Chapter 394: Raiding Tencent

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

He was both researching and discussing future directions, holding the company steady by maintaining internal morale, and beginning deliberate external communication and disclosures.

Previously, Yi’an was a private enterprise; many matters could be resolved internally without concern for outside perceptions.

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

For now, everything was still proceeding smoothly.

After all, Yi’an had been preparing for its IPO for a long time; all supporting preparations and teams were already in place, and with minor adjustments, it could settle into its new rhythm.

Even in Yan Li’s mind, he had already begun identifying candidates for Yi’an’s new CEO.

As previously mentioned, Yi’an’s current CEO’s main task had been to lead the company to IPO; now that the goal was achieved, for the sake of the stock market, he would not resign immediately—but neither would he stay long.

Once he stepped down, the CEO position would be vacant.

Yan Li, who held stakes in other companies, could not remain at Yi’an daily; he wanted a qualified executor to help him guide Yi’an’s continued growth.

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

Hmm, Fan Xiaopang had some buzz too, but it was purely for the spectacle.

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

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

If Fan Xiaopang ever wanted to shift behind the scenes or pursue a senior corporate role, that could be reconsidered later.

At most, she might become a vice president or supervisor—but leading the publicly listed Yi’an was out of the question; she lacked the ability, and shareholders would never agree.

Among these three or four candidates, Yan Li favored two: Xiao Guan, in charge of distribution.

Xiao Guan was a company veteran, having joined Yi’an early, with outstanding achievements, strong prestige and capability, and a good personal relationship with Yan Li; his promotion would not cause internal turmoil.

His drawbacks were that his abilities weren’t exceptionally outstanding, his background was primarily in distribution, so he might lack strength in content, and the distribution department would certainly need restructuring—whether he could bring himself to cut ties with his old subordinates was uncertain.

The other candidate was Du Guowei, head of the film department; he had joined the company only recently but demonstrated strong capability.

Especially over the past two years, he had led Yi’an’s film business to remarkable growth, making him currently the most prominent senior executive at Yi’an.

Moreover, Du Guowei came from a film background, giving him an advantage in content-related operations, which could further boost Yi’an’s film and television business.

His weakness was his limited seniority; the film department had only recently become independent, and his roots in the company were shallow, 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 triggered a power struggle between the CEO and powerful vice presidents, it would be a serious loss for Yi’an.

Thus, Yan Li remained indecisive between Xiao and Du.

Fortunately, there was still time—he could observe and lay groundwork, minimize internal friction, and ensure a smooth transition for the new CEO.

…

Just as Yi’an was holding steady and moving upward, Weibo encountered new complications.

After prolonged negotiations, Sina had grown weary of Weibo’s delays and evasiveness and began deepening its contact with Tencent.

Internally, Tencent had overcome multiple sources of friction, providing new support to Tencent Tootoo, preparing to acquire Sina Weibo and Blog, then launch a new round of Weibo warfare.

According to Yan Li’s intelligence, Tencent’s move stemmed from realizing that Yan Li’s entertainment strategy would clash with its own layout, so it assigned Tootoo to stall Weibo.

Weibo’s market share had already reached absolute dominance; even with Tencent and Sina’s backing, Tootoo’s chances of victory were extremely low.

But even if it couldn’t win, merely posing a credible threat to Weibo would force Weibo to continue competing, draining its resources and capital, preventing it from focusing fully on growth.

Hurting others without benefiting oneself—this was Tencent’s usual tactic: leveraging its deep pockets to bully.

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

During this period, Weibo, taking advantage of the smartphone boom, aggressively expanded on mobile, now boasting nearly 200 million users—even if Sina and Tencent joined forces, they were no longer a threat.

Moreover, how much support Sina could offer Tencent Tootoo remained uncertain, and Tencent might not even have the bandwidth to confront Weibo.

Limei Pavilion

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

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

This left Lei Boss torn—he hadn’t expected that shortly after founding Xiaomi, he’d stumbled upon two projects with potential to reach ten billion dollars in value.

But soon, he decided not to let this chance slip; he was ready to gamble, for if successful, it could directly feed back into his phone business and even realize his vision of “Internet + physical.”

Yet Lei Boss was fully aware this project wouldn’t be easy.

For starters, Tencent, 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 capital raised had been for phones, so launching a new project meant convincing shareholders.

So Lei Boss approached Yan Li: first, to gain his support as a shareholder, and second, to seek collaboration with Weibo for technical and financial backing.

