King of Capital

Chapter 77 Sorting out work priorities
Even the company has been infiltrated by someone. Not only will Xie Jingxing be unable to follow the M&A team to give lectures at the university, but it is foreseeable that even his normal work will be affected in the short term.

Therefore, it is necessary to hold a small meeting to sort out and summarize the current work in various lines and re-formulate various subsequent plans and arrangements.

Xie Jingxing thought for a moment and wrote three phrases on a piece of white paper: Taihe Capital, Grapefruit Capital, and Personal Investment.

"There's nothing much to say on your side. Just keep an eye on Didi's financing project as soon as possible. If there are any overlapping issues with President Su's Didi acquisition of Bumblebee project, you two should negotiate first. If the negotiation doesn't lead to a clear answer, then come to me." He looked at Tang Man and said something.

Grapefruit Capital - Investing in Didi is his most important work direction in the short term. This is related to Grapefruit Capital's long-term development strategy in fundraising and investment in the future, as well as the huge amount of funds needed for Yunshan Agriculture and Animal Husbandry's fresh food retail and warehousing and logistics strategies, which also need to be raised through this channel.

Liu Qiming is currently completing the relevant regulatory procedures for Xiyou Capital, including the registration of private equity fund licenses. It is expected that the first fund will be issued and raised funds by the end of this year. It is expected that the online car-hailing war will be in full swing by then, and fundraising should be relatively easy.

In short, Grapefruit Capital will not formally form an investment team before the end of the year. Tang Man will focus on the Didi project with a few big cats and small cats. Yunshan Agriculture and Animal Husbandry's fresh food retail and warehousing and logistics businesses will simultaneously start the money-burning mode at the end of the year.

Xie Jingxing has already paid a lot for this, personally participating in the hype and accompanying Cheng Wei to drink and drink tea with Deng Wei. If the two old ladies sitting in front of him can't figure out the priorities and continue to fight in the palace like they did in Juntai, then they really should be dragged out and beheaded.

Seeing his hard tone, Tang Man immediately straightened her attitude and issued a solemn military order: "Okay, by the middle of next month at the latest, if I can't handle the Didi financing project, I will submit my resignation application!"

Everyone knows that the financing results of Ali-Kuaidi are expected to be announced at the end of this month. If a money-burning battle breaks out at that time, the funds currently on Didi’s books will not be able to sustain for a few days.

Xie Jingxing nodded with satisfaction, crossed out Grapefruit Capital on the paper, and turned to look at Su He: "Have you decided which project to follow?"

"Mr. Xie, I want to follow ByteDance, but I still don't quite understand its value." Su He asked in front of his mortal enemy.

Xie Jingxing thought for a moment and said, "Algorithm, go and study carefully how Toutiao's smart advertising recommendation is different from other companies... Forget it, I'll give the Bilibili project to you. Find some time to visit Kuaishou and Tencent Video and write a research report on the online video field for me."

ByteDance currently only has one product, Toutiao. A few months ago, angel round investor Wang Qiong from SIG helped Zhang Yiming find more than 20 venture round investors, including Sequoia Capital's Neil Shen and Taihe Capital's Hu Zhifeng.

All of them believed that the ceiling for portal news websites like Toutiao was there, and at best they could become the next NetEase News or Sina News, so no one was willing to invest.

What's more, 360 Vice President Liu Jun personally participated in ByteDance's angel round of investment and has also been helping to attract investors in recent months. He directly approached his boss Zhou Hongyi hoping to get 360 directly re-invested in the game.

As a result, the red-robed leader directly said that "Toutiao" is a piece of shit. Even though 360 has the opportunity to become a portal website, it doesn't want to do it. I will invest some money to give you face and re-enter the game.

What's the point of running a portal website? He just wants to deal with Xiao Ma Ge.

From the time when Zhang Yiming started looking for investors in March this year to now, SIG's Wang Qiong has spent all the US$1 million bridge loan she helped him get. Now ByteDance's financial situation is extremely desperate.

