Chapter 248

"The inevitable has come!"

After learning the news, Chen Yansen sighed faintly.

This lifetime, the market landscape of the group-buying industry had undergone a earth-shattering transformation.

Meituan, which should have won the Thousand Group Battle, stubbornly remained the perennial number two; had it not been for Mama Ali's investment, Meituan would have been dead long ago—Wang Xin might have already launched a brand-new startup.

Lashou. com, which should have collapsed long ago, had clung to the top spot in the industry.

"This is the work of either Meituan or Dazhong Dianping, or perhaps Nuomi. com or WoWoTuan."

Chen Yansen was certain.

Timing was perfect—right at Lashou's critical IPO moment, it nearly severed Lashou's path to listing.

Financing? Lashou couldn't even dream of it anymore.

Giving investors fake data? If you weren't killed for it, consider yourself lucky!

The next morning, news of Lashou's failed IPO push was widely reposted by China's mainstream media; CCTV's noon news even gave Lashou a fifteen-second special feature.

Instantly, Meituan, Dazhong Dianping, WoWoTuan, and Nuomi. com celebrated!

After all, in the increasingly fierce industry competition, losing investor trust was no different from waiting to die.

How could Lashou, with no money and no supplies, compete with them?

Wu Bo tossed and turned all night; as soon as dawn broke, he called every investor one by one—but every reply was the same: "Sell Lashou as soon as possible so we can cash out."

Everyone knew Lashou was doomed.

Zhu Xiaohu of Jin Sha Venture Capital was so furious he didn't sleep a wink; he'd long thought Wu Bo unreliable, and last year Mama Ali had considered investing in Lashou.

But Wu Bo, young and arrogant, insisted Mama Ali cancel the JuHuaSuan launch plan and throw all support behind Lashou.

Who was Ma Liyun?

He didn't even bother with him—he turned right around and poured money into Meituan.

In fact, if anyone else had been sitting in Lashou's CEO seat, Meituan wouldn't have had a chance to stand up.

Jin Sha Venture Capital, Mai Dun Investment, and Rinite Fund had collectively invested nearly two hundred million U. S. dollars; if Lashou died, their money would vanish.

Zhu Xiaohu and the others moved swiftly, immediately convening a shareholders' meeting to oust Wu Bo as CEO and replace him with Qiu Junping, chairman of Mai Dun Investment.

They simultaneously issued a statement acknowledging Lashou's lax auditing, promising to investigate and punish merchants engaged in fake orders.

But anyone with eyes could see this evasive statement was not a genuine response.

In short: the operations team and merchants colluded to fake orders—the company knew nothing, understood nothing, and participated in nothing.

The blame was successfully dumped, but it enraged the grassroots expansion staff in the Huadong region.

These people braved wind and rain daily, going door-to-door outdoors in all kinds of bad weather to expand merchant resources for Lashou.

And now the company had sold them out!

"I make only two or three thousand a month, and faking data doesn't even earn me commissions—unless my superiors ordered it, I'd never bother faking performance, falsifying business qualifications, or inflating purchase numbers…"

Lashou's field promotion staff revealed their hearts to reporters' cameras.

Low pay, heavy workload, and taking the blame—who in their right mind would want this job?

In just two days, over five hundred employees from Lashou's Huadong region resigned en masse; before leaving, they kicked Lashou one last time, fully confirming the fraud.

Eighty percent of them joined KuaiPao, swapped their uniforms, and became KuaiPao's field promotion business managers.

The remaining twenty percent mostly went to Meituan and Dazhong Dianping.

In 2012, holding offline merchant resources meant you could easily land a business job at any group-buying or food-delivery website.

Jin Sha Venture Capital, Mai Dun Investment, and Rinite Fund all leveraged their networks to find new buyers for Lashou.

Though there's a famous saying in investment circles: never plan to scam others, never hope some fool will take the baton—but when it's your turn to take the baton, you can't smile anymore.

When Zhu Xiaohu called, Chen Yansen, eyebrows twitching, asked: "Mr. Zhu, do I look like a fool?"

