Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

’If I accidentally crush Meituan, then in this life, a product like Meituan Takeout might never even appear.’

”600 million US Dollars,” Zhu Xiaohu ventured cautiously.

”President Zhu, I have a morning meeting. I don’t have time to joke around with you,” Chen Yansen retorted mercilessly.

’600 million US Dollars?’

’Is he taking me for a fool?!’

’Jinsha Venture Capital, Maitun Investment, and the Renite Fund want someone to take this off their hands, but they’re not willing to cut their losses and take the hit. They’re actually trying to make a profit from this. As if things could be that easy.’

”400 million is the lowest. You have to understand, Lashou Network raised a total of 170 million US Dollars in funding. I know the current public opinion is against Lashou Network, but it still has its market share.”

Zhu Xiaohu said, trying to be patient.

”President Zhu is right. I wish Lashou the best of luck getting stronger and stronger under Qiu Junping’s leadership.”

After saying this, Chen Yansen hung up the phone.

’I’ll wait until Wang Xin from Meituan and Zhang Tao from Dianping have beaten Lashou Network into submission.’

Clearly, Zhu Xiaohu and the others had yet to face reality.

”Damn it! That little bastard is a cunning one!” Zhu Xiaohu couldn’t help but curse under his breath as he listened to the dial tone.

Before long, he contacted Liu Zhiping of Penguin.

Liu Zhiping didn’t hesitate and refused outright.

Gaopeng Network, the joint venture between Penguin and Groupon, had long since fallen out of the market’s top ten, and QQ Group Buy was also lukewarm at best.

Ma Wenteng was considering whether to merge the two sites to reduce operational costs.

Asking Little Ma to fork out money for another group buy site at this point had almost zero chance of success.

Unable to find a buyer to take over, Jinsha Venture Capital, Maitun Investment, and the Renite Fund could only bite the bullet and let Qiu Junping take the lead for now.

In mid-April, the group buy market was roiling with undercurrents.

On one hand, Qiu Junping increased promotional activities to win over users and merchants. On the other, he leveraged the Renite Fund’s connections in the Lighthouse Country to try and quell the scandal over Lashou Network’s fraudulent accounting.

As long as Lashou Network could successfully IPO, the crisis would be resolved.

But Meituan, Dianping, WoWo Group, and Nuomi Network gave Lashou Network no breathing room whatsoever.

As Lashou Network ramped up its promotions, its competitors promptly launched their own marketing campaigns.

Meituan abandoned its agent system, fully adopting a direct, on-the-ground sales model to rapidly expand its merchant resources, and launched a special offer for movie tickets at 19.9 yuan each.

Dianping launched electronic coupons, online reservations, and a membership card feature.

WoWo Group pivoted to a marketplace model, combining group buying with e-commerce to focus on differentiated competition.

Nuomi Network partnered with high-quality merchants in over 50 cities across the country to release bestseller lists for categories like movies, dining, and KTV. They also gave away 5 million yuan in cash vouchers to users in one go, further squeezing Lashou Network’s room for survival.

...

...

「Early on the morning of April 13th.」

As soon as Chen Yansen arrived at the office, he saw Wang Teng approaching with a grin.

”Boss, about 100,000 of Apple’s Mac computers were infected with the Flashback virus today. Even a few hundred Macs at Apple Headquarters got hit, causing sales of the iPhone 4S to cool down.”

Wang Teng explained with a smile.

”What do Macs have to do with iPhones? Can this virus infect phones too?” Chen Yansen asked curiously, pulling over a chair and sitting down.

”Users in the domestic market don’t care about the details. The fact is that Apple got infected by a virus. If we can damage a competitor by selectively ignoring a few key details, why wouldn’t we?” Wang Teng replied.

’All users will think is that Apple’s claims of a secure system are bullshit.’

After Wang Teng finished explaining the whole story, Chen Yansen learned that last July, an engineer in the Netherlands had discovered a major vulnerability in Java and reported it to Oracle Bone Script, the owner of Java’s core patents.

Oracle Bone Script and Microsoft quickly developed patches for these security vulnerabilities.

But Apple, trying to be a show-off, insisted on developing its own Java patch independently. As a result, they were a step behind and got targeted by hackers.

”A partial truth is still a truth. Have our sales changed?” Chen Yansen asked with a smirk, the corners of his mouth turning up.

”Compared to the same time yesterday, sales are up 12.7%. After accounting for factors like traffic fluctuations, it’s an estimated 10% increase.”

Wang Teng answered immediately.

Chen Yansen took out his phone. Weibo was a mess of angry comments. Apple users were cursing out Apple, Android users were mocking Apple users, and various phone manufacturers couldn’t resist jumping in to diss the security of Apple’s system.

The next trending topic was a news report about 360 suing Penguin. 360 was demanding 150 million yuan in damages, while Penguin had countersued 360 for 125 million yuan.

’Lao Zhou has lost his mind. Suing Penguin in Shencheng City... it’d be a damn miracle if he won.’

Chen Yansen scoffed.

If he remembered correctly, Zhou Hongyi wouldn’t get a single cent and would end up paying Penguin 5 million in compensation instead.

Only now could the 3Q War be considered truly over.

”Continue optimizing the Aurora OS 1.38 system. Once Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel’s voice interaction engine goes live, our new fall product will be halfway done.”

Chen Yansen said encouragingly, patting Wang Teng on the shoulder.

”Okay, Boss. I understand,” Wang Teng replied with a nod.

Chen Yansen waved his hand, dismissing Wang Teng to get back to work. He then took the elevator to the floor where the Orange Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was located.

”Boss, regarding your last request to add natural language processing and speech synthesis technology to the Yuxi functional module, I’ve spoken with Daniel. We’ll probably need another month for the development cycle.”

Zhou Chuangxi took the initiative to report as soon as he saw his boss.

”In that case, it’s no longer appropriate to call it a voice recognition tool. Let’s change it to the Yuxi Interaction Engine.”

Chen Yansen said with a faint smile.

’At that point, Yuxi will have full-chain processing capabilities, including voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis. As long as we increase the amount of voice data for training, we can create an intelligent voice assistant capable of real-time communication.’

’This kind of thing might not be a big deal five or six years from now, but in 2012, it’s definitely a product ahead of its time.’

Moreover, what Chen Yansen was building was a development tool, creating an ecosystem. On one hand, he could make money from technology patents; on the other, he could leverage the data acquisition channels of other phone manufacturers.

”Okay.” Zhou Chuangxi opened his mouth, then immediately closed it again and readily agreed.

’He actually really wanted to suggest that his boss change the name ’Yuxi,’ but on second thought, he gave up the idea.’

’Yuxi was just a development tool for an intelligent voice interaction engine; its name wasn’t that important.’

’But if his boss gave the future intelligent voice assistant such a shitty name, he would definitely stand up and object.’

Immediately after, Chen Yansen called Daniel over, and the three of them went into the office for a technical seminar.

Privately, Daniel referred to the weekly ’technical seminars’ as classes, because he learned something new every time. Chen Yansen always managed to give him new insights into programming languages, development frameworks, and database structures.

Just before the end of the workday, a call came from Zhou Hongyi, whom he hadn’t heard from in a long time.