2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 764 An Epic Bargain

Tao Qinian's appearance on the second day of the Lunar New Year allowed Tan Jincheng to spend a rare full holiday in his hometown.

It's unknown where Tao Qinian will go next, but he will most likely remain in Yicheng City, though it's also possible he will be transferred to another city.

It's even possible that he'll go to his hometown, which is a prefecture-level city; of course, the probability of that is not high.

There will be many more opportunities to interact with him in the future. Also, although Li Yun calls him "uncle" in private, it's just a formality.

"Let's go, let's go together. I'll talk to the bosses, and the rest is up to you."

On the eighth day of the first lunar month, Tan Jincheng brought Zhang Xupeng to the county. Compared to Tao Qinian, he was not as familiar with Li Yun as Zhang Xupeng, mainly because he had not been back much in recent years.

But that's alright, we have an inside man, and besides, he's just here to express an opinion.

"Don't worry too much. His resume is similar to Uncle Tao's, and everything else is fine. Besides, we've been here for so many years."

Zhang Xupeng could roughly guess what his good friend was thinking. From the very beginning when they started doing business together, his good friend often brought up the business environment. Tao Qinian was just guessing, but he really understood what Tan Jincheng was thinking.

However, he did not think that Flashpoint had anything to worry about given its current scale. As long as it was operating legally, what was there to worry about?
"I'm not too worried, but this is the first time we've changed managers, so we need to be careful. Besides, Flash will be under your management from now on anyway."

It's not just Wangjiang; the same goes for Beicang. However, Beicang had already discussed these matters in advance, and besides, Tan Jincheng himself is the R&D representative for the Beicang district.

He would know some of the information in advance.

2013 was a special year.

"Haha, if you leave everything to me, aren't you afraid I'll snatch Flash away?"

"Haha, if you really manage to snatch it away, then I'll sell the shares to you."

Will they be robbed? Tan Jincheng didn't know either. There have been cases where founders were kicked out, and bosses were sent to work as sewing machines by professional managers in collusion.

Never consider human nature, nor is it necessary to consider it.

Zhang Xupeng certainly wouldn't have such thoughts now, nor would he dare to. Tan Jincheng's control over Flashcar is something he can't and wouldn't dare to covet, but given enough time, even he himself probably won't know the answer.

As Dongzi said, if he ever loses control of the company, he will sell his shares.

Everyone has a way out.

As Zhang Xupeng said, Li Yunru had no background. He was a year older than Tao Qinian and could retire after two terms, or perhaps he could work in a less important department for a short period before retiring.

What Tan Jincheng didn't know was that without the butterfly effect, these two would have only achieved a perfunctory deputy director-level position by retirement age, without any further advancement.

Indeed, it seems easier to achieve results in a poverty-stricken county, since the starting point is low. But besides ability, the most important thing is to have resources and background. Without these two things, you are nothing.

Reaching the ceiling and then retiring with half-level benefits would be the greatest stroke of luck in their lives, just like the first generation of wealthy people starting their own businesses, which is arduous.

The meeting with Li Yun was harmonious. Both sides had their own demands and a basis for cooperation, and there were no major disagreements for the time being.

In fact, Zhang Xupeng's idea is not wrong. Now is the stage of economic growth, and Flash's scale can bring enough economic benefits and create enough jobs wherever it is.

No matter which city it's located in, there's no need to worry too much about the business environment. Minor issues may arise, but the overall direction is fine.

"I'll leave this place to you now, I have to go."

The Maybach drove smoothly on the road from the county back to the village, attracting the attention of other vehicles and pedestrians. Such a luxury car was rarely seen in the entire county, and with its Zhejiang B license plate, it was easy to identify who it belonged to.

The legendary young man from Xinba Tanjia Village has returned, which is the biggest gossip news in the county during the Spring Festival.

To be honest, many people in the county are grateful to Tan Jincheng. Not to mention anything else, the road that Tan Jincheng and his group are currently traveling on is called Anjiu Road, which is a national highway.

