Chapter 45: Registration Tops the 30,000 Mark! (31k)

Room 206 on the second floor of the startup park, cool breezes drifting through.

A dozen or so young people sat in a circle, dressed casually—some in white tees and shorts, others in shirts and jeans, and a few even in flip-flops—each holding an ice pop.

"Sen-ge, I just thought of one: Fox Tao! It echoes our site's brand image, and anyone who sees it will know at a glance we're in e-commerce."

Zhuang Rui pushed his glasses up, the idea striking him in a flash.

"Ah-Rui's idea is solid! I'm in!" Xiang Pengfei frowned, mulled it over for a moment, and felt Zhuang Rui's idea really was good.

"Song Yuncheng, what about you? As the UI designer, surely you've given your own brand image a name?"

Chen Yansen wrote the three characters 'Fox Tao' on the whiteboard, then stared at Song Yuncheng as he asked.

"I came up with two: one is Little Fox Saves Money—warm and cute, and it spells out the money-saving function right away; the other is Fox Profit Net, which starts from roughly the same place as Zhuang Rui's idea."

Song Yuncheng had come prepared and answered unhurriedly.

By now, the whiteboard already had a dozen or so candidate names written on it—things like Fox Little Benefit, Fox Profit Treasure, Fox Profit Club.

"How about we vote on it?" Zhang Wenbo suggested.

"Sen-ge, which one do you think we should use?" Xiang Pengfei asked, and the others all turned to look at Chen Yansen.

"Here's what we'll do: run a vote on the site, put up all the candidates, decide by the count, and split the activity prize money among the users who vote."

Chen Yansen thought for a moment, then gave an unexpected answer.

This approach had two benefits: first, the activity would promote the site, pulling in the first batch of seed users at low cost and efficiently completing the product's cold start; second, college students had a good feel for the internet, so their choices would be more in step with the times.

Everyone quickly grasped the cleverness of Chen Yansen's approach and responded one after another.

"Wenbo, Pengfei, how long to get it done?"

Yansen clapped his hands and looked at the two as he asked.

"No real technical challenge—we'll just drop in a ready-made template, set up the data tracking points, log the user IDs and voting actions, and it'll be live before we clock out." Xiang Pengfei answered without hesitation.

Zhang Wenbo beside him nodded in agreement.

"Prize money is tentatively set at ten thousand; we'll adjust it up or down based on participation. We'll start promoting from Xucheng College—at the very least, people need to understand what cashback shopping is."

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod and announced in a raised voice.

"OK, we'll get on it right away." Zhang Wenbo clenched his fist, looking full of drive.

"No rush—salary first!"

Chen Yansen smiled slightly, reached behind him and picked up a black plastic bag from a chair—*plop*—and several thick stacks of bills tumbled out.

College students are easy to use—cheap and tough to break. If you paid social insurance for them, they'd get mad at you.

The fresh-graduate status is extremely important; it'll come in hugely handy later for job hunting, settling a household registration, or taking the civil service exam.

"Sen-ge, you miscounted—you paid a thousand extra!" Zhang Wenbo was the first to collect his pay, counted it, and blurted out instinctively.

"You guys come to the company every night, mooching the wifi and the air conditioning—think I'm blind? The extra counts as overtime pay."

Chen Yansen shot him a look and cursed in exasperation.

Overtime pay?

Zhang Wenbo froze for a beat, then broke into a grin—five thousand a month, and no one would believe it if he told them.

"Thanks, Sen-ge!"

"Boss, you're the man!"

"……"

After everyone pocketed their pay, they scrambled to flatter him. Basically every person got an 'overtime pay' and a 'bonus,' Song Yuncheng included.

"Here's hoping we win on our first try!" Chen Yansen waved his hand at the group—he was saying it to himself as much as to them.

Lines of text kept drifting past his eyes—'Humanity's Flame +0.5,' 'Humanity's Flame +0.4,' 'Humanity's Flame +0.3'—and before long, the Humanity's Flame column on his panel had gained 4 points.

Chen Yansen focused his intent on his physique; a familiar chill swept over him, and in an instant, his physique value changed to '1.42.'

The sensation of this allocation wasn't as intense as last time, but he could still feel his body's strength slowly increasing.

Once I make money, I'll definitely move into food delivery and ride-hailing—social insurance, housing fund, commercial insurance, and supplemental pensions, the whole package. With a few million employees down the line, won't I ascend on the spot!

Chen Yansen thought to himself, a new flicker of anticipation stirring in his heart.

The morning slipped away in a flash. Chen Yansen slowly stood, stretched, and caught Song Yuncheng across from him in his peripheral vision. After a moment's thought, he said, "Now that you've got your pay and bonus, shouldn't you treat me to a meal?"

"Here's my meal card—swipe it for whatever you want."

Song Yuncheng heard him, pulled out her meal card expressionlessly, and set it on Chen Yansen's desk.

"What if I want you to come eat with me?" Chen Yansen glanced around, saw no one was paying attention, and said in a low voice.

"Boss Chen, don't forget—you have a girlfriend."

Song Yuncheng said through gritted teeth, warning him word by word.

"Don't you have a boyfriend too? I don't mind." Chen Yansen kept up the joke.

"But I do mind!"

Song Yuncheng snatched back her meal card, turned, and walked off—clean and decisive, bristling with anger, looking just like a little cat with its fur on end.

Chen Yansen shook his head, called Zhang Wenbo, Zhuang Rui, Xiang Pengfei, and the others over, and the whole crew marched toward the cafeteria in force.

