Chapter 92: Open a Series A Funding Round, Launch the Stock Option Plan (32k begging for subscriptions)

On the last night of 2010, at the Sky Garden Hotel.

In the top-floor banquet hall, eight round tables for ten were set up, laden with exquisite dishes—East Star Grouper, Australian lobster, abalone, fish maw and the like—all cooked to perfection, beautiful in color, fragrance, and flavor.

Every Fox Tao subgroup had rehearsed a short performance, and after a few headliners wrapped up, the stage turned into a karaoke room; everyone was young, and the atmosphere was buzzing.

Xu Xingxing slapped Wang Zihao on the shoulder and asked loudly, "Brother Hao, Brother Sen hasn't arrived yet? The lucky draw is about to start."

Up on the stage, Xiang Pengfei was belting out "Love Even unto Death," his tone-deaf voice torturing the audience into furrowed brows.

"He's almost here, he left half an hour ago," Wang Zihao shouted back.

Xu Xingxing nodded, thought for a moment, then walked out of the banquet hall anyway, intending to head downstairs to meet Chen Yansen.

"Sister Muyan, a toast to you—thank you for your guidance these past few weeks." Wang Zihao raised his glass and said with a smile to Liu Muyan.

"I drove here, so I can only have a soft drink—don't mind me, Zihao." Liu Muyan smiled gracefully and clinked glasses with him.

She was only seven years older than Wang Zihao, and frankly, she still had a young person's mindset; during her part-time stint at Fox Tao, she had grown closer and closer to everyone.

……

Chen Yansen had just parked the car when he spotted Xu Xingxing ducking his head, peering left and right outside the hotel lobby.

"What are you standing here for?" Chen Yansen asked with a smile.

"Waiting for you, of course! The lucky draw is starting any minute now—we're all just waiting on you! Upstairs it's practically turned into a karaoke private room." Xu Xingxing grabbed Chen Yansen's sleeve and tried to drag him upstairs.

At that moment, Meng Jie walked over as well.

"Hi, sister-in-law!" Xu Xingxing blinked, quickly let go, stepped forward to loop his arm through Meng Jie's, putting on a chummy, just-met-you-yesterday look.

Meng Jie nodded and greeted him.

"I told Zihao to hold down the fort first, didn't I?" Chen Yansen shook his head and couldn't help grumbling.

"Something like the lucky draw definitely needs you to host it to feel ceremonial—everyone's happy to wait." Xu Xingxing said with a grin.

The three walked into the elevator and rode straight up to the top floor; this banquet hall, apart from a dozen or so pillars, was walled on all four sides by floor-to-ceiling glass five or six meters high, giving one the dreamy sensation of floating in the heart of the city.

No wonder the minimum spend was sixty-eight thousand—small in area, but the decor was the height of luxury.

The moment Chen Yansen walked in, he saw Xiang Pengfei drag a chair onto the stage to sing; after half a line, his face instantly showed a look of disgust.

This kid, what he's doing is barely human!

Xiang Pengfei, perched up high, spotted Chen Yansen at the door at a glance.

He cleared his throat and shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause to welcome the handsomest man of Fox Tao—make his grand entrance!"

Following the direction of Xiang Pengfei's finger, the crowd quickly spotted Chen Yansen's figure.

Chen Yansen grinned, pointed at Xiang Pengfei, then strode confidently onto the stage and took the microphone.

"Out with the old, in with the new, looking ahead to the future—I believe Fox Tao in 2011 will be even more successful! Next, let Zihao run the lucky draw for me; I'm going down to grab a bite first, and once I'm full, I'll bring everyone a surprise."

Chen Yansen said a few brief words, then yielded the stage to Wang Zihao.

He walked over to his seat, clinked glasses with Cao Dahua, Wang Jing, and Liu Muyan, then unhurriedly picked up his chopsticks and started eating.

Wang Zihao had no choice; like a duck being shoved onto a perch, he walked to the center of the stage and began drawing from the third prize; every now and then he deliberately announced the wrong name to milk a little stage effect, making everyone roar with laughter.

A little over an hour later, all the prizes had been drawn—the lucky ones won a phone, the unlucky ones still got a 1,000-yuan shopping card.