However, a few years ago this road was notorious for its poor condition, full of potholes, and it was a terrible sight on rainy days. Now it has been repaired beautifully and widened considerably.

With the county now having more money, the residents along the roadside were also quite satisfied with the compensation for the demolition.

In addition, with the economy improving, businesses along the roads are doing better. Previously, there were only a few barbecue restaurants in the county town, but now there are in every town, and some shops have even developed telephone delivery services.

Of course, the biggest changes are in Tanjia Village and Zhangjia Village. In addition to working at Flash Motors, many people from these two villages are also doing business.

When you're poor, no one cares even in the bustling city; when you're rich, even distant relatives come calling from the deep mountains. Although Mr. and Mrs. Tan settled in Ningbo after retiring early, they still received quite a few visits from relatives who came to visit or called them.

There were countless requests to borrow money or secure a future for their descendants. Some of these relatives, let alone Tan Jincheng, even Tan Lihua couldn't recall them for a moment.

One or two is fine, but when there are many people, Lao Tan doesn't know what to do.

Tan Jincheng realized that this wasn't a solution. He didn't care about them, as most people wouldn't see them anyway, but his grandparents were still in the countryside, and he had uncles. If they came looking for him, it would cause trouble for Old Tan through these connections, which would also affect him.

The matter of borrowing money was difficult for Tan Jincheng to resolve, and it was up to Old Tan himself to make the judgment. However, Tan Jincheng, who wanted to secure a future for his children and grandchildren, did come up with a solution.

That is, he set up a small investment company by imitating ByteDance's massive engine, which was only for relatives of the Tan and Zhang families, as well as villagers of Tanjia Village and Zhangjia Village. If anyone wanted to do business but lacked money, Tan Lihua could support them by investing and taking shares.

Tan Lihua was responsible for investigating the character of the person, while Tan Jincheng's team, which he provided to his father, handled the professional aspects. Even if you were short of money while running a small shop, you could use this method to solve the problem.

Professionalizing interpersonal relationships not only imposes constraints on the other party to prevent them from taking money and not doing anything worthwhile, but also allows for the rejection of those who simply want to take advantage of others in a professional manner.

If the person's character and the project aren't up to par, the money won't be lent.

If a business grows big and you want to expand without sharing profits with others, you can redeem your investment shares at market price without any obstacles. After all, most people in the village run small businesses like electric vehicle shops.

Those with bigger dreams just want to piggyback on the FlashCar supply chain and open a parts factory on the outskirts of the county, investing a few hundred thousand yuan at most.

Tan Jincheng really didn't care about this small amount of money; it was just to solve Old Tan's troubles and give him something to do.

Old Tan has been much happier since he started this small investment firm.

Having spent his entire life in a state-owned enterprise, retiring early at a relatively young age must have been somewhat difficult for him. He didn't understand business or investment, but that's okay, he had a professional team.

To be honest, this approach is quite effective. It has also helped to support some clothing and electric vehicle industry chain companies. Although they are not very large, they are still small business owners and can earn a considerable amount of money each year.

Among these small business owners, many are post-80s who previously worked in the Yangtze River Delta region, and some are even college graduates who returned to their hometowns to start businesses, which has brought some vitality to the small county.

"Are you going back to Ningbo first or to Shenzhen?"

"Let's go to Shenzhen first."

The private placement of shares by Tencent to Orange Technology that I talked about with Pony Ma before the Lunar New Year should be finalized by now. In principle, Tencent has already agreed to add Orange Club to the main WeChat entry point in the future.

Gaining access to two major traffic sources at once is a big deal for Orange Products. Sun Tongyu will also be there, and he seemed quite excited about the collaboration.

Limited by users and traffic entry points, Orange Products Club has shown some lack of momentum in user growth after reaching a certain scale, and he has tried many solutions over the past year.

We've talked about advertising, accessing Kaixin.com, MiTalk, and the Xiaomi community; we've even considered getting involved with Dingding.

