How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 183 We're All Family [10,000-word Update, Please Subscribe]

"Before Ms. Carol took the helm at Yahoo, only 2% of the company's executives were women, and less than 1% of its employees were women. This was true not only for Yahoo, but also for all of Yahoo's subsidiaries."
"At Yahoo! Japan, there are almost no women in the lower management levels. Alibaba in China is better off, with three female executives. In China, we value the balance of Yin and Yang. An imbalance of Yin and Yang, or vice versa, can lead to instability. In comparison, the ratio of female executives is more normal, usually 4:6 or 5:5. The other companies under my command are basically the same," Wang Yao said with a smile.

“It’s normal that Japanese companies can’t achieve balance, but how come Alibaba is also so far behind?” Carol frowned subconsciously.

"Having three female executives is already quite a lot for Alibaba; it's probably related to the company culture," Wang Yao said casually.

"Men are usually aggressive in business expansion and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Alibaba was in a pioneering phase in its early days, so it was normal to have many male executives. But now that it has entered a plateau phase, this ratio is indeed questionable. No wonder the problem of counterfeit goods on Taobao is so serious," Deng Wendi said, taking sides.

"Fake?! Tell me about it." Carol perked up immediately upon hearing this, her expression turning serious.

"You didn't know? Counterfeit goods from Taobao have been in the news several times." Wang Yao looked surprised and found the most recent one.

This is a news story about a C-store merchant who sold counterfeit luxury goods, and whose revenue exceeded 10 million yuan in two years before being arrested.

"This is utterly outrageous! This is a disgrace to the business ethics of Tooth Tiger!" Carol said, her face grim.

"Actually, this is normal. After all, it's inevitable that some will slip through the net during the platform's expansion phase," Wang Yao said with a smile.

“If it were just a small fish, it wouldn’t matter, but this involves a business worth millions of dollars, and it’s related to luxury goods. In the West, we would have gone bankrupt long ago. More importantly, if we leave this hidden danger, it will be a major risk for Taobao when it expands into the Western market in the future. Chinese companies are not well-regarded to begin with, so this is a group-level hidden danger.” Carol frowned.

She didn't have a good impression of Ma Yun, so she didn't invite Ma Yun even after being promoted for six months. In the end, it was Ma Yun who took the initiative to visit her with Cai Chongxin, and the two sides even had a dispute.

However, Alibaba's performance is indeed undeniable, and it is almost the core asset of Yahoo. Carroll is hoping that after his contract expires in the second half of the year, he can get two votes on the board and recommend Taobao to enter the US market to compete with Amazon.

“Are there any other similar news stories?” Carroll asked.

“If you want, I can help you collect some,” Wang Yao nodded.

"Thank you for your hard work. I didn't expect such an unexpected bonus." Carol raised her glass to Wang Yao.

"Did I cause trouble for Boss Ma? I still rely on him for my livelihood." Wang Yao asked Deng Wendi in Mandarin with a completely innocent look on his face.

"Probably not," Deng Wendi replied.

"What are you two whispering about with guests here?" Carol frowned, displeased with the two of them talking in their native dialect as if no one else was around.

Deng Wendi reiterated Wang Yao's concerns and gave a brief introduction to the businesses of Mulan Street and Taobao Girl.

"What do you mean? Besides social media, you're also doing e-commerce?" Carol looked at Wang Yao with increasing surprise.

Normally, social media and e-commerce are two completely different fields, and it is very difficult to operate them at the same time. After all, Facebook's e-commerce system, which was tested in the first half of the year, failed.

Converting general traffic into e-commerce traffic was a huge undertaking for Douyin, costing them immensely and taking several years. In today's internet environment, almost no one can perfectly integrate social media and e-commerce.

Wang Yao demonstrated the effects of the Mulan Street mobile app on an iPad.

Carroll scrolled silently for a full three minutes. "Apple's product does have its unique features. Perhaps it was a mistake to reject the development of Yahoo Mobile at the time."

Carroll is a typical tech conservative. Perhaps because of her age, she couldn't accept the unrealistic technology of the future. So after taking office, she directly rejected Yahoo's mobile strategy, not just the app, but also the development of Yahoo phones. At that time, Yahoo's mobile phone division was almost on par with Google, but she cut it off.

The reason was that she took the prototype back to her daughter to play with, but her daughter wasn't interested.