Along the way, they drew quite a few eyes.

A month ago, Chen Yansen had become famous at Xucheng College, but since he'd thrown himself into site development, the buzz around him had slowly faded. Still, plenty of people were still watching, all betting on whether his startup could last till the end of the year.

"Sen-ge, the product's about to go live—should we hire someone who knows SEO and ad placement for operations?" Zhang Wenbo asked as they walked.

He had the most project experience and knew exactly what Chen Yansen needed most at this stage; he only spoke up because the boss hadn't made a move.

"Relax, I've got it under control."

Chen Yansen replied with a light laugh.

The internet ecosystem in 2010 was nothing like it would be a decade-plus later. If you had no money, you did SEO and keyword search terms; if you were even poorer, you posted promotions in QQ groups and on campus networks; only the deep-pocketed bought keyword rankings on Baidu and Google.

Chen Yansen knew traffic was key, but his funds were limited. In the early stage, he could only play it the cheap-and-effective way.

For example, private-domain operations, colloquially known as spamming ads in QQ groups.

Before WeChat became the mainstream social software, QQ was undoubtedly the undisputed king—classmate groups, interest groups, dating groups, every kind of group imaginable. Rather than spending money advertising on Qiandu, it was better to spend it on social platforms.

In his previous life, the universally cursed Pinduoduo had ridden WeChat's east wind, rising to prominence through viral bargain-cutting campaigns.

"Once we're back, I'll have Pengfei and Zhang Wenbo put the bargain-cutting feature's development priority in first place."

Chen Yansen calculated silently to himself.

After everyone finished lunch, most of them went back to rooms 206 and 208 to enjoy the air conditioning—after all, there were free drinks and ice cream; going back to the dorm would be pure suffering.

At 4 p. m., after the voting plugin passed testing, it officially went live.

The activity rules were gradually refined through discussions between Chen Yansen and Zhuang Rui.

The prize pool was floating: for every additional 3,000 lottery users, 10,000 yuan was added; winners would split the prize pool together, with prizes randomized between 2.8 yuan and 888 yuan; the prize money would be deposited into the user's balance and could be withdrawn to Zhifubao.

To boost user retention and first-order conversion, Chen Yansen also set a 5-yuan withdrawal threshold—winning users, in order to withdraw, would have no choice but to place another order.

After confirming there were no bugs, Chen Yansen sent the website link into the freshman exchange group:

"@everyone Dear classmates, the new product developed by our Entrepreneurship Park Room 206 is about to launch. It's a discount website where you earn cashback through Taobao purchases. The product name hasn't been decided yet—please help us vote and pick the most fitting one. Also, classmates who participate in the vote can split a minimum of 10,000 yuan in cash, with a maximum payout of 888 yuan…"

Minimum prize pool: 10,000 yuan!

Maximum individual payout: 888 yuan!

Driven by profit and bolstered by Chen Yansen's influence among the freshman group, backend registrations climbed steadily.

Afterwards, he copied and pasted this message and sent it to the campus card agent group and his high school class group as well.

Xiang Pengfei, Zhang Wenbo, Zhuang Rui and others were also helping to forward it.

"@Chen Yansen Is this a website you built? Looks legit—are you starting a business?"

"@Chen Yansen Heard Bro Sen is the campus card general agent of Xucheng College—made a killing, huh?"

"@Chen Yansen Real tycoon! Just for voting, you're giving out 888 yuan in cash?"

"@Teacher Zhang Could it be a Trojan virus? Has Chen Yansen's account been hacked?"

Didi di—!

Chen Yansen's high school class group instantly livened up, with old classmates debating heatedly.

"The event is real and effective—winners will be drawn in three days. Who knows, the 888-yuan winner might be you!"

Seeing that Chen Yansen hadn't replied in the group, Meng Jie stepped forward to vouch for him.

"Bro Sen's in a meeting. Whatever Big Sis says carries the same weight as if Bro Sen said it!" Wang Zihao suddenly popped up in the group.

"@Wang Zihao You damn rat, you're asking for a beating! Withdraw that message right now!"

Meng Jie cursed fiercely.

Big Sis?

Chen Yansen and Meng Jie are together?

For a moment, old classmates scattered everywhere wore expressions of surprise.

They had assumed that after entering college, Chen Yansen would end up with Zhou Keyuan—no one expected this outcome.

"@Meng Jie @Chen Yansen Congratulations! Dating is fine, but don't let your studies slide—your teacher wishes you well."

After a while, class teacher Zhang Li replied.

Zhou Keyuan, who had been silently watching the screen, turned pale one moment and flushed the next. From the messages, it was clear Chen Yansen was doing well at college—both the campus card general agent and running his own startup.

"If only I hadn't left him hanging." Zhou Keyuan felt a twinge of regret, and at the same time harbored resentment toward Meng Jie: What I don't want, you can't snatch either.

The link Chen Yansen had sent, anchored in university students and the college town, spread outward to every corner of the country.

Until registrations broke the 30,000 mark!

Only then did Chen Yansen realize he had vastly underestimated QQ's dominant position in 2010.

By this point, the prize pool had been topped up to 110,000 yuan!

A freshman, an e-commerce startup, and a first promotional campaign putting up hundreds of thousands in prize money!

These keywords combined instantly made him the focus of self-media and gossip bloggers.

Even in some corners of the three major portal sites—Sohu, Sina, and NetEase—there appeared reports about Chen Yansen and his startup.

Registrations began to skyrocket!

(End of chapter)