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Chapter 306 0303 [ByteDance's First Difficulty in Going Public]

This year's sandstorms were not as severe as last year's.

However, the situation is quite serious, with a disaster area of ​​68 square kilometers, affecting several provinces and cities in the north.

Yang Shuo drove the car over and parked it on the side of the road. Chen Guiliang quickly opened the car door and got in.

Many passersby were prepared and carried masks with them during the spring, putting them on whenever a sandstorm occurred.

However, some people were caught off guard and could only lift their coats to cover their mouths and noses.

The dust storm originates from a dry salt lake on the grassland, which must be completely replanted with pioneer plants. Currently, Suaeda salsa is being planted, but even Suaeda salsa is not easy to survive, and it will take another four or five years to see results.

We also need to convert farmland back to forest or pasture, and dismantle irrigation dikes; otherwise, new dry salt lakes will appear every year.

“Everything in Beijing is great, except for the climate,” Yang Shuo said as he drove. “Not to mention the sandstorms, the air is so dry. I even had nosebleeds during my first winter here. It happened several times in a row, which scared me so much that I thought I had leukemia. I went to the hospital for a checkup and found out it was just because of the dry air.”

Chen Guiliang smiled and said, "You'll get used to it after a year or two, and it will be well managed in the future."

Yang Shuo said, "I think it's very unlikely. It will take at least twenty years to govern."

Chen Guiliang did not respond.

The team behind Breakthrough Animation is truly technically amazing. I hope they can work together successfully, although I expect some of them will leave along the way.

Chen Guiliang would never let them make things like "Love, Death & Robots".

Whether it can be made or not is another matter, but where would it be broadcast if it were made? A lot of the content is unsuitable for children and simply wouldn't pass censorship.

While "Larva" does have toilet humor, each episode is only two or three minutes long, so cutting a few episodes wouldn't be a big deal. Besides, Chen Guiliang only provides the idea; they're left to create the content themselves, so the final product will definitely be different from the original Korean version.

The same applies to "Chinese Tales of the Strange"; Chen Guiliang only told "The Summer of the Little Monster." The rest of the stories were left to them to create, to do whatever they wanted.

When Chen Guiliang returned to the company, his secretary told him that Lü Zhihui was waiting for him in the meeting room.

Chen Guiliang went into the reception room again and found that Lü Zhihui had a serious expression.

"Is there a problem with financial compliance?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Lu Zhihui said, "The Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco has ended. It was a huge success, with more than 10,000 people attending. All the major companies were hawking their products and explaining their ideas, making all sorts of exaggerated claims."

“This is a good thing,” Chen Guiliang said.

Lu Zhihui said, "The reporter found that in many of the smaller sessions at this expo, the main topic of discussion among investors was exit strategies."

When investors exit, it means the venture capital firm has made its money and left. This can be achieved either by finding a buyer midway through the investment or by taking the company public.

However, at a sub-venue of the WEB2.0 Expo, a group of investors were discussing how to go public, which shows that going public is actually not easy.

Lu Zhihui added, "The company founders who participated in the speeches were still talking a lot about creativity and innovation, but most of the content was the same old stuff. They had already said it last year and the year before, and they were saying it again this year. It was very disappointing for the participants."

“That bastard O'Reilly even publicly said that Web 2.0 has a little bit of a bubble. That wasn't his intention, but the journalists twisted it. Now the headlines in American newspapers are: O'Reilly claims Web 2.0 has a bubble!”

Upon hearing this, Chen Guiliang couldn't help but curse, "Damn it!"

O'Reilly, the originator of the Web 2.0 concept, is now being told by American newspapers that he acknowledges a bubble. Regardless of whether a bubble exists, it will severely damage investor confidence and make Chen Guiliang's IPO even more difficult.

Chen Guiliang asked, "Do we need to come up with new stories for the roadshow?"

Lu Zhihui said, "Starting from the end of last year, investment in Web 2.0 began to cool down. Web 2.0 has been told too many stories before, and now no one wants to hear them anymore, and they are even tired of these stories."

The main problem is that Web 2.0 has not found a mature profit model, and in recent years there have been constant reports of layoffs, bankruptcies, and team disbandments.

The situation is similar for Renren.com and HaiNei.com. Although advertising revenue has been increasing as the number of users has grown, operating costs have risen even faster, mainly due to server and bandwidth expenses.

The more users there are, the greater the expenses for servers and bandwidth.

Chen Guiliang was eager to develop SP business, create ringback tones, and promote Weibo, all to make his revenue look better.

Zhihu, once it has a large enough user base, will eventually be spun off. It needs to operate independently, attract venture capital, and be responsible for its own profits and losses; otherwise, ByteDance's finances will look even worse.

The closure or layoffs of many Web 2.0 companies are also related to the blind investment by venture capital firms.

Investing based on a single concept or story doesn't align with proper investment logic. Many founders are themselves clueless; how can they possibly sustain a business in the long run?
Lu Zhihui said, "During the IPO roadshow, if Mr. Chen wants to tell a story, he should try to make it as practical as possible. Americans have heard too much of that kind of empty talk, and they are very disgusted with it now."

