Reborn in 08, Public Enemy of Competitors

The three arrived at the building, took the elevator, and went to the floor where Paipai.com was located.

"Please wait a moment, Mr. Wu is in a meeting with Mr. Liu and the others. He will be here shortly."

Yang Ming led Shen Mo and Zhong Xue into the reception room, brought two bottles of water, and handed them over.

Shen Mo hummed in agreement, and after the others left, he unscrewed the bottle of mineral water and took small sips.

"Boss, what do we do now?" Zhong Xue asked in a low voice.

"Let's take it one step at a time."

Shen Mo smiled and said, "Don't worry, since it's a high-level executive like Wu Xiaoguang who wants to see us, it means we have value that he values. YiTao GO definitely won't catch his eye. He's probably here for me."

Zhong Xue muttered, "You...you're really shameless..."

Shen Mo leaned back in his chair, pondering how he could get something out of the penguin.

After all, we've come all this way, we can't go back empty-handed.

Just as he was making these calculations, Yang Ming went into the conference room and truthfully reported the situation to Wu Xiaoguang, Liu Ning, and others.

Wu Xiaoguang asked, "What was your first impression of this person?"

Yang Ming replied, "Composed and mature, not like a student."

Wu Xiaoguang pressed further, "Is there anything else?"

Yang Ming pondered for a moment, then slowly said, "This Shen Mo seems to have guessed your intentions."

"Oh, then I really should meet him. I admire intelligent people, especially young intelligent people."

Wu Xiaoguang couldn't help but become interested.

I had planned to give Shenmo a hard time, to intimidate him and dampen his arrogance, but it seems that this tactic won't work.

"Mr. Wu, I don't understand why you're paying so much attention to such a small company like YiTaoGO?"

Liu Ning, the person in charge of Paipai.com, had a hint of disdain on his face.

Wu Xiaoguang said earnestly, "YiTao GO is indeed not worth our attention, but Shen Mo's rebate offers, free shipping specials, and especially group buying—even Silicon Valley in the US doesn't have such a model. What does that say?"

Liu Ning said, "That shows he's a talented person."

"Yes, and he is the kind of talent that Paipai.com needs most right now for its development."

Wu Xiaoguang waved his hand and walked straight ahead towards the reception room.

"Mr. Shen, let me introduce you. This is Mr. Wu Xiaoguang, General Manager of the Internet Business Unit."

Yang Ming began, "This gentleman is Mr. Liu Ning, the General Manager of the E-commerce Department."

"Mr. Wu, Mr. Liu, it's an honor to meet you."

Shen Mo stood up and took the opportunity to introduce Zhong Xue.

"I haven't achieved anything particularly outstanding at Tencent, so Mr. Shen's words of 'I've heard so much about you' make me feel a little ashamed."

Wu Xiaoguang waved his hand.

"A skilled strategist achieves victory without making a name for himself. As a veteran figure, Mr. Wu, Tencent's success today certainly owes a debt to you."

Shen Mo narrowed his eyes. "Besides, under your and President Liu's leadership, Paipai.com has snatched the second position in the C2C market from eBay in such a short time, second only to Taobao. How can you say that there are no achievements?"

Wu Xiaoguang and Liu Ning exchanged glances, finding the situation increasingly interesting.

"It seems Mr. Shen knows a lot about our Paipai.com?"

"You can't not understand it."

Shen Mo sat down. "As a shopping guide website, YiTaoGO aims to provide excellent service to a wide range of B2C and C2C platforms. Currently, in addition to Taobao, we have established partnerships with Letao, Vancl, and others..."

Upon receiving the look he gave her, Zhong Xue immediately took out the documents she had prepared and handed one to each of them.

Wu Xiaoguang did not immediately flip through the book, his eyes fixed on Shen Mo.

"Our YiTaoGO has a huge customer base and we are very willing to cooperate with Tencent to direct this traffic to Paipai.com..."

"flow?"

A hint of amusement flickered in Liu Ning's eyes. "Do you think QQ is going to lack users or traffic?"

"Of course we have plenty. As long as your company is willing, we can provide a new product at any time, bringing in tens of millions of exposures every day."

Shen Mo said, "However, traffic doesn't equal transaction volume. Otherwise, Paipai.com would have surpassed Taobao long ago, wouldn't it?"

Liu Ning frowned and said, "Does this mean that by partnering with your YiTaoGO, Paipai.com can surpass Taobao?"

"I can't say it's 100% certain, but at least there's a chance."

Shen Mo blurted out, "Otherwise, there's absolutely no chance."

"Are you saying this to make us pay attention to YiTaoGO so that we'll lift the ban on your links on QQ?"

Liu Ning, playing the "bad cop," snorted coldly.

"Speaking of which, I need to clarify a misunderstanding."

Shen Mo shook his head: "The group-buying link on YiTaoGO has absolutely no risk of information leakage or account theft, I don't know..."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Shen."

Wu Xiaoguang said, "Although your YiTaoGO also cooperates with Vancl and Letao, it mainly serves Taobao."

Liu Ning slammed his hand on the table. "That's right, we absolutely will not allow any platform or website to use QQ's traffic to drive traffic to Taobao!"

"Isn't it because, besides Taobao, Alipay, Jingdong, Amazon China, and even your Paipai.com, none of them open their APIs to the public?"

Zhong Xue retorted, "We just want to drive traffic to Paipai.com, but we can't get connected!"

