this man is not calm

Chapter 439 Financing
The power of culture is long-lasting, subtle and irresistible. Unlike "Resident Evil", "Mob Fighter" and "The Strange Cases of the Song Dynasty" which became popular suddenly without any warning, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Legend of the White Snake" and "Journey to the West" have historical background, but they are big IPs formed through reintegration and adaptation. Their penetration rate and influence are incomparable.

On the last day of 1997 and New Year's Day, the ratings of the New Year's Eve celebration programs of major TV stations were completely suppressed by "Journey to the West", which really surprised people in the domestic cultural and entertainment circles.

It has been nearly ten years since such a dominant TV series was born. Moreover, it is not a realistic theme that aroused heated discussions among the whole nation, nor is it a viewing trend triggered by children controlling the remote controls during the special period of winter and summer vacations. Strictly speaking, the New Year's Eve period is a low point for TV series. It is really incredible that "Journey to the West" can be so popular.

The mainstream media has begun to use the term "cultural heyday" to describe the year 1997, which has passed, and has made great acclaim for the explosive development of film and television dramas. However, the craze was triggered by a young company called Jinxi Culture, which has really made a number of influential old brands a little uneasy.

In the past, people always excused themselves by saying that ordinary people lacked the ability to appreciate and were unable to appreciate the charm of high-end cultural products. Facts have proved that it is not that people do not know how to appreciate, but that traditional cultural companies have become divorced from the soil in which they are rooted and are unable to produce film and television dramas that are popular with the public.

If the popularity of TV series adapted from comics, games and novels is due to the fact that they are new to the market, then "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Legend of the White Snake" and "A Record of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty" are the "gold mines" that are clearly visible. Countless cultural celebrities have adapted them into local dramas. They are very vibrant, so why do people turn a blind eye to them?
Maybe, it’s not that I didn’t see it, but that I tried it, but never succeeded, so I gave up.

Jin Shang had long realized that although his past and present lives seemed very similar, they were actually very different. If the previous life was a process of drastic cultural changes, self-doubt, and revival and reconstruction due to the "century of humiliation" of backwardness in modern times, then the end of the 20th century in this life was actually in a transition period from prosperity to decline and bottoming out. Traditional culture was preserved very intact, but because it had not experienced the process of destruction and rebirth from the ashes, it suffered from a serious lack of endogenous motivation.

In his two lives, Jin Shang could not find a comparable object. The complexity of the development of cultural undertakings is vividly displayed at the moment. If he had to find a similar example, it might be North America, which experienced the "Great Depression" after World War I, began to reconstruct the economy and culture, fell into severe isolationism, and slowly recovered itself.

This is most obvious in the cultural sector. Ordinary people are not uninterested in the so-called "exotic customs". The Xiao Maza Band and Dai Yiqun have launched some popular foreign song albums and albums, which have considerable domestic sales. This shows that the mainstream cultural companies responsible for production and output have no intention of accepting emerging music and film and television trends from the outside world.

To put it bluntly, if we continue to follow the routine, we can still maintain the existing interest structure. Anyway, outsiders cannot come in, and a few fish that slip through the net will not affect the overall situation. We can make a lot of money by fooling around, so why bother ourselves and look for a way to transform?
Without comparison, there is no gap. Even if it is a big shit, without many choices, everyone can only swallow it with a pinch of nose.

If this continues, it will definitely not get better.

As for culture, the more it collides, the more different sparks it can create. If you are self-admiring and don't seek to keep up with the times, it is inevitable that you will fall behind and be abandoned.

After the TV series "Journey to the West" became increasingly influential, the publicity department also organized several exchanges to share their successful experiences. However, Jin Shang, who was in charge of the creative, original design and script, was too busy to go and let the TV series' creative team do the scene work.

It’s not that Jin Shang is overconfident, but although there aren’t many things happening after New Year’s Day, each one is a big event.

First of all, the huge interest payment of 4.8 billion yuan caused the account balance of the personal financial company and family office to be greatly reduced. Fortunately, several hundred million yuan of dividends from Minxing Bank will be received soon, which can alleviate the dilemma of plummeting cash flow.

The second thing is the roadshow for setting up a private equity fund and raising funds. Jin Shang does not appear directly in the show, but he has to pay attention to the overall control at all times.

Then there is the issuance of convertible bonds by Jinxi Mall, which requires consulting professionals on how to implement it as quickly as possible and avoid risks.

