Chapter 137: 400 Million in Mao Li, Terrifying Reflexes (Begging for Monthly Tickets)

"Morning, Sen-ge!"

"Morning, boss!"

"Morning, class monitor!"

The moment Chen Yansen stepped into Room 206, several warm greetings rang out.

June's wages and performance bonuses had all been deposited. Everyone had been grumbling that the happy summer vacation was gone, but seeing the extra tens of thousands in their bank cards, they were instantly fired up with energy.

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod, walked to his seat, logged into the data backend, glanced over the daily active users, sales, and user retention figures, confirmed nothing was amiss, then switched over to a news site.

"Meituan secures another $30 million in funding, jointly invested by Mama Ali and DST Capital…"

Seeing this news, Chen Yansen couldn't help but sigh that Wang Xing's luck was really good.

With this money, even if Meituan couldn't outcompete Lashou in the second half of the year, it could still squeeze into the top three of the group-buying industry.

Chen Yansen understood Ma Liyun's approach: run his own group-buying business while investing in outside group-buying sites, then acquire and fold them into the group once the timing was right.

But what Ma Liyun hadn't expected was that Wang Xin, after taking his money to build a big company, turned around and threw in his lot with Penguin.

Chen Yansen narrowed his eyes, thought for a moment, then called over Wang Yunxia from the events group and told her, in the upcoming brand events for group-buying sites—

secretly drive more traffic to Lashou, Gao Peng, and Wo Wo Tuan. After all, the longer the group-buying war dragged on, the more he profited.

Besides, he didn't want Meituan to come out on top!

Though Wang Yunxia didn't understand why, she didn't ask further. She gave an acknowledgment and went back to add a few more resource slots to Wo Wo Tuan's brand group.

"Sen-ge, everyone's here. The Q2 financial meeting can start anytime."

At that moment, Xu Dan came over to remind him.

Chen Yansen acknowledged her and stood up to head toward the meeting room.

June not only had Taobao and JD's 618 mega-sale, but also the phone special, the home decoration hall, and the overseas shopping festival—everyone was swamped.

It wasn't until July 4th that they finally found time to put together the quarterly financial report.

Chen Yansen pushed the door open, went in, sat down, and said to Hu Yun: "Don't make it too complicated. Same old rules—keep it short. Send a copy of the data to Director Gao afterward."

With Gao Weilin playing matchmaker, Lotte Investment had indeed shown great interest in Fox Tao.

But because the project had only been established for a short time, Lotte wanted to keep observing for a while to make sure Fox Tao's profitability was stable enough before deciding whether to invest or acquire.

"Got it, Sen-ge," Hu Yun replied.

He opened the PPT, looked at the data report, and began his briefing: "April average daily active users 2.65 million, new customer share 37.4%; May average daily active users 3.04 million, new customer share 36.2%; June average daily active users 3.49 million, new customer share 39.1%."

Hu Yun paused, then continued: "Our cumulative registered users stand at 206 million, quarterly active users at 127 million, monthly active users at 56 million…"

Judging from Q2's user growth trend and new customer share, it was getting harder and harder for Fox Tao to acquire new customers cheaply and at scale through its ad placements.

The 560 million yuan from the Series A funding had only one or two tenths left, after all—total internet users in 2011 were less than 500 million, and the pool was just that small.

"Zihao, cut Q3 ad spending in half, scale down the ad footprint, and make conversion rate and ROI the primary assessment metrics for the ad team."

Chen Yansen cut Hu Yun off and instructed Wang Zihao.

After saying that, he looked at Zhuang Rui: "Lower the weight of new customers from the zero-yuan bargaining, raise the weight of old customers who haven't placed an order in 7 days but logged in within 30 days. Next, focus on retention and reactivation."

"Got it, Sen-ge," the two replied in unison.

With traffic hitting a ceiling, and group-buying sites also spending wildly on ads to buy traffic—even though the two business models differed—it still drove up Fox Tao's customer acquisition costs.

Chen Yansen thought it over and decided to slow the ad pace, shifting from pursuing quantity to emphasizing quality, and use the other half of the ad budget for old customer maintenance.

Compared with new users who didn't yet understand the shopping guide model, old users had lower activation costs and higher expected value.

"April sales 760 million yuan, gross profit 83.6 million; May sales 1.07 billion yuan, gross profit 129 million; June sales 1.61 billion yuan, gross profit 188 million—Q2 gross profit totaled 400 million yuan," Hu Yun continued.

Compared with Q1, gross profit grew 207% quarter-over-quarter.

This showed Fox Tao's Q2 growth was explosive, which was also the main reason Augusta Capital had given it a 16 billion yuan valuation.

Afterward, Hu Yun reported on Q2 user retention, sales share across platforms, and the growth of the overseas shopping business.

"The Key Account merchant recruitment department brought in 193 B2C platforms in Q2, completed 85 targeted brand events and 17 integrated marketing brand cases, with commission gross profit of 59.2 million yuan and advertising fees of 87 million yuan. Deducting super rebate commission expenses, the actual gross profit was 91.4 million yuan..."

Seeing that Hu Yun had finished his report and Chen Yansen had turned his gaze toward her, Song Yuncheng spoke up slowly.

Counting those that had already joined, Fox Tao's mall cashback section now had over 300 B2C sites, covering all kinds of vertical products, with a gross profit share exceeding 20%.

