King of Capital

“Money is like water. Many people may pay attention to water, but few people pay attention to and enjoy the process of digging a well. Wealth figures give people a very intuitive feeling, so people tend to use this dimension to define the value of success, but in fact there are more important things behind the numbers.”

“So what role did capital play in the development of Mobike?”

“We have definitely been boosted by capital, but my personal opinion is that there is no truly successful company that succeeds solely because of capital. And what capital gives you will eventually be taken back. Mobike must continue to create our own social value.”

“So you don’t care about commercial value?”

"I believe that commercial value comes from social value. Mobike is a lifestyle that provides everyone with the option of riding a bike, which will naturally create commercial value for 0-5 km travel solutions."

Hu Weiwei said slowly and seriously: "I have always hoped that Mobike would be a gift to this city. In the process of doing this, every person who loves Mobike has given me the courage and confidence to persevere."

"Okay, Mr. Hu, thank you very much for sharing today."

The host had a brief conversation with the photographer, confirmed that there were no problems, announced that the interview had ended successfully, politely declined the invitation to lunch, and the group packed up their things and said goodbye and left Mobike headquarters.

Several colleagues were silent as we took the elevator downstairs. The chief writer flipped through the notebook in his hand, thinking about the direction of the report content.

"It's all about burning money. If you fail, just treat it as charity. That's a really good attitude."

The photographer, carrying all the equipment on his back, got into the car with a grunt. His few words echoed in the empty underground parking lot, with a hint of teasing at the end.

Although Mobike has enjoyed a total capital investment of more than 6 million US dollars in the past two years, its development to this day has little to do with Xie Jingxing and Li Bin.

Whether they supported burning money before or are against burning money now, it is all for the purpose of harvesting users in the end.

But I am different. I insist on spending money just to create a great cause and give Mobike as a gift to society.

It would be nice to make some money to return the capital, but there is nothing we can do if we lose money. It is they who are optimistic about this business model, and I am not forcing them to invest.

——Today, Hu Weiwei displayed this attitude throughout the interview in a very eloquent manner, in response to the public criticism made by the company's founding investor Li Bin on WeChat Moments three days ago. It is obvious that there is a serious rift within this star startup company.

The founders and the management team want to burn money, and the investors and shareholders... some of the investors and shareholders strongly oppose it, and do not hesitate to bring up the issue of commercial capital supervision as a matter of public opinion.

[Hu Weiwei achieved growth from zero to 10 billion in two years. With the emergence of Mobike, the bicycle industry, which was declining day by day, was reborn. The annual output of the entire industry exceeded 10 million, driving the new upgrade of traditional manufacturing. In a bicycle factory in Hebei, more than 200 workers who were originally worried about whether their wages would be paid normally next month returned to the workshop...]

The chief writer spread out his notebook and placed it on his legs as he wrote with ink. It was almost noon and there was a traffic jam on the banks of the Liangma River. The car was stopping and starting and suddenly braked. The tip of his pen tore through the thin paper, leaving a long, twisted and chaotic line.

"Hey, in order to provide food for Hebei workers, the people of Beijing have to endure the hardship of living in a garbage dump. It's honorable!"

The cameraman leaned on the back of the front seat and glanced at the notebook, proudly raised his hand in front of his chest and gave a thumbs up, and the car was instantly filled with a subtle atmosphere.

The editor-in-chief raised his head and turned his neck: "Why do you say so many weird things?"

"If you can stop me from speaking, what's the point of being a reporter? I can just go home and sell cakes." The cameraman showed no sign of weakness.

The team leader advised: "Alright, we are all here to complete our work tasks, it has nothing to do with other things."

"Beat him!" The cameraman sneered and ended the argument.

【Young girl, great things. 】

The chief writer calmly flipped through the notebook, lightly skipped over the zigzag lines, and continued writing the wording of the report on the new page.

The content of Li Bin’s remarks in his circle of friends is shocking, but his personal public influence is limited.

No matter how industry insiders feel, under the positive guidance of authoritative media, the general public will only treat it as a verbal battle like the one that once happened in Zhu Xiaohu's circle of friends.

You can laugh and make up jokes about business tycoons, but soon you will forget about the fun and turn your attention to more interesting public events. Why bother with the seriousness?

The team leader looked at the thank-you message received on WeChat on his mobile phone, set the contact into an exclusive group, thought for a while and added capital letters before the name note - A. Mr. Grapefruit Zou.

【Let’s meet for coffee some other day.】

She had a faint smile on her lips, and her fingertips moved lightly as she tapped the screen to send a message, followed by three little red flower emoticons.

