2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 412 Hanging up the pen VS Hanging up the pen
Tencent's financial report has further fueled the popularity of Happy Farm.

Happy Farm has been online for less than a year, and its life cycle is far from over. This game, which cost only a few million, has truly shown internet companies what it means to achieve big results with small investments.

Kaixin.com's own daily active users (DAU) and Tencent QQ Space are both incredibly high. Even Renren.com, which is in the second tier, has a DAU of 369 million. Even Dianping, a small website that has no connection to Kaixin.com, has a DAU of 163 million for its Happy Farm mini-game.

This made Dianping extremely happy. They had just secured $100 million from Sequoia Capital last year, and it had taken them three years to see any improvement in their website. The fact that they were able to obtain the license for Happy Farm was also thanks to Sequoia.

Otherwise, given their niche website status, they wouldn't even consider Happy Farm.

Thanks to the traffic generated by Happy Farm, Dianping's own traffic has improved significantly. At the same time, they have also attracted the attention of Google and are currently in talks with Google regarding Series A funding.

Sequoia Capital provided the venture capital fund for Dianping. In addition to Google's interest in the Series A funding, Sequoia Capital is also prepared to invest further. As a condition for Orange Technology to help Dianping drive traffic, ByteDance's platform can also participate in the Series A funding.

This is the first time that ByteDance's advertising platform has had the opportunity to participate in internet investment. The internet industry really relies more on connections and resources than traditional businesses. Without connections and resources, even if you have money, people won't want it.

In fact, as early as last year, Tan Jincheng wanted to focus his investments on the mobile internet. In addition to looking for internet companies he remembered, he even tried investing in mobile terminals.

But it was useless; nobody paid any attention to him. Not to mention the internet sector, apart from Dianping, most of these websites are now dominated by giants, so there's practically no chance for him.

As for the emerging giants, none of them have appeared yet. Zhang Yiming has just graduated and is still working as a corporate slave in a company. Wang Xin's Renren.com is currently being suppressed by Kaixin.com.

For the mobile phone terminal, they chose Meizu. Meizu actually started its smartphone project very early, as early as last year, even earlier than Apple.

In fact, in the earliest days of smartphones, Meizu was very impressive. It was one of the three major smartphone manufacturers in China and could compete with Apple and HTC. Their phones had excellent design and quality, and they produced many classic models.

However, how should I put it, Tan Jincheng's understanding of Mr. Huang in his previous life only came from the internet, and he didn't have a very direct feeling about him.

Just like the impression Tan Jincheng gave in the online news, this guy seems to have a bit of a persecution complex. When you talk to him about investment and cooperation, he seems to have the mentality that "there are always troublemakers trying to harm me".

Damn it, I make batteries, you make phones, what a great thing it would be if we cooperated and made a profit together. If you don't agree to individual shareholding, cross-shareholding is also an option. It's all about sincerity.

But this guy values ​​his shares more than his life. He's willing to discuss cooperation, but there's no room for negotiation when it comes to shares.

Tan Jincheng was surprised upon receiving the feedback. What kind of mentality was this? Was it really necessary? Wasn't it normal for a strategic partner to invest a small share to deepen the cooperative relationship?

We never said we were going to buy your company and fire you.

Forget it, I'd better not associate with this kind of person. There's a reason why he ruined the company.

In the future, our CEO Lei Jun will also make mobile phones. When he first founded Xiaomi, he was very confused, even though he had 40 billion yuan in his pocket.

However, he approached more than a dozen investors, but in the end, they all backed out, not believing that a software developer could succeed in hardware.

Xiaomi was founded around the beginning of 2010, which is exactly three years ago. In three years, Xiaomi's mobile phone battery business will have developed to a considerable extent, and at that time, it will indeed have the capital to talk to Lei Jun about investment.

Tan Jincheng certainly can't make mobile phones, but having a partner is a good thing for both the future intelligent car system and the lithium battery business that is already in the works.

Lei Jun, whose extraordinary abilities surpass even those of Tan Jincheng, is theoretically easier to work with than someone like Huang, who is somewhat eccentric. He doesn't reject capital cooperation.

As an entrepreneur who has built a company into a Fortune Global 500 company, and the youngest Fortune Global 500 company, Lei Jun certainly wouldn't act like he does when he appears in the public media.

Nobody is easy to deal with, but no matter what, as long as there is a basis for cooperation, that's fine.

Speaking of this man with his own cheat codes, shouldn't he have resigned as CEO of Kingsoft at the end of this year?

Don't ask Tan Jincheng why he knows so much. You can criticize Xiaomi phones, but you really can't criticize him as a person. From software to hardware, from the Internet to industry, Lei Jun, who appears in public, may sometimes make surprising remarks, but he has always maintained his approachability.

