Chapter 327: Arms Deal with Long Guo

After a brief silence on the line, Jack Ma said:

"Fine!"

He then hung up the phone.

However, rumors quickly spread online that Ali was suppressing Long Guo's high-tech enterprises because Ali had Japanese capital shares,

In fact, between Ali and Fengyi Technology..

Ali really had acted in poor taste,

giving off a strong sense of kicking someone when they're down at a critical moment.

Now Fengyi Technology naturally needed to strike back, in order to prevent similar incidents from happening again in the future,

Lin Yi was preparing to make an example of someone, and Ali was that chicken.

After the Songjiang District Court accepted Fengyi Technology's lawsuit against Ali.

Lin Yi brought in several of the most famous law firms in Modu to form a legal team to take on the case.

And for this case, quite a few lawyers were very interested.

After all, if they could win against a big company like Ali,

their reputation would rise considerably.

Of course, Ali also had its own legal team.

In any case, both sides were not short on cash.

However, after not giving Jack Ma face,

Lin Yi promptly arranged a meeting with Pinduoduo's Huang Zheng,

At this time, Huang Zheng was busy with the Series A financing, with interested investors including IDG Capital, Gaorong Capital, and others.

But Huang Zheng himself was very dissatisfied with the Series A financing valuation.

So the financing was temporarily put on hold.

Because of the previous acquaintance between Huang Zheng and Lin Yi, he called to ask Lin Yi if he would be willing to invest in Pinduoduo under his personal name.

After all, by now everyone knew that Lin Yi's company and Old Ma's Ali had fallen out,

and were about to face off in court.

And if Pinduoduo wanted to grow in the future and become the third pole of Long Guo's e-commerce,

it would definitely have to go to war with Taobao.

As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend; moreover, Huang Zheng had also set his sights on the military background behind Lin Yi,

which was the real reason Huang Zheng contacted Lin Yi.

In a club upstairs at Jing'an Kerry Centre in Modu,

the two met again.

It was a Hong Kong-style restaurant with private rooms.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two got down to discussing the financing.

"I'm not afraid to tell Lin Zong, IDG Capital and Gaorong Capital's offer for Pinduoduo is 9 million US dollars for 20% of the shares..."

Huang Zheng said.

"Then what does President Huang mean!"

Lin Yi asked without showing any emotion.

"Pinduoduo's overall valuation is 500 million!"

Huang Zheng said, somewhat shooting his mouth off.

"If I remember correctly, Pinduoduo went live last September, right? That's about exactly 5 months from now, 100 million a month¨〃!"

Lin Yi said with a smile.

"Then what does Lin Zong mean!"

Huang Zheng asked.

"300 million valuation, I want 20% of the shares!"

Lin Yi said.

"That's too much equity, and if Lin Zong wants to invest, Pinduoduo's valuation must reach at least 400 million..."

Thus, after a round of verbal sparring between the two sides,

Huang Zheng agreed to a 380 million valuation, letting Lin Yi hold 15%,

equivalent to him spending 57 million Hua currency to obtain 15% of Pinduoduo's shares.

Regarding this investment, Lin Yi couldn't say he was overjoyed, after all at this point he couldn't see the future.

But he was still quite optimistic about Pinduoduo's development,

just this past February, Pinduoduo's single-month transaction volume broke 10 million,

and paying users surpassed 20 million.

This data might be a far cry from Taobao and Jingdong,

but Pinduoduo's growth was astonishing.

This stake was suitable for him to hold long-term, like the value investing Buffett talked about.

The next day, Lin Yi entrusted a lawyer to complete the equity transfer with Pinduoduo.

Lin Yi joined Pinduoduo only as an individual shareholder.

Of course, he would not hold any position in the company,

additionally, in the agreement signed between Lin Yi and Huang Zheng, there was a right of first refusal for subsequent financing,

which also ensured that this portion of shares would not be diluted.

But this was only a minor episode for Lin Yi.

The day arrived for the weapons transaction Lin Yi had arranged with the Long Guo military.

A total of five billion USD in arms—on the system platform, Lin Yi could earn roughly four billion USD,

a profit so obscene it was practically the very definition of pure, naked markup.

Take the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, sold for four million USD, as an example.

The system catalog price was four hundred thousand USD, yet Lin Yi flipped it for ten times that.

Someone might say the price is a bit low—after all, it costs Ugly Country eight million USD to produce a single M1A2 Abrams main battle tank.

Selling it for several tens of millions of USD would be even more worthwhile.

However, there's a situation here.

Not just anyone has the money to buy tanks worth tens of millions of USD.

Take Long Guo, for instance—if Lin Yi priced this tank at several tens of millions of USD,

Long Guo would certainly buy it, but the quantity would have to be drastically cut.

Maybe just one or two units.

And they'd definitely be used for teardown and research; once they'd mastered the underlying technology,

Long Guo would build its own at an extremely low price.

It wouldn't shell out tens of millions of USD for your big fellow.

On the contrary, Lin Yi set the weapon price below Long Guo's own cost,

while still looking after his own profit.