The cameraman looked out the window at the street. Someone said that Ofo has put 800 million bicycles into service across the country so far. Dai Wei personally admitted that the number of bicycles put into service in Beijing alone far exceeded 60, and the data is still growing rapidly.

The low cost of 300 yuan for a single bicycle is accompanied by low quality, but capital has always wanted both. It is willing to pay generously for a low-investment, cost-effective business model, but hates the high depreciation and operating costs that will inevitably result from low prices and low quality.

It doesn't matter, as long as the number of bicycles put into use is higher than the amount of damage, the problem can be solved. If 1 bicycles are put into use and 1 are damaged, the damage rate is %. As long as million bicycles are put into use before are damaged, the damage rate will still be %.

If products are built faster than they break down, the depreciation rate data will always be infinitely lowered within an acceptable good range.

As for the high operating costs of recycling and disposing of broken cars, it is better to abandon the operation for the time being and let them rot on the streets. This data does not exist in the financial statements.

Once they raise enough money to beat Mobike in the market monopoly, with tens of millions of users, why worry about costs?

When starting a business, you should never worry about the money you will need tomorrow. Dai Wei always remembers Xie Jingxing's teachings at the Peking University lecture. He has regarded it as the truth and practiced it perfectly since the day the war officially started until today. He has plenty of ways to please investors!

Billions of dollars of capital are very cooperative. As long as there is no risk in sight, there is no risk.

The dividends of mobile Internet have disappeared, and the financial industry has not yet emerged from the shadow of capital shortage caused by last year's stock market crash. Shared bicycles must be the most worthy investment track this year, even if it is an artificial trend led by Xie Jingxing and co-created by Tencent and Alibaba.

After working hard for more than a decade in venture capital, it is rare to encounter such opportunities. If newcomers don’t get on board, they will look back in a few years and be like traitors who parted their hair in the middle four or five years ago...

No one can see the piles of yellow cars lying around on the streets, but everyone can vaguely feel that the craze in the entire venture capital industry has reached its peak, and is now declining.

The cameraman raised the car window covered with an inky film and hugged the camera equipment tightly with his arms. The exquisite azure work badge on his chest was squeezed out of place.

………… “Sorry, Mr. Hu, Mr. Xie is attending a very important official meeting. I will report to him immediately after the meeting.”

The female assistant on the other end of the phone remained unchangingly distant and polite. Hu Weiwei got used to it and put down her phone. She was already accustomed to being interviewed and appearing on TV shows, and she would never tire of expressing her entrepreneurial ideas to the outside world.

The interview from the authoritative Blue Society just now was no different. It just made her feel the silent power of capital once again. She felt a little uneasy and wanted to hear Xie Jingxing's voice.

Three days ago, Li Bin spoke out late at night, bringing the long-standing tacit issue to the forefront. Unexpectedly, he did not take sides.

Acquiring Ofo and burning money are two different things. The acquisition was led by Mobike, and Dai Wei got out with the money. The equity structure was diluted, and the combined shareholdings of her and Xie Jingxing were below the actual control line. There will be follow-up investments to increase shareholdings in the future.

So yesterday Yan Wenhua came to the company for a meeting, and Xie Jingxing simply expressed his agreement with the acquisition decision through online participation, but reminded everyone to be mentally prepared for the opposition from Ofo and the failure of the acquisition.

Hu Weiwei didn't care why he was so confident in his words, she simply raised her hand and voted in favor.

Yan Wenhua was confused by this. If he couldn't manage the shared bike business through the complex relationship between Jinshajiang, SoftBank and Alibaba, the burning of money would continue until one of them failed.

Even if the acquisition is successful, in a hot industry like shared bicycles with no barriers to entry and dozens of competitors, Mobike will always have to follow up defensively as long as there are competitors who dare to spend money in exchange for market share.

When Xie Jingxing supported the merger, all the small moves made by Didi during this period became useless. Li Bin was essentially scolding everyone. He was in cahoots with Tencent's financial investors who wanted to withdraw as soon as possible.

A very important part of this is that Wang Xiaofeng, the current CEO of Mobike...

"Mr. Hu, have you read the financing plan?"

Hu Weiwei was thinking about this. He pushed open the door and walked into the office at the right time. He went straight to the water dispenser and said, "My finance colleague told me that Didi hasn't responded yet?"

"Really? I don't know." Hu Weiwei said in a light tone.

"Didi wants to block us. I think we should talk to Xinda first. Their strategic investment director will come to Beijing tomorrow. Can you talk to Xiyou?"

Wang Xiaofeng took the glass of water and gulped it down, then he let out his anger and said bluntly, "I just came back from a meeting at the Transportation Bureau. In a few days, there will be a policy to restrict the release of bicycles."

