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Chapter 453 0443 [The Great Wall Meeting]

Just in April, on April Fool's Day, Lei Jun came to visit with two young men.

One was named Wen Chu, and the other was named Hao Yi.

Lei Jun introduced them as follows: "These two are the founders of the Great Wall Club, Mr. Wen Chu and Mr. Hao Yi. They are also the co-founders of Monet."

"Hello, Mr. Chen!"

"Hello, Mr. Wen. Hello, Mr. Hao."

Monet is a mobile portal website, positioned similarly to Kongzhong. Three years ago, it had 1500 million registered users and over 800 million users for its mobile space (similar to the WPA version of HaiNei.com).

Chef Wen explained, “Mr. Chen, the Great Wall Club we founded is a global mobile internet industry CEO club. Of course, it’s not just that. For example, foreign companies like Google, SoftBank, and Sequoia Capital, as well as Chinese companies like Baidu, Sina, and Alibaba, have officially become members of the Great Wall Club. We are here today to formally invite Mr. Chen to join.”

"When was this association established?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Chef Wen said, "It was officially registered four days ago."

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "You've invited so many companies in just four days?"

Chef Wen explained, “Many of our members have worked with us before. The Great Wall Club was born out of this collaboration. Last year, we also invited Mr. Chen to our Global Mobile Internet Conference, but he was probably too busy at the time…”

"Will there be specific regulations for the Great Wall project?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Hao Yi immediately took it out: "President Chen, please take a look."

Chen Guiliang glanced at it and smiled. After reading it briefly, he said, "Okay, I'll join."

This so-called "Great Wall Club" is actually a commercial company.

After joining, members have to pay membership fees, and members of the public have to buy tickets to participate in activities. To put it bluntly, it's a business platform built for member companies. It's not a CEO club at all, let alone a non-governmental organization.

This is fundamentally different from the Taishan Club and the Jiangnan Club.

The Taishan Society is a closed organization, a top-tier private circle, similar in nature to a fraternity. It's a Western import.

Jiangnan Club is a semi-open, semi-closed club, essentially a high-end Zhejiang business community. It's similar to the "guild halls" of the Qing Dynasty—a remnant of feudalism.

Chef Wen continued, "We held our first Global Mobile Internet Conference last year, and this year we've expanded the event globally. The conference is held in China every May and in the United States every October. In the future, we may move the venue to a country outside of China and the US."

"Impressive, quite large-scale," Chen Guiliang praised.

This thing will probably only be popular for a few years. Once a more authoritative "World Internet Conference" emerges, the "Global Mobile Internet Conference" organized by the Great Wall Society will decline.

But a few years is not bad either, and Chen Guiliang can take advantage of this platform to promote himself.

Once the business was over, Lei Jun started chatting casually. He said with a smile, "This Great Wall Club is actually a commercial company. I have investments in it, so I act as their advisor and also help them recruit members."

Chen Guiliang said, "Mr. Lei, you must have made a lot of money from your investments over the past few years, right?"

"It's alright. There have been successes and failures." Lei Jun was very modest.

His investment success rate is extremely high!

Speaking of investment, Chen Guiliang has officially invested in DJI. He invested 2200 million RMB in exchange for a 15% stake in DJI.

To be honest, it's a bit pricey.

But DJI is profitable every month, and before it can mass-produce drones, it's not short of money at all. Moreover, founder Wang Tao is particularly stubborn, has a very high valuation of his company, and is unwilling to give up more shares.

Wang Tao's way of motivating employees is also unique; instead of giving stock options, he directly gives them shares.

DJI has granted company shares to two employees so far. One of them left during the economic crisis, and DJI simply gave him a small sum of money to redeem his shares. The other is Yang Mozhan, an employee of Hong Kong No. 1, who will also have his shares redeemed by the company in two years if he leaves.

Next, two employees will be awarded shares: Zhao Tao, who focuses on hardware, and Shi Jun, who focuses on software.

Regardless, compared to JD.com, the investment in DJI is relatively small.

Liu Qiangdong has almost burned through his money again!

Chen Guiliang invested $5000 million in JD.com last year, and in less than a year, JD.com has burned through more than $3800 million.

So Liu Qiangdong started looking for venture capital again.

Tiger Global, having recovered somewhat, is very optimistic about JD.com's model and plans to invest $1.5 million.

However, due to the devastating economic crisis, Tiger Global Management didn't have enough cash on hand and planned to split its Series C funding round into two phases. They would invest $0.75 billion in the first half of the year in Series C1, and another $0.75 billion in Series C2 by the end of the year.

Liu Qiangdong called Chen Guiliang a couple of days ago to ask if he wanted to make further investments. He added that if not, he'd be willing to sell a portion of his investment to Tiger Fund.

Liu Qiangdong, unwilling to have too much of the founder's equity diluted, directly applied the same tactics he used against A and B rounds of venture capital last year to Chen Guiliang. He wanted Chen Guiliang to sell a portion of his equity.

JD.com isn't burning through cash for nothing; its growth rate is ridiculously fast, with Tiger Global valuing it at $13.5 billion. If Chen Guiliang sells his shares, he could earn five times his initial investment in less than a year!
Chen Guiliang said he still needed to consider it and would let Dongzi wait and see.

At noon, Chen Guiliang treated Lei Jun and the other two to lunch.

