Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

”Kuai Pao? They got a 30 million angel investment from Senlian Capital?”

In an office in Putuo District, Zhang Xuhao clicked open a Sohu News article. His brow furrowed instantly, and his heart filled with regret.

He hadn’t expected Chen Yansen’s investment style to be so decisive.

After noticing his little maneuvers, Chen Yansen hadn’t given him any room to negotiate. He first denied that Senlian Capital had any intention of investing in Eleme, then immediately turned around and invested in a competitor.

This was a clear statement: it wasn’t that Chen Yansen didn’t believe in the food delivery model, he just didn’t believe in Eleme.

Zhang Xuhao recalled calling Zhu Xiaohu of Jinsha Venture Capital. The latter had once again refused to make an additional investment in Eleme, shattering his last hope.

’This won’t do! I have to find funding, and fast. Once Kuai Pao expands, Eleme will be in danger.’

Zhang Xuhao pondered for a moment and made up his mind.

While he was busy contacting venture capital firms, investors from Redwood Capital, Jinsha River Venture Capital, and Gao Ling Capital began looking into the company, Kuai Pao.

’After all, for Chen Yansen to take an interest in it, it must have some potential.’

Kang Guodong and Pei Yi, who had just returned to Luzhou, received a series of calls from several VC firms.

But now that they had 30 million in capital and were no longer worried about money—even though they only had 20% equity left—they rejected them all.

”Old Pei, this feels so damn good!”

Kang Guodong looked at Pei Yi across from him and grinned.

”Once we take Kuai Pao public, we’ll rub it in their faces.” Pei Yi was in an equally great mood.

Before, the two of them had practically begged investors just for a chance, even for just an hour of their time to listen to their business plan, but no one had paid them any attention.

After getting funding from Senlian Capital, the VC firms immediately changed their attitude, becoming incredibly enthusiastic towards them.

They both knew this shift was because of Chen Yansen, not because of Kuai Pao’s own merit.

”Let’s go. We’ll check out Luyang District first. The office rent there is low, and it’s right next to the pedestrian street...”

Holding a stack of documents, Kang Guodong pulled Pei Yi toward the university exit.

...

...

After being rejected by Kuai Pao, Zhang Lei of Gao Ling Capital called Chen Yansen again. ”President Chen, you weren’t entirely honest with me last time.”

”President Zhang, don’t get me wrong! After our last conversation, I had my investment analysts research the food delivery industry. They felt it had potential, and that’s why I invested in Kuai Pao.”

Chen Yansen laughed, telling a bald-faced lie.

The implication was that he had only considered investing in a food delivery website after Zhang Lei had brought it to his attention.

”When will you be in Yanjing again, President Chen? We should all get together,” Zhang Lei said with a smile, changing the subject. He didn’t actually mind.

He just needed to confirm that Chen Yansen was interested in the food delivery industry.

”President Zhang, is there something else?” Chen Yansen read between the lines and asked with a smile.

”Two things. First, Gao Ling wants to buy a stake in Pinbei. Second, I’d like to broker a partnership between you and Jingdong to jointly seize Ah Li’s market share.”

Zhang Lei got straight to the point, not beating around the bush.

When communicating with someone as smart as Chen Yansen, being direct was more efficient.

”President Zhang, if I may be so bold, is this Gao Ling’s idea, or Liu Qiangdong’s?”

Chen Yansen didn’t refuse immediately but instead asked seriously.

He had recently heard that Liu Qiangdong’s competition with Ah Li was getting intense.

Without informing Jingdong, New FoxTao had scraped the review content from Jingdong’s first-party products, drawing a public lashing from Handsome Dong.

As a result, FoxTao blocked Jingdong’s products, kicked Jingdong out of its B2C rebate mall, and even teamed up with Dangdang and Sunning to try and isolate Jingdong.

Currently, Jingdong’s merchants weren’t even eligible to sign up for FoxTao’s ”Super Rebate” event.

To put it in perspective, FoxTao brought Jingdong 300 to 500 million in sales each month.

This really pissed Liu Qiangdong off!

”This was the result of a joint discussion between me, Tiger Fund, and DST, the lead investors.”

Zhang Lei said slowly.

Gao Ling, Tiger, and DST had jointly invested over a billion US dollars in Jingdong, so naturally, they didn’t want to see Liu Qiangdong fail.

