Chapter 101: 098 Interview (5k)

Yu Xing never expected to run into the big BOSS as soon as he arrived today.

He originally just wanted to lure a small monster.

This should count as... lucky.

It's just that when he truly got the signal not to be blasted out, his whole person still became nervous.

Investor, investor, this is an investor he had never dealt with, and it concerned the funds for the website's next step of development...

Yu Xing was nervous for the fifteen seconds from the door to the office. When he sat on the sofa, he suddenly became relaxed because of a thought.

Pentakill!

I once covered your husband with 5 balls in a row!

Yu Xing savored his short but impressive working career at Zhen Ai Wang.

"Please have some tea."

Arriving at the office, although he was almost blasted out earlier, the BOSS's secretary now served tea.

Yu Xing smiled at the other party, took a sip of tea, and gave Lu Haiying, who was beside him, a look. Since they were here, not being blasted out was the first step to contacting investors.

Lu Haiying's nervous mood was eased a lot by her senior brother's look. If the sky fell, the senior brother would hold it up; if they were blasted out, she would drag the senior brother first.

Xu Xin sized up the two young people opposite her, without polite greetings, and went straight to the point: "Liu Qiangdong let you come?"

"Yeah," Yu Xing confirmed. "Liu Zong said that Xu Zong is an outstanding investor with excellent judgment and strong investment courage. Therefore, as soon as our website had financing needs, I came to find Xu Zong at the first opportunity."

It was indeed introduced by Liu Qiangdong, but it belonged to this kind of introduction, rounding out the previous rhetoric.

Xu Xin naturally heard it, but she didn't appreciate this kind of little trick, and even didn't ask the questions she wanted to ask.

The office fell into an awkward silence.

This was Yu Xing's first time seeing an "in-service" investor. This was different from the nature of Liu Wan Ying's playing around, and there was indeed more pressure.

He took another sip of tea and didn't wait for Xu Xin's voice, but it felt as if the countdown characters had already appeared for this meeting.

Since they were here!

Such a voice appeared in Yu Xing's heart. He took the initiative to break the atmosphere, like throwing a stone into a quiet lake, followed by ripples.

"I heard from Liu Zong that Xu Zong also agrees with my exposition at the Jin Ling Internet Conference."

"It seems that like Liu Zong, like Boss Ma who communicated with me on the spot, and Xu Zong, heroes in the world really see things the same way."

Yu Xing threw out the few things that might give the other party a positive score, and sure enough, he saw the look in Xu Xin's eyes, and finally added: "Bai Xiaosheng is a product born based on the judgment of industry development."

Xu Xin smiled without warmth and asked: "Then what about that Gui Ai Wang of yours?"

Yu Xing didn't ask the other party to treat things separately and explained earnestly: "Because Zhen Ai Wang gave too much sincerity, I sold it to Boss Li, but I reflected on it repeatedly afterwards..."

"After all, it was our first venture last year, and there are many lessons learned in the operation of that project that are worth Bai Xiaosheng drawing from."

Pushing everything away, it was your husband who insisted on buying it.

The previous one has been sold, the current one is better, admitting that there were lessons, and they have been transformed into experience.

Xu Xin asked again: "Then what do you think of the internet matchmaking industry?"

The wife of the boss of a matchmaking head website asking a person who had just bombarded this industry.

Yu Xing hesitated slightly.

From sitting in the office until now, Xu Xin asked three questions—rhetoric, Gui Ai Wang, internet matchmaking—none of which had anything to do with the Bai Xiaosheng he had in his hands.

Moreover, he could clearly feel that this person's impression of him was extremely poor.

If he continued to answer questions according to his own path, would it make her even more angry?

Yu Xing couldn't grasp what Xu Zong wanted to hear and looked at the opposite side, but only saw her expressionless face.

He tentatively said: "Xu Zong, do you want to hear my real thoughts or should I just say something casually?"

Xu Xin spat out two words: "Both are fine."

Yu Xing didn't have time to ponder too much, and one thought appeared in his heart: death is death!

"Since Xu Zong is willing to let me speak, then I can only say that the disturbances currently encountered by the internet matchmaking industry are all what they deserve," Yu Xing chose to speak bluntly. "If Xu Zong thinks it's because of me that caused the disturbance at Zhen Ai Wang, rather than the common practices of them and other companies in the industry that made users dissatisfied, then I have nothing to say."

