My Fintech Empire

Chapter 1493 [Valuation of Tik-Tok]

When Fang Hong heard this inquiry, he thought for a moment and smiled and said: "This is not a big problem. If Mr. Zhang confirms his withdrawal, I will arrange for someone to go there. Then you can go to the Internet company under the Galaxy Group to 'poach people' ”

There is no problem with the successor. Qunxing Group has a lot of talents under its command, and there is no shortage of head-level talents in the Internet sector.

For example, it would be okay to let the core team of Douyin department in Toutiao choose a person and let him resign on his own, or Tik-Tok proactively contact him and hire him to run the company with a high salary. This is both possible.

Fang Hong added: "Besides, just because Mr. Zhang wants to leave, it doesn't mean that everyone in his team will follow him. And if he really quits this time, there will probably be a lot fewer people hanging out with him."

If Mr. Zhang exits this time, he will definitely get an astronomical amount of money, because Tik-Tok’s current valuation has reached the level of hundreds of billions of dollars, and Mr. Zhang currently holds the equity of Tik-Tok. After several rounds of financing After dilution, it still holds about 21%, making it the company's second largest shareholder.

Although the money he received was huge, the team members who followed him would definitely re-evaluate him.

Running away when encountering trouble may be justified once or twice, and it can be said to be forbearing, but if it happens every time, as a leader, this is a super deduction.

And the most important thing is that if he does this and treats his largest shareholder, Bole, and angel investors who have supported him from beginning to end, everyone will think that he is very unreasonable.

But at this moment, the man in the video immediately asked: "Mr. Zhang wants to quit, what valuation should we give to Tik-Tok?"

Hearing this, Fang Hong thought for a moment and said: "Maybe 150 billion US dollars."

This valuation, excluding exchange rate changes, is equivalent to about 1 trillion yuan. A valuation of US$150 billion is worthy of Tik-Tok.

Data shows that the company’s revenue in 2019 is not expected to exceed US$200 million. This is not surprising to major investment institutions, because Mr. Zhang did not consider making Tik-Tok profitable so quickly, and it is currently growing at a high speed. In this stage, everything is focused on expanding the user base, and now we are in the money-burning stage.

The funds needed for enterprise development and a large amount of money-burning operations are financed by major investment institutions.

Given a valuation of US$150 billion, Mr. Zhang holds 21% of the equity, which is worth US$31.5 billion, equivalent to more than 220 billion RMB, which is absolutely an astronomical figure.

But for Fang Hong and the stars, US$31.5 billion is not much.

If Mr. Zhang is really willing to sell all his shares in Tik-Tok and exit at this time, Fang Hongle will have to directly settle the transaction in cash with him. As long as the transaction is completed, Tik-Tok will have nothing to do with Mr. Zhang. Half a cent matters, and Fang Hong can control this super platform more smoothly.

…

After a few minutes, Fang Hong ended the video connection with him and got a clear message from the big boss. He also knew what to do next.

At this moment, Chen Yu sent a connection request, and Fang Hong clicked to connect.

"I'm ready. By then, I can automatically generate a large number of AI accounts on major external network platforms, and post, comment, etc." Chen Yu said after connecting to the video connection.

After hearing this, Fang Hong said with satisfaction: "Okay, but don't be anxious, I will let you know when the time comes."

Chen Yu also nodded: "Okay, I'll be ready at any time, just say hello to me."

The two briefly chatted for a few words before ending the video communication. Generative AI accounts can be produced in batches in a short period of time, and the upper limit depends on the load on the servers of major external network platforms.

Automatically generate a large number of AI account registrations at the same time point. Such a volume of visits can definitely bring down the entire server.

…

In the recent period, in the eyes of various outsiders, Tik-Tok has been in troubled times. Misfortunes never come singly, and the house leaks and it rains all night.

At this critical moment, Ah San also took the opportunity to make trouble against Tik-Tok. Today, Sange’s media Mint reported that India’s social media regulatory regulations will be introduced in January next year at the latest, which is only two months later.

Its regulations are designed to control undesirable phenomena such as fake news, ZD attacks, and hatred on social media. Tik-Tok, which is also popular in the subcontinental market, is likely to become the focus of scrutiny and monitoring.

According to mobile application data analysis company Sensor-Tower, in the first quarter of this year, Tik-Tok had approximately 190 million downloads, of which about 45% came from the subcontinent market.

In September this year, Tik-Tok had become the most downloaded social media application in the world in September, and was also listed as the number one competitor by Facebook.

Before this, no one would have thought that the good news would be followed immediately by the strategic crisis of Beijing Magnesium and India D, which has become the biggest obstacle to Tik-Tok’s overseas expansion.

On the same day, the unfavorable news for Tik-Tok did not end there. Foreign record companies and copyright collective management associations expressed increasing dissatisfaction with Tik-Tok.

On the weekend afternoon, foreign media broke the news that Tik-Tok had started a new round of copyright negotiations with the three major record companies. The three major record companies hoped that Tik-Tok could pay hundreds of millions of dollars for copyright licensing fees.

However, Tik-Tok did not accept the price offered by the three major record companies, believing that Tik-Tok was not a music service provider and should not pay copyright fees according to the same standards as music streaming platforms such as Spotify, so the negotiations were deadlocked.

In addition to the unsuccessful copyright negotiations with the three major record companies, Tik-Tok's relationship with the copyright collective management organization has become increasingly unharmonious.

In July of this year, Tik-Tok's case with the digital music copyright organization ICE was brought to the British Copyright Court. The agency required Tik-Tok to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in copyright fees, but the case has not been closed yet.

In order to reduce the copyright burden, Tik-Tok acquired Jukedeck, a music AI startup in the UK. However, just three months later, in the middle of last month, the National Music Lyrics and Songs Copyright Agents Association (NMPA) in Beijing also joined the copyright war against Tik-Tok. NMPA tried to use political review to solve Tik-Tok's copyright issues in Beijing.

Just today, the president of NMPA wrote a letter to the participants of Laomei, which was circulated on the Internet. The letter mentioned that Tik-Tok may have infringed copyrights on a large scale in Beijing. If the association further investigates matters related to Tik-Tok, it hopes to include copyright theft in its review scope.

In response to the NMPA letter, a spokesperson for Tik-Tok also stated today that Tik-Tok has extensive licensing coverage in music copyright, involving thousands of agents and songwriters and millions of copyrights, and has paid licensing fees since its inception.

However, although such a debate must be made, in the current complex environment and the situation where Lao Mei is determined to kill Tik-Tok, such an explanation still seems a bit powerless, because the opponent has never intended to reason with you, and the opponent is just playing rogue.

This series of problems also largely shows how much pressure the Tik-Tok operation and management team is facing. It is no wonder that Mr. Zhang is a little overwhelmed. The West is constantly increasing the intensity of Mr. Zhang. Most people may have already typed GG.

However, it also indirectly shows how difficult it is for Tik-Tok to rise overseas.

But it was also on this night that Fang Hong suddenly conveyed an instruction to the current head of Toutiao, a subsidiary of Qunxing: publicly participate in the acquisition competition of Tik-Tok!

As a company under Qunxing, Toutiao, the current relationship between Qunxing and Amelika, anyone with a normal mind knows that Lao Mei will never allow Tik-Tok to be incorporated into Qunxing.

Fang Hong's move was clearly intended to stir up trouble, to do something that ordinary people would not dare to do.

This news was exposed the next morning, and immediately caused quite a stir in the industry and outside the industry. The outside world did not expect that the stars would also get involved in this kind of thing.

…