Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 154 Mr. Lei, you have to help him!

Although the fat man was impatient, he didn't leave.

"We've raised funds, we have money!"

Chen Xuebing was leaving for the airport at 2 PM, planning to finalize an investment within four hours, and he directly revealed his trump card:

“I know that Lei Jun gave you 830 million yuan, half of which was a loan to you.”

He had watched Lei Jun's interview program about investing in YY, and the biographies of Lei Jun, Zhou Hongyi, Fu Sheng, and Ding Lei all mentioned having drinks with Li Xueling and were very optimistic about him. Out of curiosity, he looked up a lot of information about Li Xueling and even saw his photos.

However, the image of the fat man in front of him was very different from the "general's demeanor" in Chen Xuebing's mind. The loose T-shirt and shorts, the lazy tone, and the hair that hadn't been washed for at least a few days made him look like an unemployed slacker, so he didn't recognize him at first.

When Chen Xuebing confirmed that the fat man in front of him was Li Xueling, he suddenly felt that he was very lucky. He might be able to see many aspects of famous people from his previous life that were not shown to the public.

This is a kind of fun.

"You know Brother Lei?"

The fat man raised an eyebrow suspiciously and took out his phone from his pants pocket to make a call.

Chen Xuebing realized that he was going to call Lei Jun. Although he was secretly looking forward to it, he quickly smiled and replied, "I don't know him. I heard about him from a friend."

"Which friend? Tell me the name."

The fat man wasn't buying it and was quite persistent.

Chen Xuebing was cornered against the wall, and finally began to recognize the man from his memory.

He took out his business card from his pocket and handed it to Li Xueling, smiling gently:

"Mr. Li, investors are coming to our door... even if you don't welcome them, you don't need to be this rude, do you?"

Li Xueling took it and glanced at the words "Group" and "Chairman" on it, and his expression softened a little.

These days, establishing a conglomerate isn't as simple as having three subsidiaries as it is in later generations; you still need some capital.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were in the same industry. I've offended a lot of people in the past, and people are always trying to dig up dirt on me."

After saying that, he didn't greet Chen Xuebing, turned around and walked inside, saying as he went, "Our websites have a large number of users and low expenses, so we're not short of money for the time being. Do you want to visit Dog.com or Duowan Games.com?"

Chen Xuebing was stunned by the last question and couldn't respond for a moment.

Doggy.net...what the heck?

"Stop playing around, an investor is here."

Li Xueling went inside, no longer in a hurry to run the Warcraft dungeon. He slapped Chen Xuebing's business card in front of someone and gave him a wink.

The man understood, looked at the business card, and started searching online.

Chen Xuebing followed him into the office.

The office was smaller than his usual hotel room, only thirty or forty square meters, with ten workstations arranged in two rows facing each other, like a makeshift internet cafe.

No, this is definitely an illegal internet cafe.

A row of computers, all occupied by people playing games.

I'm fucking envious of the life of someone who runs a gaming website.

Li Xueling had been in contact with the founders of the three major portals in his early years, and he had no respect for Chen Xuebing's title of "Chairman". He wandered around his workstation casually, grabbed a box of cigarettes from someone's desk, fumbled for a lighter on his body but couldn't find one, so he took one from another person's desk and lit the cigarette.

Then, he put the lighter in his pocket.

Chen Xuebing coughed.

Stealing a lighter is the kind of petty act he hates the most.

Li Xueling assumed he couldn't stand the smell of smoke, so she opened the window by the wall and then invited Ren Ying to sit down on the sofa next to her.

"Sorry, but everyone in our office is a heavy smoker. We're always staying up late working on data and maintenance. We can't keep up without smoking."

As he spoke, he pointed to the employees playing World of Warcraft.

"I also have to play games regularly and interact with other players. I don't get any inspiration if I don't play. I don't actually play games, but I was forced to by Lei Jun."

Chen Xuebing smiled.

"Love what you do, have fun and think more, there will always be surprises."

YY also started out in gaming.

However, this idea wasn't theirs; it was Lei Jun who came up with it.

Zhou Hongyi of 360 had just left Yahoo and entered the personal angel investment industry around the same time as Lei Jun. Zhou Hongyi got a voice project called iSpeak, but he was reluctant to invest in it. He gave it to Lei Jun, who invested in it and even showed it to Li Xueling so that he could learn from it.

Li Xueling said he wasn't optimistic, but a few months later he launched YY to compete with iSpeak.

Lei Jun later sided with Li Xueling and withdrew from the iSpeak board of directors. iSpeak did indeed lose, while YY flourished, and Li Xueling became Lei Jun's loyal follower.

