Chapter 183: Boss Chen, If You Do It This Way, No One Will Make Money

"Dragon Scale Horse! This KuaiPao app is pretty good; they actually gave me a free cup of Kawangka milk tea."

Inside the Baozuan Building, Zhou Yi took the milk tea back to her workstation, experiencing the convenience and charm of food delivery for the first time.

Place an order on the app, wait half an hour, and a delivery rider wearing a KuaiPao uniform can ride a small electric scooter to deliver the milk tea downstairs.

"Free? Sister Zhou, are you talking about KuaiPao Delivery?"

A nearby colleague, seeing this, asked curiously.

"Yes, have you used it too?"

Zhou Yi replied, then asked back.

"I registered yesterday, bought an order of Zhan's Walnut Cookies, and even used my boyfriend's account to buy a pineapple bun from Caidie Xuan."

The colleague answered with a smile.

Hearing this, Zhou Yi immediately realized: Right, use the boyfriend's account to place another order.

Thinking of this, she acted immediately.

Sitting at her computer, she sent an invitation link to her boyfriend; once the invited user's first order was delivered, Zhou Yi could receive another 5 yuan no-threshold red packet.

"Baby, I want to eat egg tarts from Caidie Xuan, buy them for me quickly."

Zhou Yi coquettishly said.

"What link is this? I'll buy it for you after work." Zhou Yi's boyfriend, Wu Lei, didn't hesitate and agreed immediately.

"Hee hee, I want to eat for free; this is the registration link for the KuaiPao app. Download it quickly. New users get 12 yuan off the first order, and a delivery rider can deliver it to me within 30 minutes."

Zhou Yi explained to her boyfriend.

KuaiPao?

Delivery rider?

Although Wu Lei was full of doubts, because it was his girlfriend's request, he obediently complied.

He entered his phone number, set a login password, filled in the verification code, and logged into the KuaiPao app.

The splash screen showed a running figure, with the product slogan "Use KuaiPao, Arrive on Time."

It then jumped to the homepage. With a cartoon UI design, the top section was the new user zone; clicking in revealed shops and products all participating in the 12 yuan instant discount.

Wu Lei quickly found the Caidie Xuan store near Zhou Yi's company, added egg tarts, rock-baked cheese, and chicken cutlet buns to the cart; after deducting the new user discount, it only cost 3.5 yuan.

Only after paying did he realize this software was quite useful.

Besides food, there were categories for fruit, milk tea, and fresh flowers.

However, the number of participating merchants was small; after scrolling casually a few times, the page reached the bottom.

Wu Lei thought for a moment, then placed another order to buy a bouquet of 11 champagne roses and sent them to Zhou Yi.

In less than half an hour, Zhou Yi received a call from the courier; she ran downstairs and found two couriers, one holding a Caidie Xuan bag and the other holding a bouquet of roses.

"Ms. Zhou, wish you a pleasant meal!"

"Ms. Zhou, here are your flowers!" the courier said with a smile.

Zhou Yi paused for a moment; only when she saw the last digits of the orderer's phone number did she realize it was her boyfriend's doing.

Smiling, she accepted the bread and flowers and walked into the building.

After more than a month of preparation, Kang Guodong and Pei Yi had built 8 stations in Luyang, Shushan, and Yaohai, and assembled a delivery rider team of over 90 people.

Including the R&D, marketing, business, and customer service personnel at the Luyang District headquarters, the total number of employees reached 140.

"Old Pei! How are the numbers today?"

After finishing the technical department meeting, Kang Guodong walked behind Pei Yi, patted his shoulder, and asked.

"1,839 new customers, 3,578 orders. Overdue orders account for 7%. Our intelligent delivery system still needs optimization; the delivery department has reported that many recommended routes have problems."

Pei Yi didn't look up, switching reports as he spoke slowly.

The labor contracts for KuaiPao delivery riders were not signed with third-party outsourcing companies, but under the name of KuaiPao Technology.

Base salary of 1,500 yuan, with five social insurances and one housing fund plus supplementary medical insurance; there are delivery commissions, order volume bonuses, and bad weather subsidies. For work exceeding 6 hours a day, overtime pay is issued according to labor law.

Therefore, most couriers' monthly income can reach around 6,000 yuan, while the starting salary for many university graduates in Luzhou is mostly only 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.

In worse cases, they can only get a wage of just over 2,000.

"Alright, have the delivery department report more suitable delivery routes; I will add the new data."

Kang Guodong nodded and agreed.

"President Kang, President Pei, do you have time for a short meeting?"

At this moment, the business head, Kou Zhen, stepped forward to ask.

He was personally recruited by Chen Yansen and assigned to KuaiPao; he was formerly a ground promotion manager at Lashou Wang, with rich merchant resources and team management experience.

Compared with Kang Guodong and Pei Yi, Kou Zhen, who already had years of work experience, was far more mature and steady in the workplace than the two of them.

"I have time. Let's go, Old Pei!"

Kang Guodong agreed at once, pulled Pei Yi along, and the three walked into the conference room.

After sitting down, Kou Zhen said to the two: "Currently, having the business team come to the headquarters for daily work wastes time and affects work efficiency. I suggest sending the business team out to set up office points near core commercial districts, allowing them to devote more energy to expanding merchants."

Kang Guodong frowned, feeling this was unfavorable for team management and worrying that no one could control people slacking off.

"I agree!" Pei Yi stated first, then gave his reasons: "The base salary for business personnel is not high; performance is key. There is no need to worry too much about whether they are slacking off; having them come to the headquarters once a week for a weekly meeting is enough."

"Alright, let's do as you say." Kang Guodong thought for a moment and still agreed.

