Reboot 2003

Chapter 99 006: The Ice Cream Effect

There is one thing to say, these proposals are actually reasonable.

Chang You was talking about browser news, Zhao Shiqiang was talking about input method advertisements, which are all means to make the project profitable, and Zhou Peng was talking about software bundling, which users talked about in the early years, and it is one of the simplest and crudest monetization channels for free software.

As for this series of proposals, the most reliable one is Xiao Wang's idea.

After all, game cheats are also software. Now that the technology and manpower are available, the market for online game cheats is also on the rise. Making money from cheats is a profitable way that will not affect the user experience. In the original time and space, a well-known vice president of antivirus software went to sea to do cheats and was arrested...

Of course, the reason for not doing this is also very simple, that is, legal risks. In 2004, the government increased support for online games, and one of the key points of policy support is to catch cheats and private servers.

And other than that...

Although it can be considered in the future, it is not currently in Chen Qin's plan.

After all, whether a company can make money is closely related to its own strategic route. Advertising platforms like Kuaikan Media are born to make money. Compared with it, Galaxy Software's current path is relatively marginal...

It's not that there is no future. In the Internet field, active users and traffic are the most precious resources, and they are things that others may not be able to buy with money.

The software ecology was not popular in 2004. Even those giants probably had a little bit of awareness of this aspect until Shanda started to deploy in the whole field, Tencent was forced to run around by Mobile, and the whole field blossomed.

This is a truly leading industry-leading road that touches the underlying logic of the Internet.

However, in the industrial chain of traffic, these projects are all upstream at the source.

The most upstream means that you can get whatever you want from the downstream traffic, but in this chain, the more upstream you are, the farther you are from the point of profit.

But Boss Chen said he wanted to 'make quick money', but he chose such a track that didn't shit. From this point of view, it seems that this company has grown in a wrong direction since its birth.

But this is actually Chen Qin's deliberate choice.

First of all... this road is indeed on the tuyere, but it is a little far away from the tuyere.

After all, in this era, a genius is one step ahead of the times, and a talent is half a step ahead of the times.

Chen Qin is just one and a half steps ahead of the times by relying on his future vision... In fact, he went too far.

The result is that these projects now seem to have no money and no competition at all.

Some of the software he makes can be used to adapt to the chaotic file formats of the Internet download era, some are downloading and browsing tools, and some can rely on the Internet to bring a better user experience to traditional software. After two or three years, they will become real Internet traffic portals.

The second is a rather real concern...

When he went to the Hanzhang Playground with Xu Lingling that day, Chen Qin had already thought of a lot of ideas. There are actually many ways to make a profit directly, and basically all of them are feasible.

It's just that after Chen Qin went back, he sat in front of the computer and thought about it carefully.

There is really nothing wrong with those profit routes, but when I think about it, he wants to start a company now, make money, and control the equity for himself...

This situation is actually quite representative.

The funds are abundant, the project is clear, and the people are there. The only problem is that the founders cannot participate in person.

Isn't it a classic case of multinational companies doing business in China?
It seems to be very good, everything is missing, the management can hire the best professional managers, and the route can be arranged by an experienced parent company.

However, the results are often not very good-looking...or bureaucracy prevails, management is rigid, and execution is low.

Either spend a lot of money to recruit a bunch of industry elites, and turn the company into the Whampoa Military Academy. After a few years, everyone went out to start a business and made a lot of money. Looking back, the parent company's office was gone.

Of course, the actual problem may not be so serious. After all, it may not be realistic for everyone to be convinced by his charisma and to give up his salary like in the novel, but it should be enough to play sixty to seventy percent under his guidance.

It’s just that everyone hasn’t even met each other, and Chen Qin is just a primary school student. He has never done this kind of remote entrepreneurship, and he really feels a little confused about the management tools at hand...

So it's better to go step by step.

It is not necessarily useful to just draw big cakes for employees and offer high salaries. To cultivate the company's culture and management style, it must be cultivated bit by bit through practice.

And this slow cultivation is not just an order across the Internet... Chen Qin thought of another management term at the time.

It's called the ice cream effect.

It means that selling ice cream must start in winter, because there are fewer people eating ice cream in winter and the market conditions are bad, which can reversely force vendors to reduce costs and improve services. If they can survive the adversity of winter, they will not be afraid of competition in summer.

When it comes to enterprises, the key point is actually to know that the winter is over, and the industry will recover in summer.Under this premise, enterprises can accumulate experience and technology and optimize management in winter, so as to achieve greater success in peak season.

For Chen Qin, a primary school student, starting a company to make a lot of money at once, without the help of a guy like Gu Wenjie to keep the place down, would be a little bit confusing. When it comes to money, management problems will increase exponentially.

It's better to start with a project that is not profitable at all. As long as the company can't make money, there should be no need to worry about employees turning bad after making money.

Then two months passed.

It can only be said that everything is according to the plan. If he burns hundreds of thousands a month, he can last for a year, which is really promising.

As a result, even these programmers started to worry.

Thinking of this, Chen Qin looked at the screen and took a sip of lemon tea calmly.

He didn't tell these people the actual situation. Although the loss of the project is true, it is true that it has prospects.

But not all of his 1000 million is used to survive the winter. If he keeps losing money, he will run away early when the 200 million registered capital is used up in the middle of this year...