As it turns out, the same project still requires the right people to do it. There's some truth to the fact that many investors believe the founder's abilities are more important than the project itself.

However, Chen Xuebing plans to change this story.

He couldn't wait for YY2008, so he had to change it to YY2006.

ADSL2+ is now widespread, and LAN access will be rolled out nationwide next year. The downlink speed of 4M broadband is already quite good; you can watch movies on Tudou.com without any buffering. Once the problem of asymmetrical uplink speeds in ADSL is solved, there will be no more lag in voice interaction.

"David, take a look, is this it?"

Someone called out to Li Xueling.

Li Xueling nodded nonchalantly, walked over to the person's computer, and took a look.

A 1.7 million yuan fund and 200 million yuan in senior management positions were among the keywords that appeared in recent newspaper articles about Gu'an Group.

His smile became undisguisedly warm as he addressed Chen Xuebing:

"Mr. Chen, are you from Chongqing?"

"Hmm." Chen Xuebing nodded, knowing that he was being investigated. He raised his hand to check the time and said, "Now that you've found out, can we get down to business?"

Li Xueling smiled and gestured towards the two rows of computers: "The real work has always been right in front of you. Those computers next to you are for our operations engineers and server administrators, and I'm the content editor here. Together, these two sides represent the entirety of our website management."

"Uh." Chen Xuebing glanced at it and smiled, "I don't really understand, can you explain it to me?"

Li Xueling looked at Chen Xuebing with curiosity.

If you don't understand, what are you doing here?
……

Since I was going to invest, I pretended to learn about it for half an hour.

Duowan is a gaming community with a thriving business and two to three million daily click requests. According to the logic of the internet investment market, it has already run its product logic successfully and has reached the Series A financing stage where it needs additional capital.

However, there is currently no way to generate profits from this.

Li Xueling insists on not engaging in advertising, believing it would only negatively impact customer experience. He plans to wait until he has accumulated a customer base before selling memberships, guilds, and other services, starting with social needs.

"The most essential services the internet provides are free, but if you have any ulterior motives, you'll have to pay."

Li Xueling's words left the deepest impression on Chen Xuebing, and he even sensed the way to survive in the live streaming industry in the future.

To Chen Xuebing's surprise, this pioneer who created the first live-streaming show platform in China, known as "Tao Dage," also had a website called Gougou.com, embodying the spirit of the Web 2.0 era. (RSS)

Information aggregation website.

It means subscribing to all the platform information you need through a website.

For example, if you want to follow a celebrity, you would normally need to follow their Instagram, Facebook, Weibo, Bilibili, and Tieba accounts.
If you don't want to miss out on concert information and new album releases, you might also need to follow him on some music platforms.

This website helps clients scrape the RSS feeds of all content from these platforms, presenting it in the most concise text and image format, while rejecting other meaningless recommendations and advertisements from these websites.

Good heavens, they've taken someone's pot and smashed their bowl.

After listening for a few minutes, Chen Xuebing came up with five words: the enemy of big data.

Despite the risk of being sued by numerous companies, we are trying to bring peace and quiet to our users.

Chen Xuebing finally believed Li Xueling's statement that "we don't sell advertisements."

"Let's talk about Duowan instead."

Chen Xuebing and Li Xueling were talking at the company entrance.

RSS is like the Merlion in Singapore; it can only remain in Li Xueling's dreams. Chen Xuebing only vaguely kept it in mind, thinking that it might be a tool for attacking social networking sites in the future, so he began to talk about his thoughts.

"Games like World of Warcraft require teamwork, right? Don't you find online text communication inconvenient?"

"Yeah, it's not convenient to swear, there are a lot of sensitive words. Players like to come to our community guild to swear. We don't block sensitive words, and that's also a source of our traffic," Li Xueling said with a smile.

"Your current operating model really doesn't cost much money. A dozen people, seven or eight guns. Even if you grow big, it's not really meaningful. You just sell some badges and special guild badges. According to you, even if you have ulterior motives about the internet, you can't do anything. You're not a game company, so you can't sell game items."

Chen Xuebing recalled that Duowan Games later had another flagship product, Duowan LOL Box, which also achieved huge sales volume. Every computer in internet cafes had it, and every player used it, but it didn't make money. In fact, it was copied by Tencent and then shut down.

"Mr. Chen, if you don't think our profit model is promising, why did you come to us?" Li Xueling asked, voicing his curiosity.

"I'll help you expand your operational space," Chen Xuebing said with a smile. "Are you interested in making a game-like voice communication software? You can communicate via voice channels and operate through a guild model as well."

