2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 361 Orange Technology's Gene

A big stage is indeed a good thing.

During the recording of CCTV's annual economic figures gala, Tan Jincheng met many influential figures and gained a lot.

But the biggest gain should be Shen Nanpeng, the founder and managing partner of Sequoia Capital, who is a true big shot.

Sequoia Capital, a domestic firm, was founded last year, and its founder, Shen Nanpeng, was selected as one of the top ten economic figures of the year, along with Tan Jincheng.

Since the establishment of Sequoia Capital in China, 39-year-old Nan Peng has invested in 20 companies in just over a year, covering industries such as technology, agriculture, insurance, and animation.

Shen Nanpeng's most famous investments this year are Qihoo 360 and Dianping. In addition to being an investor, he is also one of the founders and directors of companies such as Ctrip, Home Inns, and Focus Media.

If we're talking about who's the hottest person in the investment world this year, it has to be Shen Nanpeng.

During the recording, Shen Nanpeng was very curious about this entrepreneur who was 18 years younger than him. He wanted to hear how this young man had convinced Lao Kuang to invest $400 million in his website.

He knew Kuang Ping; the two of them had both worked in the US before returning to China and were now involved in investment businesses, so they were quite familiar with each other.

He knew that Kaixin.com, especially after the launch of Kaixin Farm, had potential, but in his opinion, it wasn't worth a valuation of 2 million, at least not now. You know, he only spent 100 million dollars to invest in Dianping.

Getting investors' money can be easy or difficult. They might be willing to give you millions to burn with just one idea, but the problem is how to convince them.

"I heard that Mr. Tan's Kaixin.com is in talks with QQ Space for a collaboration? Have you ever thought about collaborating with Dianping as well? If so, I can make the connection."

Dianping also needs users, even more than Kaixin.com. If it can integrate with Happy Farm, it will bring a lot of traffic and users to the website, which will also benefit Dianping.

"That's great! Our Happy Farm is also very keen to cooperate with more companies," Tan Jincheng said with a smile.

It would be best if more websites could adopt Happy Farm. It's like opening a franchise store; if everyone uses the official version, pirates won't have a chance.

However, at present, Orange Technology's technical capabilities are still limited, and it is currently too busy to connect with too many websites.

"What is President Tan's future positioning for Orange Technology? Are there any other development plans?" Shen Nanpeng started the conversation by asking tentatively.

Tan Jincheng smiled and said, "Is President Shen going to invest in our Orange Technology? If not, you shouldn't go around saying this."

"What? Does this involve company secrets? Shouldn't you be able to talk about the company's positioning?"

After pondering for a moment, Tan Jincheng said, "As for the positioning, it's currently social and gaming. As for the future, it's hard to say, really hard to say. I haven't thought about it yet."

Orange Technology didn't have a clear positioning in its early stages. If you had to define a positioning, it would be to make money as quickly as possible by developing games and apps, and to become a profitable internet company.

As for the later stages, we will definitely focus on big data. However, big data requires a lot of user data for training, so it's still unknown whether we can succeed.

"If we had to define Orange Technology, our positioning would be that of a profitable internet company." This is what Tan Jincheng said when Kuang Ping invested in us.

Based on his analysis of the Web 2.0 era and his vision for the future mobile internet era, Tan Jincheng describes Orange Technology as a company that can be self-sufficient in the early stages.

Without requiring investors to burn through too much money, just personal connections to facilitate cooperation and allow Kaixin.com to acquire more users, Kaixin.com can then cultivate a unicorn company dedicated to artificial intelligence and big data in the future.

Investing is about painting a picture of the future for investors. Tan Jincheng painted a very big picture: invest a sum of money, then help connect business partners and establish collaborations so that investors can achieve independent profits and losses.

Domestically, there are very few internet companies that are currently profitable. Everyone is burning money – their own money, investors' money, and money raised from the stock market.

When will we see real profits? This is a concern for many investors.

Talking to investors is nothing more than making empty promises. Whether they take the bait or not depends on whether you can make the promises to their satisfaction. If Shen Nanpeng has an investment plan, Tan Jincheng will have to make the promises to him again.

However, if it's just a simple collaboration with Dianping, then there's no need for that. This is actually part of the company's strategy, and it's not something you can just tell everyone you meet.

"Another one that I can talk about is that we will be officially announcing a joint agricultural assistance program with Ningbo University in the next couple of days."

The initial preparations for the agricultural assistance program were mainly handled by Ningbo University. With abundant administrative resources, a chance to gain recognition, and ample funding, they were much more efficient than if Tan Jincheng had done it himself.

Each of the four major regions—east, south, west, and north—selected a poor county with abundant fruit and vegetable products but inconvenient transportation. Ningbo University connected with the local agricultural assistance projects, and the farmers' products were jointly purchased by Ningbo University and Orange Technology.

