I can become stronger by paying salaries. I have one billion employees!

Chapter 230 The more greedy you are, the more opponents you will have!

Inside an office on the top floor of Building 9, Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.

"Mr. Liang, what kind of tea would you like?"

Chen Yansen stood in front of the tea cabinet, turned around and asked a question.

"Mr. Chen, please just call me by my name. I'll just have water." Liang Bo sat down at the coffee table, licked his lips, and said awkwardly.

"You don't need to be so formal here." Chen Yansen smiled faintly, took a box of Huoshan Huangya tea leaves, walked back to the sofa, and handed Liang Bo a bottle of mineral water.

"Thank you." Liang Bo took the water and quickly expressed his gratitude.

He then unscrewed the bottle cap and, taking the opportunity to drink water, curiously looked around at the office furnishings and his future boss.

Chen Yansen brewed tea for himself, and after he finished, he looked up at Liang Bo and said, "I want you to be in charge of an algorithm-driven news aggregation platform that uses search engine recommendation technology to provide users with personalized content services. The product name will be Toutiao."

"It has the same underlying logic as Lingxi Browser, only the product form has been changed to a news app?"

Liang Bo suddenly realized why Chen Yansen wanted to poach him. After thinking for a few seconds, he asked to confirm.

"Pretty much, but apart from a product proposal, you're the only one working on this project right now."

Chen Yansen poured a cup of hot water and pushed it in front of Liang Bo.

"Thank you, boss." Liang Bo's delivery of "boss" became increasingly smooth.

"Please submit a list of the types and numbers of R&D personnel you need, and the HR department will help you coordinate the recruitment process."

Chen Yansen picked up his teacup, took a sip, and said calmly.

"Boss, I'd like to take a look at Toutiao's product proposal first," Liang Bo nodded and said.

Having decided to join, Liang Bo naturally wanted to know the direction of the work so that he could have a general idea of ​​the project's development prospects.

"There's no rush. Let's talk after you sign the contract."

Chen Yansen waved his hand and said.

At this time, Liang Bo was nearly thirty years old. He had failed in several business ventures with Zhang Yiming, and life had worn down his rough edges.

At this age, with elderly parents to care for and young children to raise, and family expenses becoming increasingly heavy, Liang Bo didn't think much before resigning from his job, even though he was offered a generous monthly salary of 6 yuan.

Having entrepreneurial dreams is important, but income is even more important.

Thinking about this, Liang Bo asked, "Boss, does that mean our product content is also scraped?"

He knew that while unauthorized scraping of content from other websites could significantly shorten the data accumulation cycle for a product, it would also result in receiving a lawyer's letter much faster.

“Of course not,” Chen Yansen replied.

Liang Bo secretly breathed a sigh of relief. As a top student at Nanjing University, although he was not a law major, he understood the drawbacks of this approach.

Hearing Chen Yansen's answer, the pressure immediately eased a lot.

Chen Yansen glanced at Liang Bo and thought to himself: Zhang Yiming has some connections and resources in the industry, but not many. How can he compare to me?
He had already reached a cooperation agreement with Penguin two weeks ago.

At that time, the API interface of Tencent News will be called directly, but the prerequisite is that a deep jump link of Tencent News must be added to the news article.

In short, Toutiao uses Tencent News' content for free, and Tencent News can obtain Toutiao's traffic resources for free.

If new customers come in, then the penguin makes a profit.

Chen Yansen packaged Toutiao as a zero-commission content navigation product and successfully persuaded Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu with this rhetoric.

Then, by leveraging Zhang Chaoyang's connections, they established cooperative relationships with Sina and NetEase.

NetEase was the only one that insisted on charging a copyright usage fee, which Chen Yansen agreed to without much thought. However, he also made the same request: users who switched from Toutiao to NetEase would be divided into new and old customers, and would be charged CPA and CPM advertising fees according to market prices.

After listening to Chen Yansen's introduction, Liang Bo's concerns instantly disappeared: having a powerful boss behind him made things much easier.

Whatever resources you want, the big boss can get them!

After finishing his tea, Liang Bo immediately stood up, grabbed his suitcase, and headed to the personnel department to report for duty.

the other side.

Zhang Yiming didn't care too much about Liang Bo's departure. In his opinion, he could do everything that Liang Bo could do.

The reason the other party left was simply because they believed that his fifth entrepreneurial venture would most likely fail.

Driven by these emotions, Zhang Yiming was eager to launch the Lingxi Browser to the market. He wanted to prove to everyone that he had a talent for entrepreneurship.

at the same time.

Cheng Weixing led Kuaidi Dache to a strong rise in Hangzhou. With no competitors and a two-way subsidy policy for both drivers and passengers, the number of registered users quickly increased from zero to 240 million.

Daily order volume reaches up to 12!

In just one month, they captured half of the market in Hangzhou.

The total number of employees has rapidly expanded from the initial 100-plus to over 500, with 70% of them responsible for safety, driver management, and regional operations, while the remaining 30% are responsible for technology development and headquarters operations.

"Mr. Cheng, there's only about 600 million left in the account," Fan Junyan reminded him.

"So fast?"