As the team scale expanded, Kang Guodong finally realized the difficulty of entrepreneurship; before, it could only be considered small-scale play.

Expanding KuaiPao's operating scope from the university district to within the First Ring Road required considering delivery efficiency while also increasing server capacity to prevent website lag and software crashes during high traffic.

Especially after the addition of financial, legal, marketing, and business personnel, Kang Guodong felt his control over KuaiPao was becoming weaker and weaker.

Most of these people were sent by Senlian Capital.

In name, he was still the CEO of KuaiPao, but managing it made him feel overwhelmed.

His talent and gifts were concentrated entirely on computer programming; whenever market, finance, or marketing issues came up, Kang Guodong's head would start to throb.

In terms of management ability, he was even far inferior to Pei Yi.

Though Kang Guodong was unwilling to admit it, he also knew clearly that he was better suited to product development.

"Right, President Kang, the marketing department's online campaign is already prepared. On New Year's Day we'll team up with Luzhou Tieba, Luzhou Online, and the Luzhou Forum to jointly launch the 'Kuaipao Treats You to the First Milk Tea of the New Year' event. I think we should hire more part-time delivery riders, to avoid delivery delays on the day of the event."

Kou Zhen reminded him.

"No problem, I'll arrange it." Kang Guodong felt it made sense.

Given the current situation, relying solely on offline promotion and internal customer acquisition, the delivery system's overtime rate had already reached 7%. Once the online campaign went live, orders would surely surge.

If they wanted to maintain a good user experience, they had to prepare in advance!

Pei Yi clenched his fists; being able to personally watch the project he had built from scratch about to take off naturally filled him with excitement.

He stole a glance at Kang Guodong, silently thinking: Brother Dong, don't blame me — the CEO seat suits me better.

Once the three of them finished the meeting, each went back to their own tasks.

At midnight that day, Kuaipao's order volume reached 5,674 orders, of which new customers' first orders accounted for 38%. Cumulative registered users exceeded 30,000, nearly half of Ele. me's.

But the difference between the two was that Kuaipao had received 30 million from Chen Yansen, with new customers growing at 2,000–4,000 per day, while Ele. me had hit a development bottleneck.

The one million US dollars from Jin Sha Venture Capital at the start of the year had long been spent down to nothing. Let alone first-order subsidies, at this point Did Zhang Xuhao couldn't even afford delivery subsidies.

At Kuaipao's current growth rate, in ten days it would surpass Ele. me's user base.

But this speed came at a cost — just the new-customer subsidies alone cost 30,000–60,000 yuan per day.

As the customer-acquisition scale expanded, the balance in Kuaipao's account was also rapidly shrinking.

Kang Guodong and Pei Yi had no idea that this was part of Chen Yansen's plan — he intended to rely on continuous follow-on investment to gradually dilute the equity in their hands.

Meanwhile.

The e-commerce and express delivery circles, upon learning of Yun Su's new rules, instantly exploded.

The 1.5-yuan minimum order fee standard had thrown almost every express delivery company into a life-or-death melee.

Generally speaking, an express delivery ticket price includes transportation, labor, materials, site rental, equipment depreciation, and management costs.

The higher a delivery company's market share, the more it could leverage scale effects to lower per-ticket costs.

From the fact that Yun Su's announced preferential policies only targeted warehouse-contract customers, one could see that Chen Yansen's move was aimed at grabbing market share from the Three Tong and One Da.

Gao Weilin and Yun Su's finance department had calculated that a station needed a daily intake of 3,000 packages to break even.

It was hard to achieve this with retail customers, but for big sellers under warehouse contracts, shipping several hundred packages a day was a breeze.

As long as they signed a few clients of comparable scale, Yun Su could compete with the Three Tong and One Da over the long term.

To hold on to their big clients, the Three Tong and One Da could only be forced to cut prices.

Some small and medium sellers, to save on delivery fees, even joined forces to sign warehouse contracts with Yun Su, pre-stocking their shops' hot-selling products in Yun Su's warehouses.

When shipping each afternoon, sellers only needed to sync the order information to Yun Su, slap on the delivery waybill, and ship immediately — greatly boosting shipping efficiency.

……

……

Xucheng, Zhuxianzhuang Tech Park.

Chen Yansen sat in his office, looked at the work report Pei Yi had submitted, and smiled faintly.

Combined with the feedback from Kou Zhen and others, it showed that Kang Guodong's management ability was insufficient and he was unfit for the CEO role at Kuaipao.

Chen Yansen did not reject Pei Yi's move.

Starting a business was ultimately about making money — there was no question of betrayal.

If Kang Guodong lacked the ability, then let someone capable take over.

Take Zhang Wenbo and Xiang Pengfei, for example — though they were old employees who had followed him since Fox Tao, the positions Chen Yansen gave them were only team leader.

Business is business; friendship is friendship.

Chen Yansen had given the two of them a chance. Once the assessment period ended, if their abilities didn't meet the director-level requirements, they could only remain team leaders.

Therefore, Kang Guodong had even less privilege here.

But Chen Yansen wasn't planning to make a move just yet. Kuaipao was still small, and the core technical architecture had been built single-handedly by Kang Guodong. Moving now would easily disrupt Kuaipao's smooth operation.

When Kuaipao received its second round of capital injection, Kang Guodong's influence and voice would diminish accordingly. By then, kicking Kang Guodong from CEO down to CTO would make for a smoother transition.

"Ring ring—!"

The phone on the desk rang.

"Boss Chen, let's sit down and talk this over. If you keep doing this, nobody can make any money!"

Chen Dejun of Shentong, forcibly suppressing his fury, pleaded helplessly.

(End of chapter)