Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

The spoils from their sea fishing trip had already been handed over to the kitchen staff at Jingzhao Prefect by Zhang Chaoyang’s assistant. Just as Chen Yansen was about to walk into the private room, he heard someone call from behind, ”President Chen!”

Chen Yansen turned around at the sound.

It was Shen Nanpeng from Redwood Capital, and... Wang Xin, the founder of Meituan.

”President Chen, President Zhang, what a coincidence,” Shen Nanpeng said with a smile, jogging over to greet them.

”President Shen, a pleasure.”

Chen Yansen extended his right hand and exchanged pleasantries.

This was the first time he and Shen Nanpeng had met. The other man had invested in OFO Bike’s Series A financing, so in a way, he was a partner of Senlian Capital.

Zhang Chaoyang had been about to suggest they all dine together, but the moment he saw Wang Xin, he immediately shut his mouth.

Wang Xin stared daggers at Chen Yansen, his eyes filled with fury.

After a few seconds of silent contemplation, he took a deep breath, forced a smile, and offered a polite greeting. ”President Chen, President Zhang.”

”Is President Shen thinking of a follow-up investment in Meituan?” Chen Yansen asked, ignoring Wang Xin and turning to Shen Nanpeng.

’Do you take me for a fool?’

’As if I don’t know what’s going on with Meituan.’

’Investing more at this point would be no different from throwing money down the drain.’

Shen Nanpeng gave an awkward laugh. ”I’m just out for a meal with President Wang. We’re not talking business.”

To Wang Xin, those words were like a plunge into an icy abyss.

With only four days left until the end of May, Meituan’s transaction volume had just broken 300 million, with e-commerce accounting for 39% of it.

In other words, the monthly transaction volume for its Group Buy business was now less than 200 million.

At this rate, Meituan would have to rebrand itself as ’Meituan E-commerce’ in a few months.

Chen Yansen chatted with Shen Nanpeng for a few more minutes before ending the conversation and heading deeper into the courtyard.

After they left, Wang Xin could no longer keep his composure. His face instantly darkened.

”President Wang, stop overthinking it. The best outcome for Meituan is to find a willing buyer while its performance is stable over the next couple of months,” Shen Nanpeng advised.

He had invested a lot of money in Meituan and naturally wanted to recoup some of it.

But a follow-up investment was out of the question!

Pan-Atlantic Capital’s 100 million USD had only kept Meituan afloat for three more months. It was a bottomless pit.

”President Shen, I’ll have to trouble you then,” Wang Xin replied.

He needed Redwood Capital’s connections and network. Even though he was dissatisfied with Shen Nanpeng, he didn’t dare show it in the slightest.

Each with their own ulterior motives, the two returned to the private room with smiles on their faces.

Meanwhile.

Chen Yansen and Zhang Chaoyang sat across from each other, the table laden with exquisite dishes.

”I bet Wang Xin wants to sell the company,” Zhang Chaoyang said with conviction.

”Who cares? Whether Wang Xin sells or not, it won’t have much of an impact on Kuai Pao,” Chen Yansen said unconcernedly, pouring a cup of warm tea.

”True! Kuai Pao’s biggest rival is Qian Du.” Zhang Chaoyang waved his hand, and an assistant quickly brought over two bottles of fine wine.

...

...

「At dawn the next day, the sky was just beginning to lighten.」

Chen Yansen slowly opened his eyes, brushed Song Yuncheng’s hair away from his face, then lifted the corner of the covers, picked up his pajamas from the foot of the bed, and put them on.

He glanced out the window. It was gray and hazy. He didn’t need to check the time to know it was no later than five in the morning.

He sat down at his desk, turned on his computer, logged into the data backend, and, as usual, checked the recent business and financial status of products like Pinbei, Kuai Pao, and Fast Taxi.

After surpassing Jingdong, Pinbei’s single-day sales soared. It took three months to go from 1 billion to 1.2 billion, but only two months to go from 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion.

Huang Zheng had set a target of 10 billion for the 618 shopping festival, which was 3 billion higher than last year’s Singles’ Day transaction volume.

Business for Kuai Pao and Fast Taxi had stabilized. Although Qian Du had snatched some market share through a price war, it had come at a steep cost for Li Yanhong.

Furthermore, due to differences in user experience, after-sales service, and order fulfillment, the retention rates for Qian Du Group Buy and Qian Du Delivery were also very poor.

Instances of merchants ”brushing” orders to fraudulently obtain subsidies were becoming more and more common.

Li Yanhong made high demands and pushed his teams hard, so the operations managers under him simply turned a blind eye.

After all, the higher the merchants’ sales volume, the bigger their commission.

Some of the bolder city operations managers would directly set up ’fake stores’ and lead the charge in exploiting event subsidies—everything from the products to the customers and orders was completely fabricated.

’How much can a monthly salary even pay?’

’It’s nothing compared to the thrill of fleecing the company!’

They could make anywhere from seven or eight hundred a day on the low end, to five or six thousand on the high end.

If a colleague found out, they just had to pull that person in on it too.

Although this group of people was small, the damage they inflicted on the platform was significant.