Wen Chu and Hao Yi are quite the braggarts. They said they recently went to the US and, through Sequoia Capital's introduction, even visited the CEOs of Apple and Facebook. They practically blew Jobs and Zuckerberg's reputation off the top.

The more impressive the bosses are, the more their connections are highlighted.

Chen Guiliang simply smiled and watched them put on airs.

Lei Jun felt a little awkward, so he changed the subject, saying, "Google has officially withdrawn from China. I invited the vice president of Google China Engineering Research Institute and Google's global engineering director to work on a phone together. We also invited a few other people to have millet porridge and talk about entrepreneurship at the Yingu Building. So my phone brand is called Xiaomi, and it's expected to be released by the end of this year." "I wish Xiaomi phones great success," Chen Guiliang said auspiciously.

Lei Jun asked, "Will HarmonyOS release a new model this year?"

Chen Guiliang said, "Two models. One high-end and one mid-range."

Lei Jun asked curiously, "How tall?"

Chen Guiliang said, "The price is about the same as Apple's."

Lei Jun paused for a moment, then laughed and said, "Mr. Chen is indeed bold. I wouldn't dare to fight Apple head-on."

Chen Guiliang didn't make any grand pronouncements or criticize Steve Jobs; he's an industry pioneer and deserves our utmost respect. Moreover, the Gorilla Glass that Chen Guiliang is about to use was first adopted by Apple, prompting Corning to continuously improve upon it.

Without Steve Jobs, Chen Guiliang's upcoming high-end phone would never have been so high-end, and Gorilla Glass would not have been usable directly.

Steve Jobs was always paving the way.

In the next few years, it will be Chen Guiliang's turn to pave the way.

In the original timeline, Lei Jun pointed to Huang Zhang as a teacher, but now there's another teacher named Chen Guiliang.

Therefore, Xiaomi now combines the strengths of Meizu and HarmonyOS.

He wants to lower Xiaomi's price even further than Meizu's after its price reduction, and learn from Meizu's fan-based model among enthusiasts. He also wants to follow Chen Guiliang's approach of focusing on online sales, and has no plans to open physical stores for the time being.

Lei Jun suddenly asked, "Does Tudou.com have plans to go public?"

Chen Guiliang gave an ambiguous answer: "I don't know, maybe. Is Youku preparing for an IPO?"

Lei Jun also vaguely replied, "I think so."

Lei Jun is an angel investor in Youku, and his affiliated capital firm also participated in the investment. He casually asked at this moment, wanting to inquire about the news, because Chen Guiliang was one of Tudou's earliest investors.

The economic crisis has subsided, and several major video websites are preparing for IPOs.

LeEco was actually the first company to go public.

Because LeTV's official content is the most standardized, it's relatively easy to remove pirated videos.

Tudou is currently frantically cleaning up pirated videos, fearing that its IPO will be blocked by the US. With the wildly popular sitcom "iPartment" in recent months, Tudou, having secured the exclusive online streaming rights, is even more favored by investors and is ambitiously preparing for its IPO.

It's unclear whether Wang Wei's ex-wife will come forward again, but this time she won't be so easy to talk to.

As the conversation progressed, the topic shifted to the rivalry between Tencent and 360.

Everyone treated it as a joke.

They were also astonished by Tencent's promotional capabilities, which allowed it to seize 40% of the market share in just one month. This overwhelming momentum could directly drive small and medium-sized enterprises out of business.

Dinner is over.

Chef Wen stood up and shook hands, saying, "I would like to invite Mr. Chen to attend the Global Mobile Internet Conference next month and provide guidance."

"I wouldn't dare presume to offer guidance, but I will definitely participate," Chen Guiliang said with a smile.

Chef Wen and Hao Yi bid farewell to Chen Guiliang and immediately went to find Zhang Chaoyang. They told him that Chen Guiliang had joined the Great Wall Society and tried to persuade Zhang Chaoyang to join as well. They also planned to try and persuade Wu Ying, Ding Sanshi, Little Ma, Chen Tianqiao…

Shanda's situation will only get worse this year.

Last year, Shanda's market share in the online gaming industry dropped from first to fourth. It began making a series of blunders.

Ku6.com went public at the end of last year, becoming the first Chinese video website to list in the United States. However, it was a backdoor listing by Shanda, and didn't go through the IPO process at all.

After going public, in order to improve its financial reports, Ku6 was forced to abandon the copyright war and instead start a video news website. The founding team was so angry that they resigned, and from then on, Ku6 failed.

Online games and online novels are experiencing various problems, and even Shanda Research Institute is in a complete mess.

The grand era is about to pass.

Chen Guiliang strolled back to the company, and before he could even sit down, he received a call from Liu Qiangdong: "President Chen, can we talk?"

"Have you reached an agreement with the other shareholders?" Chen Guiliang asked in return.

Liu Qiangdong said, "The talks are almost over."

Chen Guiliang confirmed again: "They agreed to sell the existing shares?"

Liu Qiangdong remained silent.

Chen Guiliang said, "I won't sell my existing shares in JD.com, but additional investment is negotiable. Don't argue with me; I'm not as easy to talk to as Xu Xin and the others. Lü Zhihui is the CEO of Xiyi Investment; you can talk to him directly about anything. I have other things to do; goodbye!"

Liu Qiangdong wants to control the shareholding ratio of various venture capital institutions.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

The more capital that enters the market, the less control Liu Qiangdong can maintain.

(End of this chapter)