Restart life

Chapter 166 0163 [Free Ads and Free Games]

Before leaving the capital, Chen Guiliang held a meeting.

First, I listened briefly to the work progress of each department.

During this period, everyone's task is simple, but extremely crucial: to integrate the newly formed team.

ByteDance, which originally had only a dozen or so people, suddenly grew to over 100. They didn't know each other, were unfamiliar with their own tasks, and often made mistakes in the chaos of being busy.

Chang Zhongxiang's financial system has been basically completed.

Wei Xiaokang, drawing on the expertise of numerous major companies including Baidu, Sina, Sohu, Tencent, and Alibaba, devised a highly complex job hierarchy system. The submitted proposal left Ao Yanzhen, Guo Feng, and Xie Yang completely bewildered.

After discussion by the senior management team, Chen Guiliang made the final decision to establish a simple and clear 14-level job system. All sub-levels in the original plan were eliminated, and promotion criteria were mainly based on ability and contribution.

Build up seniority as a contribution, which is what people mean when they say: even if you don't have great achievements, you still have worked hard.

However, seniority doesn't carry much weight, and older employees can easily be surpassed by their "juniors."

The company's legal department currently only has one legal specialist, Shi Qian, who jumped ship from King & Wood Mallesons. Chen Guiliang is taking him to Hangzhou to discuss equity investment.

"Have you ever heard of Craigslist?" Chen Guiliang asked.

The crowd shook their heads.

Only Chang Chung-hsiang, who was in charge of finance, answered, "The largest free classifieds website in the United States."

Xie Yang asked in confusion, "How do free ads make money?"

Chang Zhongxiang said, "It's not completely free. Job postings in a few major cities are charged. But the fees are very low, a few dozen dollars per ad. When I was working in the United States, I bought a used car through Craigslist and even found a girlfriend on it."

Buying a used car is understandable, but what's with looking for a girlfriend?

Ao Yanchen asked, "That website, does it also offer matchmaking services?"

Chen Guiliang smiled and said to Chang Zhongxiang, "You explain."

Chang Zhongxiang said, "In order to reduce operating costs, that website has no pictures in any of its advertisements, only dense text information. Users can freely post advertisements to sell second-hand goods, rent houses, recruit employees... or even ask for a boyfriend or girlfriend."

"Can you maintain a balance between income and expenditure?" Ao Yanzhen asked.

Chang Zhongxiang said, "This website has been established for ten years and does not accept investment. It has now become number one in the United States, and a BBS function was added two years ago."

It's number one in the US, yet it only has about 20 employees, half of whom are technical staff.

If Chen Guiliang were to undertake this project, a team of five or six people would suffice at the very beginning.

“If Renren.com wants to improve its profitability, becoming a free classifieds website is a good choice,” Chen Guiliang said. “It can also increase the activity of Renren.com’s users.”

"Users can post information about secondhand goods or looking for love for free. However, to prevent malicious spamming, we must limit it to one or two posts per day. Free ads will be automatically removed after a certain period to avoid consuming too many server resources."

"In addition, we need to attract businesses to advertise, but pharmaceuticals and health products are strictly prohibited. Businesses' paid advertisements can be placed in prominent positions. The advertising fees should be low, focusing on high volume and low margin."

"Based on the user base of Renren.com, these ads should primarily be for recruitment. Not only full-time jobs, but more part-time jobs, such as summer jobs, tutoring, tour guides, etc. For example, if my son's grades are not good and I want to hire a tutor, I can post an ad here and pay 10 or 20 yuan a day for advertising."

"Furthermore, student users on Renren.com can post ads for free. Outside users have to pay to post ads, and they can only post on this website and cannot access the real Renren.com. Student users can also pay to have their ads placed in a prominent position after payment."

Apart from Chang Zhongxiang, who had experience with Craigslist, the others looked at each other in bewilderment, expressing serious skepticism about this model.

Chen Guiliang continued, "I don't know if it will be profitable, but it will definitely help increase the activity of Renren.com users. If the project fails, we'll consider it as improving user stickiness. We'll first form a 5-person project team to study the specifics of Craigslist."

"Don't treat Craigslist as the gold standard; copying it completely might not work in China. Even Marxist-Leninist thought needs to be localized when it comes to China. Besides, we can do better than Craigslist! If it becomes big enough, we can operate it as a standalone advertising website for users nationwide."

Ao Yanchen said, "Let's give it a try."

Chen Guiliang doesn't interfere too much with how things are executed; he only needs to provide a clear direction. Employees are free to take initiative in how they proceed.

This is the first project that Xiaonei.com will undertake after its Series A funding.

Then, Chen Guiliang mentioned that he was going to invest in a game company in Hangzhou.

Xie Yang understood immediately.

Guo Feng asked, "Isn't it too risky to invest directly in a game that hasn't even been developed yet?"

Chen Guiliang explained, "I believe that game can make money. Because the gameplay and profit model were what I sold to them when I was in my senior year of high school. It was actually my game, but I didn't participate in the subsequent development."

