How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 224 A Giant Commercial Bank
The essence of achieving great things is not about becoming more capable, but about getting more people to place their interests on one person and expecting their promises to be fulfilled.

The underlying logic for achieving great things is not based on personal ability, but on getting more people to entrust their interests and expectations to a certain person, and then binding them together like a snowball, growing bigger and bigger.

We need to let more people see the vision and believe in it.

It is commonly known as telling a story in a good way.

Because most people in the world grow up listening to stories.

Therefore, Sima Qian used the phrase "All the world's hustle and bustle is for profit" at the beginning of "Biographies of Merchants" to define the pursuit of profit as an innate human trait.

Goryeo is a small place, a consensus among all the top leaders in Goryeo, so if they need to continue to develop, they must find new target markets.

Cultural identity is a prerequisite for business activities.

The promises Wang Yao made to SK and CJ were not only accepted by businessmen, but also by the interest groups represented by both sides. Therefore, the establishment of the "Three Pure Ones" alliance did not encounter much resistance.

Wang Yao told them that the name was taken from the story of "One Qi Transforms into Three Pure Ones," which actually refers to the Three Pure Ones policy of "taking stock," "cleaning up," and "purifying."

First, take stock of how many people in Korea/Japan are willing to eat this pie, then see if there's an opportunity to get rid of those who aren't, and finally clean out those whose goals don't align with yours.

They saw Wang Yao as a springboard for going global and entering the Chinese market, while Wang Yao was eyeing their core business.

After all, when it comes to assimilation capabilities, China is the true ancestor; it's easy to come in but difficult to leave.

However, the Chinese market has not reacted much to this kind of cross-border cooperation. Firstly, since the end of last year, top companies such as Huayi, Benshan Media, Bona, and Huangyu have all reached such strategic cooperation agreements with Japan/Korea, and fans and netizens have become accustomed to it.

However, rumors have circulated in the business community that Tianhuo Media may be planning a backdoor listing, which is the main reason for the recent rise in Tianhuo Entertainment's stock price.

Even though the industry generally doesn't have a high opinion of Tianwang's valuation of 50-60 billion, it doesn't mean that Tianwang has no value. On the contrary, the media + e-commerce model is very trendy. People don't understand it, but they are optimistic about it. They are just unwilling to make a blind bet.

The range of 30 to 40 billion is generally accepted, but Tianhuo Entertainment's current market value is less than 13 billion. If Tianwang abandons financing and goes public through a backdoor listing, the potential profit margin is enormous.

Even if we assume it's not a backdoor listing, if Tianhuo Entertainment continues to develop like this, it will definitely have a scale of 25 to 30 billion yuan in the future with its cinema chain and overseas cooperation. Now is a good opportunity to buy at the bottom.

They don't care whether the "Three Pure Ones" are real or fake, or what their function is; they only care about whether they can get a share of the pie.

As a result, on the second day after Tianhuo Entertainment resumed trading, two pieces of positive news, namely "not yielding an inch of land" and "the Three Pure Alliance", directly boosted the stock price, which started with 2, to start with 5, nearly doubling.

The total market capitalization also reached the critical point of 25 billion, and later investors dared not continue to chase the price higher, so the stock price stabilized.

However, the surge in Tianhuo Entertainment's stock price still shocked everyone. No one expected that Wang Yao would turn what was originally a loss-making business into a profitable one in less than a month.

This was very upsetting for Alibaba, which originally had a chance to participate but was ultimately eliminated.

If we hadn't given up our shares in Meishe back then, we might have not only broken even but also made a small profit on our previous investment.

"Did this kid set us up?" Cai Chongxin frowned.

From the release of Tianwang's Q2 quarterly report to the two consecutive positive developments, this gradual and progressive atmosphere is clearly not a coincidence or something that Wang Yao arranged in a short period of time.

"You mean, this kid knew in advance that Alibaba was going to be in big trouble, so he didn't have time to worry about the gains and losses of the small entertainment projects, and then he dug a pit for us?" Ma Yun laughed after hearing this.

“He definitely doesn’t have that ability; he’s not Ya Hu. But that Muddy Waters organization is really despicable; how could they know our plans in advance?” Cai Chongxin also found it absurd.

Although the payment transfer issue was resolved, it dealt a heavy blow to Alibaba's booming business, halting its upward trend and forcing it to deal with internal conflicts with caution.

They still don't know who the mole is.

"Don't think about it too much. It's just a small gain or loss. Let's focus our attention back on Taobao Mall and cross-border e-commerce. JD.com and Vancl have been making some big moves lately," Ma Yun sighed, staring at the data comparison on the screen.