"If you take over, Jin Sha Venture Capital, Mai Dun Investment, and Rinite Fund will invest an additional fifty million U. S. dollars."

Zhu Xiaohu gave a forced laugh.

They were investment firms, not professional managers—they knew how to invest money, but startup operations might be worse than Wu Bo's.

After much deliberation, Zhu Xiaohu stared at his phone contact list for a long time, then finally dialed Chen Yansen.

Reputation speaks louder than shadow; Boss Chen's name in the business world was as solid as gold and stone.

Hu Weiyi, Sister Chengzi, Shangcheng, KuaiPao, Kuaide Taxi, and Toutiao—every project he touched, from offline to online, from e-commerce to O2O local life, had never failed once.

Zhu Xiaohu had not a single doubt—that was the power of reputation!

"What's the price?"

Chen Yansen smiled and asked casually.

Lashou's Series C funding was $110 million, valuation $1.1 billion; if the price exceeded $200 million, there was no point discussing it.

Frankly, Chen Yansen had some interest in Lashou—its service coverage across over four hundred cities, nearly six thousand employees nationwide; if he swallowed it, he could not only accumulate massive merchant resources for KuaiPao, but also drag Meituan and Dazhong Dianping into the mud of group-buying.

Give KuaiPao two or three more years, and when 4G and mobile internet arrived, with Hu Weiyi, Toutiao, and Shangcheng funneling traffic, even if Wang Xin had three heads and six arms, he couldn't match Pei Yi's fully grown strength.

If he accidentally crushed Meituan, then in this lifetime, Meituan's food delivery product would never exist.

"Six hundred million U. S. dollars," Zhu Xiaohu ventured cautiously.

"Mr. Zhu, I have a morning meeting. I don't have time to joke with you," Chen Yansen shot back without mercy.

Six hundred million U. S. dollars?

Were they taking him for a fool?

Jin Sha Venture Capital, Mai Dun Investment, and Rinite Fund wanted someone to take the baton, yet refused to cut their losses—trying to profit from the situation? How could such a thing exist?

"Minimum four hundred million. You know Lashou raised $170 million in total funding. I know the current public opinion environment is bad for Lashou, but its market share still exists."

Zhu Xiaohu pleaded patiently.

"Mr. Zhu is right. I wish Lashou, under Qiu Junping's leadership, grows stronger and stronger."

After Chen Yansen finished speaking, he hung up the phone directly.

Wait until Meituan's Wang Xin and Dianping's Zhang Tao give Lashou a real beating first.

Clearly, Zhu Xiaohu and the others still hadn't faced reality.

"Tsè na! Dis little bastard is so damn annoying!" Zhu Xiaohu listened to the busy tone on the phone and couldn't help cursing under his breath.

Not long after, he got in touch with Penguin's Liu Zhiping again.

Liu Zhiping didn't hesitate and refused outright.

The Gao Peng website, jointly established by Penguin and Groupon, had long since fallen out of the market's top ten, and QQ Group Buy was also in a lukewarm state.

Ma Wenteng was considering whether to merge the two websites for joint operations, thereby reducing operating costs.

Asking Little Ma to shell out money to buy another group-buy website at this point would have a success rate of almost zero.

Unable to find a patsy, Jin Sha Ventures, Maidun Investment, and Reynold Fund could only bite the bullet and let Qiu Junping step up first.

In mid-April, undercurrents stirred in the group-buy market.

On one hand, Qiu Junping ramped up promotional efforts to please users and merchants; on the other, leveraging Reynold Fund's connections in the Lighthouse Country, he worked hard to quell Lashou's fake-accounts scandal.

As long as Lashou could successfully IPO, the crisis would be resolved.

But Meituan, Dianping, WoWo Group, and Nuomi gave Lashou no breathing room.

Whenever Lashou intensified its promotions, the others promptly rolled out their own marketing campaigns.

Meituan abandoned its agent system, fully adopting a direct-sales ground-pushing model, rapidly expanding merchant resources, and launching special movie tickets at 19.9 yuan each.

Dianping launched electronic coupons, online reservations, and membership card features.

WoWo Group pivoted toward a mall model, combining group buying with e-commerce, focusing on differentiated competition.

