Chapter 394

In the following days, Seeing Yan Li spent nearly every day at Yi'an.

It was both to research and discuss future development directions, and to hold the fort at the company, stabilize internal morale and mindset, while beginning deliberate external communication and disclosures.

Previously, Yi'an was a private enterprise; many matters could be resolved internally, and what outsiders thought didn't matter.

But after going public, Yi'an became a public company; much information, finances, and strategy now required caution, and the entire company—including Seeing Yan Li himself—had to adapt accordingly.

For now, everything was still going relatively smoothly.

After all, Yi'an had been preparing for its IPO for quite some time; all supporting preparations and related teams had long been in place, and with just a little fine-tuning, it could fall into proper rhythm.

Even in Seeing Yan Li's mind, he had already begun identifying candidates to evaluate as Yi'an's new president.

As previously mentioned, Yi'an's current president's main task was to lead Yi'an's IPO; now that the IPO goal had been achieved, for the sake of the stock market, he wouldn't resign immediately—but he wouldn't stay long either.

Once he stepped down, the presidency would be vacant.

Seeing Yan Li, who held stakes in other companies, couldn't stay at Yi'an every day; he wanted to find a qualified executor to help him guide Yi'an's continued growth.

Within Yi'an, few had the qualifications to compete for the new presidency—only three or four people, all vice presidents.

Hmm, Fan Xiaopang had a bit of public support, but it was purely for the sake of joining the buzz.

No matter how famous she was, her main profession was still acting; making her Yi'an's president would cause the stock price to plummet immediately.

Seeing Yan Li hadn't even assigned her any position—she was merely a shareholder, nothing more.

If Fan Xiaopang later wanted to move behind the scenes or had ambitions for a senior company role, that could be reconsidered.

But at most, she might become a vice president or supervisor; taking charge of the already-public Yi'an was out of the question—she lacked the ability, and shareholders would never agree.

Among these three or four candidates, Seeing Yan Li's top choices were two: Xiao Guan, in charge of distribution.

Xiao Guan was a company veteran, having joined Yi'an early on, with outstanding achievements, strong prestige and capability, and a good personal relationship with Seeing Yan Li; his ascension wouldn't cause company turmoil.

His drawbacks were that his abilities weren't exceptionally outstanding, and his primary background was in distribution—he might be weaker in content, and the distribution department would certainly need restructuring; whether he could bring himself to cut ties with his old subordinates was also questionable.

The other was Du Guowei, head of the film department; he hadn't been with the company long, but his capabilities were excellent.

Especially over the past two years, he had led Yi'an's film business to strong growth—he was now the most prominent senior executive at Yi'an.

Moreover, Du Guowei came from a film background and had an advantage in content-related operations, which could help Yi'an's film and television business develop further.

His weakness was his shallow seniority; the film department had only recently become independent, and his roots in the company were thin, making it hard for him to control several powerful senior executives.

Whether restructuring the distribution division or consolidating the powerful cinema chains, he might not be able to hold his ground.

If that led to infighting between the president and powerful vice presidents, it would be a significant loss for Yi'an.

So Seeing Yan Li had remained indecisive between Xiao and Du.

Fortunately, there was still time; he could observe and lay groundwork further, minimizing internal friction to ensure the new president's smooth ascension.

…

Just as Yi'an was still steadily improving, Weibo encountered some setbacks.

After prolonged negotiations, Sina had grown weary of Weibo's delays and evasions, and began deepening its contact with Penguin.

Internally, Penguin had overcome multiple sources of internal friction, providing new support to Penguin Taotao, preparing to acquire Sina Weike and blogs, then launch a new round of Weibo warfare.

According to Seeing Yan Li's inquiries, Penguin's move stemmed from realizing that Seeing Yan Li's entertainment strategy would clash with Penguin's own layout, so they assigned Taotao to stall Weibo.

Weibo's market share had already reached absolute dominance; even with Penguin and Sina's backing, Taotao's chances of victory were extremely low.

But even if it couldn't win, as long as it posed Weibo some threat, it could force Weibo to keep competing, draining its resources and capital, preventing it from focusing fully on growth.

Hurting others without benefiting oneself—this was Penguin's usual tactic: leveraging deep pockets to bully others.

Seeing Yan Li remained calm; he had anticipated this when he stalled Sina.

During this period, Weibo, taking advantage of smartphone proliferation, aggressively expanded on mobile platforms; its user base had already reached nearly 200 million, making it unthreatening even if Sina and Penguin joined forces.

Moreover, how much support Sina could offer Penguin Taotao remained uncertain, and Penguin might not even have the bandwidth to deal with Weibo.

Limingxuan

Seeing Yan Li poured tea for Boss Lei, who was excitedly describing to him a newly discovered opportunity.

A communication and voice platform better suited to mobile internet than QQ.

This left Boss Lei torn—he hadn't expected that shortly after founding Xiaomi, he'd discovered two projects with potential to reach a $10 billion valuation.

But soon, he decided not to let this opportunity slip; he was prepared to take a gamble, since if it succeeded, it could fully support his phone business and even realize his vision of "Internet + physical."

Yet Boss Lei clearly understood this project wouldn't be easy.