Li Xueling was stunned.

He then shook his head and nodded, not thinking it was a good idea.

"It's unstable and affects game performance. We've used QQ voice chat before, and if you turn it on while playing games, it's an absolute disaster and it will disconnect you."

Chen Xuebing grinned: "You studied philosophy, right? Since you don't come from a computer background, ask the professionals for their opinions. You might think it's not feasible, but engineers might not. It's just that developing a voice software that uses less RAM costs a lot more money than making a webpage. That's the real project that requires investment."

Li Xueling understood the implication and hesitated for a long time.

"You mean, you want to invest in what we're doing?"

"Correct."

"So how are the shares calculated? Right now, in this company, Lei Ge and I each own 50/50 shares."

“Lei Jun gave you 415 million and lent you another 415 million, making a total of 100 million US dollars, right? Then I will invest twice that amount, 100 million US dollars, specifically for this project. We will set up a separate holding company. In the future, as long as the holding company has the majority stake, you will be in charge. Let’s say the controlling stake is 33%, 33%, or 34%. You are the founder, so you will get 34% and have veto power. In addition, I think we should set up a non-voting option pool on this basis, to give your partners some hope.”

This number surprised Li Xueling greatly.

This person is even more generous than Lei Jun.

Lei Jun's investment was something he personally begged for.

He was both uncertain and excited as he listened to the voice message.

If it can really be made... then some of the consumer products he has envisioned can indeed be realized.

He suppressed his expression, revealing not a trace of it.

"This matter...it's not up to me. Wait a minute, let me ask President Lei?"

"Of course." Chen Xuebing smiled, raised his hand to him, indicating that he could start fighting now.

His second purpose for coming today was to get involved with Lei Jun.

Lei Jun is an extremely talented programmer. He worked at Kingsoft for many years and was surrounded by many experts. He had long envied the team that helped him write Xiaomi's first-generation system, MI-UI.

Li Xueling was holding her phone, ready to find a place to make the call, but after thinking about it, she decided to dial the number directly in front of Chen Xuebing.

Lei Jun understands software better and has a broader perspective than him. If there are any problems, he can directly question Mr. Chen.

The unexpected $100 million made him somewhat suspicious.

Two beeps sounded, and a gentle voice came from the other end.

"Hey, Xue Ling."

“It’s me, Brother Lei.” Li Xueling looked up at Chen Xuebing: “Someone came to the company today, wanting to invest.”

Chen Xuebing couldn't help but smile when he heard the voice that had brainwashed him with "Are you OK?"

"Investment?...Invest in you? Or invest in the company?"

"The company he's investing in thinks we could work on a voice project..."

"...I hold 34%. Do you think this product is feasible?"

Li Xueling slowly recounted Chen Xuebing's ideas and shareholding model.

After listening, Lei Jun quickly replied, "Oh, um... This is a much larger market, at least $10 billion. If we reduce the use of plugins, this idea should be feasible, but Tencent is already a major player in the voice communication market. Are you confident?"

"Yes," Li Xueling answered readily.

To get someone to give up their shares, he has to say yes, no matter what.

"What are you planning to sell?" Lei Jun then asked.

Chen Xuebing felt that he was probably the one who had to answer this question to satisfy Lei Jun.

Just as he was about to interject, a smile appeared on Li Xueling's face.

"With voice chat, there are so many things you can sell. You can sell exclusive badges and membership privileges. Premium members can mute the other person's microphone so that others can hear them cursing, and they can also prevent being kicked. How awesome is that? Plus, with voice chat, I can create a music channel and develop female members. Girls can get applause, and boys can listen to girls sing and chat when they're tired of playing games. Men and women who meet in games can also communicate voice-to-voice. This way, my ideas about social interaction can be realized. And memberships and special badges will definitely sell well, and online stickiness will be greatly enhanced."

Li Xueling spoke fluently and at a rapid pace, which surprised Chen Xuebing.

I wasn't really interested just now, but this is...

He may look like a pig, but he's got a sharp mind!

You've been thinking about this for a long time, haven't you?

Lei Jun also sensed that Li Xueling was absolutely passionate about this matter. After hesitating for a moment, he said, "If you want to do this, you'll need a new technical team. Have you thought about where you'll get the people?"

Chen Xuebing's eyes lit up.

This question really hit a nerve with him.

Just as Li Xueling was about to speak, Chen Xuebing quickly interrupted.

"Mr. Lei, you have to help him with this! He can't do it alone! This isn't just a billion-dollar market; if it really takes off, it could easily reach ten billion dollars!"

(End of this chapter)