Chapter 240: Daily Orders of 400,000, Valuation of 1 Billion USD! (Requesting Monthly Votes)

"Mr. Chen, I am Xiao Naibing, majoring in Internet of Things Engineering. Here is my resume; please accept it."

Xiao Naibing, with thick skin, presented the resume with both hands.

Chen Yansen chuckled helplessly, did not reach out to take it, but sized the other man up and down, then asked: "The spring recruitment fair is right over there. If everyone acted like you, what would be the point of me hiring HR?"

Xiao Naibing is a senior this year, about to graduate; in the end, he is just a young man in his early twenties. Asked by Chen Yansen, his face turned green then white, obviously his psychological quality was not strong enough.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Chen. Since there were no positions matching my major, I rashly disturbed you."

Xiao Naibing's face flushed red; he scratched his head and honestly confessed.

"Resume."

Chen Yansen said coldly.

A burst of ecstasy instantly surged on Xiao Naibing's face; he hurriedly handed over the resume again.

Although he is a senior and Chen Yansen is only a sophomore, he dared not claim to be a senior.

Chen Yansen flipped through it casually, then spoke: "There is a position for an Internet of Things Development Engineer in Shencheng. The starting salary is 6,000 yuan. It's not high, but food and accommodation are provided."

"Thank you, Mr. Chen. I can accept that." Xiao Naibing readily agreed.

After all, everyone knows that at a subsidiary under Senlian Capital, a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan actually reaches a pre-tax income of 8,000 yuan.

"Go back and wait for the offer! No next time. Do you understand what I mean?"

Chen Yansen returned the resume to him and reminded him with a smile.

Following Chen Yansen's gaze, Xiao Naibing turned his head and saw a group of classmates watching from afar. He immediately understood, put on a lost expression as if rejected, and sighed his way back to the dormitory.

"Young minds are just so sharp."

Chen Yansen commented inwardly.

Afterwards, he continued walking toward the faculty apartments.

Half an hour later, he went downstairs, got into his car, and drove to the Technology Park.

Counting autumn and spring recruitment, he planned to recruit 500 graduates for Xuyuan. The number looked large, but after distribution across various projects and departments, it wouldn't even make a splash.

Among them, 70% of the positions were still interns for operations specialists, design assistants, and business roles.

Despite this, Tang Qingshan was extremely satisfied and had already given him a heads-up, insisting that he speak as an outstanding alumnus at the autumn welcome assembly next semester.

What the heck, outstanding alumnus!

Chen Yansen had absolutely no interest in something with not a shred of benefit, but Old Tang had invited him for the second time, so he could only give the other person some face.

Ten minutes later, Chen Yansen parked the car in front of Building 9 and took the elevator to the eighth floor.

"Boss, regarding the several issues you mentioned last time, I had the Technical Department readjust them according to your instructions."

After seeing Chen Yansen approach, Liang Bo hurriedly went to meet him and proactively reported the development progress of Jinri Toutiao.

Jinri Technology currently has only over 60 R&D engineers, so they are squeezed into the same office building as Sister Chengzi Technology.

"Lingxi Browser goes online tomorrow." Chen Yansen leaned against the desk and said casually.

"Two months, front and back. This development speed matches Zhang Yiming's personality: pursuing efficiency while also valuing stability."

Liang Bo was slightly stunned, then spoke with a smile.

"I believe Jinri Toutiao won't be inferior to Lingxi. In terms of R&D team strength, Zhang Yiming cannot compare with you."

Chen Yansen said lightly.

This sentence seemed to encourage Liang Bo, but it was also the truth. Between February and March, Sister Chengzi Technology and Pinba Shangcheng had run through more than a dozen universities in the province, recruiting over 300 outstanding graduates from institutions like Huake University, Luzhou University of Technology, and Zhoulai University of Technology.

Among these people were R&D engineers proficient in algorithms, machine learning, and computer vision, as well as top talents in big data development and natural language processing.

Many, during their junior or senior year, or second or third year of graduate school, had worked deeply on projects with their supervisors, accumulating two or three years of hands-on experience.

Liang Bo's team naturally received a batch of these people.

This was also the main reason the development progress of Jinri Toutiao could advance to more than half.

"It all relies on the boss supporting me." Liang Bo said with a smile.

"Strive to go online on April 1st. My positioning for Jinri Toutiao is a traffic generator. It can complement traffic and data with Pinba, Kuaide Dache, and Kuai Pao. Although Jinri Toutiao started late, it is the project I value most."

Chen Yansen first stated the requirements, then painted a big pie.

He had said these words to Pei Yi, to Cheng Weixing, and also to Huang Zheng.

Now he said them to Liang Bo again. Judging from the other party's emotional feedback, it was not hard to see that these words had a good effect.

Combined with the influence of his spiritual power, Liang Bo was like he had been injected with chicken blood, wishing to turn around and return to his workstation to work for the boss for a full 24 hours.

"Okay, rest assured. I will control the progress and launch as soon as possible while ensuring quality." Liang Bo straightened his back and immediately stated his position.

"Fine, go get to work."

Chen Yansen patted Liang Bo's shoulder and waved his hand to signal.

Liang Bo nodded and walked toward his workstation with great spirit.

"Tsk tsk, spiritual power can actually be used like this!"

Chen Yansen smiled faintly.

He returned to the office and plopped down on the sofa.

