this man is not calm

Chapter 422 A mixed bag of fish and dragons
Jin Shang has always attached great importance to introducing strategic investors, but it has not been able to find the right opportunity and has no suitable targets to choose from.

If you take the initiative to approach someone, you will be easily taken advantage of; if you wait passively and express your intentions, the results will not be very satisfactory.

With the current scale of Jinxi Mall, what is needed is tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars. Those who have this kind of funds must be strong and have a good background, so there is no need to rush to grab a share of the B round of financing.

It is like the struggle for supremacy among the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty. For Jinxi Mall, it is already the end of the Central Plains War. Both its own and its opponents are very strong. There is no surrender between evenly matched competitors. For the purpose of mutual dependence and warmth, short-term alliance is still possible. Semi-independent forces that only obey orders but not declarations have no room for survival.

Besides, with the scale of Jinxi Mall, there is no powerful force in the country that can be taken as a vassal.

After meeting with representatives of a number of large funds and chatting for two hours, Jin Shang and Wei Shuangping talked on the phone for half an hour.

"Not going well?"

Seeing that Jin Shang's expression was not very cheerful and his attitude was not as enthusiastic as before, Zhang Hua asked curiously,
"The alliance of big capitals will definitely not be reached after one or two negotiations."

"It's not about that. I was a little naive before. As long as it's capital, it won't be a vegetarian, even if it has a 'hat' on its head."

Maybe they are not so strict about the scale of investment, shareholding ratio and so on, but Jin Shang would rather they were a little stingy and greedy, and not keep testing the bottom line.

If the purpose is not to make money, or it is not so pure, then there will inevitably be higher requirements in other places, such as the supervision and review of funds, the structure and seats of the board of directors and the board of supervisors, the amendment of the company's articles of association, the replacement of accounting firms, quantitative data and performance betting, etc.

Don't think that you can fool people just because those representatives have an identity within the system. In fact, they are all very smart and have seen a lot. Some small tricks are useless in front of them.

"The dishes weren't even ready yet, but they were rushing to serve them to the table and discussing the distribution plan. The way they ate wasn't really that ugly, but it wasn't elegant either."

"What are they eyeing, and can't the e-commerce platforms satisfy their appetite?"

"Jinxi Payment, I have to say that the vision of the veteran players is still good. And Planet Intelligence, this large-scale integrated hardware manufacturer..."

Ordinary entrepreneurs may not be too picky and are very eager for funds. When they reach the point where they will go bankrupt without support, they will reluctantly give in. As for the frustration of selling their piglets at a low price before they grow up, they will not care about it.

But Jin Shang is not a newbie without strength. Without a certain level, emerging projects will not get financing from the capital market at all. Anyone with a discerning eye knows that Jinxi Payment and Planet Intelligence are good things. Wanting to get shares with just a few words is overthinking. It is not about money at all.

"Think about it, you want to introduce strong strategic investors, but strength means a big appetite. If you don't come up with something good, others won't give in."

"You can't do this, it's too passive."

Regardless of whether Jin Shang listens to other people's advice or not, he will usually give it more thought. But this time is different. It seems that the huge investment of Jinxi Culture during this period has made people feel that they do not have enough cash in their hands.

No matter who I find, I want to test and get the upper hand.

This is very unpleasant.

It’s not that I’m afraid of being looked down upon, but the bad consequence of “one punch fails to open the door, but attracts a hundred punches” may occur.

"First, freeze the financing plan, allocate 5% of the shares to establish an equity incentive pool, and then issue semi-closed financial products in the name of the private equity investment fund and trust company under the family office..."

"So radical?"

Zhang Hua was a little surprised. He originally thought that his nephew was a very calm and precocious young man who seldom acted on impulse in business. He did not expect that he would want to resort to self-financing when things did not go well for him.

This kind of operation is usually done by speculators who transfer money from one hand to the other and rob Peter to pay Paul. They rely on bragging and deception, and most of them end up in a mess.

The liquidity of private equity investment funds and trusts is not good. Generally, wealthy families with a lot of spare money will buy a little for the purpose of preserving value, but they will not get too deeply involved. The risks of this thing are difficult to control. It depends on people and can be dragged down by accidental factors.