Not to mention anything else: Penguin, whose home base had been raided, would retaliate at all costs; he'd face immense competitive pressure.

Also, product development and promotion required substantial funding and resources; the money raised earlier was for phones, so launching a new project meant convincing shareholders.

So Boss Lei approached Seeing Yan Li: first, hoping for Seeing Yan Li's support as a shareholder, and second, seeking cooperation with Weibo for technical and financial backing.

He had even prepared to drag Seeing Yan Li into the water—facing Penguin alone was too much pressure, but with Seeing Yan Li and Weibo, it would be different.

"Boss Lei, I understand everything you've said, but just one question: can you beat Penguin?"

Seeing Yan Li posed the soul-question: many had noticed the opportunity, but noticing and executing were two different things; whether execution could succeed was another matter entirely.

Penguin's advantages were too great, and this was a direct raid on their home base—Little Ma would fight to the death.

Upon hearing this, Boss Lei's expression grew serious: "We've studied it—if we can establish a six-month head start over Penguin, our chances are still very high; at minimum, we could split QQ's market in half."

Seeing Yan Li shook his head: "Six months is impossible; even three months is doubtful."

"Penguin's foundation is stronger than you imagine, and from what I know, Penguin hasn't neglected this area—they've just not fully settled on a direction."

"Once they react and go all out, their new product rollout will be extremely fast."

Seeing Yan Li had clashed with Penguin before, gathered intelligence on them, and knew some future information.

So he understood clearly: in instant messaging, you simply cannot beat Penguin.

But if you can't beat them, do you just give up?!

Seeing Yan Li poured tea for the slightly disheartened Boss Lei: "If Weibo drives traffic to your product and provides celebrity promotions, how much would your win probability increase?"

Boss Lei's eyes lit up instantly: "At least thirty percent."

You're still being too optimistic!

Seeing Yan Li said nothing in response; Weibo could drive traffic to Lei Boss's new project, even build a closed-loop social ecosystem combining public and private domains, creating mutual reinforcement.

But Weibo isn't an instant messaging app; compared to Weibo, QQ and Penguin's new mobile communication product could link seamlessly—Penguin simply migrating QQ users would bring massive traffic.

Lei Boss's new product, facing Penguin's full force, has a 90% chance of dying.

But so what? Penguin knows Penguin isn't Weibo's match, yet still acts to harm others without benefiting itself.

No matter how Lei Boss's new product turns out, Seeing Yan Li must still irritate Little Ma.

Seeing Yan Li had originally considered stepping in himself, but now that Lei Boss was willing to lead the charge, Seeing Yan Li was even more satisfied.

Slim chances don't matter—as long as the competition is fiercer and lasts longer, it drains Penguin's energy and resources.

Then, when Penguin is too busy to pay attention to Penguin, Seeing Yan Li will gather strength, command Weibo to launch a decisive strike, win in one battle, and finally end this years-long Weibo war.

So Seeing Yan Li gave Lei Boss considerable support, hoping he'd give Penguin a harsh lesson.

If by some miracle he actually won, Seeing Yan Li would laugh himself to death.

Weibo's support for Xiaomi wasn't free—the new project was spun off with Weibo holding substantial equity; backing a rival that could challenge or even replace Penguin would make Weibo huge profits.

Lei Boss came full of excitement and left brimming with confidence; soon after, he officially named the new project—Miliu.

The name was even tied to Seeing Yan Li: back when Seeing Yan Li was planning his key move to strike Penguin from behind, he had incubated an internal side project called Weiliao.

When Lei Boss launched his new product, Seeing Yan Li simply assigned part of the Weiliao team to support him—offering ideas and keeping Penguin entangled longer.

Many of Seeing Yan Li's ideas came from future intelligence; to Lei Boss's developing project, they were like treasures.

Whether Lei Boss already had the idea or wanted to flatter Weibo and deepen ties, he boldly named the new product Miliu, claiming proudly that each company contributed one character.

That was sneaky!

The character "liao" is a functional term anyone can use; if Lei Boss truly followed "one character per company," it should've been 【MiWei】 or 【WeiMi】, or even 【MiWeiliao】.

Still, Seeing Yan Li genuinely felt Weiliao was better than Miliu.

Miliu easily gets tied to Xiaomi phones, mistaken for an internal app; Weiliao avoids that problem and can leverage Weibo's momentum.

But Miliu is Xiaomi's project—they naturally want their own brand element; Seeing Yan Li had no reason to fight over it, since it was essentially a disposable pawn.

While supporting Lei Boss, Seeing Yan Li also personally met with Sina's Cao Chairman to discuss acquisition.

Seeing Yan Li could accept Sina's ties to Penguin, but weakening them was better.

Sina didn't want to keep fighting Penguin in the Weibo war—they wanted to concentrate on their new project—so as long as Weibo showed sufficient sincerity, they'd prefer to sell to Weibo.

Seeing Yan Li's personal talks with Cao Chairman were essentially the final negotiation.

If they reached agreement, it was basically settled; if not, they'd have to fight again.

During negotiations, Cao Chairman was somewhat annoyed—after all, Weibo had been unprofessional this time, oscillating between talking and not talking, playing Sina several times.