He took out his phone, downloaded the file package sent by Zhang Yiming, and installed the Lingxi Browser a day in advance.

The page was simple, square, and had no sense of design.

At the top of the screen were the search box and the URL input bar.

Below that row were five icon entries: News, Novels, Beautiful Pictures, Videos, and Websites.

Scrolling further down was the information waterfall flow, mainly text and images. Videos were mostly static cover displays; before clicking to play, it would remind the user again how many MB of traffic the upcoming video would consume and whether to switch to Wi-Fi mode.

There was no way; in 2012, data prices were still too expensive. Once users felt this app consumed too much traffic, even the best product would make users subconsciously reduce the frequency of opening it.

Chen Yansen tried swiping left and right operations and felt no lack of smoothness. Obviously, Zhang Yiming had listed the Sister Chengzi phone as the top priority in mobile application adaptation.

The information content on the Lingxi Browser was 100% crawled. Zhang Yiming only marked the news source at the very bottom of the content page.

If one wasn't paying attention, they wouldn't notice it at all.

Chen Yansen tapped open a video with a big car headlight on the cover, watched it for a dozen seconds or so, then habitually swiped down—but the screen didn't switch to a new video.

Clearly, the Lingxi Browser version 1.0 didn't have that feature yet.

He could only swipe left to go back and refresh the homepage again.

This time, the entire content style of the video section changed—nothing but big headlights or big butts, with the occasional celebrity gossip video thrown in, as if probing Chen Yansen's next area of interest.

Ten minutes later, Chen Yansen put down his phone.

He roughly estimated that, based on his browsing behavior, the Lingxi Browser had taken only ten seconds to pick out the video content he liked from the massive sea of content.

This showed that, when these pieces of information were entered into the database, feature extraction and tagging work had already been done on them.

Simply put, if a user likes to read type-A content, the system recommends content tagged with the type-A label.

"Zhang Yiming really does have some ability. His experience at Kuxun, Fanfou, and Jiujiufang gave him a solid technical foundation in recommendation engines—only with that could he have completed the development of the Lingxi Browser in such a short time."

Chen Yansen narrowed his eyes slightly and remarked with feeling.

Too bad Zhang Yiming was too shrewd when it came to equity structure, unwilling to give up his controlling stake.

Even if ByteDance's employees someday exceeded 100,000, he wouldn't get a single wisp of the Human Dao salary fire.

The product's not bad, but you have to make way for Toutiao today!

The next morning, eight o'clock.

The Lingxi Browser's promotional poster appeared on the homepage of Sister Chengzi's app store.

That placement slot was, of course, paid for.

At the same time, Zhang Yiming was still fine-tuning the promotion plans for 91 Assistant, Wandoujia, and App Treasure, intending to further boost the product's exposure.

At this point, UC Browser, QQ Browser, and Qiandu Browser were all in a period of rapid growth—the first had a massive accumulated user base, while the latter two had over a hundred million users being funneled in from their main products.

The only thing Zhang Yiming could rely on was the product itself.

From the resource allocation Chen Yansen had given the Lingxi Browser, he had read the other's meaning.

In ByteDance's seed round, the stake Senlian Capital got was too small; Chen Yansen was all business, pure and simple.

Resources would be given—but you've got to pay up!

Zhang Yiming sighed; he knew in his heart that Chen Yansen's approach was beyond reproach.

But he didn't want to lose control of the company—and that wasn't wrong either.

Purely business, no sentiment!

Cheng Weixing's Kuaidi Dache had received Chen Yansen's full support; the two of them had started out at the same time.

The Lingxi Browser had just gone live, and Kuaidi Dache's valuation had already broken through $600 million, boasting over 5 million users in Hangcheng and Jin Ling, with daily orders hitting 300,000.

But Zhang Yiming wasn't envious in the slightest—he knew Cheng Weixing had long since become the second-largest shareholder.

If he had to choose again, Zhang Yiming would still choose to bring in Source Code, Today, and Ethereum Capital, thereby diluting Senlian Capital's influence over ByteDance.

After one day ended, the Lingxi Browser's 24-hour download count was just over 80,000.

It looked like a decent number, but every bit of it had been thrown together with money.

The moment the cash stopped, new users dropped to zero.

Zhang Yiming could only pin his hopes on the first batch of seed users.

Actually, compared with Cheng Wei, Zhang Yiming's entrepreneurial conditions weren't bad at all—right from the start, four venture capital firms had been shoving money at him.

Cheng Wei didn't even have a single investor willing to see him. His 800,000 yuan in startup capital had been pooled together with old colleagues; he couldn't even afford to keep an R&D team, and the first version of Didi Dache had actually been outsourced—twice over.

On the other side.

After Kuaipao integrated Ele. me's rider resources, it rapidly expanded its delivery team to 2,200 people, with daily deliveries hitting 240,000 orders.

In addition, there were over 400 part-time delivery riders.

The Hucheng takeout market had become Kuaipao's back garden—as long as delivery resources could keep up, the city's order volume could keep climbing!

Seeing this, Zhu Xiaohu of Jin Sha Ventures could no longer hold back and called Chen Yansen again, demanding to invest.

Mama Ali and Penguin's intentions were just as strong!

To win Chen Yansen over, Liu Zhiping even threw out a valuation offer of $1 billion!

For a takeout platform with no competitors and daily orders breaking 400,000, that wasn't much!

(End of this chapter)