"If I could, I wouldn't make an exception for something like this, but right now, there's no need to be too restrained."

"I'm not saying this, have you ever thought about going to find the old man of the Huang family?"

Zhang Hua suggested, feeling somewhat amused,

"I know you don't want to have too much to do with that side, but... one hand pays the other hand delivers the goods, it's just business, whose money is not money?"

"I don't want to owe anyone a favor that I won't be able to repay in the future."

"You're overthinking it, Ah Shang. Regarding this matter... I think it's hard to say who owes whom. Giving timely assistance is a favor, but does adding icing on the cake count?"

For the current situation of Jinxi Culture, what kind of financing is available?
Strictly speaking, if Jin Shang wasn't too picky, there would be many people rushing to give him money, but his requirements were too high and it was impossible to find someone who perfectly matched his requirements.

After a brief thought, Jin Shang shook his head gently:
"Not now, maybe in a few years. Right now... Old Huang isn't in a hurry, so why should I worry about it? However, this matter really can't be done so roughly. Let's use the bank loan to support it for a while and see who can hold out."

The reason why players who hold a large amount of cash are not in a hurry now is not because the Jinxi Mall is not good enough, but that there are still some promising competitors on the market. Before the competition in the same track becomes fierce, everyone does not have a very intuitive feeling about the speed at which e-commerce burns money.

After Jin Shang deliberately lowered the selling price of Jin Xi Mall and forced all its peers to start a "round-robin" mode where they were powerless to advance and difficult to maintain, a painful but sustainable business model became the mainstream.

To put it bluntly, it is Jinxi Culture that has led the competition model in this industry astray.

Continuous bleeding has caused all e-commerce platforms, big and small, to continue to lose blood, and then they urgently need to seek support from the outside world. This limited "bloody battle" of "stabbing each other in the back" while controlling the intensity and deviating from the "vital points" has caused too many small and medium-sized capitals to enter and get stuck in it, unable to advance or retreat. Under the model of mutual harm in the entire industry, internal circulation improves competitiveness, allowing one side to hold on longer, wait for others to fall down, and then reap the vacant market. The winner takes all, which is the only way out.

In comparison, Jinxi Mall's advantage is that it was one step ahead and established warehousing and logistics in most of the developed metropolitan areas across the country, basically covering distribution in the capital, the Yangtze River Delta, and Central China.

The advantage of Jinxi Mall is that it has heavy assets but slightly lower operating costs. However, to outsiders who do not know the truth, this gap is not unbridgeable. As long as money is invested, any amount of warehousing and logistics can be built, and as many couriers as needed can be provided.

Moat and core competitiveness are only relative, at least that's how powerful big capital sees it.

Although this is true, it is not all. After-sales and door-to-door services are the real killer features that set Jinxi Mall apart. Of course, there is another unknown factor, which is that with the help of the "Golden Finger", the operating efficiency of Jinxi Mall has increased by at least 3 to 5 percent.

Don't underestimate such a tiny gap. The larger the company or group, the more employees they have. When big corporate disease breaks out, it is harder than climbing to the sky to improve efficiency a little bit. This is far from being solved by emphasizing corporate culture, enforcing attendance discipline, or laying off employees to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Therefore, the so-called investor representatives who were talking in front of Jin Shang may have underestimated how huge the advantages of Jinxi Mall are, and thought that all e-commerce platforms that are so big would perform like this.

Without comparison, we don’t know how powerful Jinxi Mall is. This is the key reason why financing has not been successful.

Only after those mixed e-commerce platforms have gone through a round of reshuffle will everyone realize which one is truly powerful.

"One or two years is still too short. The real gold needs to be smelted in more fierce fires before it can be revealed."

In that case, let's wait a little longer.

However, if we just rely on network price differences and after-sales service fees to make profits, the profit channels are still too narrow. We need to find ways to shorten the payment cycle, transfer the pressure and risks to suppliers, and improve the efficiency of cash flow utilization.

If you want to make quick money, the capital market is of course more convenient.

besides……

"We need to plan cross-holdings among several subsidiaries. Improving the control and stability of the system is urgent."
-
The issue of financing for the e-commerce platform has been discussed for almost a year. After it was essentially frozen, more people came to the door to propose financing. However, Jin Shang was too lazy to worry about this matter. He would continue to negotiate and leave the rest to Wei Shuangping.