But Apple's tablets are popular all over the world, and even Carroll, a staunch old fogey, has to admit the chain reaction that these new technologies will bring. Currently, there aren't many iOS-compatible apps on the market, with games being the most common.

Wang Yao's Mulan Street app is the most feature-complete and user-friendly app she has ever used. As someone from Silicon Valley, she naturally immediately thought of many technological possibilities and directions.

Deng Wendi, who was also using the mobile app for the first time, looked surprised and asked, "It's already this good? What about the MS version?"

"Here it is." Wang Yao took out an HTC Android phone and demonstrated it to her.

Social media apps tend to be bloated on tablets, but the experience is much better on smartphones.

However, websites like Mulan Street, which display images in a waterfall layout, are very smooth to use on tablets.

Carol also leaned over to look at the mobile version of MS, her expression growing increasingly serious. "I've seen Facebook's beta app, and to be honest, it's probably not as good as yours. Has China's technology really advanced to this level?"

It's not so much a technological advancement, but rather that the UI provided by Wang Yao is mature enough. While the technology may not be as solid as that of Silicon Valley, it certainly appears more mature on the surface.

“Our technology outsourcing team comes from all over the world,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"You mean, this Mulan Street app already has four million users in the Chinese market, and its profit model, which uses Taobao to settle commissions, can currently generate tens of millions of yuan in sales every day, and nearly a billion yuan annually?" Carol pointed to the Mulan Street app.

"Pretty much. If Taobao performs well enough in the second half of the year, sales might even reach a new high. Mulan Street is just a sales intermediary platform, and its size depends on e-commerce platforms. But I designed an independent website redirection function on the overseas version, specifically for brands and individual merchants." Wang Yao introduced the independent website model that is more suitable for overseas consumer habits.

"Are they sold on Mulan Street?" Carol asked in a deep voice.

"We're not considering selling it for now," Wang Yao shook his head.

"Aren't you afraid I'll go back and have Tooth Tiger make a copy?" Carol asked with a playful smile.

"I believe in Ms. Carol's character," Wang Yao said solemnly.

“Young man, business doesn’t care about character, it only cares about morality, but that morality is also about morality towards consumers.” Carol smiled and patted Wang Yao on the shoulder.
"But don't worry, before you officially enter the Western market, I guarantee that at least Yahu will not copy it. But once you enter the West, then we'll have a real showdown."

“Great, competition helps us improve.” Wang Yao said without changing his expression.

Actually, he wasn't worried about Carroll taking this model away. Due to consumer habits and culture, the product recommendation platform didn't develop well in the West in its early stages. Westerners are very sensitive to advertising, whether it's soft or hard advertising, after all, they've been tormented by television sales for half a century.

If Carole really positions it as a business intermediary advertising platform, then it will probably end up like the other small and medium-sized social media platforms she acquired, losing a large number of users due to forced advertising.

The international version of Mulan Street is positioned like Instagram, focusing on check-in communities and flaunting wealth and beauty, in order to attract a large number of UGC users to fill the platform with content in the early stages.

Moreover, Wang Yao has a series of major marketing events that will determine the life or death of the platform. These are the core of social media, while technology is just a tool to serve positioning.

Unless Yahoo can make its algorithm the world's leading one, but if that were the case, Yahoo wouldn't have been almost forced to go bankrupt by Google in the field of advertising algorithms.

“The young man looks very confident.” Carol smiled as she looked Wang Yao up and down.

“It’s because they have confidence in my team.” Wang Yao smiled. “Moreover, although the giants have strong capital advantages, they value strategy and luck more in the internet field. Otherwise, Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t have been able to surpass MS against the odds.”

“The Internet,” Carroll repeated.

"A toast to Tim Berners-Lee." Wang Yao raised his water glass.

“Few people remember him anymore; when people talk about the internet, they always mention Winton Cerf and his ilk.” Carroll said with some surprise, “Mr. Wang seems to know the truth.”

"Perhaps it's just my subjective perspective; after all, this world is made up of countless perspectives," Wang Yao smiled.

"Is there anything I can help you with for your '100 Women' column?" Carol asked with a smile after a moment's thought.

“If possible, I would like to adapt it into a movie,” Wang Yao said solemnly. “Your story deserves to inspire more people.”

"A goal in life gives more motivation to those who come after," Deng Wendi said with a smile.

