Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Chapter 154: Chapter 143: The First Batch of Orange Mobile Phone Users, a First-Month Sales Target of 2 Million Units

The dinner party ended, and they were on the way back.

Chen Yansen and Gao Weilin were discussing Zhou Shouzhi. Gao Weilin, a keen judge of character, immediately realized his boss wanted to poach the man.

”Boss, how about I use a potential collaboration as an excuse to sound him out for you next time?”

Gao Weilin asked with a tactful smile.

”No need! It’s more beneficial for Orange Technology’s development if he stays at Digital Sky Technology.”

Chen Yansen waved a hand, rejecting Old Gao’s suggestion.

An elite like Zhou Shouzhi might seem gentle, but he’s actually proud and ambitious.

Forget an invitation from Orange Technology. Even if Lei Yijun personally invited him, he would still wait and watch for two or three years. He only agreed to become Xiaomi’s Chief Financial Officer after its valuation surpassed 200 billion.

And after Xiaomi’s IPO, he immediately jumped ship to Byte.

In the eyes of someone like him, both Xiaomi and Byte are just stepping stones.

’Business is all about using each other, after all.’

”President Li wants to hold the special Xiaomi Mobile Phone event on August 28. Are we still allocating resources according to the original plan?”

Song Yuncheng nudged Chen Yansen with her arm and asked in a low voice.

”Isn’t the FoxTao mobile app online now? I recall it has 300,000 daily active users. Let’s give Xiaomi a splash screen as well. Consider it a gift from me to President Lei.”

Chen Yansen said softly, leaning back against the car seat.

”Huh!?” Song Yuncheng was taken aback. She had been about to ask if they should reduce the resources allocated to them, since Xiaomi and Orange Technology were competitors.

She never expected that not only would Chen Yansen refuse to cut back, but he would even offer to increase Xiaomi’s traffic.

”Think bigger! They paid a 10 million advertising fee six months ago, so there’s no need to play petty games. If I’m scared of even Xiaomi, how will I compete with giants like Apple and Mountain Star in the future?”

Chen Yansen made a fist and gently knocked it on Song Yuncheng’s head.

”Ow, I get it. I’ll talk to the events team and get the plan over to Li Wanqiang as soon as possible.”

Wincing, Song Yuncheng pouted and shot Chen Yansen a fierce glare.

Gao Weilin, sitting in the front passenger seat, remained silent as if he were invisible.

Early the next morning, the sky was just beginning to lighten.

Chen Yansen opened his eyes and picked up his phone to check the time. It was only 4:50 AM; he was sleeping even less now.

He sighed, got out of bed, and walked over to the desk. He picked up a book on electromagnetism and sat down to read.

Behind him, Song Yuncheng was sleeping soundly, lying on her side under the covers with a sliver of pale skin exposed.

It wasn’t until 9 AM that the three of them left the hotel and headed for the 798 Art District.

Lei Yijun had been in the internet industry for many years, building a vast and powerful network. Shencheng Ma and Hang City Ma were both there, along with Zhou Hongyi from 360, Zhang Chaoyang from Sohu, Wang Zhidong from Sina, and Ding Lei from NetEase. Practically every A-list tycoon in the industry had accepted the invitation.

After all, back when Lei Yijun was the general manager of Jinshan, Ma Liyun was still an English teacher in Hang City, Little Ma had just graduated, and the first line of code for QQ had yet to be written.

And by the time Lei Yijun became CEO of Jinshan, Zhang Chaoyang had just returned to the country to found Sohu.

In terms of seniority, Lei Yijun was without a doubt one of the first-generation internet entrepreneurs.

As the general manager of Xiaomi’s Market Department, Li Wanqiang was naturally stationed at the entrance to the conference hall, responsible for greeting guests.

”President Chen, let me show you to your seat.” Li Wanqiang spotted Chen Yansen from a distance and hurried over to greet him.

”Thank you for the trouble.”

Chen Yansen smiled and followed Li Wanqiang into the main hall.

Xiaomi’s launch event venue was more luxurious than Orange Technology’s and much larger. A sizable crowd of media members and fans had shown up.

The moment any entrepreneur entered, camera flashes began to flicker nonstop.

The media section immediately erupted in a clamor the moment Chen Yansen walked in.

In terms of public recognition, Chen Yansen was far more famous than the likes of Wang Zhidong or Ding Lei.

The influencer-entrepreneur trend hadn’t yet taken off, though Chen Ou of Jumei had toyed with the idea. But Chen Yansen had already beaten him to the punch.

