King of Capital

Chapter 94 ByteDance acquires Kuaishou?

China cannot live without Huaqing Garden, just as the West cannot lose Jerusalem - Internet entrepreneur Xuan.

Xie Jingxing still failed to find out the grudges between Tang Man and Su He. That night, he had dinner with Zhu Xiaohu, Peng Zhijian and other new and old friends in the venture capital circle to socialize and chat about gossip in the circle.

The next morning, Tang Man was still busy with the follow-up work of the transaction and payment with Didi. He went to Huaqing Jiayuan Community, which is located near Wudaokou and opposite the east gate of Tsinghua University, and met another heroine of the love-hate relationship.

In Room 7, Building 305, a dozen programmers were working in the long living room of an ordinary three-bedroom apartment. The door of the master bedroom was open, and Cheng Yixiao, the founder of Kuaishou, Zhang Fei of Y Capital, and Su He were standing at the door chatting about something.

"Hello, the takeaway you ordered is here." Xie Jingxing's opening remarks failed to make the programmers raise their heads.

Song Anli, with delicate makeup and beautiful dress, said in a coquettish voice that she had worked hard, and brought a wisp of fragrant wind to distribute a large number of McDonald's meals to the programmers' workstations one by one. Now everyone looked up.

Some people lower their heads to check whether the plaid shirt they are wearing today looks handsome, or sit upright with their backs straight and stare at the computer screen. Strings of codes automatically scroll out on the black background of the screen, as if a hacker war is going on.

After Song Anli put the takeaway down and said sorry for bothering her, she looked away with a sense of disappointment, then smiled politely and said calmly, "No problem, thank you."

Cheng Yixiao's mouth couldn't stop twitching, and he wanted to strangle this shameful fellow to death. At the same time, he had a direct feeling about Xie Jingxing. The rumors on the Internet media were true. He was young, energetic, romantic and rich.

There are beautiful women around him, and he behaves more like a super rich second-generation than an investor. I really don't know whether it is right or wrong to take his money.

"Mr. Xie, I'm sorry for not welcoming you in person." Zhang Fei joked in a pretentious tone.

5Y Capital is currently the only investor in Bumblebee Ride-hailing besides Baidu. The invested companies of both parties are almost at loggerheads with each other, but now they are cooperating for mutual benefit in another invested company. The embarrassment can only be understood but not described.

The venture capital circle is so small that Xie Jingxing has long been accustomed to it and explained as if it were nothing special: "I came to visit you on a business trip."

"Su Hua will be coming over later. There's a restaurant downstairs that serves authentic Baoding donkey meat hotpot. Let's go have a meal."

Cheng Yixiao quickly suggested that the presence of Su He in the company these days had greatly increased the productivity of the brothers, and there was really no need for Assistant Song to come and cause trouble.

"No trouble, I have an appointment with someone to look at the project later."

Xie Jingxing looked around and moved a small stool to sit by the window: "How was your talk with Su Hua?"

"It's basically the same. If nothing goes wrong, we'll meet today to discuss the details of equity distribution. In a few days, he will bring the entire team to join Kuaishou." Cheng Yixiao closed the bedroom door casually, turned over the computer chair and sat down.

Zhang Fei used the bedside table as a stool, Song Anli stood against the wall, and Su He pulled out a suitcase from the corner and sat on it as if he was familiar with the place.

The scene looks a bit funny as if it were a makeshift team, but this is the norm in Huaqing Jiayuan. Many Internet giants such as Zhang Yiming and Wang Xing started their careers here. With a house and a few computers, everything is ready. All they need is a few awesome programmers and product managers to create a valuation of tens or hundreds of billions.

Xie Jingxing was not surprised. He put his arms on his knees and sat on the bench with the momentum of a dragon chair. He asked bluntly: "How do you arrange the equity?"

"Our tentative plan is that everyone will dilute half of their equity to give Su Hua and his team 50% of the shares. Su Hua will serve as CEO to manage the company's operations, and I will be responsible for product technology." Cheng Yixiao restrained his expression and got to the point.