Xu Xin sighed in her heart. Alright, let's stop here about her husband's matter.

Her expression didn't fluctuate, and she no longer dug deep to ask, but transitioned the topic to the current Bai Xiaosheng: "You just said that your new website drew from lessons learned?"

Yu Xing keenly sensed the change in atmosphere and topic, nodded earnestly, and listed: "Yes, like Gui Ai Wang, although there was a website, and although I relied on it to participate in the Internet Conference, it was essentially more inclined to be an offline company, and the online traffic was just for the Taobao shop."

"Gui Ai Wang relied on a high-commission mechanism to promote rapidly, and its management system was very weak."

"But this project of Bai Xiaosheng is a very standard internet company."

"It is more asset-light, pays more attention to the creation and running-in of the team, and makes better use of the high spreadability of the internet industry itself."

He paused and continued: "I originally thought management was a simple thing. The team size of Gui Ai Wang expanded quickly, and our revenue in the first month alone approached one million, but... I soon discovered that management really has a margin, such as reimbursement. I only learned from Boss Wei Jialan of Zhen Ai Wang when I was acquired that the reimbursement of our Beijing market team was abnormal."

"Therefore, we made improvements this time when doing Bai Xiaosheng."

Yu Xing observed Xu Xin's expression. He didn't know if it was an illusion, but her eyes seemed to become more focused.

He lifted his cup to drink tea, moistened his throat, and entered the comfort zone of practical experience: "Bai Xiaosheng still used a ground promotion team this time, and has already invested 25 people in five cities—Beijing, Shencheng, Yangcheng, Pengcheng, and Lin'an. Their task is to accurately promote to internet companies in these five cities."

"We have the operation experience of Gui Ai Wang, and in fact, we can quickly build up the user quantity. Whether it's campus users or campus part-time teams, these are areas where we have achieved results, but we didn't do that, and we are also cautiously controlling the number of company team members."

Yu Xing's words were enough to make people have reason to believe, as he had indeed quickly achieved results in his previous project.

"Bai Xiaosheng's positioning is vertical and segmented. We don't need to quickly make a large number of users for others to see; we pursue long-term and effective development."

"If I were to compare the two projects of Gui Ai Wang and Bai Xiaosheng, I have been telling myself three words during the operation time of the latter."

Yu Xing took a breath and said these three words: "Restraint, vertical, segmented."

Hearing the young man in front of her put the word "restraint" first, Xu Xin couldn't help but think of her evaluation at the "Qunar" financing meeting yesterday—young people who have tasted sweetness find it hard to settle down.

Making quick money, doing short-term work, young people.

Xu Xin has seen many such genius young people over the years, but as time passed, they almost all disappeared in the waves of business.

Having tasted sweetness, can they still let go?

Like this Yu Xing in front of her...

Especially, he started his second venture almost without a gap. How did he overcome human nature?

Xu Xin felt it was a bit incredible.

She asked about Bai Xiaosheng for the first time: "Vertical and segmented? Is this the birth born from the judgment of industry development you mentioned?"

"Not bad. The main tracks of the internet have already been occupied by big factories. It's hard for me to have confidence to do e-commerce now, whether it's money or resources, they are too different," Yu Xing said. "In such an era, internet companies want to succeed only by being more vertical and segmented. I think this is also the reason why our website took 95,945 users in two months of going online!"

Two months, 95,945!

Among them, the vast majority are workplace people!

Xu Xin couldn't help but squint her eyes, knowing very well the gold content in it.

"Workplace social networking is not a new track, but there has been no successful enterprise. I think, first, the high-speed development of the internet industry in the past few years has gradually laid a user foundation, and second, a piece of the puzzle is missing," Yu Xing expounded. "The puzzle Bai Xiaosheng provides this time is 'workplace topics'."

Xu Xin listened quietly.

"Simply doing workplace social networking is too difficult. Like the former vice president of Sina who founded Tianji. com, he wanted to do this, but he couldn't do it," Yu Xing slowed down his speaking speed. "We have mainly focused on three workplace topics in the past two months: first, the entry of college students; second, the problems of the internet matchmaking industry; third, Ctrip's layoffs and fake insurance policies. The first two came from our planning, while the last one was the inevitable appearance under the mechanism of Bai Xiaosheng."