Apart from Dingding, which has no plans to advertise yet, most of the other collaborations have been finalized, but the results have been mediocre, and frankly, they haven't been as effective as the sales of several thousand Xiaomi 1 phones.

Taobao's development in recent years has been too rapid, putting pressure on a number of e-commerce websites. Orange Products has done relatively well because of its focus on flash sales, but e-commerce websites similar to Taobao are in a very bad situation.

Huang Zheng's e-commerce website is now completely defunct. For the past two years, he has been developing games, creating a game platform called "Dream Chaser," and making adult games overseas, single-mindedly focusing on making money.

Sun Tongyu could easily grasp the sheer power of QQ's user base, and it was only a matter of time before WX surpassed 100 million users.

It has to be said that Tencent's team is indeed the best in China when it comes to making social apps. Zhang Xiaolong is a really awesome product manager. Even the "People Nearby" and "Drift Bottle" features were released by MiTalk first.

However, the WX team reacted quickly. In the 4.0 version currently in internal testing, a photo album function similar to Path and Instagram has been added, which is the Moments function that Tan Jincheng is familiar with!

This feature is a killer feature!
Ten years later, most people no longer like to post on WeChat Moments, but today's netizens have a strong desire to share. For WX, being the first to post on WeChat Moments has completely solidified its status as the king of instant messaging software.

This is also the first step for WX to become more legitimate. While promotional methods like "People Nearby" and "Message in a Bottle" may attract some curiosity for a while, they are ultimately not respectable.

MiTalk and other instant messaging software may have thought of the Moments feature, but Tencent truly crushes them in terms of capabilities.

In addition, the independently developed WX team has a very high degree of autonomy, and can be described as an independent startup, completely free from the interference of large corporate problems.

"Wasn't Sun Tongyu's visit enough? It's just a matter of signing a meeting and a contract, isn't it?"

Zhang Xupeng was a little confused. He had heard Tan Jincheng mention a few days ago that not only would he be going, but Gu Qingqing would also be going with him.

"Haha, it's not entirely about that. I'll also take a look at the battery factory over there, and I also have to go to Hong Kong." In 2011, if you were to ask which entrepreneurs in China were incredibly successful, besides the most eye-catching belt, Lei Jun would definitely be on the list. Xiaomi 1 had over 60 units ordered in several pre-sales!

Based on a retail price of 1999 yuan, this translates to a production value of over 12 billion yuan, which is nothing short of a miracle for a company that has been established for less than two years.

Unfortunately, the production capacity of Xiaomi 1 could never be increased. If those 60 units could have been shipped out in 2011, that would have been absolutely amazing.

Besides signing a contract with Tencent, Tan Jincheng's main purpose in going to Shenzhen was to inspect the battery factory's production capacity.

Cars and electric vehicles didn't sell well in 2011, but mobile phones sold really well. In 2011, a total of 2.8 million mobile phones were sold in China, an increase of 12% year-on-year.

Of these, a total of 7210 million smartphones were sold, representing a year-on-year increase of 129.4%.

The mobile phone market is expected to reach around 3 million units in 2012, with a growth rate of around 25%. The forecast for smartphones is much more optimistic, with a growth rate similar to this year, which is about 1.7 million units.

Smartphones account for half of total sales. Xiaomi will release the Xiaomi 2 in 12, as well as new derivative models such as the Xiaomi 1S, Youth Edition, and Telecom Edition.

Conservatively speaking, Xiaomi's sales in 2012 (including pre-orders) must have reached at least one million units, right?

This year, Dexian Electronics has made a fortune, securing an order for 60 batteries for the Xiaomi Mi 1 phone. Thanks to prior preparation, there was no shortage of production capacity.

2011 was also the best year for Dexian Electronics since its establishment.

Currently, Dexian Electronics also has several major clients, including Apple (iPod and some iPads), Xiaomi, HTC, and Meizu, etc.