"Establishing a fresh produce warehouse locally and partnering with logistics companies, users can choose to convert their in-game crops into real-world fruits and vegetables after reaching a certain level in Happy Farm, which Orange Technology will then ship to them for free." "Isn't this going to be very expensive, and isn't a completely free model unprofitable?" Shen Nanpeng asked, frowning.

Not only can they not make a profit, but they also lose all the money they earned in the game. How can they be self-sufficient?
"Of course, it's not just that. If we simply give them to game users, how much agricultural product will they consume? If that's the case, then we don't need to build any agricultural product warehouses, and we can't talk about helping farmers."

Happy Farm currently has only 300 million users. Since each user sends out a portion of fruits and vegetables, it won't consume much. Even if all the users of Kaixin.com were added, there would be no need to build four fresh food warehouses.

Even if Ningbo University is rich, it wouldn't spend its money like this.

"Since it's about helping farmers, we can't just focus on combining it with games. We'll also put the fruits and vegetables we buy on our website for sale, which means we'll go through the e-commerce model."

Who can afford to give it away for free? Besides, no free charity can last forever.

"E-commerce?" Shen Nanpeng said in a deep voice.

It wasn't just Pony Ma who could see through the secrets. As a bigwig in the investment world, Shen Nanpeng was able to learn about the benefits behind the agricultural assistance plan just from a few words from Tan Jincheng.

Agricultural products are not just agricultural products; they have a powerful industrial chain behind them, and Sequoia Capital has also invested in this area.

"I guess so," Tan Jincheng replied somewhat perfunctorily, not wanting to elaborate.

Seeing Tan Jincheng's expression, Shen Nanpeng couldn't help but smile; he hadn't realized that this young CEO Tan was so wary.

As a big name in the investment world, Shen Nanpeng is always a guest of honor wherever he goes. Even if he only shows the slightest interest in investing, the other party will welcome him with open arms and desperately explain his entrepreneurial philosophy.

But this guy is an exception. Does he really not want to invest at all?

"E-commerce is not easy to do," Shen Nanpeng said with a hint of deeper meaning.

I didn't intend to do e-commerce. I just wanted to make money using Orange Technology. As for what I did, I didn't care at all. How big it could go depended on how much Qingqing and Cheng Hao could manage.

"We'll do our best. I don't know to what extent we can achieve it, but Orange Technology is happy to help some farmers solve the problem of selling their agricultural products," Tan Jincheng said with a smile.

Providing agricultural assistance is a golden opportunity and a great protection for Orange Technology. Orange Technology will definitely find ways to continue doing so, especially since the profits in this area are actually quite substantial.

While you can't compete with Alibaba in the e-commerce arena, there are still niche markets where you can do quite well. In the early stages of e-commerce, many niche e-commerce websites emerged, such as Vipshop, which performed very well.

Another point is that although Tencent's foundation is in social networking, they have never given up on doing e-commerce. However, they really don't have the genes for doing e-commerce, and they have invested a lot of money but still can't do it well.

If you can't do something well yourself, you can acquire it. Shen Nanpeng invested in Dianping, which later received investment from Tencent. Dianping didn't make much of a splash until JD.com's JD.com and Pinduoduo really started to compete.

Orange Technology has an e-commerce background, which will allow it to have a deeper foundation for future cooperation with Tencent.

In short, everything Orange Technology does right now is about making money—making money from investment institutions, making money from games, making money from agricultural products, and saving the money to train big data in the future to support the automotive industry.

Although Tan Jincheng was reluctant to say more, Shen Nanpeng still kept Orange Technology in mind. The cooperation between Happy Farm and Dianping was indeed something he wanted to facilitate, as it would benefit both Dianping and himself.

As for whether or not to participate in Orange Technology's Series B investment, we'll have to wait and see.
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Beicang.

Tan Jincheng sought to expand his network to a higher level, and Zhang Yunsong did the same.

After receiving Pony Ma's approval, the cooperation negotiations between Orange Technology and the QQ Space project team progressed quickly. Cheng Hao and Huang Xitong were responsible for data integration, while the contract terms were discussed by Zhang Yunsong, Gu Qingqing, and their respective teams.

Originally, the two sides could have concluded negotiations on the contract terms before Tan Jincheng returned on the 14th, but Zhang Yunsong deliberately slowed down the process.

There's nothing else to it, I just want to wait for Tan Jincheng to come back.

The chairman of Flash Group was named this year's Emerging Economic Figure of the Year, an honor his boss received two years ago. Although Flash Group's analysts are not as good as Tencent's, they are in the real business, so theoretically they are no less capable than their own boss.

Having already established contact and even shared drinks, Zhang Yunsong naturally wouldn't miss this opportunity to make friends.

He works on investment projects; what if we need his help someday?

(End of this chapter)