Chen Yansen took the stage again and said with a smile, "Two things. First, to make sure everyone has a great time tonight, we're adding ten more grand prizes of ten thousand yuan—the draw starts in three minutes. Second, I'm preparing to launch Fox Tao's Series A funding plan, and when the time comes, I'll issue a stock option to every one of you, with an exercise price of 0.01 yuan."

Ten-thousand-yuan grand prizes?

Stock options?

Apart from a handful of people, most of those present had only a vague idea of what stock options were.

"Teacher Wang, what are stock options for?" Xu Xingxing sidled up to Wang Jing and asked curiously.

"Simply put, it's a check you cash in the future—when Fox Tao goes public or starts a buyback program, these options can be converted into cash. But the exact quantity and value, only Chen knows."

Wang Jing thought for a moment, then explained unhurriedly.

The people around him heard this and felt a sudden flash of enlightenment—anyway, it was money, so that was all that mattered.

Based on what they knew of Chen Yansen, for him to announce it at the year-end party, the value of these options had to be considerable.

In an instant, cheers erupted all around, and some people even whistled.

Chen Yansen didn't dawdle; on the spot he drew ten names, ten thousand yuan in cash for each.

The Dao-kindling on the panel belonging to that person instantly increased by twenty-nine wisps.

After stepping off the stage, Chen Yansen ate while watching them make a ruckus up on the stage.

Every team leader became a target of the crowd's heckling, and one by one they were dragged up to sing a song.

Song Yuncheng, as Fox Tao's employee number one, was no exception—she had served successively as head of the Design Group, the Operations Group, and the Customer Service Group; the moment she stepped on stage, applause rang out non-stop.

Song Yuncheng had even met Ma Wenteng and Zhang Yong, yet she was blushing crimson from being put on the spot by this group of college students below; she took the microphone and softly began singing Fish Leong's "Courage."

Looking at Chen Yansen and Meng Jie in the audience, Song Yuncheng finally sobered up, and her eyes slowly grew moist.

In just a few short minutes, her mood had shifted from heartache and a stinging ache to numbness.

When she looked up at Chen Yansen again, the warmth in Song Yuncheng's eyes had already vanished.

The song had only reached its midpoint when Chen Yansen saw Zhang Wenbo come running over in a panic; just as he was wondering what was up, he heard him blurt out, "Brother Sen, Zihao's gotten into a fight with someone outside!"

A fight?

Could it be that this kid had drunk too much?

Chen Yansen had no time to think it through; he called out to Pengfei, Zhang Yifeng, and seven or eight other guys, and hurried outside.

Out of the banquet hall, at the restroom door, he saw Wang Zihao gripping a man by the collar, the two of them grappling on the floor, Wang Zihao about to throw a punch.

Liu Muyan and a long-haired woman were trying to break it up on the side.

"Haozi, stop!" Chen Yansen shouted.

Since college, Chen Yansen rarely called him that—after all, Wang Zihao was the head of Fox Tao's Ad Placement Group, and constantly using his nickname would be letting him lose face.

Wang Zihao, fist about to land, heard the familiar voice and gradually calmed down.

"What's going on?" Chen Yansen stepped forward, pulled Wang Zihao up, and asked.

"I—" Wang Zihao glanced at Liu Muyan, then swallowed the words that had risen to his lips.

"You guys go back first, I'll handle this." Chen Yansen looked at the man pinned to the ground by Wang Zihao. The man was thin and scrawny—dealing with him didn't require this many people.

Xiang Pengfei, Zhang Yifeng, and the others exchanged glances. Though unclear on the situation, they still turned and left, saying as they went: "Brother Sen, call us if anything comes up."

Once the others had walked far away, Wang Zihao finally said in a low voice: "This idiot is Mu Yan Jie's fiancé. He lied to her saying he was working overtime at the company, but instead he brought another woman to a private room for dinner—and Mu Yan Jie happened to walk in on them."

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod, thinking: This is that cliché?

He glanced at Liu Muyan. She stood off to the side, motionless, her face ugly with anger, staring coldly at the man on the ground.

"Zhou Yuwen, who is she exactly?" Liu Muyan steadied herself and demanded in a cold voice.