Chen Yansen nodded, offering no comment.

In June, people like Song Yuncheng, Li Hui, Zhang Yifeng, and Yuan Wei all took home over 100,000 yuan in performance commissions.

Zhang Yifeng, with the most outstanding performance, earned as much as 142,000 yuan in June alone!

That drove the other merchant recruitment staff crazy with envy—after all, in 2011, houses in many small counties only cost fifty or sixty thousand yuan apiece, and this kind of money could buy two or three of them.

Song Yuncheng stood out in group-buying and B2C business, earning 126,000 yuan, second only to Zhang Yifeng.

Yuan Wei took in 106,000 yuan. He felt the smartest decision he'd made in the past two years was joining Fox Tao.

Li Hui, needless to say, was only a senior next semester—still not graduated, yet already with nearly a year of work experience.

After several months, the number on his bank card had reached 300,000 yuan.

He planned to go home at year's end and buy his parents a new house.

Li Hui was deeply grateful to Chen Yansen.

Back then, when he had betrayed his previous campus card general agent to switch to Chen Yansen, Chen Yansen not only didn't mind but had tilted phone card resources his way, letting him make quite a bit of money.

After joining Fox Tao, even for merchants whose first-phase output was only a few tens of thousands, he was willing to serve them wholeheartedly. At the same time, he was the one with the fewest key account merchants among the top merchant recruitment staff.

Yet he still took home just over 100,000 yuan, sitting firmly in the merchant recruitment team leader seat.

After hearing the Q2 work report, Chen Yansen did a rough calculation: total sales for the first half came to 4.93 billion yuan.

Considering the second half was the e-commerce peak season, the 10 billion yuan sales target was, barring surprises, basically in the bag.

In high spirits, he told Xu Dan: "Talk it over with Xu Xingxing, see which nearby places are good for travel, organize a team-building trip, try to schedule it for July or August."

"Got it, boss," Xu Dan replied with a light smile.

July and August were the e-commerce off-season. Having just gotten through 618, users' purchasing demand had already been released—this was the perfect window to let everyone relax a bit.

Afterwards, the team leaders began reporting their Q2 outputs. The core assessment for the investment promotion team leader was sales revenue and gross profit targets.

The core task for the category team leader was the monthly sales target for Super Cashback. The pressure was immense, but the bonuses upon completion were also very generous.

Based on the gross profit growth of each category, bonuses ranged from 5,000 to 50,000 yuan. Although it couldn't compare with the top investment promotion team, category operations managers for several major categories like digital products, food, and women's wear could still take home twenty or thirty thousand a month.

Although everyone reported their work in a fast-paced, highlight-focused style, by the time the meeting ended, it was nearly twelve o'clock.

Chen Yansen glanced at the time, then looked at the over 1,000 wisps of Human-Path Flame on his system panel, and still decided to head back to 0418.

He declined Wang Zihao's lunch invitation and walked straight toward the faculty apartment.

In June, he had accumulated 1,457 wisps of Human-Path Flame, plus the 44 wisps left over from May, totaling 1,501 wisps.

Chen Yansen synthesized them into 15 wisps of Divine-Path Flame, and this time added them all to his Spirit attribute.

The value rose from 10.02 to 10.17!

The change seemed small, but Chen Yansen clearly felt his memory and comprehension rapidly strengthening.

Every book he had read, he could clearly recall in his mind, ready to be called upon at any moment.

His information processing speed was as fast as a computer!

After two days of observation, Chen Yansen found his sleep time had shortened again. Originally he could sleep four or five hours; now he would wake up right on time after just 4 hours of sleep each day.

His weight increased from 94 kilograms to 97 kilograms!

But from the outside, he looked like someone of at most 85 kilograms. In reality, the density of his muscles, bones, and flesh throughout his entire body had reached an astonishing level.

Privately, Chen Yansen went to the gym to test it out, and could easily lift a 500-kilogram barbell with one hand.

His two BMW 750s weigh 2,000 kilograms empty.

Chen Yansen had tested it: with one hand he could lift the car half a meter high, and with both hands exerting force together, he felt he could flip the car several meters away.

Strength comparable to an elephant, reaction speed as fast as a hummingbird!

To test his reaction speed, Chen Yansen held a pencil up at a height of two meters, then let go.

During the pencil's fall, he could catch and release it 21 times, while an ordinary person could catch it at most once.

But to say his reaction speed was 21 times that of an ordinary person, Chen Yansen felt wasn't quite accurate, because he could clearly feel that the contraction speed of his hand muscles couldn't keep up with his reaction.

Simply put, his body's reaction couldn't keep up with his brain.

However, Chen Yansen didn't take it to heart. Instead, he deliberately slowed down, making himself look like a normal person.

In the days that followed, graduates left the school one after another.

On July 8th, the College of Virtual Reality began its summer vacation. Students from Year 1 to Year 3 also left within two days, completely cleared out.

The vast campus was empty and desolate, incredibly quiet. Even the cafeteria aunties were on holiday, leaving only the hundred-plus staff of Fox Treasure.

Xu Xingxing contacted two off-campus restaurants to handle the three meals a day for Fox Treasure and Sister Chengzi's Tech, otherwise even eating would become a problem.

(End of this chapter)