Finally, there is the annual report disclosure of Jinxi Video, the convening of the board of directors and shareholders' meetings. Listed companies need to disclose a series of data, deal with exchanges and accounting firms, and answer investor press conferences.

After finishing all these, I still have to attend the CSRC's consultation meeting for listed companies to discuss whether the current "split share structure" needs to be changed.

Although domestic secondary market exchanges have been around for quite a while, they have never made big enough strides and every innovation has been very cautious.

In the early years, due to lax management and considering the actual situation, corporate shares were not allowed to circulate. The "same shares, different rights" situation was intended to avoid some risks, but it also dampened the enthusiasm of investors.

Introducing the "equal rights for equal shares" model and enhancing market vitality is one of the signs of a mature secondary market, but this method is not a panacea. "Equal rights for equal shares" means intensified institutional gaming and the introduction of a large number of retail investors, which will lead to more and more variables. If the investor protection system cannot keep up, it will lead to a series of adverse consequences.

In fact, discussions in this area have been going on for many years. In the past, there has always been a lot of noise but little action. However, since the year before last, the situation has changed, and there is a sense that things are getting serious.

Ultimately, the economy has begun to improve, and the current state of the secondary market is no longer able to match market demand.

The Beijing Stock Exchange has a history of more than 60 years since its early days, but there are still less than 300 listed stocks in the secondary market, which is really too shabby. What is even more embarrassing is that junk companies are seeking to go public to cash out, while good companies are not very keen on listing. There are even one or two high-quality stocks that actively seek delisting every year due to poor financing channels. This is completely different from the concept that good companies should be listed companies 20 years later.

In 1997, Jinxi Video and Minxing Bank were the few large-scale IPOs in China in the past decade. They were successfully listed, which may have been because the exchange wanted to establish a reputation and set an example.

However, "equal rights for equal shares" is not a panacea. As a star entrepreneur in Beijing in the past two years, Jin Shang was invited to attend and expressed his opinions.

I have said a lot of things, but if we remove the details, it actually means one thing: in principle, we support "equal rights for equal shares" and make the secondary market bigger and stronger, but in the GEM, we still have to make room for "equal rights for equal shares".

The original intention of this idea is that after the advent of the Internet era, the entrepreneurial boom will definitely sweep the country, and there will be many young entrepreneurs who are determined to make money in this industry. If there is no "AB share" system to enhance the voting rights of founders, then the control of future technology companies will easily be divided up by various investors in rounds of financing.

For company founders, this is a very strong defense measure. While ensuring the stable development of the company, it will not be severely turbulent due to internal strife or the removal of management.

There was a typical example in my previous life. When Alibaba was seeking a secondary listing on the Hong Kong stock market, because there was no AB share system, this record-breaking IPO eventually went across the ocean to be listed on the Nasdaq.

Jin Shang, who already knew the pros and cons, carefully explained his views. As for whether the regulators would take note of them and give them serious consideration, that is not a problem for an entrepreneur to worry about.

For now, Jinxi Culture should pay more attention to the issuance of convertible bonds of e-commerce platforms. After consulting many industry insiders, Jin Shang learned that given the current situation of Jinxi Culture, it can issue convertible bonds, but there is little hope of publicly listing them in the secondary market, unless it can accept listing on the current "third board" stock transfer market.

However, it is currently very difficult for the "third board" market to transfer to the main board. Its popularity is too low, financing is limited, and it does not play much of a role.

In view of this, Jin Shang had to think of other ways, trying to expand the scale of employee shareholding by holding shares on behalf of others through agreements, or raising funds through internal trusts. However, this method is suspected of self-financing, jumping across the "red line" of supervision. If nothing goes wrong or no one reports it, it will be fine. But once there is a discordant movement, it may be difficult to end.

In other words, this thing can only solve the emergency situation temporarily and cannot become a regular means. The real way for Jinxi Mall to be able to attack and defend is to establish a private equity investment fund and set up a separate trust company to raise funds publicly.

"Fortunately, we have Minxing Bank and its affiliated securities and financial companies. In addition, we can think of other methods."
-
Amidst the busyness, it soon arrived on January 20th, the Great Cold in the lunar calendar. Tomorrow is the Northern Minor New Year, and the day after tomorrow is the Southern Minor New Year. The third Spring Festival Gala is being prepared in full swing.

Many employees' hearts have already flown away, and even those whose hometowns are far away have already taken annual leave to go home early. However, the boss Jin Shang has to go to work as usual. Although he has fewer social engagements in recent days, the company's affairs are not necessarily less, and there are even more important matters that cannot be shirked, which are relatively more difficult.

