King of Capital

Chapter 95 Temples and Faith

"Hey, wait, you can't sign yet." Zhang Yiming put down the pen and looked up.

Xie Jingxing raised his eyebrows: "What do you mean, are you trying to fool me?"

"Do I need to ask the legal department to review the contract first?" Zhang Yiming smiled awkwardly.

Xie Jingxing's old face flushed slightly as he remained silent and tried to maintain his momentum. Song Anli cleverly put away the contract, opened the office door and quickly went out to find Su He to arrange the contract. He sat on the sofa and made small talk: "Hey, how is your algorithm engineer team going?"

"21 people."

Zhang Yiming poured two cups of tea and said, "I found a few reference books online that are not publicly available. Can you help me think of a solution?"

"Make a list of books and send it to me later." Xie Jingxing crossed his legs unconsciously.

Perhaps all technical people are the same. Zhang Yiming is somewhat similar to Pony Ma. Because his company has not yet grown up, he is even less talkative. At the age of 30, he exudes the carefree and undisciplined spirit of a middle-class family kid who has not been beaten by society.

Due to Xie Jingxing's personality, he had little interest in this kind of people, and he always subconsciously regarded them as sheep that needed to be ruled by force.

But in fact, Zhang Yiming's ideas and goals are very clear. At the beginning of creating ByteDance, he established the core strategy of "recommendation algorithm engine", personally recruited algorithm technology experts everywhere, and defined the ultimate demand of mobile Internet smart terminals as "killing time".

——Only sufficiently reliable and excellent intelligent recommendation algorithms can occupy the user’s mind and seize all of the user’s fragmented time.

For example, when Xie Jingxing just returned to China in June, the news refresh cycle of PC portal websites such as Tencent, NetEase, and Sina was several hours, which was half manual and half intelligent. When the backend editors were in a good mood, the news would be refreshed more frequently, and when they were in a bad mood, the news would be refreshed more slowly.

Toutiao, which focuses on mobile phones, is fully intelligent and captures news from the entire Internet. Ten years later, it has achieved the state where people can refresh the page at any time to see new news, which is a common practice for the public.

Moreover, the Internet industry today still retains the last bit of the simple integrity of open communication. Major portals can bind accounts to each other at will. Toutiao users can bind their Weibo accounts to capture Weibo-related comments, clicks and other data.

Before Xie Jingxing returned to China to participate in the show, he took time out to fly to Beijing and chat with him for the whole afternoon. When he heard about this gameplay, the only word in his mind was "WTF?". He immediately suggested that Zhang Yiming could try to do intelligent advertising recommendations and use a large amount of free data to speed up the training of the underlying algorithm for personalized recommendations.

As of now, ByteDance's "recommendation algorithm engine" has reached initial maturity and can be used as a moat technology with core competitiveness. Even if the butterfly effect spreads too far, ByteDance will definitely have a place in the entire Internet industry within the next ten years.

Therefore, Zhang Yiming did not need to be ruled and led, just need to be given money and resources. The two of them really did not have any common topics to talk about, and they barely dealt with a few words to get over the awkwardness before falling into a long silence.

"Burn the money." Xie Jingxing racked his brains and came up with three words.

Zhang Yiming's teacup swayed and the hot tea splashed out. He grimaced in pain, "Ah?"

"Pre-install the machine to increase the number of Toutiao users and strive to completely surpass several portal websites by the end of the year." Xie Jingxing explained in detail.

Zhang Yiming thought for a moment and hesitated: "There are too many mobile phone manufacturers now, and I don't think the effect is good."

"Why is the effect not good? We only pay the mobile phone manufacturer when the pre-installed software is activated." Xie Jingxing took a sip of tea and said as a matter of course.

At present, the domestic smartphone market dividend has not yet peaked, and various low-end and unknown brand smartphones have been fully launched in the sinking market. The utilization rate of smartphone product functions by middle-aged and elderly people with limited educational background is very low.

Affected by this, the cooperation between APP product developers and mobile phone manufacturers for pre-installation is very rough. Leading software products such as Sohu are pre-installed for free, while the pre-installation price of small and medium-sized software products ranges from a few cents to a few cents.

Xie Jingxing came up with a business model for the pre-installed machine market that matured many years later. Users would pay the corresponding fees to mobile phone manufacturers only after clicking on the pre-installed software. This was the simplest and crudest way to buy customers.

Zhang Yiming showed interest: "It's creative, but it will disrupt the market and the price will be higher."

"Do you know what the current customer acquisition cost of WeChat Mobile Payment is?"

Xie Jing Xing smiled like he was holding up two fingers: "One dollar per user. If you can buy 1 billion users, I will reimburse you 2 billion in cash."

"……hiss."

Zhang Yiming was scalded by the hot tea again. He hurriedly dropped the teacup and shook his hand in pain.

Cheng Yixiao thought Xie Jingxing was a playboy, he thought Xie Jingxing was a lunatic, and there was probably no other person in the entire domestic Internet industry who would dare to say that he would spend 2 billion in cash to buy customers.

He grabbed a few tissues and wiped his hands: "Five million... ten million, let's try ten million first."

"It's up to you. I'm just making a suggestion. There's also a startup team at Huaqing Jiayuan that's working on a short video community product. I suggest you take some time to visit."

After careful consideration, Xie Jingxing decided to abandon Su He's slightly whimsical and wild idea. Regardless of other things, from the perspective of expanding the market boundaries, it is better for many heroes to come together than for one to dominate alone.

