One Yuan First Recharge: I'm Actually the Boss Behind a Fortune 500 Company

After the first batch of thirty machines were deployed to the canals, life returned to its usual rhythm of outward calm but underlying tension.

Song Kai and his R&D team continued refining the system—they established a dedicated group to track and analyze user feedback data. This data came from most of the thirty machines—most users connected to Wi-Fi after purchase, and the system automatically collected anonymous performance data and crash information. Although the data volume was small, for a fledgling team, this was their first opportunity to understand how "real users," rather than "testers," were using their product.

The result was both gratifying and unsettling.

The reassuring aspect is that the system's overall stability is indeed quite good—in the hundreds of hours of usage data collected, there were zero serious crashes and only a handful of minor lag reports. This indicates that the high-intensity stress tests they conducted during the R&D phase were on the right track.

The unsettling part is that several issues that never occurred in the lab have surfaced in real-world user environments. For example, there's a compatibility issue with a third-party application—users occasionally experience screen flickering when opening a popular short video app. The frequency is low, occurring about once every ten uses, but Song Kai still considers this too high.

"It's most likely a rendering optimization issue," Song Kai analyzed during an internal meeting. "The application version we use for testing in the lab might be different from the real version, and sometimes the updates pushed out change the rendering pipeline. This is easy to solve; we just need to do targeted adaptation."

He assigned an engineer to specifically follow up on this issue and demanded that a repair plan be provided within a week.

Meanwhile, new news came from Li Desheng's side.

The second order—still thirty units.

The quantity might not seem large, but Zhou Haibo noticed Li Desheng's frequent purchasing. He asked Li Desheng on the phone, "Boss Li, how did the last batch of goods sell?"

"It's alright." Li Desheng's answer was brief and restrained. "It's a little better than I expected. Several friends who bought some have come back to ask about it, saying they've used it for a few days and feel it's quite good, and they want to recommend it to others. Some of my regular customers have also taken a few units to try it out, and the feedback has been decent."

This word-of-mouth marketing approach is a more effective way to promote a new brand than any Google AdSense. User reviews are genuine, credible, and cost virtually nothing.

However, this also means that product reputation is a double-edged sword. If the first batch of users find it useful, they will spontaneously help spread the word; but if one or two users encounter problems, their negative reviews on social media may directly kill a fledgling brand.

So when Song Kai and his team were working overtime in the office to fix the rendering problem of that third-party application, no one complained—everyone knew that what they were holding in their hands was not an ordinary project, but a fragile beginning that could be ruined at any time due to a small bug.

At the end of May, the results of the MOCA certification came out.

Song Kai personally opened the large envelope sent by the certification agency, took out the official certification certificate inside, glanced at the result, then slammed his hand on the table and let out a long breath.

Authentication successful.

This result was expected—they designed the product according to MOCA standards during the R&D phase, and the hardware quality of the product itself was also fine—but seeing the official certification documents finally put my mind at ease.

The added value of MOCA certification for a domestically produced mobile phone is mainly reflected in its cooperation with offline channels and operators. Some distributors with high quality requirements will only be willing to list products after they have passed MOCA certification. Moreover, MOCA certification is a basic entry threshold for the centralized procurement projects of the three major operators.

These two certifications together—the network access license and the MOCA certification—mean that Xingyue Smart's product has cleared the main qualification hurdles for its market launch in China.

Wang Hao put the two copies of the certification documents together and took a picture. He didn't post it on his WeChat Moments or publicize it in the company's internal group chat; he simply saved the photo to his phone.

He was used to keeping important things in his heart rather than saying them aloud.

With the arrival of June, summer officially begins in the provincial capital.

Temperatures soared to over 30 degrees Celsius, and the heatwave on the streets forced pedestrians to quickly seek refuge in air-conditioned rooms. The air conditioning in the Yuantong Digital City was blasting, but it couldn't stop the stench of plastic and sweat wafting between the various stalls.

Li Desheng's sales gradually climbed from seven or eight units per week to more than ten units per week. Although this number is still insignificant in the mobile phone industry, it is quite impressive when viewed from the perspective of a company without Google promotion, marketing investment, and relying solely on word-of-mouth marketing.

More importantly, some retailers who specialized in wholesale business in the surrounding cities and counties of the provincial capital started sourcing their goods from Li Desheng. They would buy wholesale from the provincial capital and then sell to markets in the surrounding counties and towns. These areas were relatively less sensitive to brands but had high requirements for the cost-effectiveness and durability of the products.

"A customer from Lincheng bought fifteen units at once," Li Desheng told Zhou Haibo on the phone. "He said he tried selling a few units there and the user feedback was quite good, so he took more to stock up."

