Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

”Oh, come on. We’re just getting called in after hours. It’s not like we aren’t getting paid overtime for it. Back when I was at Ah Li, I used to work until dawn all the time,” Zhou Xia said casually, waving his hand to comfort the others.

Being called back to the office for a night shift after they were already in bed was definitely annoying, but they were all just cogs in the machine. No one said anything too harsh.

Hong Jun and Xie Rui exchanged a smile, then yawned and walked toward the elevator bank together.

The next morning, Cheng Weixing opened the incident report.

Gao Qiang hadn’t been feeding Zhang Yunni a line. He had attached her timecard records to the email, showing she had worked overtime for ten consecutive days. On top of that, the backend UI styles for the testing and production environments were indeed highly similar.

”First, adjust the backend UI style of the testing environment.”

”Second, lower the upper threshold for risk-control alerts and establish a rollback plan.”

”Third, add a secondary confirmation button in the production environment to prevent similar incidents from recurring...”

At the end of the email were Gao Qiang’s proposed optimizations, as well as the recommended penalty for Zhang Yunni’s mistake.

Her Q2 bonus would be canceled, and she would be removed from the promotion list for the second half of the year.

Cheng Weixing frowned slightly. The punishment was a bit too harsh. After a moment’s thought, he understood what Gao Qiang was doing.

’This guy is trying to plead her case, and he’s being so damn roundabout about it.’

Cheng Weixing shook his head and cursed under his breath.

Zhang Yunni was exceptionally capable and a hard worker. Plus, she was a veteran employee who had been transferred from Hang City to Yanjing. Negating all her past contributions over a single mistake would be disheartening for everyone.

’Who can guarantee they’ll never make a single mistake at work?’

After some thought, Cheng Weixing canceled the second penalty, only docking Zhang Yunni’s Q2 performance bonus by fifty percent.

The effectiveness of the ”Fast Taxi Red Packets” at acquiring new users, however, far exceeded his expectations.

’Since it’s so effective, why wait another day?’

Cheng Weixing made an immediate decision: launch it now.

「Meanwhile.」

「Fast Taxi’s Yanjing Branch Office.」

Gao Qiang opened the reply from President Cheng and quickly scanned it. When he saw the final decision regarding Zhang Yunni, he couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

That afternoon, Fast Taxi’s Red Packets feature officially went live.

The product managers categorized users into four types on the backend: new users; users who had registered but never placed an order; existing users who hadn’t placed an order in the last 7 days; and existing users who hadn’t placed an order in the last 30 days.

The promotion could only be initiated by existing users, who could then split a 100-yuan cash red packet with others by having them ”open” it.

New users: up to 8 yuan.

Registered users who had never placed an order: up to 5 yuan.

Existing users who hadn’t placed an order in 7 days: up to 5 yuan.

Existing users who hadn’t placed an order in 30 days: up to 8 yuan.

Once a passenger completed a ride, the money would be deposited into their Orange Pay balance.

This strategy served a dual purpose: one, to seize a larger share of the Yanjing ride-hailing market, and two, to create more offline use cases for Orange Pay, thereby increasing user retention.

This model—getting free rides and even earning cash rewards—instantly blew DiDi Dache’s market to smithereens.

The drivers didn’t leave, but all the passengers flocked to Fast Taxi.

In a single day, DiDi Dache’s daily orders plummeted to just over 40,000.

Cheng Wei didn’t have time to overthink it. He simultaneously ramped up DiDi’s own promotions while pushing his product and R&D teams to copy the ”Fast Taxi Red Packets” model.

’Copying them isn’t the issue right now. We have to defend our market share first.’

Fast Taxi’s red packets spread like wildfire via QQ, WeChat, Renren Network, and various BBS forums. This viral, social-sharing approach to red packets was naturally interactive and shareable, proving far more effective than their previous strategy of just giving coupons to new users.

In just a few days, Fast Taxi’s registered driver count grew by over 3,000, reaching a total of 17,000—which accounted for 25% of the entire Yanjing taxi market. Its average daily orders skyrocketed to 600,000.

Under this ”cash-burning land grab” strategy, Yanjing, despite being their latest focus, became the first city to surpass 500,000 daily orders.

Two days later, DiDi Dache launched its ”Split a 108-Yuan Cash Prize” promotion. But to Cheng Wei’s surprise, just three hours after going live, both WeChat and QQ blocked the link to the event.

”Motherfucker! Son of a bitch Ma Wenteng, could you be any more biased?!”