When the product was mentioned, Zhang Yiming immediately got into the mood, sat up straight and asked seriously: "Is there anything interesting about their product?"

"In my opinion, if Toutiao can take the first place in the mobile information distribution market share next year, it should consider making short video products." Xie Jingxing gave a reserved answer.

Zhang Yiming fell silent again and thought carefully. The young investor in front of him, who had just graduated from Columbia University's CC College, helped him get several programming reference books from the United States that were not officially available for public sale during their first meeting.

Last month, the WhatsApp acquisition case made a lot of noise and the national media was at the center of criticism for being a hypochondriac. The other party took the initiative to help him contact the technical teams of many international technology giants including Apple and Microsoft as soon as he returned from abroad, and arranged online exchange and learning opportunities. Money, resources, and ideas, except for a slight disagreement on equity, there is no other investor in the world who is so compatible. It is not without reason that he is like a young girl who was forced to sign a contract to sell herself under the oppression of the landlords in the old society.

Every strategic suggestion put forward by the other party is worth his careful consideration.

"Technical team, headline promotion and customer acquisition, short videos, these are the three suggestions." Xie Jingxing summarized, patted his butt, stood up and left.

Zhang Yiming came to his senses and tried to persuade him to stay for lunch, but was politely declined. He then promised that he would sign the investment contract as soon as the legal department approved it. He then rambled on about a lot of random things and finally stressed that he should not forget to help get the reference books.

Xie Jingxing was in great pain, so he arranged for Su He to stay and follow up on the investment contract. He had to force this old guy to sign the investment agreement today.

…………

At one o'clock in the afternoon, the restaurant on the second floor of Peking University's fourth canteen was sparsely populated.

Xie Jingxing finally had lunch and said vaguely, "Let's eat first."

"There's just one last bit left."

Song Anli bent over her desk, writing on the notebook in a way that only she could understand. From yesterday till now, she had been following three projects of different industries and types for a day and a half. Her brain obviously couldn't keep up with the pace, so she could only write down the key points first.

Xie Jingxing ate the steamed pork with rice flour and followed the topic and asked, "What do you think of your work these past two days?"

Song Anli's movements suddenly stopped, she raised her head and remained silent for a long while, then said two words with a serious expression: "Thank goodness."

"?"

"I am now very glad that I signed the confidentiality agreement that night. This is probably the best decision I have ever made in my life."

"...That's not necessary. You still have a long life ahead of you."

"No, I'm sure!" Song Anli looked determined to join the party.

Xie Jing Xing was speechless, shrugged his shoulders and ate in silence. He would have to ask Assistant Song to study with Liu Qiming for a while. Although he was thick-skinned, he still couldn't stand such straightforward flattery.

Song Anli couldn't help but suppress the smile on her face. She put away her notebook and ate, but he was always in her sight.

So dazzling.

The head of Tencent's strategic investment team took the initiative to propose a toast at a dinner last night; the founder of a company valued at tens of millions of dollars was willing to have his head pressed down and forced to sign an investment agreement in the office; Ms. Su, who holds the title of the queen of domestic mergers and acquisitions, bent down and put aside all false reputations to work as a "programmer" in the invested company in order to complete the project she wanted to do.

Just as his assistant, Cheng Wei greeted her with a smile, Liu Chuanzhi's daughter called her sister, and Jack Ma's assistant tried his best to add her personal contact information and asked about her well-being.

As a fresh graduate who has just entered the society after graduating from college, I think I have no other strengths except for my good looks. It is both fortunate and unfortunate that I accidentally end up working with such a person.

Song Anli clearly felt that there was a flame coming towards her. If she took a wrong step, she would be doomed. She urgently needed a barrier to protect herself, such as erecting a temple in her heart to give the man in front of her glory and make it a belief.

It was not for love, but for her own bright future. In her poor and limited knowledge, only fanatical religious believers could be loyal and never betray.

"Have you ever considered becoming the godfather?" she hypnotized herself.

Xie Jingxing shook his head to express his incomprehension: "Whose godfather?"

"The godfather of the entire venture capital circle, in your hands, Cheng Wei became the founder of the highest valued startup in China; in your hands, Jan Koum became the founder of the largest merger and acquisition case among startups; you also said that you wanted me to surpass Xu Xin." Song Anli's eyes were shining.

Xie Jingxing curled his lips: "I'm saying I'm giving you a chance to surpass Xu Xin. In fact, I still don't think Xu Xin is an investor worthy of admiration."

At the dinner last night, Zhu Xiaohu gossiped about Xu Xin, saying that Xu Xin joked with others that he had a childish mentality, but he would always personally step out to support the invested companies.

Xie Jingxing instantly lost his good impression of this old woman. We are all from the lower class, so why would anyone look down on us? He must find a project to practice with her in the future.

"So what are your expectations of me, or what kind of investor do you think I will be?" Song Anli continued to ask without caring.

Xie Jing Xing took a breath and corrected: "My expectations of you depend on myself. What kind of investor do you think I will be?"

"I just said, the Godfather, at least the Godfather of the Internet industry." Song Anli said firmly.

"Okay, then you are the Godfather's golden left hand, okay?" Xie Jingxing felt a little tired of playing the girl's workplace development game.

Song Anli thought for a moment and said, "Actually, I'd rather be the Left Hand of God."

"That might be a little difficult. There are regulations in the country that after the founding of the country, spirits are not allowed."

(End of this chapter)