”President Zhang, let’s put the financing aside for now. First, I’d like to hear the specifics of this partnership,” Chen Yansen asked.

”Jingdong can open its 3C electronics and home appliance resources to Pinbei, and in return, Pinbei would need to open its food, apparel, beauty, and mother & baby category resources to Jingdong. As for the specific format of the partnership, we can hash out the details over time,”

Zhang Lei replied.

Chen Yansen sneered inwardly. ’Zhang Lei and Liu Qiangdong have certainly cooked up a clever scheme.’

Although Jingdong and Pinbei were both B2C e-commerce platforms, Jingdong used a hybrid model of first-party retail and third-party sellers, whereas Pinbei was a purely open platform with no first-party operations.

Following the partnership model Zhang Lei described, the day Jingdong finished poaching Pinbei’s merchant resources would be the day the partnership ended.

”I’m sorry, but I don’t see any sincerity from Jingdong,” Chen Yansen refused flatly.

Pinbei’s biggest advantages right now were its prime traffic entry point from Penguin and the more than 20,000 merchants it had accumulated back in its FoxTao days.

Taobao claimed to have 5 million sellers, but its true core merchants numbered less than 50,000, with the rest being mostly C2C individual sellers.

Chen Yansen was always the one taking advantage of others. The idea of Liu Qiangdong prying resources from his grasp was pure fantasy.

Zhang Lei was taken aback and cursed inwardly, ’This kid really isn’t easy to fool.’

He thought for a moment, then said, ”President Chen, whatever you have in mind, just say the word. I’ll communicate it to Liu Qiangdong for you.”

This was the benefit of having a middleman. If Liu Qiangdong had come to negotiate in person, the talks likely would have collapsed by now, with one side having to concede or both parting on bad terms.

”A partnership is possible, and I can agree to direct traffic to Jingdong, but I have two conditions: First, Jingdong’s first-party retail must become a merchant on Pinbei; second, Orange Pay must be added to Jingdong’s payment module,”

Chen Yansen replied.

At the time, Jingdong users only had two payment options: online banking and cash on delivery.

Six months ago, Liu Qiangdong had terminated their partnership with Wealth Treasure, finding its fees too high.

But when he tried to apply for a payment license, he discovered the difficulty had increased several hundredfold. To put it bluntly, the higher-ups wanted to strictly control the number of licenses issued.

Being one step too slow set Liu Qiangdong back three to four years.

Seeing no hope in applying, Liu Qiangdong planned to build Jingdong’s own payment tool by acquiring a third-party payment license.

But for now, he was still screening acquisition targets.

Plus, developing a payment system takes time. In his previous life, Jingdong Pay wasn’t launched until 2014.

Chen Yansen’s thinking was simple. It was fine for Liu Qiangdong to want to increase sales, but Jingdong had to help Pinbei round out its electronics and home appliance categories, which in turn would boost Pinbei’s average order value and overall valuation.

As for Orange Pay, that was just something he threw in.

He was certain Liu Qiangdong would agree, because he had already realized just how foolish Jingdong’s reliance on cash on delivery was.

Orange Pay could help Jingdong save a large sum in transaction fees, and they wouldn’t have to put up with Wealth Treasure’s grief.

”Okay, I’ll pass it on to Liu Qiangdong.” Zhang Lei was straightforward, hanging up without any further haggling.

Chen Yansen put down his phone, walked over to the sofa by the window, and sat down. ’It seems 2011 is an incredibly difficult year for Jingdong and the capital backing it,’ he thought.

It wasn’t even December, and Jingdong Logistics had already lost over a billion, with profitability nowhere in sight.

’So Liu Qiangdong wants to become the Bezos of Hua Country? It’s not that simple.’

「Meanwhile.」

Liu Qiangdong was sitting in his office when he received a call from Zhang Lei.

”Basically, Chen Yansen wants to treat Jingdong as a flagship store on Pinbei Mall, but he requires Jingdong to promote Orange Pay in return.”

Zhang Lei briefly recounted the main points of their conversation and left the decision to Liu Qiangdong.

Liu Qiangdong’s heart skipped a beat. He knew Chen Yansen had seen through his intentions, but his goal had been achieved anyway.

As for the issue of Orange Pay, he agreed without much hesitation. After all, Jingdong’s own payment tool was nowhere near ready.

It was only natural to pay a price for piggybacking on Pinbei’s traffic.