At this point, Chen Yansen had just over 10 million followers on Weibo. The account was run by his colleagues in the Market Department. It used to feature daily life photos and previews for Super Rebates, but now it was all about the Orange Mobile Phone, which had caused his online popularity to soar.

Many university students looked up to him as a role model!

Li Wanqiang led Chen Yansen to a seat in the front row. To his left was Zhou Hongyi, and to his right was Ma Wenteng.

’Fuck!’

’Who the fuck arranged these seats?’ Chen Yansen grumbled inwardly.

”President Chen, we meet again. I haven’t had the chance to thank you yet. From the angel round to the Series A, you’ve certainly made Penguin a lot of money.”

Ma Wenteng shot a glance at Zhou Hongyi, ignored him, and struck up a conversation with Chen Yansen.

Penguin had invested a total of 150 million in FoxTao. Based on the app’s 16 billion valuation, that investment had yielded a return of nearly 1.5 billion.

Even with Ma Wenteng’s current net worth, he wouldn’t dare call a potential 1.5 billion gain ”small change.”

The more Ma Wenteng looked at Chen Yansen, the more he liked what he saw.

”Then I should be the one thanking you, Mr. Ma. Without Penguin’s support, FoxTao could never have grown this fast.”

Chen Yansen replied with a calm smile.

If Ma Wenteng hadn’t given the nod, FoxTao’s ”slash the price to 0 yuan” links would have been banned long ago. There’s no way it would be pulling in over 300,000 new customers a day like it was now.

Aside from a few directors from Yanjing, the front row consisted of about a dozen entrepreneurs. Lei Yijun seating him here wasn’t some attempt to set him up for a fall by overpraising him.

It was simply that the guests in the second row were a huge step down from him in terms of both net worth and influence.

”The investment world is buzzing with rumors that you’re looking to sell FoxTao as a package deal. Are you really that bullish on phone manufacturing? Enough to abandon your very first company?”

Ma Wenteng asked with a teasing smile.

”If I sell the first, there’s always the second. Lotte and Augusta are both interested. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to sell it for a high price so Penguin can make a killing.”

Chen Yansen said nonchalantly.

”You’re really not like the other young people,” Ma Wenteng remarked, nodding slightly.

As an investor, he’d seen countless entrepreneurs. They either treated their companies like their own children or guarded their equity with their lives, completely failing to grasp the strategic value of fundraising.

Chen Yansen was the complete opposite. He showed no sentimental attachment to the company he’d founded; his eyes were only on the prize. Investing in people like him often yielded a higher rate of return.

The two hadn’t been chatting for long when Lei Yijun took the stage.

This was Chen Yansen’s first time watching a Xiaomi launch event live. Over a decade later, Lei Yijun’s classic speeches from these events would be clipped by netizens into viral meme videos that spread across the internet.

The most classic of these were ”Our competitors are idiots” and ”Are you OK?”

But the Lei Yijun on stage today was under immense pressure. Before the sales numbers for the Xiaomi Mobile Phone were released, no one knew if it would be accepted by consumers and the market.

The fact that the Orange Mobile Phone had launched first put considerable pressure on Sect Leader Lei.

Before beginning his speech, Lei Yijun glanced at Chen Yansen and then launched into his opening remarks.

He finished his greetings, and a round of applause rose from below the stage.

Chen Yansen watched Lei Yijun and clapped lightly. The man’s Mandarin wasn’t perfect, but at an event like this, it actually made him more relatable and became one of his strengths.

It was as if the man on stage was one of your own relatives, teachers, or friends, creating a strong sense of familiarity.

The opposite was true of Ma Liyun. Lao Ma’s Mandarin was standard and his English was fluent, yet this created a sense of distance between him and the users.

Chen Yansen already knew the price of the Xiaomi Mobile Phone. It was still 1999 yuan, but customers who bought it through FoxTao could receive a rebate of anywhere from 20 to 100 yuan.

In principle, this made it 20 yuan cheaper than the Orange Mobile Phone’s channel price.

It wasn’t hard to predict that both the Xiaomi and Orange mobile phones would sell well. Now, it was just a question of who had the production capacity to lock in users first and capture more market share.

Meanwhile, far away in Shencheng City, the Orange Phone Factory was working overtime to ramp up production.

The first batch of over 600 employees was finally experiencing the joy of maxing out their overtime pay.

The daily income from base salary and overtime was capped at 180 yuan.