When Zhou Haibo relayed the news to Wang Hao, Wang Hao was writing and drawing in front of the whiteboard in the simple office. On the whiteboard was a rough map of the provincial capital and surrounding areas—the provincial capital was in the center, and several surrounding counties and cities were marked with circles. Among them, Lincheng was circled in red by Wang Hao with a marker.

"What are the characteristics of the distributors in Lincheng?" Wang Hao asked.

"I heard from Li Desheng that the consumption level there is a grade lower than that in the provincial capital. Consumers are price-sensitive, but they are more accepting of new brands than in the provincial capital. They value cost-effectiveness more and don't care much about whether the brand is a big name."

Wang Hao wrote a word next to Lin Cheng's spot on the whiteboard: cost-effectiveness.

He stepped back a few paces, looked at the map and markings on the whiteboard, and remained silent for a while.

"Zhou Haibo, have you noticed?" Wang Hao suddenly spoke up, "The path we're taking now is the opposite of the route those big brands take from first-tier cities down to lower-tier cities."

Zhou Haibo thought for a moment and understood what Wang Hao meant.

Most mobile phone brands employ a market strategy of penetrating from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier cities—first establishing brand reputation in first-tier cities, and then gradually expanding into lower-tier markets. However, Xingyue Smart's current situation dictates that they cannot follow this path—they lack sufficient marketing budget and the strength to compete head-on with major brands in first-tier cities.

But they can do it the other way around. They can start with the counties and towns surrounding the provincial capital, entering markets that big brands don't pay much attention to or cover, and gradually build a reputation and distribution network.

This path may be slower, but it's more stable. Moreover, in this level of market competition, the advantages of big brands are not as unshakeable as in first-tier cities—users in lower-tier markets are more pragmatic and pay more attention to the product itself. This is precisely the opportunity for new brands like Xingyue Smart, which lack brand halo but have product strength.

"Should we focus more on the surrounding cities and counties?" Zhou Haibo asked.

"You can give it a try," Wang Hao said, "but don't expand too rapidly all at once. Choose two or three locations first, find a reliable distributor for each location, and cultivate the market in depth."

"Does Lincheng count?"

"Okay. As for the other two, go talk to Li Desheng and see what recommendations he has."

"it is good."

After Zhou Haibo left, Wang Hao stood alone in front of the whiteboard, looking at the two characters "Lincheng" that he had marked in red.

The market is slowly opening up. Although the cracks are not large yet, as long as there are cracks, light can shine in.

In mid-June, people in the provincial capital's mobile phone industry finally noticed this small brand.

The incident began when a locally well-known digital review blogger posted a brief review of Xingyue Smart on a social media platform.

This blogger doesn't have a large following, around 50,000 to 60,000, but he has a good reputation among local tech enthusiasts for his "honest and straightforward" style. He's not the kind of review blogger who gets paid to do reviews, nor does he make a living from it—his day job is as a product manager at an internet company, and he does reviews purely out of interest.

His review stemmed from a friend who bought a Xingyue Smart phone from Li Desheng's stall. After using it for two weeks and finding it satisfactory, the friend recommended it to him. Out of curiosity, he bought one as a backup phone, used it for a few days, and then wrote a short review of a few hundred words.

He used several words to describe the phone: high cost-performance ratio, solid build quality, and system smoothness exceeding expectations. He also mentioned its shortcomings: the camera performs poorly in extremely low light conditions, the brand has almost zero brand recognition, and after-sales service is uncertain.

Overall, it's a fair review. It doesn't exaggerate the product's merits, nor does it deliberately nitpick.

This short review didn't get much interaction—a few dozen likes and a dozen comments. But one comment was pinned by the blogger; it was written by a user who bought the phone: "The blogger is quite accurate. I've been using this phone for almost a month, and the system is indeed smooth, and the battery life is good. The only downside is that the back cover gets fingerprints easily, but otherwise, there's nothing wrong with it."

This user comment is more convincing than the blogger's own evaluation.

Someone replied below, asking, "Which brand is this? I've never heard of it before."

Someone replied, "It seems to be made by a small factory in the provincial capital. It's said that the boss used to work in an electronics factory in the provincial capital."

"The electronics factory in the provincial capital? Isn't that about to go bankrupt?"

"So they went out on their own."

These few loosely connected discussions are insignificant in the vast flow of information on the internet. But for Xingyue Intelligence, this was the first time they had been thrust into the spotlight by a real user without any paid promotion.

Wang Hao also saw the review and comments on his phone. He neither forwarded them nor boasted about them in the team group chat.

He simply took a screenshot of the user comment and saved it to his phone's photo album in a folder named "User Voices".

This folder currently contains only two images—this screenshot and the first page of the quality inspection report.

He believed that the contents of this folder would continue to grow.

In the last week of June, Zhou Haibo secured a stable distributorship in Lincheng.