”President Zhang, I have no problem with that,” Liu Qiangdong replied immediately.

”Good. I’ll get the ball rolling on this. Send someone to Xucheng to sign the contract and arrange to go live as soon as possible.”

Zhang Lei said with a nod.

Sure enough, just as Chen Yansen had predicted, Liu Qiangdong agreed to the partnership without much thought.

This type of partnership model might have been novel in 2011, but a dozen or so years later, it would be commonplace.

Ah Li and Sunning, Jingdong and Yihaodian—they all used similar partnership models.

After receiving Zhang Lei’s reply, Chen Yansen assigned Gao Weilin and Song Yuncheng to follow up on the partnership.

”Boss, partnering with Jingdong could negatively impact the merchants in Pinbei’s electronics and home appliance categories. It won’t help us develop our own merchant base.”

After hearing Chen Yansen’s plan, Song Yuncheng frowned slightly and voiced his opposition.

”We’re a platform. We don’t have ’exclusive’ merchant resources. Just feed parameters like sales volume and gross margin into the algorithm and let it handle things. Whoever sells the best gets the traffic, simple as that.”

Chen Yansen knew perfectly well that merchants had no loyalty. They went wherever the money was.

If Jingdong’s electronics and home appliance products could sell tens or hundreds of millions on Pinbei, the brands behind the scenes would proactively jump out, bypass Jingdong, and establish partnerships directly with Pinbei.

”Okay, I understand.” Song Yuncheng stood there and pondered it seriously for a good while before nodding in agreement.

”Old Gao, how are things going with Kuai Pao?”

Chen Yansen grunted and looked at Gao Weilin.

”They’re still busy renting an office and hiring people. But Pei Yi poached about twenty former employees from a bankrupt group buy website. These people have a lot of restaurant industry connections and are very familiar with expanding offline business. Once the initial prep work is done, their growth won’t be slow.”

Gao Weilin replied with a smile.

As it was his first real investment project, Gao Weilin naturally paid closer attention to it.

”Okay. Keep a close eye on the technical integration for me. Make sure there are no slip-ups.”

Chen Yansen nodded slightly, then turned to give Song Yuncheng some instructions.

With the explosive growth in business for Orange Technology and Pinbei, Orange Pay was in urgent need of operations engineers, security experts, and risk management specialists.

Wang Xueting, Xiong Li, and Zhang Junjie had been poaching people like crazy recently. To save time, they were specifically targeting Wealth Treasure.

Headhunters waited outside Wealth Treasure’s headquarters every day. When they saw an employee getting off work, they would approach and ask, ”Sir, are you considering a job change?”

It got to the point that Ma Liyun couldn’t stand it anymore and called to warn Chen Yansen to tone it down a bit.

Chen Yansen paid him lip service but secretly continued doing as he pleased.

After Song Yuncheng and Gao Weilin left the office, Chen Yansen picked up Pinbei’s weekly business report and casually flipped through it.

Registered users reached 40 million, daily active users were 10 million, daily orders exceeded 4 million, and daily sales were close to 300 million.

Of course, Orange Mobile Phone sales accounted for sixty percent of that.

In terms of actual scale, Pinbei was about one-fifth the size of Jingdong and one-twentieth the size of Taobao.

This was also the main reason Chen Yansen agreed to partner with Jingdong.

He didn’t want to go to extremes like Pinduoduo and put a cap on the platform’s growth potential.

So from the very beginning, his plan was to use low-priced products to attract traffic while using high-priced goods to elevate the platform’s brand perception, avoiding the negative impression of being cheap and low-quality.

As for product quality, the platform had a security deposit mechanism. If any merchant tried to pass off shoddy goods as high-quality ones, Chen Yansen would penalize them without hesitation.

Before the end of the workday, Liu Zhicheng from Wine God Network’s Market Department called to discuss a partnership.

Chen Yansen didn’t refuse, handing it off to Song Yuncheng to handle.

Chen Yansen was more than willing to partner with platforms like Jingdong, Wine God Network, as well as Sunning and Gome.

They wanted to leverage Pinbei’s traffic and high conversion rates to boost their sales, and he, in turn, wanted to leverage their platforms to build Pinbei into a comprehensive e-commerce platform.

He walked out of the first-floor lobby, and just as he got in the car, Cao Dahua sent a message: The Orange F1 is almost sold out!