"You saw it all yourself, what else is there to ask? Are you stupid or what?" Zhou Yuwen laughed carelessly, climbed up from the ground, unhurriedly straightened his shirt, and brushed the dust off himself.

"I want you to say it yourself." Liu Muyan's face went deathly pale as she bit her lip and spoke.

"She's my girlfriend, you're my fiancée—any other questions?" Zhou Yuwen shot a glance at Chen Yansen and Wang Zihao, then replied arrogantly.

The tears in Liu Muyan's eyes fell at his words. She could never have imagined that the man who had grown up with her, the man she was already engaged to, would betray her like this.

Chen Yansen said nothing. With the mindset of watching a good show, he caught a whiff of a kindred spirit from Zhou Yuwen.

"Zhou Yuwen, we're over!" Liu Muyan's emotions collapsed, and she squatted on the ground sobbing.

"Oh, then let's end it, then." Zhou Yuwen laughed heartlessly. With that, he wrapped his arm around the long-haired girl and went into the private room.

Seeing this, Wang Zihao chased after him, ready to beat him down.

Chen Yansen grabbed him and pointed at the crying Liu Muyan.

Wang Zihao's energy instantly deflated. He stood there at a loss. After a long while, he finally thought to pull out a tissue and hand it to Liu Muyan.

Chen Yansen narrowed his eyes and strolled leisurely back to the banquet hall.

……

……

Shencheng, Penguin headquarters.

"You're saying that the ten million from two months ago has now become a hundred million?" Ma Huateng looked at Liu Zhiping across from him and asked.

"Perhaps even more than that. I heard SIG Asia Venture Capital Fund and Lotte are both urgently evaluating Fox Tao's profit model. It's possible the valuation could shoot up to three hundred million USD." Liu Zhiping pushed his glasses up and said with a faint smile.

"Could it really be like this kid said—that we don't have the genes for e-commerce? He took a niche track like shopping guides, which is so trashy, and still made it top-tier. What if we let him take over Paipai?"

Ma Huateng's voice gradually grew quieter, and he finally let out a sigh.

He was a smart man—how could he not understand that an ambitious young man like Chen Yansen would never be content to serve under someone else?

To get Zhang Xiaolong to join Penguin, how many precedents had he broken?

Did he really have to keep breaking precedents?

From their last contact, Chen Yansen's conviction was probably even stronger than Zhang Xiaolong's.

"It's tough. If he wanted to join Penguin, he wouldn't have refused Zheng Chunbin's invitation." Liu Zhiping chuckled and shook his head lightly.

"That ten million wasn't invested in the Fox Tao project—it was invested in him as a person. Facts have proven my investment was a great success, but how do I get a return on it?"

Ma Huateng's gaze fixed intently on his old friend, as if waiting for an answer.

"Give him the same treatment as Zhang Xiaolong?" Liu Zhiping probed.

"For Fox Tao's Series A funding, I'd trouble you to make a personal trip and pass along a message to Chen Yansen for me—as long as he's willing to help Penguin improve its e-commerce sector, I'll give him an annual salary of thirty million, plus two hundred million in stock options."

Ma Wenteng deliberated for a moment, then made a decisive call.

What Chen Yansen had said last time, he hadn't paid much attention to at first. But once Fox Tao's valuation broke through the one billion mark, he began to take it to heart and quietly turned it over in his mind.

A person with no power and no influence—even if they speak the truth—no one believes them. But once they hold power, even their farts smell sweet to others.

Ma Huateng had exactly this kind of mentality.

"Alright." Liu Zhiping didn't refuse. He was also curious how this young man, Chen Yansen, had taken a new project from zero to tens of millions of users.

Every step the other took was precise and flawless—and that precision was chilling.

"MiChat is already live. How much longer does Zhang Xiaolong need on his end?" After finishing the discussion about Chen Yansen, Ma Wenteng asked again.

"Xiaolong says the details still need polishing." Liu Zhiping frowned—he understood Ma Huateng's urgency.

"Give him half a month—he must launch!" Ma Huateng's gaze was sharp, his tone stern.

WeChat was Penguin's next T0-tier communication app product, yet MiChat had stolen a march on them. This made him very unhappy, and he had no patience to wait any longer.

What details? If it works, that's good enough!

(End of chapter)