Nuomi partnered with quality merchants in over 50 cities nationwide to launch bestseller lists across multiple categories—movies, dining, KTV—and handed out 5 million yuan in cash vouchers to users in one go, further squeezing Lashou's survival space.

……

……

Early morning, April 13.

Chen Yansen had just arrived at the office when he saw Wang Teng come up to him with a grin.

"Boss, about 100,000 Apple Mac computers got infected with the Flashback virus today, and even a few hundred Macs at Apple HQ got hit, causing Apple 4S sales to cool."

Wang Teng explained with a smile.

"What's a Mac got to do with Apple phones? Can this virus get into phones too?" Chen Yansen pulled over a chair, sat down, and asked curiously.

"Domestic users don't care about that. The fact that Apple got hit by a virus is fact—selectively ignoring some key info can hurt the competitor, why not do it?" Wang Teng replied.

Users would only think Apple's claims about system security were total bullshit.

After hearing Wang Teng's full account, Chen Yansen learned that last July, a Dutch engineer had discovered a major Java vulnerability and informed Oracle, the holder of Java's core patents.

Oracle and Microsoft quickly developed patches for these security holes.

But Apple had to play the rebel, insisting on developing its own Java patch, so it fell a step behind and got targeted by hackers.

"Partial truth is still truth, right? Have our sales changed?" Chen Yansen asked with a slight smirk.

"Compared to the same time yesterday, sales are up 12.7%. Stripping out traffic fluctuations and other factors, we estimate a 10% increase."

Wang Teng answered immediately.

Chen Yansen pulled out his phone—Weibo was full of cursing. Apple users cursed Apple, Android users mocked Apple users, and every phone maker couldn't resist jumping in to diss Apple's system security.

The next trending topic was news that 360 was suing Penguin, demanding 150 million in damages; Penguin countersued 360, claiming 125 million yuan.

"Old Zhou's lost his mind. Suing Penguin in Shencheng? If he wins, that'll be damn weird."

Chen Yansen scoffed.

If he remembered correctly, Zhou Hongyi didn't get a single cent and even had to pay Penguin 5 million.

Only at this moment did the 3Q Battle come to a perfect close.

"Keep optimizing AuroraOS 1.38. Once Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel's voice interaction engine goes live, our Autumn new arrivals will be halfway done."

Chen Yansen said encouragingly, patting Wang Teng on the shoulder.

"Got it, boss, I understand." Wang Teng nodded.

Chen Yansen waved Wang Teng off to get back to work, then took the elevator up to the floor housing Sister Chengzi Tech's AI lab.

"Boss, regarding what you asked last time—adding natural language processing and speech synthesis to Yu Xi's feature modules—Daniel and I talked it over, and it'll take about another month of development."

Zhou Chuangxi saw the boss and stepped forward to report.

"Then calling it a voice-recognition tool won't fit anymore. Let's rename it the Yu Xi Interaction Engine."

Chen Yansen said with a faint smile.

When the time came, Yu Xi would have full-pipeline processing—voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis. As long as they increased the volume of voice data for training, they could create an intelligent voice assistant for real-time communication.

This thing might not be rare five or six years later, but in 2012, it was absolutely a product ahead of its time.

Moreover, what Chen Yansen was building was a development tool, an ecosystem. First, it could make money from tech patents; second, it could leverage other phone makers' data channels.

"Got it." Zhou Chuangxi opened his mouth, then closed it again, and agreed readily.

He actually really wanted to suggest the boss change Yu Xi's name, but on second thought, he gave up.

Yu Xi was just a development tool for an intelligent voice interaction engine—the name didn't matter.

But if the boss gave the future intelligent voice assistant such a shitty name, he'd definitely step up and oppose it.

Then Chen Yansen called Daniel over, and the three of them walked into the office for a technical seminar.

Privately, Daniel called the weekly "technical seminar" a class, because every time he learned something new. On programming languages, development frameworks, and database structures, Chen Yansen always gave him fresh inspiration.

Near the end of the workday, Zhou Hongyi, who hadn't been in touch for a long time, called.

(End of chapter)