Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

In an office on the top floor of Building 9, Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.

”Mr. Liang, what kind of tea would you like?”

Chen Yansen asked, turning around from the tea cabinet.

”President... Boss, please, just call me by my name. Water is fine for me.” Liang Bo sat before the coffee table, licking his lips and fidgeting nervously.

”No need to be so formal with me.” Chen Yansen smiled faintly. He walked back to the sofa with a box of Huoshan Huangya tea and handed Liang Bo a bottle of mineral water.

”Thank you.” Liang Bo took the water and thanked him quickly.

He then twisted open the cap and, using the act of drinking as an opportunity, curiously sized up the office decor and his future boss.

Chen Yansen busied himself with making tea. When he was done, he looked up at Liang Bo and said, ”I want you to take charge of an algorithm-driven news aggregation platform. It will use search engine recommendation technology to provide each user with a unique, personalized content feed. The product will be called Toutiao.”

”So it has the same underlying logic as the Lingxi Browser, just in the form of a news app?”

It dawned on Liang Bo. He instantly understood why Chen Yansen had poached him. After thinking for a few seconds, he asked for confirmation.

”More or less. But besides a product proposal, you’re the only person on this project right now.”

Chen Yansen poured a cup of hot water and pushed it in front of Liang Bo.

”Thank you, Boss.” The word ”Boss” rolled off Liang Bo’s tongue more and more smoothly.

”List the types and number of R&D personnel you need. Submit it to me, and the HR department will coordinate recruitment for you.”

Chen Yansen lifted his teacup, took a sip, and said lightly.

”Boss, I’d like to see the product proposal for Toutiao first,” Liang Bo said with a nod.

Since he had decided to join, Liang Bo naturally wanted to know the direction of his future work to get a general idea of the project’s prospects.

”There’s no rush. We can talk about that after you’ve signed the contract.”

Chen Yansen said with a wave of his hand.

Liang Bo was nearly thirty. Having followed Zhang Yiming through several failed startups, life had already worn down his sharp edges.

At his age, a man had aging parents to support and young children to raise, with family expenses growing heavier by the day. Faced with a generous salary of 60,000 a month, Liang Bo didn’t think twice before resigning from his job with Zhang Yiming.

Startup dreams were important, but income was more important.

Thinking of this, Liang Bo asked, ”Boss, will our product’s content also be sourced by scraping?”

He knew full well that recklessly scraping content from other websites without authorization could drastically shorten the product’s data accumulation period, but it would also bring cease-and-desist letters much faster.

”Of course not,” Chen Yansen replied.

Liang Bo breathed a silent sigh of relief. As a top graduate from Nanda, even though he hadn’t majored in law, he understood the drawbacks of such a practice.

Hearing Chen Yansen’s answer, a great weight was lifted from his shoulders.

Chen Yansen glanced at Liang Bo and thought, ’Zhang Yiming may have some connections and resources in the industry, but not many. How could he possibly compare to me?’

Two weeks ago, he had already negotiated a partnership with Penguin.

They would directly call the Penguin News API, with the precondition that a deep-link back to Penguin News had to be added to the body of the articles.

Simply put, Toutiao would get to use Penguin News’s content for free, and Penguin News would get free access to Toutiao’s traffic.

If any new users flowed to Penguin, it would be a win for them.

Chen Yansen had packaged Toutiao as a zero-commission content navigation product. Using this pitch, he successfully won over Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu.

Then, using his connection with Zhang Chaoyang, he established partnerships with Sina and NetEase as well.

Only NetEase insisted on charging a copyright usage fee. Chen Yansen agreed without much thought, but with a counter-demand: users who clicked through from Toutiao to NetEase would be categorized as new or existing, and NetEase would be charged CPA and CPM advertising fees at market rates.

After hearing Chen Yansen’s explanation, Liang Bo’s worries instantly vanished. ’Working for a powerful boss really makes things so much easier,’ he thought.

’Whatever resources you need, the big boss can get them!’

After finishing his cup of tea, Liang Bo promptly stood up, grabbed his suitcase, and went to the HR department to report for duty.

「Meanwhile.」

Zhang Yiming wasn’t too concerned about Liang Bo’s departure. In his view, he could do anything Liang Bo could do.

The only reason Liang Bo had left, he figured, was because he believed that this fifth startup attempt would most likely fail as well.

Driven by this feeling, Zhang Yiming was desperate to launch the Lingxi Browser. He wanted to prove to everyone that he truly had a talent for entrepreneurship.

「At the same time.」

Cheng Weixing was leading Fast Taxi in a powerful rise in Hang City. With no competitors and a two-way subsidy policy for both drivers and passengers, its registered users quickly shot up from zero to 2.4 million.

Daily orders reached as high as 120,000!

In just one month, it had captured half of the Hang City market.

The total number of employees also ballooned from just over 100 to more than 500. Seventy percent of them were responsible for safety, driver management, and regional operations, while the remaining thirty percent handled tech development and headquarters operations.

”President Cheng, we only have about 6 million left in our account,” Fan Junyan reminded him.

”That fast?”

Cheng Weixing was stunned for a moment. Including the capital injection from Senlian Capital and Fast Taxi’s gross profit, they had burned through at least 30 million in this period.