"From the perspective of user quantity, I think our thinking is correct."

"Topics are the medium of social networking, and social networking provides soil for topics. The two interact, and finally, it will be the workplace platform we want to build."

Yu Xing expounded to this point, and there was no nervous emotion in his heart.

Xu Xin thought about the content she heard and asked for a piece of data: "What is your DAU now?"

DAU is Daily Active Users.

"We are in a high-speed growth period now, and this data changes every day," Yu Xing replied. "The DAU the day before yesterday was close to 40,000, but this value is relatively distorted. I didn't pay attention to yesterday's, but it must be higher."

Yesterday was the NetEase press conference + Ctrip employee anonymity, so the number of users activated must be more.

Xu Xin asked again: "Have you calculated the DAU/MAU ratio?"

Yu Xing replied: "Yes, but because of our rapid growth, this data is also relatively distorted. The ratio we calculated on December 10th was 61%, but it is not used as reference data."

MAU is Monthly Active Users.

The DAU/MAU indicator was made popular by Facebook. It uses the DAU/MAU ratio and discusses it publicly when analyzing its own performance. Therefore, many websites and products increasingly like to use it to measure user stickiness.

Generally speaking, for world-class products like Facebook, the ratio is often above 50% all year round, and it was as high as 70% or 80% in the early days, while 20% is considered pretty good for general products.

Yu Xing gave Bai Xiaosheng's answer, but also emphasized very honestly that it didn't have reference value.

Xu Xin didn't dwell on this data and suddenly asked from another angle: "As far as I know, you are not from a computer background and have a medical background before. Is it your employees who are measuring this data when the website just started?"

"We hired a consultant from Bain & Company," Yu Xing explained. "She was the one asking for this data. I really didn't know before, but she said that these data need to be tracked for a long time to be used as a reference."

Xu Xin felt that this was somewhat reasonable.

She asked: "A consultant from Bain? You still have a budget for this?"

"She has already resigned from Bain, and the first angel investment we received was given by her," Yu Xing explained in detail. "She has agreed to continue providing professional advice, which is also a lesson I learned from the previous project."

Xu Xin was silent. Objectively speaking, the words of the young man in front of her were increasingly like those of a reliable entrepreneur.

She asked a question that had made many internet entrepreneurs increasingly difficult to answer in the past few years, and said slowly: "If Tencent also does the same project, what are you going to do?"

Xu Xin stared at Yu Xing, noticing that the other party seemed to have a little smile, and immediately heard the answer of five words.

Yu Xing replied without hesitation: "Tencent has a position."

As an investor, and an investor who has been investing in the internet industry for many years, Xu Xin has needed to pay attention to the influence of big manufacturers like Tencent, both actively and passively, in recent years.

She had asked no fewer than 10 entrepreneurs, but this was the first time she wanted to gasp after hearing the answer.

Oh!

No need to explain more. The current situation and background of this project indeed only need these five words to be a complete and full-score answer!

Xu Xin resisted the urge to praise and still said in a slow tone: "Not bad."

Immediately, she added: "I didn't think of this aspect."

"Xu Zong, you are just an investor, and it's the first time you've heard it, so naturally it's not as comprehensive as my repeated thinking about the website's competition," Yu Xing laughed. "Therefore, Bai Xiaosheng should be a rare internet project that doesn't need to worry about big factory competition."

He finished the tea in his cup and quickened his speaking speed: "We won't take investment from big factories; that is a trap instead!"

"We won't go to second- and third-tier cities to do promotion after getting the financing money; that is also a trap!"

"We only need to get 5 million US dollars this year to have confidence in reaching 1 million users, and next year we will have confidence in another round of financing, continuing to accelerate the number of users to 5-10 million!"

"Social networking is a good story, and workplace social networking is also a pretty good story!"

"After initially establishing the platform mechanism of workplace social networking and workplace topics, we now only need a sum of money to quickly expand our scale and move toward success!"

Yu Xing's eyes were bright, basically completing the exposition of this accidental encounter today.

He still had some words he wanted to say and pies he wanted to paint, but today might just be like this.

Xu Xin nodded slightly and evaluated: "The money asked for is not small, and the appetite is very big."