Successful people often develop a strong desire to publish their biographies as they age, let alone have them adapted into movies for the world to admire.

Especially at Carole's age, it's really hard to refuse.

“I don’t have much time to act,” Carole joked.

“I plan to cast Anne Hathaway and Cate Blanchett to play your youth and middle age,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Mr. Wang, you have a great eye for casting." Carol's wrinkles around her eyes smoothed out.

The conversation with Carol went smoothly, even more smoothly than Deng Wendi had imagined. "It seems you're very good at handling this kind of social interaction with strong, independent women," Deng Wendi said with a smile after seeing Carol off.

"She's not as mean as the rumors say," Wang Yao chuckled.

"Then you should thank your mother for giving you a pleasing face. This woman is obsessed with looks; she's even made the news for her opinions on her employees' appearance," Deng Wendi laughed.

"With the support of Yahoo!, the promotion of Ms globally, especially in East Asia, will be much faster in the future," Wang Yao said.

Although Wang Yao did not agree to Mulan Street's financing, Deng Wendi and Carol temporarily finalized a cooperation agreement on the international version of MS. After the MS mobile app is released, Yahu will provide some traffic support in East Asia in the short term.

If user growth is optimistic in the future, Yahoo will prioritize investing in Ms. This is purely a personal grudge of Carroll, just to prove that former CEO Chris's assessment that she was an 'internet novice' was wrong.

It must be said that holding grudges is one of the driving forces behind human struggle.

Although Yahoo has been squeezed out of the Western market by Google and Facebook to the point of almost losing its survival space, it is the largest search platform in Japan and has also spawned the largest e-commerce service.

Sun Zhengyi is indeed a talented individual who leveraged local advantages to directly combine the strengths of Yahoo and Alibaba.

With the support of Yahoo in the Japanese market, Ms might be able to quickly seize market share from Facebook and Twitter. This is one of the strategies that Wang Yao and Deng Wendi discussed. Ms can now leverage some capital resources.

"But are you really going to make a movie about her? Won't the cost be too high?" Deng Wendi frowned.

According to Wang Yao's vision, even a biographical film would require an investment of at least 5000 million to 1 million US dollars, considering that "The Devil Wears Prada" cost over 4000 million US dollars at the time.

The box office would need to be at least $1 million to break even, which is a bit too extravagant if it's just for Carole's friendship.

Among so many excellent celebrity IP adaptations in the world, Carole is not particularly attractive, unless she can really lead Yahoo out of its predicament, in which case her commercial history status will reach a terrifying position.

"The film's preparation period will be at least six months. By then, Ms. will have at least tens of millions of targeted female users worldwide. As long as Carol doesn't have any scandals during her time with the film, we're fairly confident."

"Even if we fail, we can just pretend we never mentioned it," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Pah, pah, pah, it will definitely succeed," Deng Wendi spat lightly.

Her current goal is to inherit Carole's legendary female CEO persona, and she's also hoping that Ms. will raise funds and go public, so she can challenge Twitter and Facebook.

"Do your best and leave the rest to fate. There will be plenty of opportunities." Wang Yao smiled dismissively.

"But after listening to you today, I feel like you have ulterior motives," Deng Wendi said, sizing up Wang Yao.

After the conversation turned to Alibaba, she vaguely sensed something was amiss.

Although the news of Wang Yao and Ma Yun 'shaking hands and making peace' is already widely known, and everyone regards Tianhuo as a subsidiary of Alibaba.

But based on Deng Wendi's understanding of Wang Yao, this kid shouldn't be easily subservient to anyone.

Furthermore, after seeing the Mulan Street APP version today, which is clearly a labor of love and not something that would be easily given away, she intuitively felt that Wang Yao's main purpose in getting involved with Carol might not really be for Ms's development.

"You're overthinking it. Do you think I'm going to target Alibaba?" Wang Yao chuckled.

“Others might not dare, but if it were you, it’s very possible.” Deng Wendi suppressed her smile and frowned.

"Who do you think can challenge Alibaba now?" Wang Yao raised an eyebrow slightly.

“Life is unpredictable, who knows?” Deng Wendi shrugged.

“Hmm, that makes sense. Who knows what the future holds?” Wang Yao smiled as well.

