Chapter 222: Day One Online: 290,000 Orders! Zhang Yiming Wouldn't Listen, So

"President Chen, welcome to Yanjing. Let me introduce you—this is Liang Bo, ByteDance's head of product R&D."

Zhang Yiming volunteered the introduction.

"President Chen, hello!"

Liang Bo stood to one side, visibly ill at ease. He started to reach out for a handshake, then thought it too presumptuous; his right hand hovered by his trouser pocket, caught between advancing and retreating, and could only stay there in awkward limbo.

"Mr. Liang, a pleasure to meet you."

Chen Yansen read the nervousness in the man and took the initiative, clasping Liang Bo's right hand with a faint smile.

As a core figure at ByteDance, Liang Bo was no stranger to Chen Yansen.

In his previous life the two had crossed paths, except that he knew Liang Bo, while Liang Bo did not know him.

The company he had founded, Feiyu Tech, was merely a livestream e-commerce firm, but under it were female streamers whose core income came from tipping in showrooms, and naturally they had also set up shop on the Douyin platform.

When Chen Yansen attended the Douyin Premium Content Sharing Conference, he had caught a distant glimpse of Liang Bo—the other man was the CEO of ByteDance with a net worth of tens of billions, while he was merely the boss of a mid-sized MCN agency.

In this life, however, the roles of the two men had been swapped.

Twenty-nine-year-old Liang Bo, apart from the title of R&D manager at Xu Jiujiu Fang, had no achievements worth mentioning.

Facing a big boss like Chen Yansen—famous at a young age and worth billions—he was naturally full of nerves, terrified of offending an investor.

"President Zhang, let's go take a look at your studio first."

Chen Yansen said with a teasing smile.

Because Zhang Yiming kept a tight grip on the equity, the seed round had only taken in five million in funding. To save costs, ByteDance in its early R&D phase had rented just one not-very-large office area, with other companies on the same floor.

So calling it a studio wasn't wrong.

"President Chen, President Gao, President Song, please follow me."

Zhang Yiming hurried to reply, leading the three into the elevator.

With a "ding," the elevator doors slid slowly open!

They walked down a narrow corridor, passing the front desks of three small companies along the way, before finally stopping at an office area on the west side.

In a space of just over a hundred square meters, some thirty people were packed in—front-end, back-end, mobile developers, architects, testers, and product managers among them.

These office conditions were even worse than those of Fox Tao back in the day.

Chen Yansen shook his head inwardly, thinking only that Zhang Yiming was truly a penny-pincher.

With conditions like these, he had still managed to "sweet-talk" over thirty people—proof that Yanjing's job market in 2012 wasn't as good as one might imagine.

"President Chen, this is the product proposal for Lingxi Mobile Browser. We plan to develop the Android version first. Going forward, based on data such as users' browsing history, search records, and dwell time, we'll use a recommendation algorithm to deliver personalized content recommendations."

Zhang Yiming opened a PPT and walked through it in detail.

Put plainly, Lingxi Mobile Browser's content-distribution mechanism was no different from Toutiao's—it just changed the form in which the product was presented.

If a user frequently browsed entertainment news, the browser would prioritize pushing the latest entertainment updates, industry gossip, and the like, letting users quickly get the information they were interested in and cutting down the time spent filtering information, thereby boosting stickiness.

Chen Yansen sat in his chair, listening to Zhang Yiming's pitch.

Given his grasp of the internet's future trends, Zhang Yiming's product really did have a chance of succeeding.

Aggregating content resources—news, novels, video, music—and finding what most interested the user: as long as marketing and promotion didn't fall flat, breaking into the industry's top ten would be no hard feat.

Chen Yansen's eyes narrowed slightly, and he immediately spotted a key point: Zhang Yiming didn't have ample funds on hand, so the only routes to obtaining news, novels, video, music, and other content were piracy and infringement.

Growth might be extremely fast early on, but the moment it touched the vital interests of Penguin, Baidu, and Mama Ali, Zhang Yiming could well end up like Kuainiu.

"Where will this content be sourced from?"

Chen Yansen cut in and asked directly.

"I can aggregate information from other portal sites and then make recommendations to users, but to avoid copyright issues, we'll add hyperlinks to the original pages within the content."

Zhang Yiming said shrewdly—no money meant no-money methods.