When Xie Jingxing took the initiative to approach him and expressed his willingness to invest, Xiao Zhang wanted to shout "It's time for dinner again, family." The current sticking point between the two parties is that Taihe wants to invest $8000 million at a valuation of $2000 million and take 25% of the shares alone.

ByteDance was a little panicked and hesitant, hoping that Taihe would lead the investment and attract a few additional investors to reduce the total financing amount to US$1500 million, even if the valuation was lower.

The two parties have signed an investment intention agreement. The next step is to wait for ByteDance to bring in other investors and officially sign the transaction at any time. With Taihe leading the investment, it will be much easier to attract other investors. It will be completed around next month or early October.

The situation is similar at Bilibili. In the industry, there is a Station A that has died numerous times and come back to life. Outside the industry... it has become two-dimensional and has its own dimensional wall. It is hard to say whether serious investors regard this thing as an online video website or not.

Liu Qiming took the founding team of Bilibili to see a performance by SHN48, a small idol girl group under Siba Media. On the night of the performance, he pulled both parties to a table for dinner and went to Shang K for a drink. This guy almost adopted a few adopted sons on the spot.

The two parties quickly signed a letter of intent, and subsequently they were entangled in the investment amount and valuation.

Therefore, Su He has enough energy to follow up on these two projects at the same time, and can also take charge of Didi's acquisition of Bumblebee project.

"You can go to Kuaishou to have a look and urge Zhang Fei to figure out what he's been tinkering with that's taking him so long." Xie Jingxing suddenly thought of something and added impatiently.

Su He was stunned for a moment, and reminded embarrassedly: "Mr. Liu has been following this project for a long time, and Mr. Hu Zhifeng and Zhang Fei are old acquaintances."

"Okay, I'll go talk to Mr. Hu later." Xie Jingxing didn't say anything more.

The situation of Kuaishou is more complicated than that of ByteDance and Bilibili. Zhang Fei of 5Y Capital is its angel round investor. Although Kuaishou doesn't have much money in its account now, he is thinking of helping to find a bridge loan to keep it going, and then bring Su Hua, who is trying to start a business, into the company to work as a partner.

The plan is to wait until Kuaishou is completely transformed into a short video website, and user data is running high to raise the valuation before seeking the next round of financing.

At this time, Zhang Fei was secretly talking to Su Hua while dragging Taihe. Xie Jingxing, Liu Qiming and Hu Zhifeng all came out to talk to him in person one after another, and the more they did so, the more the other party wanted to drag it out.

He originally considered to wait until Kuaishou had dragged its feet enough and then throw money at it, or spend some time to personally use all kinds of overt and covert means to force his way in. Now, looking at the paparazzi squatting in the basement of the office building outside the window, he decided to be patient and take his time. In addition to these three future giants, the big fish worth investing in various industries in the market this year have basically completed financing in the first half of the year, and they have to wait until the next round of collective financing next year to enter the market. There are still a few online travel companies such as Ctrip and Qunar.com that are burning money to fight, but the timing is still wrong.

It is either too early or too late to catch the big fish. The remaining small fish such as Yuanfudao, Pop Mart, and Ele.me are neither here nor there. If Xie Jingxing, after taking charge of Taihe, still needs to personally participate in their early round of financing of 18 million yuan before the B round, then all Taihe employees below him should voluntarily submit their resignation reports.

As for smaller companies like Douyu and Siba Media, Taihe will not invest in them. Even if it does, it would be a courtesy for Xie Jingxing to personally come out and ring the bell when they go public.

There are two main situations when a startup seeks financing: either they are short of money, or they need investors’ help in integrating resources inside and outside the industry, or some special invisible resources.

Taihe has both of these qualities as a leading domestic VC institution. In addition, its head, Xie Jingxing, just completed a historic high-priced merger and acquisition in China half a month ago. Its ability is unquestionable. In terms of resources, it has Tencent in China and Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon abroad.