At present, Jin Shang is staying in the front-line management room of the data center, which has completed the first topology, added racks, and increased the computing power to a higher level.

After more than two months of trial operation, the messaging function between Jinxi Chat and Xiaolingtong was officially launched.

Over the past two years, Fetion has leveraged its advantage in mobile phone users to effectively suppress Jinxi Chat, with a clear advantage in both user volume and activity level. If it were not for the demand generated by online time and group buying business dominated by offline life, the contrast would probably be even more obvious.

Now, with the support of more than 80 million Xiaolingtong users, Jinshang can also enjoy the advantages of instant messaging and text messaging.

only……

"Customers who can afford mobile phones and pay high mobile phone bills are mostly able to buy computers; urban white-collar workers who can use PHS cannot afford computers."

There is no doubt that the number of Xiaolingtong users is almost ten times that of current mobile users, but the actual increase in active users is not that obvious.

Fetion, which took the lead, has already occupied a large share of the market. Jinxi Chat, which started two years later, can no longer even see the back of its competitors.

Of course, winning first doesn’t count as winning. Whoever laughs last laughs best.

There is still hope of catching up and maintaining its basic market share. Jinxi Chat, which has not been defeated for more than two years, has stubbornly held on to its bottom line. Currently in the instant messaging market, the market share ratio of the two is 3 to 5, with Fetion occupying half of the market, and the remaining 20% ​​is divided among other small applications, peers in the segmented market and foreign competitors.

The current situation of the instant messaging market is that two strong players are competing with each other, and many up-and-coming players are waiting for an opportunity to move in. The fundamental reason for this result is that there are too many chat rooms of all sizes with low barriers to entry. Even with the strong squeeze from Jinxi Chat and Fetion, they still cannot completely eliminate all kinds of micro instant messaging software.

Then there is the proliferation of various "plug-ins", which makes Jinxi Chat busy and has to put out fires everywhere, and Fetion does not have the leisure to make an example of them.

Yang Qi, who was in charge of the debugging and grid connection work, couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he saw his staff successfully connecting the data of Jinxi Chat and Xiaolingtong.

The interface between hundreds of thousands or millions of users and more than 80 million user data is completely not on the same scale. The data has increased nearly a hundred times, and the requirements for software and hardware have increased a thousand times. It took more than a year from the date when Xiaolingtong went on sale to barely achieve this step.

"Fortunately, I did not disgrace my life."

Watching messages being sent to Xiaolingtong user terminals through Jinxi Chat, and then many text messages being returned, the amount of background data soared, the power of the server rack increased, and the cooling fan whirred. The high-frequency vibration noise, which was obviously a bit harsh, seemed so comfortable.

"The bonus will be sent to your salary card soon. There will be a party tomorrow, so everyone should have some fun. After arranging your shifts, you can prepare to take a day off."

It is always a pleasure to give out money.

The importance of building this data interoperability function is self-evident. This is not the era of data traffic charges. Both making calls and sending text messages are charged. The charges outside the package are calculated by the minute for the former and by the number of messages for the latter.

It is free to receive calls and text messages on Xiaolingtong, but it costs money to make calls and send text messages. It is not too expensive, but not cheap either. After binding the family number, it is 20 cents per minute, 10 cents after three minutes, ordinary indoor calls are uniformly 20 cents, and long-distance calls are more expensive, the cheapest is 40 cents per minute.

Sending text messages is more expensive, costing 20 cents per message.

Both have their advantages, it just depends on which one is more suitable for you.

Generally speaking, the call time and the guaranteed number of free text messages included in the monthly package are sufficient.

Except... in special circumstances.

After binding with Jinxi Chat, as long as you recharge your membership or purchase a preferential SMS package, you can send unlimited text messages from the computer client. To put it bluntly, it is to encourage Xiaolingtong users to use Jinxi Chat. It doesn't matter if you don't have a computer, you can access the Internet in the school computer room, and Internet cafes are now becoming more popular, so you don't have to worry about not finding a place to enjoy the discount.

In order to have this chat tonight, Jin Shang has put a lot of effort into it. The coupons for the year-end sale, especially those that purchase a membership, are the most cost-effective.

In order to compete for instant messaging, an Internet application whose role is not particularly obvious and has not shown strong traffic monetization capabilities, Jin Shang mobilized almost the entire group company.

(End of this chapter)