In other words, to completely swallow Hang City’s ride-hailing market, they would need to invest another 30 to 40 million in subsidies.

And in the East China, North China, and Southern China markets, there were at least a dozen more cities with populations comparable to Hang City.

Just developing the market and acquiring users in the eastern region alone would require an investment of over 1 billion.

Only then did Cheng Weixing understand that if he hadn’t boarded the great ship of Senlian Capital, it would have taken him two or three years to conquer the Hang City market, even with his own capital, technical skills, and a smooth fundraising process.

”I understand.” Cheng Weixing mulled it over for a long moment before giving Fan Junyan a slight nod. Then he walked out of his office and directly dialed Chen Yansen’s mobile number.

”President Chen, Fast Taxi’s marketing funds are running low,” Cheng Weixing said, getting straight to the point.

The unspoken message was clear: ’I need money!’

”I’ll give you another 30 million. Take the Hang City ride-hailing market as quickly as possible. After that, I’ll initiate Fast Taxi’s Series A funding round.”

Chen Yansen leaned back, propped his feet on his desk, and said nonchalantly.

’30 million?’

’That should be enough!’

Cheng Weixing hadn’t expected Chen Yansen to be so forthright. Although his own equity stake would be diluted again, he didn’t care.

’When the pie gets bigger, everyone gets a better slice!’

”Thank you, President Chen! Give me one more month, and I’ll make sure every single taxi driver in Hang City has the Fast Taxi app installed on their phone.”

Cheng Weixing promised, full of confidence.

”Actually, you could try adding a private car service. This would increase competition among drivers and, in turn, improve Fast Taxi’s service quality,”

Chen Yansen advised.

Otherwise, in the eyes of the taxi drivers, Fast Taxi was just a piece of software handing them freebies. Without competitive pressure, even with a rating system, this bunch of drivers—used to acting like they owned the road—would still dare to be rude to passengers.

And those passengers were acquired with cold, hard cash.

’A private car service?’

’Unlicensed private cars?’

Cheng Weixing frowned, silently assessing the risks. After considering it for more than ten seconds, he answered cautiously, ”President Chen, I’ll draw up a proposal as soon as possible.”

”You decide. After all, you’re the CEO of Fast Taxi.”

Chen Yansen said with a smile.

In his past life, Cheng Weixing had been kicked out of management by investors early on, so most people had never even heard his name.

As the founder of Hua Country’s ride-hailing model, Cheng Weixing’s execution and management skills were not bad at all.

In less than a month, he had expanded the business to cover the entire central area of Hang City, a testament to his market development capabilities.

Just as Cheng Weixing was riding a wave of success, Cheng Wei left Ji Gang’s office, his face etched with disappointment.

A week earlier, he had finally made up his mind to resign from his position as Deputy General Manager of Wealth Treasure’s B2C division. Full of anticipation, he took his business plan for DiDi to Ji Gang of Ali Baba’s strategic investment department.

He had thought that, for the sake of their shared history as Ali Baba employees, Ji Gang would at least invest a few million, but he was rejected outright.

Cheng Wei had a nagging feeling that Ji Gang had rejected him personally, not the ride-hailing model itself.

Perhaps because Fast Taxi had already established a firm foothold in Hang City, Ali Baba simply didn’t want to waste money on DiDi. Investing in DiDi was a worse bet than investing in Fast Taxi.

’I should go to Yanjing and look for opportunities,’ Cheng Wei mused as he walked out of the Ali Headquarters.

Having made up his mind, he subconsciously glanced back at the Ali Headquarters, his eyes filled with resentment and indignation, before setting off on his quest to find investors.

Three days later, Senlian Capital injected 30 million into Fast Taxi.

As soon as Cheng Weixing got the money, he immediately accelerated his expansion.

The Orange Application Mall even placed promotional banners for Fast Taxi on its homepage and above the popular app search list, targeting users with Hang City IP addresses.

Riding on the gimmick of ”zero-yuan taxi rides,” Fast Taxi’s fame grew among young people. Even some uncles and aunts in their fifties learned how to use the ride-hailing app with help from their children.

In fact, Cheng Wei hadn’t been wrong in his assessment.

Ma Liyun was not at all uninterested in the ride-hailing market. On the contrary, he had immediately recognized that ride-hailing apps could enrich the offline payment scenarios for Wealth Treasure and increase the product’s daily active users.

However, he also saw the model’s drawbacks at a glance: developing the market would consume enormous amounts of manpower and financial resources.

At that time, Ali Baba’s top priority was buying back the shares Yahoo held in Ali Baba, which was why he had rejected Cheng Wei’s investment proposal.

But he was very interested in Fast Taxi!

That very afternoon, Ma Liyun personally called Chen Yansen.

’Ali Baba wants to buy a stake in Fast Taxi?’

’And add Wealth Treasure as a payment option?’

Chen Yansen thought for a moment before agreeing to Ma Liyun’s request.

Because he hadn’t just said yes to Ma Liyun; he had also said yes to Ma Wenteng, Zhu Xiaohu of Jinsha Venture Capital, Zhou Shouzhi of DST Capital, and others—six venture capital firms in total.

There was no other way. This market burned through a ridiculous amount of money; it was impossible for him to keep it all for himself.

The greedier you are, the more enemies you make!