The distributor, surnamed Ma, was in his early forties and had been in the mobile phone wholesale business in Lincheng for seven or eight years. He owned four stores covering several main streets in the city's main urban area. Recommended by Li Desheng, he came across Xingyue Smart's products and, after personally trying them for a week, decided to officially begin distributing them in Lincheng.

The first order was for one hundred units.

This number finally gave Wang Hao a real sense of what was happening—his first three-digit order had begun.

At Li Desheng's current sales rate, it would take nearly two months to sell all 100 machines. However, Boss Ma has his own store network in Lincheng, a stable customer base, and a good reputation locally, so the 100 machines might be sold much faster than expected.

Accompanied by Zhou Haibo, Wang Hao personally went to Lincheng and met with Boss Ma.

The two met at Boss Ma's largest store on the main street of Lincheng. The store was quite large, about 70 or 80 square meters, with a red sign with white lettering hanging at the entrance: "Ma's Communications." The glass display cases inside were filled with mobile phones of various brands, from Huawei to Xiaomi to OPPO, a dazzling array. The sales staff, wearing matching dark blue vests, were introducing products to several customers.

Boss Ma led Wang Hao to a small meeting room behind the store and poured him two cups of tea.

"Mr. Wang, I've been using your phone for almost ten days now." Boss Ma picked up his teacup and said in that straightforward tone typical of northerners, "To be honest, I wasn't very confident at first. A new brand, with nothing to its name, relying solely on one product, it's hard to survive in this market. But after using it for a while, I feel that this product is competitive."

Wang Hao didn't rush to reply, but listened quietly.

"I'm a pretty straightforward person," Boss Ma continued. "Your product looks good, the system is smooth, and the camera is pretty competitive for this price range. That's the truth. But there are some issues you need to be aware of."

"Mr. Ma, please speak."

"First, after-sales service. You don't have an after-sales service center in Lincheng right now. What if a user's machine has a problem? How am I supposed to handle it? Send it back to the provincial capital? That would take at least three or four days round trip, and users can't wait that long. If this problem can't be solved, I can only control the amount of goods I order and dare not stock up in large quantities."

"I'm working on this problem," Wang Hao said. "I plan to partner with local repair shops in Lincheng to establish an authorized service station. We'll also stock some spare parts in your store in advance, so minor issues can be handled locally. For major issues like motherboard problems, you can send it back to the provincial capital, and we promise to repair or replace it within two business days."

After listening, Boss Ma nodded slightly: "That's more like it. Secondly, your brand awareness is too low. Nine out of ten users in Lincheng have never heard of the Xingyue Intelligent brand. When my shop assistant recommends it to customers, she has to use a lot of persuasion to convince them to give it a try."

"Brand awareness isn't something that can be resolved in a day or two. What I can promise is that in the Lincheng market, we will cooperate with you to do some localized promotional activities. For example, opening events, buy-one-get-one-free promotions, or joint promotions with some local businesses. We will cover part of the costs."

Boss Ma remained silent for a moment, seemingly weighing Wang Hao's sincerity and the reliability of his promise. Finally, he raised his teacup and clinked it against Wang Hao's: "Alright. I'll start with a hundred units to try. If they sell well, I'll add more later."

Wang Hao also raised his teacup and took a sip—the tea from Lincheng was slightly bitter at first, but had a sweet aftertaste.

One hundred units.

This was the largest order he had signed since starting his business. There was no ceremony, no group photo, no red ribbons at the signing ceremony. Just two middle-aged men, in a small meeting room behind a mobile phone store, clinking two cups of tea together.

The night the payment for one hundred machines was deposited into the company account, Wang Hao didn't go home immediately after finishing overtime work in the office.

He sat in the empty office for a while, opened his phone, scrolled to the photo of the MOCA certification certificate he had taken at the beginning of the month, then scrolled to the screenshot of the blogger's review, and finally scrolled to the screenshot of the bank transfer notification he had just received.

He put the three pictures together and posted a memo that was only visible to himself.

Then he locked his phone, stood up, turned off the lights, and walked out of the office.

The summer night breeze brushed against my face, carrying the lingering heat of the day. Across the street, people were laughing and talking loudly at a barbecue stall. In the distance, neon lights on tall buildings flickered in the night.

He stood downstairs at the company building, glancing up at the utterly ordinary office building—the light had just gone out in the fifth-floor window. There stood a company less than a year old, a boss who had crawled out of the ruins, and a story with no end in sight.

Wang Hao withdrew his gaze and walked towards the parking lot.

Tomorrow I need to go to Lincheng to oversee the implementation of after-sales cooperation. The day after tomorrow there's a meeting with local small channel distributors in the provincial capital. Next week I also need to discuss the planning of the next generation of products with Song Kai.

One thing after another, with no end in sight.

But this is the path he chose.

He left willingly.