The cap for weekend overtime was 240 yuan.

Take Brother Zhu, for example. He worked seven days last week and earned 1,380 yuan before taxes.

At his old factory, he would have made eight or nine hundred at most for a week’s work, and he’d have had to put in an extra two hours every day.

”This is so damn good! Next month is the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the overtime pay for that day alone is 360 yuan. One day of work will be worth what used to take four days!”

Brother Zhu said with a wide grin.

”Brother Zhu, you know Xiaomeng, the guy who quit last month? He failed an interview yesterday and is kicking himself for it now.”

A nearby coworker chimed in during a break, teasing with a laugh.

”That’s ’cause he’s an idiot! He left a great place like the Orange Phone Factory to go work a job that pays less than 150 yuan for a 14-hour day. Anyone who even finished middle school wouldn’t be that foolish.”

Brother Zhu said proudly, skillfully placing a tested phone into its box along with the manual, charger, headphones, and other accessories.

”The Orange Factory is great, but limiting the overtime hours is a real drag. I could tighten screws for 16 hours a day, but they make me clock out and rest after just 12.”

A workhorse of a colleague beside him complained indignantly.

A young guy like him, just eighteen or nineteen, wasn’t afraid of pulling all-nighters. Forget 16 hours—he’d even worked 30 hours straight before.

After the second round of hiring, the number of employees at the Orange Factory reached 1,200. Every month, they could contribute over a thousand wisps of Human Dao Fire to Chen Yansen.

Meanwhile, the logistics department was acting on order information from the Orange Mall. They wrapped the phones in protective foam, sealed them in cardboard boxes, and affixed the shipping labels.

Shunfeng delivery trucks came once in the morning and once in the evening to haul the packages to the sorting center, from where they were dispatched across the country.

While Chen Yansen was in Yanjing for the Xiaomi launch, thirty to forty thousand customers had already begun receiving their Orange Mobile Phones.

For 1999 yuan, they got flagship specs that would normally cost 3999 yuan: a large screen, a high-performance processor, and the smooth Aurora OS. The reviews were almost universally positive.

Of course, some users complained about the battery life, noting that it had to be charged every day.

There was no helping it. The Snapdragon MSM8260 1.5GHz dual-core processor, paired with the 4.5-inch screen, was a real power drain. But it was also a real joy to use.

Whether for gaming or watching videos, the experience was fantastic.

Chen Yansen was shipping out phones like crazy, getting ahead of the autumn product launches from Apple and other domestic first- and second-tier manufacturers.

In the same price range, phones from Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and Lenovo were completely uncompetitive. They were mostly low-end devices with inferior chips, small screens, and laggy performance.

Users who had long been tormented by knock-off phones and overpriced, low-quality smartphones were finally getting a taste of something good.

By the time Chen Yansen returned to Xucheng, pre-orders on the Orange Mall had already reached 1.3 million units.

Industry insiders were all speculating whether the Orange Mobile Phone could break 2 million in sales during its launch month.

This was nearly four months’ worth of total production capacity for the Orange Phone Factory.

”Boss, the new director of the brand department starts today. Should I ask her to come over?”

Someone from HR knocked on the door of Chen Yansen’s fifth-floor office to ask.

”Have her come straight over.”

Chen Yansen was reading a book and didn’t even look up as he gave the instruction.

CLICK-CLACK-CLICK—!

A short while later, Ye Qiuping stepped out of the elevator and walked over slowly.

She was wearing a short-sleeved beige blouse and a pair of cotton-linen ankle pants. Her skin was fair, her figure full and curvaceous, and the buttons of her blouse were stretched taut.

At 27, Ye Qiuping exuded the aroma of a woman in full bloom.

It was a different style from what she had worn when they last met in Yanjing.

Ye Qiuping stopped in front of the office. Even though the door was open, she raised a hand and knocked twice, her gaze quickly sweeping over Chen Yansen.

He had his head down, holding a book and flipping through the pages with incredible speed.

He wore a white shirt, and his frame was tall and upright. His side profile was sharply defined, and he sported a neat, short, spiky haircut. From a distance, he looked more like a scholarly college student than a tycoon worth tens of billions, a stark contrast to his actual identity.

His long, strong fingers slid across the page, making a soft rustling sound. Seeing this, Ye Qiuping subconsciously swallowed.

For some reason, she felt that Chen Yansen had changed in some indescribable way since she’d last seen him.

”Come in.”

Chen Yansen said coolly, without raising his head.