"You were making games in your senior year of high school?" Ao Yanzhen asked in surprise.

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "Do you really think the money I earned from running my company was all royalties and bonuses? I made about 20 yuan by making games and selling game ideas when I was in my senior year of high school. I was too lazy to ask for the remaining balance, otherwise it would have been close to 30 yuan."

Everyone was silent.

They were speechless at his arrogance. Xie Yang raised his hand: "I can vouch for it."

Chang Zhongxiang asked, "Shouldn't we inform the investors about the directors they appointed?"

“I will tell him,” Chen Guiliang said, “but if he objects, I certainly won’t accept it.”

The directors appointed by the investors are not permanently stationed at the company; they only attend a meeting once a quarter. If a large investment is involved, that director must be informed, and that's all.

Most founders who are reasonably competent will not give the investing company's board of directors veto power when accepting investment.

……

At the end of June, Chen Guiliang, accompanied by a legal counsel and a finance officer, flew to Hangzhou to discuss investment matters.

Tao Chenggang, along with his three partners, warmly welcomed Chen Guiliang.

His team consists of more than ten people, and they've been working on the game for over a year. To be honest, no one is confident, mainly because they're afraid of running out of funds and not being able to operate the game even if it's finished.

Currently, most self-developed games in China have investments below 500 million yuan. This allows them to complete the game, but they lack sufficient funds for marketing and promotion—even large companies are reluctant to allocate more funds to these projects.

When they saw that Chen Guiliang had indeed come to invest, Tao Chenggang's entire team instantly changed their spirit and energy.

Tao Chenggang told Chen Guiliang, "World of Warcraft has had a huge impact on other paid games. Lineage 2, which was incredibly popular a while ago, saw its online player count plummet after World of Warcraft's open beta. Other paid games are experiencing similar issues, and our free-to-play strategy is correct. Yulgang hasn't been affected much."

"So, 'Yulgang' is our biggest competitor?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang was very confident: "There's no rival. The gameplay you gave me is much better than 'Yulgang.' Moreover, 'Yulgang' is afraid of offending players and doesn't crack down on cheating. I estimate that its economic system will collapse sooner or later."

The fatal flaw of "Yulgang" is not just its insufficient crackdown on cheats. There are a whole host of problems.

The real competitor is Boss Shi's "Zhengtu"!
Mr. Shi used the same methods he used to sell health supplements to launch a massive, nationwide promotion of "Zhengtu," establishing over 1800 branches across the country. Even before the game officially launched, he dispatched his former health supplement team to second- and third-tier cities across the country, eventually reaching even small county towns.

After covering the entire small county town, Boss Shi then shouted the slogan "Games to the Countryside".

They paint advertisements on the walls of rural houses, such as "Play online games and get free fertilizer" and "Every village has game cards, every town has gift packs," essentially selling online games like a health supplement.

Then, he was summoned for questioning.

Because of the nationwide outcry, more than 5000 complaint letters are received every day.

This is suspected of luring left-behind children in rural areas to play games!

Such a massive marketing campaign requires a huge amount of funding. In Mr. Shi's own words: $1 million was invested directly, and another $1 million was reserved as reserves.

How could Chen Guiliang afford to offend someone like that?

He could only urge Tao Chenggang to speed up the process and seize the market share of free-to-play games first.

Tao Chenggang then took Chen Guiliang to play games.

“The graphics are terrible, almost like ‘Legend’,” Chen Guiliang said. “After I inject funds, you should still optimize the art style.”

Tao Chenggang said, "Okay."

Chen Guiliang personally experienced the game for an hour and checked various game data, mainly focusing on game resources and the economic system.

“Your economic system is too conservative; ordinary players will be very poor,” Chen Guiliang said.

Tao Chenggang said, "Although there are two systems, one for free silver and one for paid gold, I'm afraid that too many studios and cheat programs will come in and cause the silver system for ordinary players to crash."

“Don’t be afraid of this. Crack down hard on cheaters and ignore the studios,” Chen Guiliang said. “Even the government needs macro-control, so your game can too. Make the economic system more complex so that free players can also get rich, and everyone can achieve a moderately prosperous life. If the economic system becomes unbalanced, use game-related means to macro-control it. You should also hire someone who understands economics.”

Tao Chenggang: "..."

Chen Guiliang said, "I'm not joking."

This gameplay was also created by Boss Shi, who constantly exerted macro-control over the economic system of "Zhengtu".

Chen Guiliang said, "We need to increase the ways for ordinary players to make money, and make more game resources available to them. This isn't a private server; ordinary players are extremely important. Only by retaining them can we retain the big spenders!"

"Making too many free resources available is tantamount to encouraging studios," Tao Chenggang said.

“The studio is not the enemy,” Chen Guiliang said.

Tao Chenggang thought it over carefully, and although he was still a little hesitant, he finally nodded and said, "I'll give it a try."

-

(Begging for monthly votes while crying my eyes out, I'm about to get bombarded with requests.)
(End of this chapter)