Shen Mo suggested, "As far as I know, Vancl is developing a marketing platform similar to Ali Mama. I think Tencent could also build a 'Premium Alliance.' YiTaoGO is willing to cooperate to help Paipai.com grow bigger and stronger, and create new glories."

"Since Mr. Shen is willing to build a major Paipai.com, would you be interested in joining us?"

Wu Xiaoguang squinted his eyes into slits.

Shen Mo pretended not to understand, "Mr. Wu means..."

"Join us on Paipai.com"

Seeing that things were getting out of hand, Wu Xiaoguang got straight to the point.

In his view, YiTaoGO was of little value; the most valuable thing was Shen Mo himself.

With limited funds, Shen Mo managed to grow his user base to nearly a million in just a few months, which shows he's quite talented.

"Thank you for your kind words, Mr. Wu, but I'm just a lazy person and don't like working for others."

Shen Mo suppressed his smile and became serious.

Wu Xiaoguang was slightly taken aback, not expecting Shen Mo to refuse so decisively.

Liu Ning mistakenly thought that Shen Mo was unfamiliar with the penguin's job level system, so he gave a brief explanation.

You should know that there are 6 major levels in total, and each major level is further divided into 3 grades. As the president of Paipai.com, I am only T4.

"As long as you achieve results, I guarantee you will be promoted to 3-2 within three years. Even if you are promoted to 4-1 after that, it's not impossible."

Wu Xiaoguang was full of confidence, believing that even Tsinghua and Peking University students would find it hard to refuse the conditions he offered.

Zhong Xue turned to look at Shen Mo, her eyes filled with envy.

If it were me, I'd probably hesitate for even a second, which would be disrespectful to the penguin!

However, to everyone's surprise, Shen Mo did not take Wu Xiaoguang's empty promises, and did not believe even a single punctuation mark of them.

I'm very familiar with Tencent's job level system. In my past life, I couldn't get promoted from T3 to T4, so I switched to Ali.

"I am very grateful for Mr. Wu's kindness, but I am really sorry, I prefer to work for myself."

Shen Mo flatly refused. He had worked for penguins in his previous life, and now that he had been reborn, who the hell would work for someone else?

It's impossible for me to work; I'll never work in my life.

Not to mention Wu Xiaoguang, even Ma Huateng would refuse.

………………

Seeing that Wu Xiaoguang's offer to recruit them was rejected, Yang Ming and Zhong Xue were dumbfounded, their heads buzzing for a moment.

Liu Ning's face turned ashen, and he said sarcastically, "Then I wish President Shen good luck. It's just a pity that Paipai.com can't cooperate with YiTaoGO, and YiTaoGO can't continue to post links on QQ. It's probably not going to be that easy for them to succeed..."

Shen Mo curled his lip, showing no sense of the big picture or any discernment whatsoever!

No wonder Paipai.com couldn't compete with Taobao or Jingdong in its previous life, and was eventually handed over to Liu Qiangdong. With this guy, it's no wonder it couldn't win!

So he immediately retorted: "It's easy for YiTaoGO to become the number one shopping guide platform. On the other hand, if Paipai.com doesn't cooperate with us, it might not be able to catch up with Taobao and could even be overtaken by Jingdong and eBay."

"Mr. Shen, aren't you exaggerating?"

Wu Xiaoguang said sternly, "Does Paipai.com really die if we don't listen to you and cooperate with YiTaoGO?"

"Hard to say!"

Shen Mo couldn't stand being wronged in the slightest, so he immediately went all out.

Wu Xiaoguang remained rational and restrained. "Oh, I wonder what insightful opinion Mr. Shen has?"

"I wouldn't call it a brilliant insight, but I just think that Tencent's direction in e-commerce was wrong from the start."

Shen Mo said, "If you're going in the wrong direction, the harder you try, the more you'll fail."

Wu Xiaoguang pressed further, "How do you prove it?"

"We all know that C2C cannot eliminate counterfeit goods."

Shen Mo said in a serious tone, "Even if the crackdown is very strict, once a counterfeit shop is shut down, it can immediately start anew with almost zero cost."

"Taobao also has the problem of counterfeit goods, and it's ten or even a hundred times worse than Paipai.com, but Taobao still survived."

Liu Ning's tone was somewhat cold.

"Because Taobao is a pure transaction platform, if you buy counterfeit goods, you might just curse a few times."

"But Penguin's main focus is social interaction, and trust is its lifeline and bottom line."

"If someone buys counterfeit goods on Paipai.com, won't that resentment from being cheated affect their QQ account?"

Shen Mo's words were like a heavy hammer blow to the hearts of Wu Xiaoguang, Liu Ning, and others.

Lies don't hurt, truth is the knife.

The entire meeting room fell into a deathly silence. Shen Mo seized the opportunity and continued to speak.

"This is not the most fatal problem. If Paipai.com does not solve several other more serious issues, it is destined to fail."

"What's the problem?"

Liu Ning suppressed his anger, forcing out words through gritted teeth.

"Mr. Liu, don't be impatient, I'm not keeping you in suspense."

"I shouldn't normally be asking these questions, but since you value me so much, I can answer them."

Shen Mo said, "But even if you listen, you may not be able to make the decision. You'll have to report it up the chain of command, and the story will get distorted over time."

"You want to see Pony?"

Wu Xiaoguang immediately understood the hidden meaning in his words.

"That's right, some things can only be discussed with Pony in person."

Shen Mo nodded. "What are your roles at Tencent? You should tell us by talking to the person in charge, Pony Ma!"