Chen Yansen laughed inwardly; this approach was about as feeble as a piracy site's disclaimer.

President Chen, actually I got the inspiration from the Fox Tao business model; they do product recommendations, while Lingxi does news recommendations.

Zhang Yiming said with a smile, clearly holding high expectations for the product.

Chen Yansen thought it over but offered no reminder.

Zhang Yiming was a smart man; the fact that he devised a way to sidestep copyright disputes showed he had no intention of freeloading forever. Once the business matured and ad revenue could cover content-production costs, it wouldn't be too late to transition from "news aggregator" to "news producer."

Chen Yansen nodded and tossed off a couple of casual compliments.

Afterward he asked a few more questions. As it turned out, most of these R&D staff were fresh graduates—in short, cheap, easy to use, and easy to sweet-talk.

Chen Yansen stayed at ByteDance until eleven o'clock, then simply treated the group to lunch at a nearby restaurant.

The per-person bill barely topped a hundred yuan, yet it left these young people thoroughly satisfied.

Chen Yansen shot a glance at Zhang Yiming and cursed under his breath—he hadn't expected this guy's squeeze-every-last-drop tactics to be even harsher than his own.

No wonder the man had managed to pull in investment with ease across several ventures.

In the eyes of venture capital, an entrepreneur like Zhang Yiming—who spent money only where it counted—was precisely the type more likely to succeed.

After lunch, Chen Yansen rose and took his leave.

This Yanjing trip could be considered a complete success.

On the way to the airport, Gao Weilin was still texting his old classmates. The gist: mainland bosses are stupid and rich—come quick!

He'd been worked to the bone lately!

He had to find a few more people to help shoulder the load.

Otherwise, just the financing and M&A work for Kuaipao, Kuaidi Dache, ByteDance, and Gao De Maps alone would be enough to grind him into scrap!

"Old Gao, find a headhunter firm on Hong Kong Island later and help me poach someone."

Chen Yansen said suddenly.

Poach someone?

Gao Weilin was taken aback, then asked: "Boss, who are we poaching?"

"Liang Bo from Byte! During lunch, I made some indirect inquiries; the core figure of the Lingxi Browser is Liang Bo. Zhang Yiming's programming skills are not bad, but they overlap heavily with Liang Bo's. Besides, I'm not interested in Byte's new product. Do you understand what I mean?"

Chen Yansen explained.

"Understood, Boss. I will arrange it as soon as possible," Gao Weilin nodded and replied.

As for whether the headhunter could poach Liang Bo, Chen Yansen was not worried at all.

People's fundamental nature is to value profit.

He didn't believe that if offered generous treatment and the opportunity to independently lead a new project, Liang Bo would remain unmoved.

Moreover, the equity ratio in Liang Bo's hands was only 5% of Zhang Yiming's.

Both were top graduates from Nanjing University; Chen Yansen didn't believe Liang Bo hadn't once thought about becoming his own boss.

The reason he jumped from Jiujiu Fang to follow Zhang Yiming in starting a business was merely gratitude for the other's mentorship.

If Liang Bo had to choose between joining Senlian Capital or Byte, which would he pick?

Chen Yansen believed his chances of winning were greater.

At the same time.

By the Xihu in Hangcheng, at Yintai City, the Outlets Plaza, the intersection of Mama Ali's headquarters and Qianjiang Shangcheng, everywhere were ground promotion staff wearing green vests, distributing promotional posters to passersby of the Luren Sect.

"Kuai Di Taxi, treating the people of Hangcheng to free rides!"

Today happened to be the weekend; a young man in a sharp suit casually took a flyer and read it aloud softly.

"You make no money at all; how do you profit?"

Cheng Wei looked up, gazed at the ground promotion staff, and asked curiously.

"Then I don't know. Anyway, Kuai Di Taxi is a subsidiary under Senlian Capital, with the same boss as Pinbai and Sister Chengzi Technology. It's not some scam software. You can download and try it. If there are problems, you can find the patrol to arrest me."

The ground promotion staff said with a smile.

Of course he knew how the company profited, but how could he possibly tell a random passerby?

Cheng Wei hummed, held the poster, and left.

As he walked, he thought, feeling that the O2O ecosystem of 2012 seemed to be becoming richer and richer.