"Beijing area?" Hu Weiwei automatically ignored the first half of his sentence.

Wang Xiaofeng patiently analyzed: "The corresponding supervision issued by Beijing is very instructive. If other regions follow suit, it will not be long before the ministries and commissions issue supervision."

"I haven't heard any news about this before. Why are they suddenly going to restrict the release?" Hu Weiwei said in a timid tone like an 80-year-old lady.

"Ofo held a marketing campaign and set up a two-kilometer-long bicycle formation outside the West Fifth Ring Road to show that ofo is everywhere."

Wang Xiaofeng paused with sarcasm and turned helpless: "It was just a coincidence. I happened to run into the city leader personally entertaining a foreign business delegation there. They praised China's manufacturing capacity so much that it was so good that even the foreigners could do performance art. The leader was embarrassed."

The area west of the Fourth Ring Road is surrounded by deep mountains and old forests on the left, the Yongding River on the right, the Babaoshan Cemetery in front, and the Miaofeng Mountain Holy Mother Yuanjun Temple in the back, which enjoys the incense of the world.

Except for the fact that there were no living people there, it was a piece of Feng Shui treasured land. The foreign bumpkins were uneducated and could not explain the importance of fate, luck and Feng Shui. They only knew what overcapacity was, which did not seem to be a good word for doing business.

At present, the total number of Mobike bicycles deployed nationwide has far exceeded the expectations at the beginning of the year. 520 million bicycles are enough to meet the needs of the market. Last month, the company publicly announced that the total number of bicycles deployed was 800 million. After removing the water, the number should be more than 900 million by now.

Add to that the many second-tier players in Rainbow, and it is roughly estimated that there are 1800 million bicycles. Hidden behind this set of data are various operational and management problems such as random parking, theft and damage, which would confuse any city administrative department.

However, the entire industry's explosion came too quickly and too violently, reaching such a scale in just half a year.

Due to the two main themes of energy conservation, emission reduction and environmental protection, and shared economy and technological innovation, the top-level supervision has not yet figured out what is going on, so local governments naturally will not take the lead.

Once a big brother stands up to take responsibility, investment restriction and rectification will be an inevitable trend, and the accidental occurrence of shared bikes will not affect the overall situation.

The key point that Wang Xiaofeng wanted to express lies in the subsequent extension. The online car-hailing industry issued its first regulatory draft. Didi acquired Kuaidi, and this year the industry officially determined the merger and acquisition of Uber China. The disorderly competition environment has been curbed, and there are traces of the merger route pushed by various related parties for leading companies.

"If everyone is sincere in trying to bring us together with Ofo, that would be a good thing, but if anyone wants to take advantage of the opportunity to cause trouble, that would be a problem."

Wang Xiaofeng frowned and said, "We are facing considerable pressure both internally and externally. We need to eliminate the information gap and strive to gain strong support."

"You have to have a good talk with Mr. Xie on behalf of the company!" He returned to the point and emphasized seriously.

Hu Weiwei responded slowly: "I am currently busy with overseas markets and brand promotion. I am not as familiar with financing as you are."

"...I will have to make operational adjustments in response to supervision. You should take care of this financing and subsequent mergers and acquisitions. The finance department happens to need someone to take charge." Wang Xiaofeng was silent for a few seconds and then directly handed over the management rights.

520 million bicycles and 1320 million monthly active users were achieved with more than billion yuan of funds.

Mobike had spent all its financing long ago, and during this period it had misappropriated user deposits to settle bills with suppliers in an attempt to delay the pace of new rounds of financing, and to increase its operating data as much as possible to expand the company's valuation in order to raise more money, thus forming an abnormal positive cycle.

Didi jumped out to match the merger and acquisition at a very precise time. The company had the money to take the dominant position in the first two months, and the same was true for the next two months when it completed a new round of financing.

But at this moment, the investors and shareholders have locked up Mobike's cash flow by manipulating the financing plan.

Didi therefore pretended to be unwilling to cooperate with the financing process, leaving sufficient room for merger negotiations.

Xie Jingxing's financial strength is unquestionable and Hu Weiwei has shares. The combined equity voting and financing sources of the two can break this shackle in all aspects. Wang Xiaofeng can only choose to make an exchange.

The most important thing is that Li Bin went too far. He disregarded all personal interests and put the company in an embarrassing situation.

Wang Xiaofeng regards Mobike as his life's career. He does not accept the accusation of burning money, nor does he accept becoming a victim in the merger process. Didi cannot threaten him.

(End of this chapter)