He had even prepared to drag Yan Li into the fray; facing Tencent alone was too daunting, but with Yan Li and Weibo on his side, it was different.

“Lei Boss, I understand everything you’ve said—but just one question: can you beat Tencent?”

Yan Li posed the soul-question: many had sensed the opportunity, but sensing it and executing it were two different things—and whether execution could succeed was another matter entirely.

Tencent’s advantages were too great, and this was a direct raid on its home turf—Little Ma would fight to the death.

At this, Lei Boss’s expression grew serious: “We’ve studied it—if we can establish a six-month head start over Tencent, our chances are still high, at least enough to split QQ’s market in half.”

Yan Li shook his head: “Six months is impossible; even three months is doubtful.”

“Tencent’s foundation is deeper than you imagine, and I know they’ve already been working on this—they’ve just not fully settled on a direction.”

“Once they wake up and go all out, their product rollout will be extremely fast.”

Yan Li had clashed with Tencent before, gathered its intelligence, and possessed some future knowledge.

So he knew clearly: in instant messaging, you simply cannot beat Tencent.

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

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

Lei Boss’s eyes lit up instantly: “At least thirty percent.”

He was still too optimistic!

Yan Li said nothing; Weibo could indeed drive traffic to Lei Boss’s new project and even build a closed-loop social ecosystem combining public and private domains, creating synergy.

But Weibo wasn’t an instant messaging app; compared to Weibo, QQ and Tencent’s new mobile communication products could link seamlessly—Tencent could simply migrate QQ users, generating massive traffic.

Against a fully committed Tencent, Lei Boss’s new product had a 90% chance of failure.

But so what? Tencent knew Tootoo couldn’t beat Weibo, yet still chose to hurt others without benefiting itself.

So regardless of how Lei Boss’s new product turned out, Yan Li had to make Little Ma’s life harder.

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

Slim odds didn’t matter; as long as the competition intensified and prolonged, it would drain Tencent’s attention and resources.

Then, when Tencent was too busy to pay attention to Tootoo, Yan Li would gather strength, direct Weibo’s full assault, win decisively, and finally end this years-long Weibo war.

So Yan Li gave Lei Boss substantial support, hoping he’d give Tencent a harsh lesson.

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

Weibo’s support for Xiaomi wasn’t free; the new project would be spun off independently, with Weibo holding significant equity—backing a rival capable of challenging or replacing Tencent as an internet communication giant would make Weibo immensely profitable.

Lei Boss arrived full of excitement and departed brimming with confidence; soon after, he officially named the new project “MiLiao.”

The name had some connection to Yan Li: when Yan Li was planning his decisive strike against Tencent, he had incubated an internal side project called “WeiLiao.”

When Lei Boss wanted to launch a new product, Yan Li simply assigned part of the WeiLiao team to support him, offering ideas and helping Xiaomi entangle Tencent further.

Many of Yan Li’s ideas came from future intelligence, which Lei Boss, still developing his project, treated as treasures.

Whether he’d had the idea himself or wanted to flatter Weibo and deepen their bond, Lei Boss decided to name the product “MiLiao,” claiming proudly that each company contributed one character.

That was sneaky!

“Liao” was a functional term anyone could use; if Lei Boss truly followed “one character per company,” he should’ve named it “MiWei” or “WeiMi,” or even “MiWeiLiao.”

Still, Yan Li genuinely felt “WeiLiao” was better than “MiLiao.”

“MiLiao” could easily be mistaken as an internal Xiaomi app, tied to their phone; “WeiLiao” had no such problem and could leverage Weibo’s momentum.

But “MiLiao” was Xiaomi’s project, and they naturally wanted their own brand identity—Yan Li had no reason to fight over it; it was essentially a disposable pawn anyway.

While supporting Lei Boss, Yan Li also personally met with Sina’s CEO Cao to discuss acquisition.

Yan Li could accept Sina’s alliance with Tencent, but weakening it was preferable.

Sina didn’t want to keep fighting Weibo alongside Tencent; they preferred to concentrate resources on their new project, so as long as Weibo showed sufficient sincerity, they’d rather sell to Weibo.

Yan Li’s direct meeting with CEO Cao was essentially their final negotiation.

If they reached agreement, the deal was essentially settled; if not, they’d have to fight again.

During negotiations, CEO Cao was somewhat displeased—after all, Weibo had been unprofessional, oscillating between talks and silence, playing Sina several times already.