First came food delivery apps like Kuai Pao and Ele. me, followed by ride-hailing apps like Kuai Di Taxi.

He pondered for a moment, stopped on the sidewalk, scanned the code, and downloaded Kuai Di Taxi.

Soon, he completed the installation and registration process and found a 10-yuan no-threshold coupon in his account, valid for one week.

And the base fare for a taxi in Hangcheng within three kilometers was exactly 10 yuan!

The homepage product design was very simple: the upper half of the screen was a map showing the phone's location nearby, and below were two input boxes, for the departure point and the destination.

Cheng Wei thought for a moment, entered the intersection of Qianjiang Shangcheng, but the location wasn't accurate, with an error of thirty to fifty meters. Fortunately, there was a small green icon on the map to manually adjust the departure address.

Next, he entered the name of his residential compound; this time the location was extremely precise.

The page displayed that he needed to pay an additional 2 yuan.

The prepaid bill clearly stated the order trip was 3.7 kilometers; the price was no problem either.

Cheng Wei clicked submit, jumped to the payment page, and currently only Sister Chengzi Payment was available as an option.

This made him start to believe that even if Kuai Di Taxi wasn't a subsidiary of Senlian Capital, it definitely had a close connection with it.

Pay first, then get in the car.

Cheng Wei stood at the door, looking around from time to time. Ten minutes later, a taxi with the license plate ending in 2681 stopped in front of him.

Cheng Wei walked straight over, opened the car door, and got in.

"What is your mobile phone number ending?" the driver asked.

"1190," Cheng Wei replied.

After the driver verified it, he said proactively, "This Kuai Di Taxi is really good. Including your order, I've taken 42 orders today."

"So many? Does the platform take a commission?"

Cheng Wei quickly cut to the core point and asked the driver.

"There is a commission, but not much, only 10%. For every order taken, there is also a subsidy of two yuan."

The driver answered while driving.

But he kept a card up his sleeve and didn't mention the order-rush bonus.

Kuai Di Taxi's free ride event meant that for passengers, anything within the base fare was completely free.

For a moment, taxi drivers in Hangcheng simply didn't lack orders.

Cheng Wei secretly pondered the business model of Kuai Di Taxi; he, being from Mama Ali, quickly smelled a hint of opportunity.

10% didn't seem like much, but if this model could be promoted nationwide, the annual revenue might reach hundreds of billions.

Thinking of this, Cheng Wei was instantly tempted; he felt this product was good, with astonishing potential.

That night, the name Kuai Di Taxi successively appeared on Xihu Voice and the Life Channel of Hangcheng Television.

"Please let the people of Hangcheng take free taxis" was just like the "Treat the whole city to milk tea" stunt Kuai Pao pulled in Luzhou: simple and effective.

In the early sprouting period of ride-hailing, spending money to cultivate users' taxi-hailing habits was a crucial step for the project's development.

As soon as Kuai Di Taxi launched, it was targeted by domestic venture capital firms.

If Cheng Wei could see the huge market potential of ride-hailing, those investors who spent their days looking for new projects were naturally no exception.

Zhu Xiaohu from Jin Sha Ventures received the news first. After some inquiries, he couldn't help but wonder, "How is it this kid again!"

After Kuai Pao's food delivery Series A financing was snatched by Penguin, Zhu Xiaohu didn't want to miss the ride-hailing track again. After pondering for a moment, he decided to go to Xucheng in person and also meet Chen Yansen, this business genius.

On the other side.

Chen Yansen returned to Xuyuan, took the car keys handed to him by Xiao Li, first sent Song Yuncheng back to the dormitory, and then returned to 0418.

He turned on the computer and logged into the Kuai Di Taxi data backend.

The real-time user registration volume for the day was 42,000, the order volume was 29,000, the first-order conversion rate was around 70%, and the gross profit was 171,000.

But this figure didn't include labor, R&D, management, and marketing costs—otherwise it would immediately turn into negative gross profit.

Chen Yansen set down his computer and lay back on the sofa. The food delivery and ride-hailing tracks were about the same: in the early stage both required massive amounts of energy and capital to incubate the market and cultivate users.

"Gotta find a few more suckers!"

Chen Yansen thought to himself. The more venture capital firms that got on board, the fewer competitors he'd have down the road.

(End of chapter)