Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

”President Chen, I’m Xiao Naibing from the Internet of Things Engineering program. Here is my resume, please accept it.”

Xiao Naibing brazenly presented his resume with both hands.

Chen Yansen couldn’t help but chuckle. He didn’t reach for it, instead sizing the young man up and down before asking, ”The spring recruitment fair is right over there. If everyone did what you’re doing, what would be the point of me hiring an HR department?”

Xiao Naibing was a senior about to graduate. At the end of the day, he was just a young man in his early twenties. Chen Yansen’s question made his face flush then go pale; his composure clearly wasn’t strong enough yet.

”I apologize, President Chen. I’m only bothering you so brazenly because there were no positions that matched my major.”

Xiao Naibing’s face was beet red as he scratched his head and confessed honestly.

”Resume.”

Chen Yansen said coldly.

An expression of sheer ecstasy instantly flooded Xiao Naibing’s face, and he hurriedly offered his resume again.

Even though he was a senior and Chen Yansen was only a sophomore, he didn’t dare pull rank as an upperclassman.

Chen Yansen casually flipped through a couple of pages, then spoke. ”There’s an IoT developer position over in Shencheng City. The starting salary is 6,000 yuan, which isn’t high, but room and board are included.”

”Thank you, President Chen! I can accept that,” Xiao Naibing readily agreed.

After all, everyone knew that for a subsidiary under Senlian Capital, a 6,000 yuan monthly salary was effectively a pre-tax income of 8,000 yuan.

”Go home and wait for the offer! This is a one-time thing, understand what I mean?”

Chen Yansen handed the resume back to him with a smiling reminder.

Xiao Naibing followed Chen Yansen’s gaze and saw a group of students watching from a distance. He immediately got the hint, putting on a dejected look as if he’d been rejected and heading back to his dorm with a sigh.

’Young minds sure are sharp.’

Chen Yansen thought to himself.

He then continued toward the faculty apartments.

「Half an hour later,」

He went downstairs, got in his car, and drove to the Science and Technology Park.

Between the autumn and spring recruitment drives, he planned to hire a total of 500 graduates from Xuyuan. It sounded like a lot, but once they were distributed among the various projects and departments, they would barely make a ripple.

Furthermore, 70% of these positions were internships for operations specialists, design assistants, and business roles.

Even so, Tang Qingshan was extremely satisfied. He had already given Chen Yansen a heads-up, insisting that he speak as a distinguished alumnus at the coming fall semester’s freshman welcoming ceremony.

’Distinguished alumnus, my ass!’

Chen Yansen had absolutely no interest in things that offered zero benefit, but this was the second time Old Tang had asked, so he had to give the man some face.

「Ten minutes later,」

Chen Yansen parked his car in front of Building 9 and took the elevator to the eighth floor.

”Boss, regarding the issues you brought up last time, I had the tech department make adjustments according to your instructions.”

As soon as Liang Bo saw Chen Yansen approaching, he hurried over to report on the development progress of Toutiao.

Today Technology currently had only a little over 60 development engineers, so they were crammed into the same office building as Orange Technology.

”Lingxi Browser goes live tomorrow,” Chen Yansen said casually, leaning against a desk.

”It only took two months from start to finish. That development speed is just like Zhang Yiming’s personality—he pursues efficiency but also values stability.”

Liang Bo was momentarily stunned, then said with a smile.

”I believe Toutiao will be no worse a product than Lingxi. When it comes to the strength of the development team, Zhang Yiming is no match for you.”

Chen Yansen said lightly.

This sentence seemed like a pep talk for Liang Bo, but it was also the truth. Between February and March, Orange Technology and Pinbei Mall had scoured over a dozen universities within the province, recruiting more than three hundred outstanding graduates from schools like Huake University, Lu Zhou Institute of Technology, and Zhou Lai Polytechnic.

Among these people were development engineers proficient in algorithms, machine learning, and computer vision, as well as top talents in big data development and natural language processing.

Many of them had accumulated two or three years of practical experience working on projects with their advisors during their junior and senior years of college or their master’s programs.

Naturally, Liang Bo’s team had been allocated a batch of these new hires.

This was the main reason why Toutiao’s development had progressed so far.

”It’s all thanks to your support, Boss,” Liang Bo said with a smile.

”Aim for an April 1st launch. My positioning for Toutiao is as a traffic-generating machine that can complement the traffic and data of Pinbei, Fast Taxi, and Kuai Pao. Although Toutiao is starting late, it’s the project I value most.”

Chen Yansen first stated his requirement, then began painting a grand vision.

He had said the same thing to Pei Yi, to Cheng Weixing, and to Huang Zheng.

Now he was saying it again to Liang Bo. Judging from the man’s emotional feedback, it was clear the speech was working.

Combined with the influence of his Spiritual Power, Liang Bo looked like he’d been shot up with adrenaline, ready to turn around and work 24 hours straight for his boss.

”Yes, Boss! Rest assured, I’ll manage the progress and get it online as soon as possible while ensuring quality,” Liang Bo said, his back ramrod straight as he immediately stated his position.

”Good. Get back to work.”

Chen Yansen clapped Liang Bo on the shoulder and waved him off.

Liang Bo nodded and walked back to his workstation, his face glowing with spirit.

’Tsk, tsk. So Spiritual Power can be used like this too!’

Chen Yansen smiled faintly.

He returned to his office and plopped down on the sofa.