Cheng Weixing was taken aback. Including the investment from Senlian Capital and the gross profit of Kuaidi Dache, at least 3000 million yuan had been spent during this period. In other words, to completely dominate the ride-hailing market in Hangzhou, another 3000-4000 million yuan in subsidies would be needed.

In the East China, North China, and South China markets, there are at least a dozen other cities with a population size similar to Hangzhou.

In the early stages of market development and user cultivation, more than 10 billion yuan needs to be invested in the eastern region alone.

Cheng Weixing then realized that if he hadn't boarded the big ship of Senlian Capital, with his own capital and technical strength, it would have taken him two or three years to take over the Hangzhou market, even with smooth financing.

"I understand." Cheng Weixing pondered for a moment, nodded slightly to Fan Junyan, then walked out of the office and dialed Chen Yansen's mobile phone number directly.

"Mr. Chen, we don't have much marketing budget left for Kuaidi Dache," Cheng Weixing said bluntly.

The implication is that I want money!

"I'll give you another 3000 million to take over the ride-hailing market in Hangzhou as soon as possible. Then I'll launch Kuaidi Dache's Series A financing."

Chen Yansen leaned back, put his feet on the desk, and said casually.

3000?
That should be enough!

Cheng Weixing didn't expect Chen Yansen to be so agreeable. Although his shareholding percentage would shrink again, he didn't care.

A bigger cake is more satisfying to eat!

"Thank you, Mr. Chen. Give me another month, and I want every taxi driver in Hangzhou to have the Kuaidi Dache app installed on their phone."

Cheng Weixing assured him confidently.

"Actually, you can try to increase private car services to increase the competitive pressure among drivers, which will improve the service level of Kuaidi Dache."

Chen Yansen spoke up to remind him.

Otherwise, in the eyes of taxi drivers, Kuaidi Dache is just a software that gives them benefits. Without competitive pressure, even with the rating system restrictions, these drivers who are used to being treated like lords will still dare to speak rudely to passengers.

These passengers all paid real money for their tickets.

Private car service?
Unlicensed taxis?

Cheng Weixing frowned, secretly assessing the risks involved. After considering it carefully for more than ten seconds, he cautiously replied, "President Chen, I will come up with a solution as soon as possible."

"It's your decision, after all, you are the CEO of Kuaidi Dache."

Chen Yansen said with a smile.

In his previous life, Cheng Weixing was kicked out of management by investors early on, so that the vast majority of people had never even heard of him.

As the founder of China's ride-hailing model, Cheng Weixing's execution and management skills are quite good.

In less than a month, he expanded his business to the entire central area of ​​Hangzhou, demonstrating his remarkable market development capabilities.

Just as Cheng Weixing was feeling triumphant, Cheng Wei left Ji Gang's office with a look of disappointment on his face.

A week ago, he finally made up his mind to resign from his position as the deputy general manager of Zhifubao's B2C business, and with great anticipation, he took Didi Chuxing's business plan to Ji Gang in Ali's strategic investment department.

He had assumed that, out of consideration for being fellow Ali people, the other party would invest at least a few million, but Ji Gang directly rejected him.

Cheng Wei vaguely felt that Ji Gang was only rejecting him, not the ride-hailing model.

Perhaps because Kuaidi Dache has already established itself in Hangzhou, Ali doesn't want to waste money on Didi; investing in Kuaidi Dache is better than investing in Didi.

"Go to Yanjing and look for opportunities."

As Cheng Wei walked out of the Ali headquarters, he pondered to himself.

After figuring it out, he subconsciously glanced back at the Ali headquarters, his eyes filled with dissatisfaction and resentment, before embarking on his journey to find investors.

Three days later, Senlian Capital injected 3000 million yuan into Kuaidi Dache.

After receiving the money, Cheng Weixing immediately accelerated the pace of expansion.

Orange App Store has placed promotional posters for Kuaidi Dache (a ride-hailing service) on its homepage and above the App Hot Search list, targeting users with Hangzhou IP addresses.

With the gimmick of free rides, Kuaidi Dache has become increasingly popular among young people. Even some middle-aged men and women in their fifties have learned to use ride-hailing apps under the guidance of their children.

In fact, Cheng Wei was right.

Ma Liyun was not uninterested in the ride-hailing market; on the contrary, he immediately realized that ride-hailing apps could enrich Zhifubao's offline payment scenarios and increase the product's daily active users.

However, he also immediately saw the drawbacks of the ride-hailing model, which required a lot of manpower and financial resources to cultivate the market.

At this time, Ali's primary task was to repurchase the Alibaba shares held by Yahoo, so he refused to invest in Cheng Wei.

But he was very interested in Kuaidi Dache (a ride-hailing app)!
That afternoon, Ma Liyun personally called Chen Yansen.

Ali wants to invest in Kuaidi Dache?
And add the Wealth Management option to the payment methods?

After a moment's thought, Chen Yansen agreed to Ma Liyun's request.

Because he not only agreed to Ma Liyun's request, but also to six other venture capital firms, including Ma Wenteng, Zhu Xiaohu of Jinsha Venture Capital, and Zhou Shouzhi of DST Capital.

There's no way he can do it all by himself; this track is just too damn expensive.

The more greedy you are, the more opponents you will have!

(End of this chapter)