Zhang Fei took advantage of the opportunity to say something shameless: "Mr. Hu Zhifeng means that Taihe can come in after the team is merged."

Su Hua used to work at Google. After leaving, he started his own business and successfully sold the company. Cheng Yixiao is a typical engineer with little entrepreneurial experience. Overall, the transfer of half of the equity is not a loss for the current Kuaishou startup team.

The current point of contention lies in the order of priority between Taihe and Su Hua's team. In fact, he doesn't want Taihe to come in now at all. He still wants Su Hua's team to join in the complete transformation of the short video community and run user data for further financing.

But these days, Su He put on a pair of tacky black-framed glasses and tied his hair into a bun under the pretext of visiting, and stayed in the company all day, studying a basic programming language reference book hard. His sincere performance was very helpful to Cheng Yixiao, who came from a technical background.

After spending a few days together, the entire original Kuaishou founding team, including him, was very impressed by this approach. Out of personal feelings, they believed that Taihe respected them more and were inclined to accept Taihe's investment immediately to balance 5Y Capital and Su Hua's team.

As the founder, Cheng Yixiao was able to force himself to think rationally and generously gave up half of his shares to the new team. However, his brothers did not think so. They only knew that they had followed Old Cheng to start a business from scratch for two or three years, and even if they had no credit, they had worked hard.

As a result, the investors spoke without blushing or breathing heavily, and wanted to introduce a new team to dilute the equity held by everyone by half, and they were more or less resentful.

And in the final analysis, if Cheng Yixiao had not tacitly agreed, Su He would not have been able to perform the drama of "living in Sha Jia Bang forever". The human heart of this old woman who came from the mergers and acquisitions business is too dirty.

Zhang Fei took the overall situation into consideration and in order to maintain the internal stability of the founding team, he could only curse inwardly and accept it. However, he initially bargained to have Taihe Capital invest first and then merge the equity of each party in Su Hua's team to reduce dilution.

He had a clear plan in mind. On a dark and windy night, he went to Cheng Yixiao's house to have a heart-to-heart talk with his financing plan. As soon as he entered the room, he saw Su He and Su Hua there, with two bottles of wine on the table. He felt cold from head to heels.

As expected, Taihe offered favorable conditions of 1500% of the shares at a pre-investment valuation of 20 million, and would enter the game after merging with Su Hua's team.

Cheng Yixiao excitedly took his hand and poured wine, saying that they would be brothers in the same trench from now on. Su Hua stood beside him and nodded happily in agreement.

Zhang Fei was so angry that he vomited blood after being hit twice in a row, so he would never miss the opportunity to disgust Su He. He deliberately mentioned that Hu Zhifeng was in charge of the Kuaishou project within Taihe.

"Taihe's investment decision-making structure is different from that of conventional venture capital institutions. It only needs to be responsible to me. Since there is no problem, then sign the contract." Xie Jingxing didn't care about it and just took it as a joke. Before going to Yunnan, he had a private talk with Hu Zhifeng. Since he was still useless, he would make room for someone who was useful. Zhang Fei was not qualified to complain to him for the time being, so Liu Qin, the founder of 5Source Capital, had to come.

Su He took off his black-framed glasses and smiled, then took out the investment intention agreement that he had prepared in advance. Xie Jingxing and Cheng Yixiao signed it readily on the spot.

Zhang Fei sighed inwardly. The speed at which a family office led by a strong man could carry out projects was indeed incomparable. Conventional venture capital institutions needed two or three days to go through the decision-making process, but they could get things done just by raising their hands.

There is not much difference when working on a project like Kuaishou, but if it comes to some projects where the negotiation of specific investment and financing conditions is complex and the competition is fierce, it is very likely that a difference of half an hour will lead to a missed opportunity.