The consequence of developing too fast is high costs. It is better to stop and make up for the previous debts. Anyway, this kind of long-term competition measured in years cannot be determined by a short-term burst. In the end, it still depends on the competition of quality and price, after-sales service and operational strength.

There is no need for Jin Shang to suppress it deliberately. Excessive costs, delay in profitability, and the fading of the hype will naturally lead to a series of problems.

Sure enough, on the first day of October, news came from my second uncle-in-law Zhang Hua that the first bulk transaction e-commerce platform in the north focusing on agricultural trade was shut down in a low-key manner.

Two years ago, Jin Shang had visited the platform. At that time, the e-commerce platform with the "four-haves" of having a strong background, strength, resources and channels was so prominent. It was really surprising that it failed so quickly.

After understanding the specific process, Jin Shang couldn't help but sigh that the difficulty of moving from offline to online is beyond imagination these days.

After the initial excitement, the agricultural wholesale e-commerce platform quickly became a decoration. The imagined foreign orders did not come, and the domestic sales channels did not use it at all. In the end, it still had to do business offline. No one read it online, and the click-through rate was almost non-existent.

To put it bluntly, e-commerce platforms focusing on agriculture have few users and no traffic injection. Their promotional methods are limited to relevant document initiatives. Without any practical benefits, who would care about this?
After running idle for nearly two years, the website, which cost a lot of money but did not generate many business orders, had to be shut down.

There are many e-commerce platforms that are doing poorly, and some unknown startups fail every month. However, the collapse of a large platform that is strong, large in scale, and popular for a while still surprises many peers.

Obviously, it was still on the cusp of the storm, and the capital injection from the outside world had never stopped. It would have been relatively easy as long as they wanted to raise funds and package themselves. In the end, they didn't make much waves and just gave up so decisively. It is more or less shocking.

"Without burning money to subsidize users or merchants, and without massive traffic support, what's the point of playing with e-commerce platforms?"

Do you really think that advertising on Jinxi Culture’s portal website, instant messaging and SNS social networking sites, as well as offline newspapers and magazines is free?
In order to sustain Jinxi Mall, the direct or indirect support is not a small amount.

There was once a rich and powerful young man named Xue Jinshang who started an IT Internet business. In the first half of the year, he advertised heavily on TV, and there were promotional posters everywhere in the subway and on outdoor billboards. But after the summer vacation, things seemed to have quieted down a lot.

Spending money is also a technical job. How can you just do something big when you see something good and waste your limited cash flow?
In another year or so, when more and more outsiders who come to this industry to make money fail, everyone will realize that not everyone can do it, and spending money cannot solve all problems.

Now, Jin Shang just wants to watch the joke. After the so-called entrepreneurs who are "stupid and rich, come quickly" are taught a lesson by reality, he will realize that the industrial layout of Jinxi Culture is not something that can be learned easily.

Jinshang, which has the strength to hold on, is still concerned about opening the data center as soon as possible, networking the photovoltaic panels to generate electricity as soon as possible, and starting the windmills as soon as possible.

The supervision of construction progress is usually done by his employees. Whenever important equipment is brought to the site or wind turbines are being hoisted, he will take time to go and take a look.

The first phase of the project has a construction period of approximately six months. Whether it can be advanced or delayed depends on the specific debugging progress.

The first factory building is expected to be put into use in late October. If there is no need to customize some dual-power IT equipment, it would be faster to buy regular general products on the market.

With the support of mechanized construction, the skill attributes of the "infrastructure maniac" do not have to wait until ten years later to be lit up, it is already exaggerated now.

Of course, such a smooth progress is inseparable from the thorough planning and preparation in the early stage, as well as the fierce investment after the start of construction.

Jinxi Culture's current data storage and computing power needs are mainly concentrated in Jinxi chat, online video and online games, which have high requirements for network quality and stability and long online time, and all of which put a lot of pressure on the server.

It’s not that Jin Shang is anxious, but the cost of broadband servers is getting higher and higher, and he has to build a data center.

(End of this chapter)