Not to mention how much help it can provide to founding companies, but in the small world of the Internet, how many venture capital institutions dare to say that their resources are better than Taihe?
As long as Xie Jingxing wants to invest, any Internet startup can just spend more or less money. To sum up, there hasn't been much movement in Taihe's venture capital field this year, and other aspects have smoothly transitioned to the post-investment management of previous investment projects.

And we are also collaborating with universities to create a financial research institute…

Xie Jingxing once again looked at the paparazzi squatting outside the building, raised his pen and crossed out Taihe Capital on the white paper, putting the university cooperation project on hold for the time being.

"So it seems that I have become an idler for the time being?"

He looked down at the last remaining "personal investment" on the paper and casually said that in this regard there was only the 800 million yuan in the stock market, and the operation plan had already been made and he didn't need to worry about it.

Su He and Tang Man exchanged glances and thought about it carefully. It was true. At least, as long as there was no money-burning war before the next round of financing, the boss would indeed become a idler.

This is the norm for CEOs of venture capital firms, and Shen Nanpeng does not personally lead every project.

Xie Jingxing has taken too big steps in the past few months. He started with a multi-billion dollar cross-border merger and acquisition case. It seems that he has caused bloodshed on the streets, but in fact, this is not the norm.

"Well, actually, Xiyou has a project that I am preparing to report to you. Tongcheng Travel can no longer sustain the money-burning competition and is seeking a new round of financing. The scale may reach 100 million US dollars. If you have time, would you like to go to Tongcheng headquarters in Suzhou to conduct a survey in person?"

Tang Man was very negotiable and even used honorifics. Although Xiyou hasn't raised funds yet, Xie Jingxing has used the equity of Forsan held by Xiyou Capital (USA) to pledge a loan of nearly 10 billion US dollars, which will be credited to the account in ten days or half a month.

No matter how exaggerated the Didi war is, it is impossible to burn all the money, because it means that at least Tencent will have to come up with $10 billion and Alibaba will have to come up with $20 billion to burn. Neither Pony Ma nor Mr. Ma dare to play this way.

If Xie Jingxing is determined to get involved in online tourism, it is not impossible to start a war on two fronts.

He looked at Tang Man thoughtfully without saying anything. Su He cleared his throat and continued, "There's a little problem here at Taihe. Shen Xin's discussion on investment with the 'Bu Du' milk tea brand in Chuncheng was not going smoothly. After all, you were the one who led this project in the beginning, and Mr. Shen is under a lot of pressure."

"You two are disgusted with me being in the way now, aren't you?"

Xie Jingxing was so angry that he laughed. He actually thought that one day he would be treated like a child by his subordinates - go and have fun.

The company will still be able to function without you, so please go out and stay out of the spotlight and don't affect our normal work.

"Of course not. The prospects for the online travel industry are indeed good, and we are currently at the center of the storm." Tang Man explained tactfully with an embarrassed smile.

Su He knew Xie Jingxing better than she did, and added, "We are a venture capital firm, and privacy is very important. It is really difficult for us to carry out our work if you attract media reporters to your home every day."

"You haven't had a good rest since you graduated, so just take a vacation and travel for a few days. Come back when the limelight has passed."

She didn't care that Xie Jingxing's face was getting worse and worse, and said the last sentence to make it final: "Pusi Capital under the name of Wanda Prince Wang wants to participate in this round of financing for 'Budu'. Prince Wang himself is currently in Chuncheng. Shen Xin said that his goal is clearly to come to Taihe."

"..."

Xie Jing Xing smiled, baring his teeth and said cheerfully: "Book me a flight to Spring City tomorrow, I'll go see what's going on."

"Okay, do you need to arrange accompanying personnel?" Su He asked hurriedly.

Xie Jingxing raised his chin: "Ask Liu Qiming to transfer the A330 from Yunshan."

Su He breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally fooled this young man. It turned out that he was a young man who knew how to show off his temper.

(End of this chapter)