5 million US dollars needs to be carefully considered in the current environment.

Like "Qunar" yesterday, the C-round financing it hoped to get was 15 million US dollars, while Bai Xiaosheng was only a company established for less than 3 months.

This was a lion opening its mouth.

Xu Xin didn't mock him. The thoughts and thinking in her heart were mixed together, and it took a full two minutes before she said: "Did you bring the letter of intent?"

Yu Xing signaled Lu Haiying, realizing his mistake. He should have handed it to the investor's table first.

Lu Haiying took out the financing letter of intent from her bag and handed it to Xu Xin's secretary.

Xu Xin didn't flip through it, just said: "I'll take a look. I have another meeting later. Let's contact by phone."

Yu Xing stood up and thanked her politely: "Good, Xu Zong, Bai Xiaosheng hopes to get the help of an excellent investor like Xu Zong."

He and Lu Haiying said goodbye and left.

After they got into the elevator, Lu Haiying said: "Senior brother, I seem to have dared to breathe..."

"So, this is the feeling of meeting an investor." Yu Xing should have been happy, but he felt strangely neither sad nor happy, just saying, "The communication and meeting today should be pretty good."

Lu Haiying looked at the elevator going down and made a joke: "Definitely good! Xu Xin's attitude at the beginning and the end was completely different! This is... this is the senior brother and I jointly lobbying the investor..."

Yu Xing laughed and walked out of the elevator.

Lu Haiying walked two steps before suddenly noticing the senior brother in front, his back seemed to be soaked with sweat.

Capital Today's office.

The financing letter of intent from Bai Xiaosheng was only flipped one page.

Xu Xin looked at it for two glances and didn't continue reading, her fingers constantly tapping the table lightly.

Secretary Luo Shujing saw this and said: "Xu Zong, Bai Xiaosheng sounds pretty good."

Xu Xin came back to her senses and asked: "You've been listening on the side. How do you think Yu Xing introduced it?"

Luo Shujing deliberated: "Seems okay."

Xu Xin laughed: "I often say that an excellent investor must have an intuition like a killer. I invested in Ding Lei very quickly back then, and when I met Liu Qiangdong, I chatted with him until 2:00 AM. 10 million US dollars didn't take more than 24 hours from meeting to funds arriving."

"But today, this intuition is a bit blurry."

"You say, why is this?"

Luo Shujing felt that the boss's words were a bit mysterious, but the cases she mentioned were indeed facts.

She shook her head, knowing that there was already an answer, and supported: "Why?"

Xu Xin frowned and evaluated: "Because what he said was too good, too clear."

Luo Shujing was surprised. Too good and too clear, this doesn't work either?

"Ding Lei is outstanding enough, right? Liu Qiangdong is also pretty good, right? But when I chatted with them back then, they also had many confusions and uncertainties," Xu Xin said. "Entrepreneurs face an uncertain market, and Yu Xing doesn't have a resume in this regard. His answers..."

"I can only say that we can't see the whole picture. So, setting aside the partial facts we can see, the feeling today is always a bit wrong."

Xu Xin finally evaluated: "This person is strange. We can look again. Let Liu Zong and the others investigate this website."

Luo Shujing had been a secretary for a long time and knew that the boss was not interested in topics like jewelry, cosmetics, etc., that women talk about. She seemed to regard investment as a pleasure, often studied different entrepreneurs, and was keen on communicating with entrepreneurs.

That is to say, the boss's judgment of people is very accurate.

She nodded, walked out of the office, but suddenly a thought emerged in her heart: the attitude before and after Xu Xin saw Yu Xing was already different.

Xu Xin sat alone in the office, and after a long time of thinking, she still opened Bai Xiaosheng's letter of intent.

But she hadn't looked for long before the phone on the table rang.

Xu Xin saw it was her husband Li Song and answered the phone.

Ten seconds later, she was surprised: "Why did you fly to Shencheng?"

Li Song laughed: "To see our company's market promotion in Shencheng, to see if there are any New Year gifts worth buying in Shencheng. Why, not welcome?"

"Welcome, you come," Xu Xin looked at the document on the table. "I'm going to finish work before the new year too."

Li Song confirmed the time: "Good, I'll arrive tomorrow and personally visit Xu Zong at Capital Today!" ===== CHAPTER 102 =====