Since the beginning of July, JD.com and Vancl have been making frequent small moves, and their revenue growth is expected to be significant. In addition, JD.com received $10 million in funding from a mysterious investor, which directly boosted its valuation to over $1 billion, which is very disadvantageous in its competition with Taobao Mall's B2C platform.

Furthermore, it has opened up the supplier model and begun to venture into C2C, and all of this points directly to Mulan Street, a third-party platform.

"Has Mulan Street's commission rate on Taobao decreased recently?" Ma Yun asked again.

"It's dropped a bit, less than 5%, probably related to the platform's previous turmoil." Cai Chongxin glanced at the data and didn't think there was anything too unusual.

“Mulan Street’s content seeding monetization model has already shown promise, and it’s deeply integrated with JD.com. We should contact similar content seeding platforms on the market and support one of them,” Ma Yun said.

"There are quite a few platforms like this. Meilishuo, 5BBS, and YOKA, which used to be vertical women's forums, have all started to transform after being inspired by Mulan Street, but none of them have been as successful as Mulan Street."

Mulan Street's content advantage does indeed seem irreplaceable at present, mainly because Wang Yao has a group of high-quality models and content teams. We previously poached models from Taojianghu, but following Tianhuo Media's operating model, we found the results were minimal.
"If we want to catch up, we must increase investment in the content department, with a budget of at least 5 million to 10 billion yuan," Cai Chongxin said.

Taojianghu is a social media platform launched by Taobao at the beginning of the year. Initially, it focused on compiling high-quality reviews from within the platform and pushing them to consumers, which was a passive content organization. Later, it tried to emulate Mulan Street by actively promoting products, but due to the lack of a core content team, it only had influencers but no content, so it was not very effective.

"Does a content team need such a large budget?" Ma Yun was taken aback.

"Tianwang's current cultural and creative team has nearly four to five thousand full-time and part-time employees, and the number of related peripheral practitioners may be close to ten thousand. This is basically the upper limit of all content-related talent in China."
New media, like e-commerce, is a new industry. Its creative logic differs from traditional advertising, marketing, and media journalism majors, resulting in a significant talent shortage.
Mulan Street's content marketing advantage lies in two aspects. First, it relies on the influence of its rich network of online celebrities and models, and their use of Korean models further enhances this advantage.
Furthermore, the platform has signed contracts with a group called "ordinary people influencers." Users can register as influencers, and once they have enough followers, they can start posting links to earn commissions. This is already moving from the PUGC model towards true UGC.

Secondly, there's the advantage of content clustering. Our data department has observed that they release a new "product recommendation hot keyword" on average every two weeks, and the entire site revolves around this hot keyword to brainwash users and promote their products, so the effect is very good.

At the beginning of the month, the hashtag 'Forest Girl' directly boosted sales of related women's clothing on Taobao by 5%, a very strong effect that even made it to the top of social media trending topics. Therefore, the Mulan Street model has a very high barrier to entry for replication, requiring a combination of models, content, social media, and trends.

The most important element is content. Developing a new media content creator takes at least six months. From a time cost perspective, it's better to poach talent directly, but poaching from Skynet is extremely costly.” Cai Chongxin sighed.

PUGC stands for 'professional user-generated content'. Although content platforms worldwide, led by YouTube and Weibo, claim to be UGC models, they are essentially all PUGC because the content produced by bloggers and content creators (UPs) is primarily related to their professional expertise. Those who can voice their opinions are mainly public intellectuals, authoritative media outlets, experts, and scholars; ordinary people constitute only a small portion.

The UGC model is defined as a content output model mainly composed of non-professionals, that is, ordinary people. In other words, on Mulan Street, any user can publish content and even profit from it, which directly breaks down some barriers.

The difference between the two is in terms of 'scale'. After all, there are more ordinary people than professionals in this world. When the voices of ordinary users are as loud as a tsunami, they will drown out the voices of professionals.

For platforms, if they implement a UGC model, content costs will increase indefinitely, user stickiness will rise infinitely, and the platform will form an unshakable content moat.

This trend is already emerging on Mulan Street.

Since Alibaba almost poached all of Taobao's top models, Wang Yao has arranged a full set of non-compete agreements for his employees and significantly improved their benefits.

With the national average wage at just over 2000 yuan, the average salary in Tianwang Cultural and Creative Department has reached 5000 yuan. More importantly, the 520 system is something that Alibaba would absolutely not dare to touch lightly.

After all, Alibaba's corporate culture is based on the principle that "only by enduring hardship can one rise above others."

The 520 system is simply heretical.

Combining the two approaches, it takes time to cultivate talent on our own, let alone six months. Judging from the trend of Mulan Street, we might have our Series B funding round in three months.

Poaching talent would be too costly, so even if we acquire some similar platforms, the return on investment wouldn't be much higher than it is now.

