence to exonerate his wife and daughter, was also committing a crime.

The male lead played by Andy Lau has an IQ that high?
Is he trying to outmaneuver the police at every turn?

Is it true that the righteous are one foot higher than the evil ones?

How did an ordinary-looking male protagonist manage to outmaneuver the police?

How could he have conceived of and managed to create a collective false memory among so many people who had seen his entire family?

Through various forms of psychological suggestion, he managed to make those who saw his family the day after the incident believe that it was the date of the incident.
Fan Jinshuo, who didn't have much formal education, felt like her CPU was about to burn out. While she was carefully studying the movie plot, she was also trying to figure out the protagonist's criminal methods in her mind. Was it feasible in reality?

At first, she thought it was impossible.

But upon closer reflection, it becomes chilling to discover that the protagonist's methods of committing crimes seem to be actually feasible.

In reality, many people are not sensitive to dates.

On what day did this event happen?
Many people seem to genuinely not remember it after a few days.

She couldn't remember.

So if someone were to casually tell her today's date, she might actually believe that today's events happened on that date ten days or two weeks later.

When she walked out of the movie theater after watching the movie, she was still a little lost in thought.

The shock of the movie's ending still lingered in her mind.

The male lead, played by Andy Lau, actually won in the end?
How could such a movie be shown in mainland China?

What's the point of the review process?
Does this movie depict evil triumphing over good?
But it doesn't seem like that.

In terms of identity, the police in the movie represent justice, but in terms of principle, the protagonist's family who resist the police investigation and interrogation seem to truly represent justice.

Even if the male protagonist's wife and daughter committed murder.

Back in his hotel room, Fan Jinshuo poured himself a glass of mineral water and drank it casually.

I'm still thinking about the movie "Drishyam" that I watched tonight.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt that the screenwriter, Cao Sheng, had a very strong presence in this movie.

Cao Sheng did not appear in this movie.

Logically speaking, this movie can be considered the work of the lead actor or the director, but after watching it, she always felt that it was the work of screenwriter Cao Sheng.

The screenwriter's presence was more noticeable than that of the director and the male and female leads.

It practically became a work showcasing Cao Sheng's skills.

Such films are extremely rare in the Chinese film industry.

(End of this chapter)