Of course, Chen Qin had already thought about the company's financial situation.

Although it is quite interesting to think about it, now with so many layers of equity isolation and overseas capital, the legal person is also set up by others. This kind of equity structure is simply set up for the purpose of running away...

But if he wants to go bankrupt and run away, it should not be his turn.

After all, the company can't rely on its main business to make profits now, but there are other ways.

Since the main business does not make money, it is enough to start a side business.

In fact, Chen Qin had already made arrangements for this. It just so happened that after the boss finished speaking, Chang You and Zhao Shiqiang presided over today's meeting as usual and began to discuss the next project update plan. He had no idea how dark things the elementary school boss behind the screen was thinking.

Chen Qin clapped his hands suddenly: "Okay, Chang You, please stop for a moment, let's stop here for today's product discussion."

He cleared his throat as he spoke.

"Sun Xiaomei, you just came back yesterday, let everyone report what you have gained from this visit to Yanjing."

Others in Li's group were quiet during the video conference—the Galaxy Software company's business is as clean as a piece of white paper today, and the company's daily affairs are not many. There are product meetings on weekdays, and everyone is basically discussing software development and new projects.

But they also probably know that the boss seems to have sent his confidant Sun Xiaomei to Yanjing recently. I don't know what the results are, but it seems to have spent a lot of money. Presumably they are still buying some unprofitable projects...

The nominal CEO, Sun Xiaomei, was a little surprised. Compared to Chang You and Zhao Shiqiang, who are capable of technology, able to negotiate acquisitions, and can host meetings, Sun Xiaomei is just an ordinary girl from the Northeast who came out of three colleges.

But the aura is not that strong, and no one pays attention during the meeting, and naturally goes to the corner.

After Chen Qin yelled, she came out and said, "Okay, I...I went to Yanjing with Wen Jianing from the legal department and Lu Rong."

Chen Qin reminded him to focus: "Tell me about the signing with the record company, how is your contact?"

"It's all discussed, but the copyright period is generally not too long..." Sun Xiaomei said a few words, and felt that her mouth was a bit stupid, "Why don't you talk about it, Lu Rong."

Sun Xiaomei herself is not very good at talking. A newly recruited assistant girl of hers lit up the microphone and talked eloquently: "Boss, we went to the capital this time and met with four record companies. Jingwen is willing to manage the digital copyright of songs with us. Baidisi is willing to give us a one-year digital copyright buyout contract for some songs. Xiyangyang and Dadi Records are willing to sell digital copyright for three years. They are all within the purchase budget. Now the contract has been signed."

The programmers didn't understand what this meant, so they all applauded. Someone asked, "What about Warner? Last time I said I was going to talk about Warner Records, I'm still waiting to listen to Stefanie Sun in the office."

Others laughed, and Lu Rong replied calmly: "Warner signed it at the beginning of the month. This time, we asked someone from the accounting company to settle the final payment. The boss sent a check. In addition to the agreed movie and song copyrights, Warner also agreed to sell us the online copyrights of its artists. Stefanie Sun signed two older songs, and according to the boss's arrangement, signed some lesser-known singers, all for one year."

Someone asked, "How much is it?"

Lu Rong didn't quite know whether she should say this or not. Boss Chen took the initiative to say, "A normal song is about [-] yuan, and a popular song is only [-] to [-] yuan. It's a one-year copyright buyout in the new technology field."

The programmers commented: "It seems to be quite cheap. Is digital copyright so cheap now?"

Boss Chen explained to them: "After Warner merged with AOL, it broke the earth's record with a loss of 500 billion in the first quarter. Now it needs to withdraw a lot of cash to repay the debt. In order to reassure investors, it desperately draws a line from online music, so it sells online copyrights so cheaply."

Lu Rong smiled and flattered her: "If it wasn't for the boss's discerning eye, we wouldn't know that there is such a cheap channel. Those ordinary record companies buy out copyrights for at least three or four thousand. Warner's songs are really affordable recently. They just ask us to pack and buy many ordinary songs together, at least 100 songs."

Everyone also nodded secretly, thinking that Boss Chen is indeed worthy of being a foreign high-ranking boss, and even knows this kind of inside story. Of course, the important thing now is not how cheap these copyrights are, but what are their uses: "Boss, we bought so many copyrights, how should they be used?"

Lu Rong said mysteriously: "This is the company's commercial secret, anyway, you just wait for this to make a lot of money!"

Chen Qin also said: "The money, if you earn it, it will be invested in the company. If you lose money, I will make up for it. Everyone should write the code well, and don't worry about the profit."

Everyone hurriedly said that they didn't have that idea, and they didn't know who said "the boss's air", which made Chen Qin a little confused.

Someone asked again: "Boss, how many music copyrights do we have now?"

Chen Qin said flatly: "The budget is 100 million, and 67 has been spent so far, and there is still 30 that have not been spent. Xiao Sun, you must continue to work hard."

Because it has nothing to do with the company's business content anyway, and there is no need to keep this secret from most people. Everyone just admired it. Someone heard a whimsical idea and suggested:
"Then why don't we learn from Baidu and build a download tool like Nepster?"

Another suggested: "Nepster is a model for pirated music. Besides, Baidu is already doing this. If we want to do it, we can make a Chinese iTunes. Now that there are so many copyrights, we can definitely make a lot of money!"

(End of this chapter)