"Tsk, I didn't expect it to be people that got stuck." Ma Yun was stunned for a moment, then chuckled: "Looking at it this way, the average revenue per employee of SkyNet is more than 2, which seems pretty good. This young CEO Wang knows how to use people."

“The 520 system is indeed a cancer; he’ll know what’s coming of it later,” Cai Chongxin sneered.

"In other words, we can't get around Wang Yao now," Ma Yun said with a smile.

“Or we could bring in another company with content creation capabilities and media resources for collaboration,” Cai Chongxin replied.

“I’ll talk to Wang Yao when I have some free time,” Ma Yun nodded.

In fact, Tianhuo Media and Tianhuo Entertainment have already reached the industry ceiling and development red line in China. Further expansion would encroach on the cakes and private territories of the big shots.

Therefore, if Wang Yao wants to boost the valuation, he must make a drastic move overseas. Korea is a market that Chinese companies don't even look at. First, it's too difficult to develop the market because of the consumers' xenophobia, and second, the market is too small.

Focusing their energy on the Korean market is like putting money in a bank for them.

But only when there are many such scraps will Wang Yao have the opportunity to rise to prominence.

The first project officially announced by the [Sanqing] Alliance is the [Genesis 101] talent show. Korea has a voice in the talent show field globally.

However, although this talent show is the same program, there are three versions, and even the positioning is different.

Goryeo continues to follow the 'high-end' route, and immediately received resumes from hundreds of large and small entertainment companies across the country. They were mostly mature trainees who had been practicing for more than three and a half years and were good at both singing and dancing.

The Japanese side, represented by AKS, still follows its own "idol training" route, regardless of singing and dancing skills, or even appearance, as long as they are popular, they can be selected.

On the other hand, Wang Yao bet on the "specialty" route, prioritizing the strengths of ethnic musical instruments and ethnic dances.

Each of the three parties ultimately selected six members to form a six-member sub-unit called 【SQ Girl Group—C/J/K】 and debut in various countries. After six months of working together, they began preparing for an 18-member group album.

In Chinese talent shows, the focus has always been on 'storytelling' rather than 'actual ability', so Wang Yao doesn't expect to find a reliable talent show team and training instructors in China, and can only try to find a solution in Korea.

Wang Yao's first thought was JYP, after all, apart from SM and YG, their company system was the most advanced, and after KT Entertainment was established, their first target for acquisition was also JYP.

Wang Yao and JYP CEO Park Jin-young met once earlier this year, when it was about copyright card issues.

Because of its small size and family-run business model, JYP did not catch the eye of local conglomerates. So, although it produced a hugely successful girl group like Wonder Girls, without any backing, JYP eventually became just a background company.

But JYP's boss, Park Jin-young, is a very shrewd person. He knows that in the Korean market, it is impossible to escape dependence on conglomerates, but his original intention is to protect his artists through 'family-style' management.

Therefore, he laid out plans for the overseas market early on, using the influence of the overseas market to protect his own artists. In 07, he specifically established an overseas department, one in New York and one in Hong Kong. He also laid out plans for the Chinese market in advance, collecting Chinese trainees. The girl group miss A, which just debuted at the beginning of the month, has a team configuration of 2 Korean and 2 Chinese trainees.

So when he first met Wang Yao, this Chinese businessman, his attitude was noticeably better than that of other company bosses. But he never expected that when they met again, this young man would be someone he could not reach.

JYP Entertainment has a shareholder named Jung Ji-hoon, who is one of the few male singers from Korea who has transitioned into acting and entered Hollywood. He is a top-tier artist, and naturally, he would share information about the major events that have recently occurred in the Korean entertainment industry with Park Jin-young.

The person who could get SK and CJ to temporarily cease hostilities and form an alliance, whatever the real reason, is someone he can't afford to offend.

Moreover, as soon as the news of the "Genesis 101" talent show was released, Wang Yao asked Jiang Hudong to contact him, and he could roughly guess what the other party's intentions were.

"I apologize for disturbing you, President Park." As soon as Wang Yao got out of the car, he found that Park Jin-young was already waiting at the company gate with WG and miss A.

"It's an honor to have Mr. Wang grace my humble abode with his presence," Park Jin-young said with a smile as warm as the Big Bad Wolf, as he stepped forward to greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Wang." Two rows of young girls bowed in slightly broken Chinese.

Wang Yao suddenly realized why he always felt distracted whenever he visited Goryeo; the root of it all lay in the Goryeo greeting etiquette.

It's hard to stay calm when you're greeted by groups of young, stylish, and beautiful girls dressed in revealing clothes every day.

For the Chinese, Goryeo was simply a giant commercial empire!
(End of this chapter)