Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Chapter 126 Internal Strife

In the conference room on the top floor of the Sohu Network Building, the operations and accounting department of the 5Q Campus Network was having a meeting. The atmosphere in the room was so tense that it was hard to breathe.

The projector fan hummed, and the data curve projected onto the screen resembled a snake that had lost its breath, plummeting straight from the peak of the first day to the bottom, where it lay motionless.

Zhang Chaoyang slammed the report in his hand onto the large conference table with a loud crack, startling the operations manager who was giving the presentation.

"Mr. Zhang, this is the actual retention data for 5Q Campus Network on the third day." The operations manager swallowed hard, his voice trailing off. "The number of registrations on the first day did indeed exceed 1.2 million, but the retention rate on the second day plummeted. As of today, the three-day retention rate for new users acquired on the first day is less than five percent."

"Five percent?" Zhang Chaoyang leaned on the table with his elbows, his hands crossed under his chin, his gaze sweeping coldly over the crowd. "Where did the remaining million-plus people go? Did they take our mascots and five-yuan red envelopes and vanish into thin air? Never to return?"

"The due diligence team conducted a sample follow-up survey." The operations manager wiped the sweat from his forehead. "The students reported that apart from the alumni directory and a dry forum, there was no interaction on our website. After receiving the five-yuan red envelope, they went straight to the internet cafe and spent the money on HaiNei.com to buy fertilizer and steal vegetables."

The meeting room fell silent. Most of the senior executives were watching Zhang Chaoyang and Wu Tao.

Wu Tao sat to Zhang Chaoyang's left, his brows furrowed even more tightly than Zhang Chaoyang's. He held a Parker pen in his hand, his knuckles white from gripping it so tightly, and his round face showed a pained expression.

"Mr. Zhang," Wu Tao broke the silence, his tone filled with deep regret and disappointment, "This can't really be entirely blamed on the poor execution of the operations team. I really don't understand Mr. Chen's strategy; it's just too—"

They're treating the company's money terribly.

Zhang Chaoyang glanced at him coldly: "More than a million people went to grow vegetables for Bai Yuhang, spending our money to give Qihang benefits. What kind of strategy is this?"

Wu Tao sighed, pushed the report in front of him forward again, and tapped the data with his finger: "Do the math. 1.2 million registrations, 5 yuan cash bonus per person, plus main site resources, mascots, flyers, and on-the-ground promotion staff—nearly 10 million RMB just went in. And the result? The college students took the 5 yuan we gave them from Sohu, went straight to internet cafes, and spent it all on five bags of fertilizer from HaiNei.com. This isn't social media promotion; this is precise feeding, a targeted blood transfusion into Bai Yuhang's corporate account!"

Several executives in the conference room couldn't help but twitch their lips violently. They quickly looked down and pretended to look at documents, or simply covered their chins with their hands and rubbed them.

Zhang Chaoyang's face had turned from ashen to bright red. A man of refined manners, he had never lost his temper like this before, but today he simply couldn't hold back any longer. He slammed his hands on the table: "Where is Chen Yizhou?! Didn't he confidently promise that his 'Crazy Vegetable Garden' would be online in three days? It's been three days now, and we haven't even seen a trace of a webpage!"

Wu Tao quickly sat up straight, his face full of concern, and hurriedly replied, "President Zhang, I really have to say something fair about President Chen. President Chen has extremely high technical standards and is a real workaholic. The day before yesterday, he personally went to the technical department and pulled away all the veterans from Groups One and Two, not even sparing a batch of old servers in the server room, saying he wanted to conduct some kind of high-concurrency stress test. Technical lead Wang Xiaochuan and his team worked two consecutive all-nighters—"

"Retired old servers?" Zhang Chaoyang keenly grasped the key point, his eyes sweeping over like knives.

Wu Tao chuckled inwardly, but his face remained serious, full of admiration: "Yes, President Chen is very noble. He said the new machines should be reserved for the main site to run the news channel, and he can run the 5Q campus network code on the old machines. I truly admire his willingness to save costs for the company. But the problem is, the underlying logic of Qihang looks simple, but it actually has extremely high requirements for data interaction. His technical lead, Wang Xiaochuan, just called me to complain that the old machines simply cannot handle the complex concurrent logic. After running for ten minutes in the internal testing phase, the server room reported that two machines crashed."