He took out his phone, downloaded the file package Zhang Yiming had sent him, and installed Lingxi Browser a day early.

The interface was simple, boxy, and completely lacking in design sense.

At the top of the screen was a search box and URL bar.

Below that was a row of five icon entry points: News, Novels, Pictures, Videos, and Websites.

Scrolling down further revealed an information waterfall feed, dominated by text and images. Videos were mostly displayed with static cover images, and before playing, the app would once again remind the user how many megabytes of data the upcoming video would consume and ask if they wanted to switch to WIFI mode.

It couldn’t be helped. In 2012, data prices were still too expensive. The moment users felt an app consumed too much data, they would subconsciously reduce the number of times they opened it, no matter how good the product was.

Chen Yansen tried swiping left and right. There was no lag or stuttering; Zhang Yiming had clearly prioritized compatibility with the Orange Mobile Phone.

The content on Lingxi Browser was 100% scraped. Zhang Yiming only noted the news source at the very bottom of the content page.

If you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t even notice it.

Chen Yansen clicked on a video with a thumbnail of a busty woman. After watching for a dozen seconds, he habitually swiped down but was not taken to a new video.

Obviously, version 1.0 of Lingxi Browser did not yet have this feature.

He had no choice but to swipe left to go back and refresh the homepage.

This time, the style of content in the video section changed completely. It was all big chests or big butts, with one or two celebrity gossip videos occasionally mixed in, as if testing Chen Yansen’s next area of interest.

「Ten minutes later,」

Chen Yansen put down his phone.

He roughly estimated that Lingxi Browser, based on his browsing behavior, had taken only ten seconds to select video content he liked from a massive sea of content.

This indicated that the information underwent feature extraction and tagging when it was added to the database.

Simply put, if a user liked to view Type A information, the system would recommend content with the Type A tag.

’Zhang Yiming really has some skills. His experience at Kuxun, Fanfou, and Jiu Jiu Room gave him a rich foundation in recommendation engine technology, allowing him to develop Lingxi Browser in such a short time.’

Chen Yansen’s eyes narrowed slightly as he couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration.

Unfortunately, Zhang Yiming was too shrewd when it came to equity structure and refused to give up his controlling stake.

In the future, even if Byte grew to have over 100,000 employees, Chen Yansen wouldn’t get a single wisp of Human Dao Fire.

’The product is good, but you have to make way for Toutiao!’

「The next day at 8:00 AM.」

A promotional poster for Lingxi Browser appeared on the homepage of the Orange Application Mall.

Of course, they had paid for this ad placement.

At the same time, Zhang Yiming was also optimizing his promotional plans for 91 Assistant, Wandoujia, and AppBao, intending to further increase his product’s exposure.

At this time, UC Browser, QQ Browser, and Qian Du Browser were in a period of high-speed growth. The first had a massive user base, while the latter two had traffic funneled from their parent products, which had user bases in the hundreds of millions.

The only thing Zhang Yiming could rely on was the product itself.

He understood Chen Yansen’s intentions just from the level of resources allocated to Lingxi Browser.

Senlian Capital’s equity stake from Byte’s seed round was too small, so Chen Yansen was taking a strictly business approach.

’You can have resources, but you have to pay!’

Zhang Yiming sighed. He knew in his heart that Chen Yansen’s actions were irreproachable.

But he wasn’t wrong for not wanting to lose control of his company, either.

’It’s all business, no personal feelings!’

Cheng Weixing’s Fast Taxi, on the other hand, had received Chen Yansen’s full support. They had both started at the same time.

Lingxi Browser had just launched, but Fast Taxi’s valuation had already broken 600 million US Dollars. It boasted over 5 million users in Hang City and Jinling, with daily orders reaching as high as 300,000.

But Zhang Yiming wasn’t the least bit envious. He knew that Cheng Weixing had long been relegated to the second-largest shareholder.

If he had to choose again, Zhang Yiming would still opt to bring in Source Code, Today Capital, and Ethereum Capital to dilute Senlian Capital’s influence over Byte.

After one day, Lingxi Browser’s 24-hour download count was just over 80,000.

It didn’t seem like a small number, but it was all bought and paid for.

Once the money stopped, the new users would drop to zero.

Zhang Yiming could only pin his hopes on the first batch of seed users.

In reality, compared to Cheng Wei, Zhang Yiming’s starting conditions weren’t bad at all. He had four venture capital firms throwing money at him from the very beginning.

Cheng Wei couldn’t even get a meeting with an investor. His 800,000 in startup capital was scraped together with old colleagues, and he couldn’t even afford a development team. The first version of DiDi Dache was actually made by a subcontractor’s subcontractor.

「Meanwhile.」

After integrating Eleme’s courier resources, Kuai Pao quickly expanded its delivery team to 2,200 people, with daily delivery orders reaching as high as 240,000.

In addition, there were over 400 part-time food delivery couriers.

The Hu City food delivery market had become Kuai Pao’s private backyard. As long as delivery resources could keep up, the entire city’s order volume could continue to skyrocket!

Seeing this, Zhu Xiaohu of Jinsha Venture Capital could no longer hold back. He called Chen Yansen again, demanding to invest.

Ah Li and Penguin’s interest was just as strong!

To win over Chen Yansen, Liu Zhiping even threw out a valuation of 1 billion US Dollars!

For a food delivery platform with no competitors and daily orders exceeding 400,000, this wasn’t considered a high price!