"What's wrong with that old woman Carol now? Why is she suddenly going to conduct an internal audit of Alibaba?" Ma Yun received an email from the president's office of YaHu early in the morning. After reading it, she went to Cai Chongxin in annoyance.

It has been more than half a year since the two sides parted on bad terms. Now, at this point in time, YaHu is actually going to conduct an internal audit, citing Taobao's operation as violating YaHu's company culture. They are demanding that an investigation team be dispatched to verify this, and have attached a large number of previous news reports about Taobao's counterfeit goods.

Why bring up something that has already been resolved?
Isn't this obviously nitpicking?
"Could it be that they've discovered something unusual?" Cai Chongxin's expression changed, and he lowered his voice.

“Impossible, no one knows about that except for a few of us.” Ma Yun’s expression turned serious.

"The license plate standards will be announced next month, so we absolutely cannot afford any unforeseen complications," Cai Chongxin said in a deep voice.

"Impossible. I guess it's because YaHu's performance has declined sharply recently, and the board of directors is putting pressure on her. She's just looking for a scapegoat," Ma Yun sneered.

"Hopefully so, but there have been quite a few complaints about counterfeit goods lately, it's time to take action." Cai Chongxin frowned.

"It seems like the number of cases has suddenly increased in the last week?" Ma Yun frowned.

They have all weathered many storms and are very sensitive to details.

"It's possible they're being targeted, after all, the A luxury goods incident really had a terrible impact," Cai Chongxin sighed.

“Actually, it would be appropriate to take this opportunity to launch platform protection terms,” Ma Yun said thoughtfully, stroking her chin.

Previously, Taobao attracted merchants by offering free registration, which required annual financial support from the group to maintain its expansion. Now, with Taobao Boss as a natural brand that is constantly trending on social media, Taobao's merchant registration rate has increased by more than 300% compared to the previous month.

In other words, Wang Yao's Taobao Boss alone can meet the platform's needs for recruiting merchants. Therefore, Ma Yun thought of activating the platform's guarantee terms in advance, increasing the store guarantee deposit and deposit to make up for the losses, and incidentally improving the quality of merchants.

Taobao will definitely take strong measures to address the issue of counterfeit goods.

The original plan was to first separate Taobao boutique stores (Tmall) after Double 11, classify high-quality and low-quality merchant brands, and then gradually clean them up.

But it seems we can move it forward now. It's almost June, and there are still five months until Singles' Day. If we do a good job of cleaning up, consumer trust will increase, and Singles' Day will bring higher conversion rates.

Wang Yao's arrival accelerated Alibaba's entire process considerably.

"And another thing is, Carroll actually asked Alibaba to increase the proportion of female executives, which is really baffling," Ma Yun added.

“Oh, that’s normal. Sun Zhengyi received the same advice.” Cai Chongxin said with a smile.

"Ya Hu has really created a huge hidden danger for itself. If it continues like this, Ya Hu is getting closer and closer to collapse," Ma Yun said with a smile.

"It's okay. The more it collapses, the lower our cost of a reverse takeover will be, which is a good thing." Cai Chongxin smiled.

“Let’s convene a meeting to discuss the Q2 financial report. There’s been a lot of positive news lately, which might even boost the stock price,” Ma Yun changed the subject, throwing Carol’s suggestion to the trash.

"If Tianhuo Media or Mulan Street were to acquire it, it would indeed be a major positive development," Cai Chongxin said.

"Let's wait for Wang Yao's news. I believe he will make the right choice. As for the gap in the Taobao Girl business, has it been filled?" Ma Yun suddenly remembered.

"The task has been temporarily transferred to Tianhuo, since they're currently the only company in the country capable of handling it," Cai Chongxin said, shaking his head.

This feeling of not having a meal replacement is not good.

“We’re all family, sharing resources is only right. Lao Cai, remember to think altruistically,” Ma Yun said with a dismissive smile.

The two were chatting in the conference room while waiting for everyone to arrive when suddenly the assistant knocked on the door and came in with a grim expression. He ran to Ma Yun's ear and whispered a report.

"Let them report it. Let the public relations department handle it," Ma Yun said, frowning.

"This isn't an ordinary report; the whistleblower is a foreigner." The assistant sighed. An ordinary report certainly wouldn't have reached Ma Yun's side.

Ma Yun was also taken aback upon hearing this.

Foreigners? What's wrong with foreigners?
(End of this chapter)