His marketing skills are so strong that many companies strive to emulate them. He maintains a clean personal life, and his surprising remarks never come across as greasy. He never makes statements like "I have no interest in money."

On the contrary, that English sentence provided a lot of amusement for netizens.

Tan Jincheng himself is a pen pal, but he really hopes to meet this man with his own cheat codes and learn from him. As for Xiaomi making cars in the future, let them make cars. Cars aren't like the internet; you can't monopolize them. Many competitors buy BYD batteries, and they haven't been particularly aggressive in protecting them.

At this stage of development, the automotive industry is no longer considered a particularly high-tech industry. The technology is roughly the same for everyone. The important thing is to sell the product. Like two-wheeled electric vehicles, it's just a consumer product.

What was once hailed as the crown jewel of industry has been reduced to an ordinary industrial chain by us. Every car company boasts sales figures of tens or hundreds of thousands of vehicles, which sounds quite impressive.

With May approaching, Boss Tan, though he had just returned, didn't have any vacation time to speak of.

The upcoming Shanghai International Auto Show, the start of the Olympic Games promotional period, and the electric vehicle exhibition held in Nanning from the 18th to the 20th of this month by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade are also the focus of Flash's work in May.

From the very beginning, Flash has been deeply involved in the development of Nanning and other counties and cities in the autonomous region. Flash's first large-scale marketing campaign, the "Journey Across the Coastal Frontier," started in Beihai, the autonomous region.

Besides local electric vehicle companies in the autonomous region, Flash is the earliest and most deeply rooted national large-scale electric vehicle company in the Nanning area. Today, Flash electric vehicles have a very high market share in Nanning.

The high-performance, cost-effective Flash brand series is especially popular in this city. Perhaps due to the climate, the nightlife in Guangdong and Guangxi is extremely vibrant. At midnight, the streets of Ningbo are almost deserted.

In the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, their nightlife is just beginning. Along the streets of Nanning, young men and women riding black Flash brand electric bikes can be seen from time to time at barbecue stalls.

Some blond-haired teenagers were holding the handlebars of electric bikes, with two little girls on the back, and some even had one girl sitting in the footrest area in front.

They sped past the streets like lightning; that's their youth.

It is not so perfect, nor so in accordance with public order, but it is certainly unrestrained and free.

Years later, when they look back on those youthful days, they might laugh and call themselves fools, but they certainly won't regret it. Although they were poor, they were happy.

As a national brand with a high market share in Nanning and excellent sales in Southeast Asia, Flash is a key guest at this exhibition, with a status almost equivalent to that of a co-organizer.

The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade also extended an invitation to Tan Jincheng, the head of a key enterprise, who will attend the opening ceremony of the trade fair.

In the past, Tan Jincheng might have declined such an invitation and sent a regional manager instead, minimizing contact with these official institutions.

However, after being criticized for his involvement in FlashDrive, Tan Jincheng decided that he should be more high-profile at appropriate times, appear in public more often, and maintain a certain level of exposure.

In addition, to coordinate with the upcoming Olympic promotional period, FlashLink's two major business segments, including Orange Technology, will also conduct some mainstream promotional activities, such as public welfare activities.

It's a pity that the internet these days doesn't meet the requirements for live streaming, otherwise Tan Jincheng really wanted to put on a live stream to help farmers, that would be truly explosive, even surpassing Lei Jun's marketing efforts.

However, after the sales figures for the following quarter were released, Tan Jincheng prepared a major surprise.

Regardless of how Lei Jun (CEO of Xiaomi) markets his businesses in the future, Tan Jincheng hopes that when people think of companies that do good marketing, it won't just be Xiaomi, but also Flashcore.

In fact, the first thing that comes to mind is FlashDrive.

Is this some kind of contest between pen holders? Regardless of what kind of pen holder Boss Tan is, it's still a pen holder.

As the pen-wielding boss, Mr. Tan is currently sitting in his office, pondering whether or not to attend the Shanghai Trade Fair this year. Unlike last year, this year's Shanghai Trade Fair is a purely trade fair for Flash Motors.

Selling products, advertising, and promoting are all different from last year in terms of scale. These tasks can be handled by sending a regional manager, or at the very least, Lin Yumin or Wu Zhenping can go.

After all, he had finally gotten a holiday and had been on business trips for so long, so Tan Jincheng really didn't want to travel around for work again in May. Besides, he had other things to do during the May Day holiday.

This also relates to Flash's next strategic move.

The spacious office was quiet. Boss Tan sat in his chair, deep in thought. Toys were piled up on the carpeted floor, and Tan Jinyue was lying on the floor playing with her toy train.

Everything seems the same as when I used to bring my child to work, yet it also seems different.

(End of this chapter)