Zhang Chaoyang was so angry that he laughed, and slammed his hand on the solid wood conference table, making the teacups rattle.

"What a convenient way to save costs! He just throws away ten million RMB in promotion fees without batting an eye, going to the server room to scavenge junk servers and pretend to be an expert? Does he really think Sohu's money grows on trees?!"

Wu Tao quickly stood up, picked up the teapot and refilled Zhang Chaoyang's cup with hot water. He lowered his voice and gently comforted him, "Mr. Zhang, please calm down. After all, President Chen has studied abroad and seen the world. Perhaps the current internet mindset in the US is different from the way things work in Zhongguancun. It's inevitable that he'll experience some culture shock after just arriving here. We need to give him more time to adapt."

This dismissive "acclimatization issues" effectively branded Chen Yizhou and his team with shame.

Zhang Chaoyang stared at the swirling tea leaves in the cup, his chest heaving violently, unable to utter a single word for a long time.

"Convene an emergency meeting of all senior executives," Zhang Chaoyang said after a long pause, pursing his lips and taking a deep breath. "You immediately go and personally inform Chen Yizhou to put aside all his affairs and bring the main team leaders here to report."

The door to the conference room on the top floor of the Sohu Network Building was pushed open again.

Chen Yizhou strode in, his face ashen, followed by Wang Xiaochuan, who was looking down at his toes.

This top student from Tsinghua University's Computer Science Department had two huge dark circles under his eyes and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest.

As soon as he entered, dozens of executives' eyes fell on him, and the oppressive atmosphere made him afraid to even breathe.

He was a computer science student at Tsinghua University, whose eyes were usually only on code; he had never seen such a tense situation before.

Zhang Chaoyang sat in the main seat, expressionless, and tapped on the user data report on the table, which showed a three-day retention rate of less than five percent.

"Yizhou, have a seat." Zhang Chaoyang cut to the chase without beating around the bush, "When exactly is your 'Crazy Vegetable Garden' going to be shown to the public? Ten million RMB has been thrown in, and all I've heard is a bang. What about the Wall Street roadshow? How am I going to explain this to everyone?"

Chen Yizhou pulled out a chair and sat down, suppressing his anger as he explained, "President Zhang, it's not that we're slow. The underlying logic of Qihang is more complex than expected, with high-concurrency data interaction, which places extremely high demands on the hardware. The servers provided by the data center simply can't handle it. We just ran a few thousand minutes of stress testing, and both machines crashed."

Wu Tao, sitting opposite him, immediately chimed in, his face full of innocence and grievance.

"Mr. Chen, that's unreasonable." Wu Tao spread his hands. "Our main site's technical department has provided you with all the veterans since the site's inception, without reservation. The equipment is also the most stable batch that has been tested over time. Mr. Chen, you're a technical expert, you can't let us down at this crucial moment. I was under pressure to transfer all the best equipment from the server room to you. How come the machines are now being blamed?"

Chen Yizhou nearly spat out blood, pointing at Wu Tao and demanding, "President Wu, the ten so-called core members you assigned to me can't even write a basic Flash interface! They run off faster than anyone else at mealtimes, is that what I asked for?"

Wu Tao sighed, looking heartbroken: "President Chen, they are all veteran employees who have been with Sohu since it started. You're new here, so you might not be used to our local development pace. You can't blame your subordinates entirely for the technical and marketing issues."

"And another thing, President Chen's strategy in this battle is truly unique," Wu Tao leaned back in his chair and continued sarcastically. "So, all that money Sohu spent on on-the-ground promotion was just to make Qihang Technology a free ATM? I heard that HaiNei.com's financial turnover has hit a new high these past two days. It turns out that Sohu deserves a lot of credit for Bai Yuhang's performance."

The CFO stood beside him, clicking his tongue and looking pained.

"President Chen, we've burned through nearly ten million RMB in just three days!" The CFO tapped the report in his hand. "At this retention rate of 5%, the cost of acquiring a single active user is far too high. All in all, it's high enough to ring the bell twice on NASDAQ. Ten million US dollars of dedicated funds, at this rate, we won't even make a sound."

The group of people, one after another, vividly demonstrated the problems of passing the buck and shirking responsibility that plague large corporations.