Chen Guiliang muttered, "Being pragmatic... then we can only let the data speak for itself."

O'Reilly is a lunatic. He coined the concept of Web 2.0 and initiated the Web 2.0 Expo. Yet he actually admitted at the expo that Web 2.0 was a bubble.

During his speech, O'Reilly said: "Some people say that Web 2.0 is a bubble. Do you think so?"

Those listening to his speech were either Web 2.0 practitioners, Web 2.0 investors, or journalists looking to make headlines.

Everyone was stunned by O'Reilly's question: Dude, you can't just say anything like that in this kind of situation!
But O'Reilly, still feeling humorous, added a twist with a mysterious tone and expression: "Maybe there is a little bit (bubble). But I think great things are going to come out of here, and things are just beginning." He was clearly trying to create a dramatic effect for his speech, and what he really wanted to say was the second half of the sentence.

But the reporter only listened to the first half of the sentence and didn't care about the second half.

Lu Zhihui had already left, but Chen Guiliang was still sitting in the conference room deep in thought.

After a long while, he returned to his office and called Guo Feng in: "By analyzing the interest tags selected by users on Renren and Haiwainet, the interest groups they join, and the keywords they use to write logs and search and browse other people's logs, can we conduct a simple behavioral analysis?"

Guo Feng asked, "Why analyze all this?"

Chen Guiliang said, "Our website has too few ad slots, but I'm afraid that increasing the number of ad slots will lead to a poor user experience. Therefore, I want to target ads more precisely. Users in different regions and with different interests will see different ad content."

"The specific advertising price will be lower, but the advertising effect will be better, and the number of ads that can be run per unit of time will be greatly increased. It will not affect the user experience."

Guo Feng said, "This technology was released at the end of 2005. The main tool is Google Analytics, which opened up most of the core functions and is free. E-commerce companies are the main users of this function."

Chen Guiliang asked, "Nobody uses SNS websites to place ads?"

Guo Feng thought for a moment: "It seems there aren't any in China."

It doesn't exist abroad either.

But it'll be here soon!
Because the relevant technology only gradually matured last year, it mainly serves e-commerce platforms.

By the middle of this year, portal websites such as Yahoo will be using it for targeted advertising.

By the end of this year, Facebook will also use it for targeted advertising.

If Chen Guiliang starts doing this now, it will be the world's first SNS website to adopt this advertising model.

Use this as a story during your IPO roadshow; it's guaranteed to catch the investors' eye!
Chen Guiliang said, "You assemble a team to do this. If you don't have enough people, find them immediately. You can even poach programmers from e-commerce platforms with high salaries!"

"Is it related to going public?" Guo Feng asked.

Chen Guiliang said, "It is related to the listing and also beneficial to the company's revenue."

Guo Feng's expression was serious: "I'll arrange it immediately!"

After he left the office, Chen Guiliang leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh of relief.

He thought that big data was impossible to develop in this era, but he never imagined that this era also had its own methods.

It's no longer called big data analytics, but user behavior analytics.

Of course, as the technology became more advanced, this technology was also called "basic user behavior analysis".

Guo Feng called the company's technical staff together to discuss the matter and found that although everyone had heard of it, they didn't really understand the technology.

So Guo Feng applied to poach talent from Taobao.

We only need to poach one or two core programmers; they can lead ByteDance's team forward. Of course, we also need to publicly recruit some more programmers, as the existing technical staff have other jobs.

Chen Guiliang immediately called Wang Hao of Xiami Music.

Wang Hao used to work at Taobao. When he created Xiami Music, he directly recruited four people from Taobao.

“When I left Taobao, this technology didn’t exist, so I’m not very familiar with the current technical team,” Wang Hao said. “Wait a minute, I’ll ask my former colleagues.”

Chen Guiliang said, "Thank you for your trouble."

“It’s a piece of cake,” Wang Hao laughed. “However, you’ll have to handle how to persuade them to switch jobs, Mr. Chen. I’m just responsible for passing on the information.”

Several days later, Wang Hao sent an email to Chen Guiliang.

He directly compiled a table listing all the information of the Taobao team members, including their approximate salaries.

Chen Guiliang thought to himself: Awesome!
Alibaba is going public in Hong Kong this year, so it's impossible to poach anyone with stock options.

However, this team was formed at the beginning of last year. One-third of them are long-time Alibaba employees, while the remaining two-thirds are recruited from outside.

Those newly hired programmers probably won't receive stock options for the time being.

Chen Guiliang called over Wei Xiaokang, the HR manager: "I will send you this email, which contains specific information. No matter what means you use, poach one or two programmers from Taobao. If you really can't poach them, then try poaching from Baidu. Baidu has also formed a similar team, but its technology is not as comprehensive as Taobao's. This technology was first used by e-commerce companies."

Speaking of Baidu, Robin Li has once again made a statement.

Li Yanhong cited reports from American newspapers to prove that he did not make wild claims in his speech last year, and asserted that he had successfully predicted the Web 2.0 bubble.

The unnamed Yin-Yang expert Chen Guiliang said that young people have little experience and can only see the current excitement, but not the crisis behind it.

(End of this chapter)