After finishing the task quickly, Xie Jingxing left without any hesitation, went downstairs and paced around the community, starting a conversation: "Those who are capable should do more work, and there is no need to feel psychologically stressed."

"Boss Hu and Zhang Fei are old acquaintances, so it's difficult to do anything because of the relationship."

Su He said something modestly beside him, and then took the initiative to take the responsibility: "It is my fault for the Bumblebee acquisition project."

"It doesn't matter. I've met Deng Wei in person. Strictly speaking, we gave up this project on our own initiative."

Xie Jingxing felt that she was a little stimulated by Tang Man. This morning, Didi announced that it had completed the highest valuation record financing for a domestic start-up, and the old enemy was temporarily in the lead.

He comforted her like a psychological masseur: "Kuaishou and ByteDance are projects that are no worse than Didi, and the returns will be proportional to your efforts."

"I recently took a deeper look at the technologies of Kuaishou and ByteDance and found that their underlying algorithms are very different. Even an outsider like me can see that. Especially since you mentioned Toutiao's smart advertising recommendation system before, I am considering whether I can use it in Kuaishou's short video push."

Su He lowered her voice and thought seriously. She even wanted to push ByteDance to acquire Kuaishou and directly kick Zhang Fei and Su Hua out.

Xie Jingxing was surprised. ByteDance's valuation in this round of financing was 80 million US dollars, while Kuaishou was only worth tens of millions. This sounded too wild.

Perhaps only an investor like Su He who came from mergers and acquisitions could think of such a bold move. He was a little confused for a moment and praised sincerely: "It seems that you have done in-depth research on the online video industry during this period."

"Thank you for your cultivation, leader."

Su He put his hands behind his back and looked down at his toes, but he couldn't see anything. The two of them chatted casually as they walked out of the community and took a car to Yingdu Building, which was not far from Huaqing Jiayuan.

Zhang Yiming moved the company's office from a residential building to there a few months ago. The entire company team has grown to a hundred people. Zhang Lidong, vice president of the Beijing Times, was dragged on board because of an interview and he recruited a lot of talents from all over the place.

Compared to the uniform plaid shirts of Kuaishou, there are actually quite a few women in ByteDance's office. The old guy also decorated the tea room with a lot of rockery and bonsai, which took up a large area. The company atmosphere looks warm and elegant.

Because the two parties had already signed an investment intention agreement, Xie Jingxing took a general tour of the company's layout, walked straight into Zhang Yiming's office and raised his hand to signal.

Without saying a word, Song Anli locked the office door from the inside, took out a formal investment agreement and placed it on the desk, then took out a pen and opened it.

"Taihe invested $7500 million at a valuation of $1200 million, accounting for 15% of the shares."

Xie Jingxing tapped his fingers on the table: "I know you don't want to give up too many shares, but I have to invest in you like this. If you don't let me invest, we'll just waste time together."

"...Mr. Xie, we can talk it over. There's no need to do this." Zhang Yiming was dumbfounded with a blank look in his eyes.

Xie Jing Xing sighed: "Brother, you have delayed me for too long. It has been nearly four months since I returned to China in June. Even if you were a piece of stone, you should have warmed up by now, right?"

"Mr. Xie, I am really honored and touched to be valued by you, but..."

"Well, let me ask you three questions. If you say no, I will turn around and leave immediately and never bother you." Xie Jingxing asked with a tense expression, "Is a valuation of 7500 million US dollars enough?"

"enough?"

“Can we squeeze out 15% of the share in this round of financing?”

"can."

"I'm here to talk to you in person. I want all 15% of this round of financing. Will you give it to me?"

"..."

Zhang Yiming, who had never suffered any hardship since childhood and had a bit of scholarly spirit, was forced into a corner. After being speechless for a long time, he saw Xie Jingxing turning around to leave. He silently picked up the pen, pressed the investment agreement on the table, and lowered his head to sign.

Xie Jingxing smiled with satisfaction: "Happy cooperation."

(End of this chapter)