Back to the prime of life

Chapter 215 Accident
After the meeting, Lu Changge spoke on the phone with Zhou Shuang for another twenty minutes.

In China, Pulsego's user base is still around 200,000, which is of course limited by the low penetration rate of smartphones. However, the business model of this product has been proven in the United States, so the company is still confident.

However, Lu Changge's future plans for it are completely different from those for Chatter in the United States. In short, he has no intention of selling it, no matter how much money is offered.

So they were actually talking about other things, such as a new team in the company developing other applications.

Lu Changge was somewhat interested in this, but unfortunately he didn't have enough time. Li Ming was already knocking on the door, and Min Xiuwen had arrived.

This newly hired brand manager hadn't even been to Lumang once before being directly taken to Beijing.

After Lu Changge gave them a brief introduction, the three of them went to a nearby breakfast shop and chatted while eating.

Min Xiuwen didn't know that he had been forcibly dragged over by Xu Huiya. He thought that he was supposed to play a role here, so he said as soon as he came up: "President Lu, I thought about it on the way here. Since we are talking about financing, we should talk about our own future plans for the company. I still have something to say about the brand."

What he meant was that if they wanted money, they would definitely exaggerate the company's valuation.

"What do you suggest?"

Min Xiuwen seemed encouraged. "Here's what I think: President Lu has already explained the necessity of building the Lumang brand to me very clearly, and I think the logic is clear. But 'needing to do' and 'being able to do' are two different things, and that's what I want to talk about. I want to describe it from two aspects: the strategic level and the execution level... The strategic level includes brand positioning and market gaps, brand story and vision resonance, and the founder's personal IP; the execution level includes proving that users have established brand awareness..."

This guy comes from a professional company. When it comes to serious matters, he starts spouting long, formulaic phrases like "strategic level," "execution level," "brand story," and "visionary resonance." These kinds of terms would never come out of Li Ming's mouth.

Not only that, he went on to talk about content assets, visual assets, and so on. In any case, Lu Changge was completely fooled by him.

Ultimately, it's about a brand's story and emotional resonance, but it can be transformed into six or seven different pieces of content.

Finally, Lu Changge asked only one question: "In the eyes of investors, there are several pitfalls in brand storytelling, such as over-packaging leading to a mismatch between brand investment and business stage, as well as competing brands and brands that over-rely on their founders. How would you answer if asked about these?"

"It's hard to explain what 'excessive packaging' means. What is excessive and what is not excessive? If we really want to quantify it, it's the percentage of marketing investment. However, Lumang doesn't have the overwhelming marketing of Vancl. From the perspective of brand content, there are currently no decent competitors. The only thing that needs to be carefully explained is that the brand relies too much on individuals. We need to think about this carefully."

His statement actually coincided with Lu Changge's thoughts.

But there's really nothing to think about. They started with this tactic, so now they have to bear its negative effects. Investors aren't stupid; who can't see the fatal flaw in this?
At this point, Li Ming said again, "No, I think now that we've started trying to build a brand, is there any way to separate Lu Changge and Lu Mang as much as possible from the beginning?"

"Yes, there are."

"We can talk about this," Lu Changge encouraged.

"The relationship between a brand and its founder is like that of a rocket and its booster—initially, the founder's personal brand is needed to propel the brand into flight, but once it reaches a stable trajectory, they must separate and rely on an internally-driven system for continued operation. The key is to replace the individual with a system in advance, and to use the system to cover up chance. The specific methods are…"

The most obvious examples are team-based operations and multi-brand strategies, which reduce reliance on a single founder as a figurehead. For instance, talent can be recruited internally, gradually decoupling the success story of Luman from a single success to the result of collective teamwork. Alternatively, a completely new brand can be created for a specific product, one that is no longer directly associated with the founder.

Li Ming said, "This content is just pure boasting, because we haven't done any of it yet."

"Not necessarily. You invited me here precisely to work in this direction, didn't you?"

Lu Changge wholeheartedly agreed; at least Min Xiuwen knew why he had come to show his face. He had originally planned to deliberately keep a low profile for a few years, waiting for netizens to forget about him—a method that relied on time. However, Min Xiuwen's deep involvement in this matter actually revealed knowledge beyond Lu Changge's comprehension.

This is why talent is so important to a company.

After all, a boss is not omniscient or omnipotent.

But...

“Things are different now. Today, it’s the investors who want to see us, not the other way around. And Lumang isn’t the kind of small Taobao shop we’re talking about. So we need to get what we want.”

Li Ming asked, "What is it?"

“In the process of a company’s growth and expansion, money is actually the most common resource, and once a company shows good asset growth, money is the easiest thing to obtain. In comparison, other resources such as team, technology, and supply chain are often more critical and cannot be bought with money. For Lumang, besides capital and brand, what else is related to our life and death?”

He was inspiring the two of them to think about it as well.

“Talented individuals,” Min Xiuwen said.

"why?"

"Because no matter what the problem is, it always needs to be solved by someone. The results brought about by people who can solve problems and those who cannot are completely different."

Lu Changge praised, "Insightful. Lao Li, Qin Jun and I were discussing supply chain management the other day. Our company doesn't produce goods; it's essentially a platform. But if these production-side people directly face consumers in the future, we'll have some concerns. But Xiuwen is right; ultimately, supply chain management optimization is still done by people."

"They might not be able to succeed by directly targeting consumers; selling things is much harder than you might imagine."

Lu Changge remained noncommittal.

In fact, the future live-streaming sales model will bring certain challenges to e-commerce, because merchants will face consumers directly and will not need any intermediary channels at all. It's just that people can't imagine it now.

In general, before meeting with investors, they had already discussed most of the issues and needs, and then it came down to whose offer was better.

There's not much room for maneuver here, because Lu Mang Company is growing strongly, and Lu Changge is unlikely to make concessions on his core terms. If he can't get it, he'll just switch to another company.

At nine o'clock in the morning, Hsu Hui-ya appeared. To everyone's surprise, she brought a blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigner with her.

In this situation, everyone subconsciously assumed he was from the UK or the US, but this guy spoke with a strong Russian accent, and the tall Russian man opposite him said right away, "Mr. Lu, you are much younger than I imagined. I can't believe that the owner of Chatter software is so young."

This guy actually knows about chatter!

This is interesting. Lu Changge looked at Xu Huiya, who also seemed to be secretly pleased with herself, as if she had finally seen his unexpected reaction. "Ivanovic wanted to see you as soon as he arrived in China. He is very sincere, and what he wants to talk to you about is not just about showing off."

Well, all that discussion this morning was for nothing.

(End of this chapter)