In addition to supplying batteries to these manufacturers, they also supply some peripheral accessories, such as data cables, chargers, etc. In the field of mobile phone 3C accessories, Dexian Electronics has indeed accumulated a lot of technology.

Although most of these customers were developed after Tan Jincheng took over, the acquisition of Dexian Electronics was truly a worthwhile investment.

Furthermore, starting in 2012, Dexian Electronics gradually stopped accepting orders from counterfeit mobile phones. Given Xiaomi's growth rate, Dexian Electronics will definitely not be able to exclusively enjoy its battery orders in the future.

However, in 2012, it was still Dexian Electronics that took over.

"We still have to go to Hong Kong, won't that take quite a while?"

"It won't be long. The main thing is to get together with the employees in Hong Kong and talk to them about this year's investment plans."

Tan Jincheng attached great importance to controlling Hong Kong Investment Company. It was jointly overseen by Tan Jincheng, Gu Qingqing, and Cheng Linfeng. During the time when Gu Qingqing was pregnant, he frequently traveled to Hong Kong.

Now that the child is older, Gu Qingqing will keep a closer eye on investments in Hong Kong.

In addition, Tan Jincheng also wants to buy some properties in Hong Kong, and it would be more convenient for the two of them to go and take a look together.

Thinking of real estate, Tan Jincheng said to Zhang Xupeng, "I'm planning to acquire some high-quality properties in Hong Kong. Do you have the same idea? I can help you take a look."

Zhang Xupeng curled his lip: "What am I looking at? Houses in Hong Kong are priced like that. Forget it."

The property Xiao Tan mentioned could not possibly be the kind of second-hand house they bought back then. Although he is on the rich list and has a net worth of several billion, he doesn't have the ability to own real estate worth hundreds of millions.

In 2009, Pony Ma bought a villa in Hong Kong for HK$4.8 million, with an area of ​​over 1900 square meters. However, this was only the purchase price; the renovation and upgrade of the villa has not yet been completed.

I heard from Little Ma that the construction period will be six years.

"Okay, I should be back in Ningbo by mid-February. Keep a close eye on things during that time."

Tan Jincheng didn't say anything more. He mainly invested in real estate, not to live in Hong Kong.

Zhang Xupeng is quite wealthy, but he doesn't actually have much cash at his disposal. Like Tan Jincheng, Zhang Xupeng has also hired a team to manage his assets, which includes some investments, but most of them are in the real economy.

In addition, he also had the same troubles as Tan Jincheng. Zhang Guolong and his wife also had a lot of relatives. However, he was better off than Tan Jincheng because he had Zhang Xuhui to share some of the burden.

Zhang Xuhui, who lived in the same province, was Zhang Xupeng's cousin, and he was harassed more often than Zhang Xupeng.

In the eyes of their relatives, both of them were rich.

"Okay, got it; by the way, hehe, if you're going to sell stocks, give me a heads-up."

Zhang Xupeng also invests, but he focuses more on the clothing industry and stores, as well as some other physical enterprises, none of which are large in scale. For investments in liquid cash, he follows Tan Jincheng.

ByteDance's purchases in the secondary market are always large-scale, and the media can find out about them, let alone him, the CEO of Flash Group.

He went all in on Apple shares, and he also got his team to follow suit.

This trick might seem a bit underhanded, but he didn't care. What's wrong with taking advantage of his good buddy a little?
Tan Jincheng's cost basis for holding Apple shares is definitely higher, but during the Chinese New Year period this month, Apple shares rose by 12.71%, and the stock price has soared to over $450. The market value of Tan Jincheng's holdings is as high as $24 billion.

He bought quite a lot.

"Oh, no rush. I plan to sell it at the end of August or the beginning of September."

Generally speaking, Apple's stock price fluctuates in the month leading up to a new product launch. In addition, in the first year after Jobs' death, Cook's abilities had not yet been recognized, so reducing holdings in late August or early September was the most appropriate time.