Cheng Wei erupted in a furious tirade.

As a result, DiDi Dache’s promotion link could only be circulated on platforms like Qian Du’s forums, Renren Network, and Weibo. The results paled in comparison to the viral effect of Fast Taxi’s red packet campaign.

But there were others who were even more furious than Cheng Wei.

Wang Jianwei, the founder of YaoYao Zhaoche, sat in his office looking utterly dejected. What stung more than being defeated was being completely ignored.

Before DiDi Dache’s rise, YaoYao Zhaoche had been Yanjing’s original ride-hailing pioneer, but their business models differed.

DiDi Dache and Fast Taxi partnered with taxi companies, whereas YaoYao Zhaoche partnered with car rental agencies.

From May to June, the price war between DiDi and Fast Taxi had completely wiped out YaoYao Zhaoche’s market share.

Wang Jianwei was so frustrated he couldn’t even speak. DiDi and Fast Taxi hadn’t targeted YaoYao Zhaoche directly, yet his company was now on the verge of collapse.

The monthly car rental fees weighed on his shoulders like a mountain.

Only now did he think to contact his investors for another round of funding to pivot to the taxi business, but it was already too late.

As YaoYao Zhaoche’s angel investors, both Redwood Capital and Zhen Fund refused to make any follow-on investments.

After seeing the superiority of the models used by DiDi and Fast Taxi, who would want to throw more money at YaoYao Zhaoche?

Even if Wang Jianwei secured the funding and pivoted immediately, things like order-matching algorithms, GPS systems, and partner resources all required time to build from scratch.

Investing in YaoYao Zhaoche now would be just throwing good money after bad.

Wang Jianwei held on for two more days before announcing on June 14th that YaoYao Zhaoche was ceasing operations. The countdown to the company’s shutdown had begun.

Yet, even at this point, neither Cheng Wei nor Gao Qiang had paid any attention to YaoYao Zhaoche. To them, a small company with only a thousand daily orders was no different from a weed on the roadside.

And several such ”weeds” like YaoYao Zhaoche had gone under in rapid succession, without making so much as a ripple in the industry.

The market share between Fast Taxi and DiDi Dache gradually stabilized at a 7-to-3 ratio. No matter how much Cheng Wei struggled, he couldn’t close the gap.

Of the 200 million yuan raised in their Series C round, 60 million had been burned through in just over twenty days.

After seeing the weekly financial report, the investment liaisons from Qian Du, Today Capital, Haina Asia, and Gao Ling Capital felt their vision go dark.

’DiDi Dache burns way too much damn money!’

Little did they know, a full twenty percent of that money had been siphoned off by Gray Studios.

DiDi Dache’s newly formed risk control department soon discovered the existence of these ”wool-pullers” and reported it to Cheng Wei.

”Are you telling me that 20 million yuan of our funding has been scammed from us?”

Coming from a business background, Cheng Wei didn’t understand the technology and hadn’t realized the importance of having anti-fraud mechanisms in place.

”Yes, President Cheng. The technical department has already tightened IP and device restrictions and banned a number of drivers who were using virtual machines or location-spoofing software to fake rides,” replied Wang Zhigang, the newly appointed director of DiDi’s security department.

”Call the police!” Cheng Wei, about to go mad with rage, ordered immediately.

「At the same time.」

Inside a residential building in Yanjiao, Brother Hui’s face was ashen. He instantly understood what was happening when he discovered their accounts were being banned one after another.

He hurriedly gathered his crew, grabbed their equipment—modem pools, computers, and all—and fled Yanjing in a rush.

In the past two months, the five of them had skimmed more than three million yuan. If they got caught, they were definitely looking at serious prison time.

By the time the Inspectors arrived, the place was completely deserted.

Brother Hui and his crew got away quickly, but some of the slower fraudsters were still busy swapping SIM cards, preparing to register a new batch of accounts.

Naturally, they were caught red-handed.

The next afternoon, news that DiDi Dache had been hit by massive fraud splashed across the homepages of Toutiao, NetEase, Sohu, and Weibo.

”SCAMMED OUT OF 20 MILLION! DIDI DACHE ISSUES WARNING: RETURN THE FUNDS BY THE 25TH OR FACE CRIMINAL CHARGES!”

Riding on the sensational 20-million-yuan figure, DiDi Dache shot to the top of the trending topics list.

’This is one wave of publicity I’d rather do without!’

Cheng Wei didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’d never imagined that DiDi Dache’s first time hitting the top of the trending list would be for a reason like this.