For every 1 million in funds Li Yanhong spent, 300,000 was siphoned off by merchants and internal fraudsters, another 300,000 was taken by professional deal hunters, and of the users acquired with the remaining 400,000, less than one-tenth were retained.

In reality, Kuai Pao experienced similar phenomena, just on a smaller scale.

In all of 2012, several hundred merchants had their stores shut down for order brushing and subsidy fraud. The list of internal employees submitted by the risk control department to the Inspection Institute contained as many as 47 names.

It was human nature; there was no way to completely eliminate it.

Chen Yansen could only have Pei Yi strengthen the risk control mechanisms and anti-cheating detection. Anyone who dared to step out of line would be fired at best, or sent to prison at worst.

After finishing his work, he crawled back into bed and went back to sleep for a bit.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, Chen Yansen got into a black Maybach 62S and sped toward the 798 Art Center.

Although Xiaomi wasn’t a top-tier brand in the mobile phone industry like Orange, Huawei, or ZTE, it was still a leader among second-tier manufacturers.

Thanks to the loyal user base it had built over three years, a teeming crowd of fans was visible the moment one entered the conference hall.

They wore matching printed T-shirts with the words ’Born for Fever’ emblazoned on the chest in an eye-catching font.

Just as Chen Yansen got out of the car, he ran right into Yu Chendong from Huawei.

In 2013, Lei Yijun and Yu Chendong could still maintain a civil front as friendly competitors, often flattering each other on Weibo.

Big Mouth would praise Xiaomi’s products for having conviction and commend its marketing and channel development capabilities.

Lei Yijun, in turn, regarded Ren Zhongfei as his idol and looked to ’Huawei’ as a model to learn from.

In a word: they had loved.

”President Chen, give me a heads-up. How many new products does Lei Yijun have today?” Yu Chendong asked, lowering his voice.

”Three phones, one speaker,” Chen Yansen said with a smile.

There was no harm in telling Yu Chendong; after all, he would find out in an hour anyway.

”What about the price points?” Yu Chendong pressed.

”President Yu, don’t panic! They won’t have much of an impact on Huawei,” Chen Yansen said after a moment’s thought.

The Xiaomi 2A and Xiaomi 2S were mainly targeting the low-to-mid-range market, while the Redmi 1 was aimed at the thousand-yuan phone market.

The overlap with Huawei’s product price segments wasn’t high.

”I’m not actually scared,” Yu Chendong said, though he didn’t mean it.

In the past two years, with the rise of Orange, 360, and Xiaomi, as well as carriers’ restrictions on contract phones, life hadn’t been easy for Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and Lenovo.

”I believe you,” Chen Yansen replied with a nod.

His expression and demeanor were perfectly normal, but Yu Chendong felt he was just being perfunctory.

”President Chen, President Yu, a pleasure to see you both! I’m Luo Yonghao from Hammer Technology...”

Just then, a familiar voice sounded beside them.

Chen Yansen turned his head and, sure enough, saw Luo Yonghao dressed in a polo shirt with a stand-up collar.

’Lei Yijun really likes inviting Luo Yonghao, huh,’ Chen Yansen grumbled to himself.

He had run into Luo Yonghao at last year’s product launch, and unexpectedly, here he was again this year.

”You two chat. I’ll be on my way,” Chen Yansen said with a slight nod to Yu Chendong and Luo Yonghao.

Chen Yansen didn’t like getting too close to unlucky people, afraid of their bad luck rubbing off on him.

’What do I have to talk to him about!’ Yu Chendong complained to himself. After a few perfunctory words, he hurried after Chen Yansen.

’Hammer Technology?’

’What kind of serious person gives their product a name like that?’

’The guy spends more than half a year just to make a deeply customized version of Android, hasn’t even scraped together a supply chain, and a character like him thinks he can build phones?’

Yu Chendong concluded that he and Luo Yonghao had no common ground.

”...” Luo Yonghao watched their retreating backs, a corner of his mouth twitching. He thought, ’It’s not like I’m the plague. Do you really have to run away that fast?’

「Meanwhile.」

Apple, using the Orange Z1 Instruction Set as a foundation along with its own proprietary CPU architecture patents, had finally completed the design work for the A7 chip.

What surprised Chen Yansen was that Apple was one step ahead of him!

After testing the power-to-performance ratio and computational efficiency on simulation tools, Apple immediately abandoned the ARM instruction set architecture.

In the eyes of a businessman, they would buy patented technology from whoever offered the lowest price and the best product.

Even though Orange Technology was a Hua Country tech company, Cook couldn’t care less.

Even if ARM lowered its prices, he wouldn’t go back unless ARM could produce a patented instruction set with more advanced performance. Otherwise, he would rather use the Orange Z1 Instruction Set.

Soon, semiconductor companies like Qualcomm and Broadcom also heard the news. Ruling out the possibility that Cook had gone insane, only one answer remained: the superiority of the Orange Z1 Instruction Set was beyond their imagination.

Qualcomm, which had previously maintained an arrogant attitude, immediately shed its pride and placed a call to its head of the Great China Region.