American tech stocks often undergo stock splits. Apple, Tesla, and others have all experienced several large-scale stock splits. Apple's first stock split seems to have been in 2014.

Selling before the stock split is a bit of a pity, but thinking about it, Nvidia still made the effort.

Nvidia's market value is only around 10 billion US dollars at this stage. If you invest 1 billion, you can get more than 10% of the shares!
Compared to Apple's modest gains, buying Nvidia at this point is an epic bargain, a real steal. Nvidia's current popularity isn't even as high as MediaTek's.

Qualcomm is an unattainable level for them; Huang is still trying to curry favor with Lei Jun.

The question is, how should this money be invested? Buying some stocks is a small matter, but if it's just investing in stocks and only making some profits in the secondary market, then it's a bit of a waste.

However, even though we live in a global village and technology is touted as borderless, acquiring a 10% stake in Nvidia is not an easy task.

There are many wealthy companies in China that have considered acquiring chip companies, but it seems there are no successful cases.
Sigh, I need to think of a good solution. I need to be very careful in selecting both the pseudonyms and the partners.

February 1th, the tenth day of the first lunar month.

In Shenzhen, companies traditionally give out "lucky money" or "red envelopes" to mark the start of the work year. The amount varies from a dozen to several hundred yuan depending on the size of the company. That's one of the good things about Guangdong province; the red envelopes are meant to bring good luck.

Unlike Anhui and Zhejiang provinces, where the amount of money given out in red envelopes is quite astonishing.

Dexian Electronics officially started work on the eighth day of the first lunar month, but the red envelopes for starting work were not distributed until the tenth day of the first lunar month. The reason was that the big boss was coming on the tenth day, and Qin Junchao postponed the time for distributing the red envelopes by two days.

"Boss, Happy New Year!"

"Haha, Happy New Year! I can't go back to my hometown for the Spring Festival. You're not blaming me, are you?"

"Not at all, I'm quite used to it here. Besides, I've brought my parents here, and they're comfortable living here too."

"That's good; let's go, let's go hand out red envelopes. I bet if you didn't hand them out by the eighth day of the new year, the employees will think there aren't any left."

Whether it was genuine comfort or just polite talk, Tan Jincheng didn't care at all. With gain comes loss. Qin Junchao initially joined the company through Lin Yumin's recommendation, starting as a salesman at Jinyi Industrial and eventually becoming a supervisor at a subsidiary, which could be considered a leap in social class.

Putting everything else aside, he has already bought a house in Shenzhen, something that most working people can't achieve even after a lifetime of hard work.

"Haha, you might actually have that idea. I made this decision on the spur of the moment."

In previous years, the electronic red envelopes from Dexian were not very large, with amounts of 68 yuan and 88 yuan being distributed. This year, due to good performance, the red envelope amount has been increased to 158 yuan.

When the company's general manager appeared in the workshop with the big boss to distribute red envelopes, it immediately caused a stir. When Pony Ma distributed red envelopes at Tencent, it was crowded with people. Tan Jincheng's popularity in various branches was no less than that of Pony Ma.

Especially in electronics factories, where most employees are young people, quite a few people asked Tan Jincheng to take photos with them, and Tan Jincheng tried his best to accommodate them.

Tan Jincheng didn't do anything serious all morning. He just handed out red envelopes while inspecting the company, and Qin Junchao was responsible for reporting on the work.

"After the new factory goes into operation, will its production capacity be able to keep up with this year's expectations?"

"No problem. We'll focus on Xiaomi and Apple products as much as possible. As for other smaller orders, I'll cut them if necessary."

Tan Jincheng nodded. Other industries could be expected to be more conservative, but mobile phone batteries and related products were different. If the emergence of Xiaomi in 2011 crushed the counterfeit phone industry, then 2012 was almost the end of Nokia's empire.

In 2011, Nokia's sales declined every quarter, but due to inertia, they still maintained their position as the world's number one in shipments.

In 2012, with the widespread adoption of smartphones, Nokia's crown was about to fall.

(End of this chapter)