Rebirth 2010: I taught Mr. Lei how to make a mobile phone

Chapter 430 Invest in innovation and acquire Zhihu!
The list of candidates for the Qingyun list scrolls like a revolving lantern.

Those on the list are either top employees from first- and second-tier Internet companies, or technical experts from all over the world.
The upper limit of those who can make it onto this list may not be high, but the lower limit is definitely not low. At least the entry rate of Ali P7 is less than 30%, which is a clear example.

For privacy reasons, Ivy League College does not include any name information.

People looked at the hard conditions for Qingteng Road selection at the top of the screen. Basically, they had to score above 99 points and answer the questions within half an hour to have a chance of being on the list.

At the bottom of the screen is the overall statistical data of this Qingyun Ranking.

“Total number of candidates selected for the Qingyun List: 1440;
Baidu: 381 people; Tencent: 327 people; Alibaba: 283 people; NetEase, Sina, Sohu, New Oriental, Yibo. Danei IT

For leading brands like BAT, it is natural for them to rank high, with the number of people ranging from 100 to 300.

The number of employees at second-tier Internet giants such as Wangsouxin has gradually decreased to less than 100.

Each of those training institutions had several to dozens of people on the list, especially New Oriental, which had 43 people, which was beyond everyone's expectations. When did training classes become so powerful?

After watching it, everyone had the illusion that senior employees from China's major Internet companies were rushing to take an exam.

Countless flashes lit up, and media reporters took the opportunity to capture this rare scene.

When the HR personnel in charge of recruitment at all the big companies saw this list, their faces fell instantly.

Especially the HR manager of Alibaba, he felt like the sky was falling.

My first reaction was, why is Alibaba ranked third? Weren’t the technical people in the company arrogant and boastful? But when the critical moment came, they all failed.

The manager didn't know which side he was on, so he quickly reflected on himself, then put himself in his job and took a deep breath.

You know, all those on this list are, as expected, technical talents with an annual salary of over one million, and he did not see any M-sequence candidates on it.

There is nothing wrong with that. After all, what a company lacks most are people who do the work, and managers have always been redundant. This trend has already appeared in Alibaba.

If the admissions to Ivy League schools is an open conspiracy, then this list without any names is a naked conspiracy.

He could imagine that all the high-level employees of various Internet companies who had taken leave in the past two or three days, regardless of whether they participated in the Qingteng College exam or not, would be questioned by their superiors.
Since ancient times, human hearts are the most unpredictable, or perhaps Chen Mo's move was really insidious.

Regardless of what happens in other companies, based on his understanding of his own company, he estimates that there may be significant personnel turmoil within Alibaba in the next month.

如果说P3P4是小兵，P5P6是大头兵，那每一个P7以上的技术类员工都负责核心业务的主力军。

The departure of these people will inevitably have an impact on existing business.

If we think further ahead, if there is always information gap in the handover, which leads to some major online failures, the loss is not just a matter of money, but also the credibility of users, the market and even the entire company.

The manager sighed secretly, feeling a little depressed, while he was still struggling here, trying every possible means to recruit some "leftovers" that the other side looked down upon.

After three days of hard work, they finally recruited nearly three hundred people, but then the other side cut off the source of their talent, causing the high-end talent pool of their companies to flow out.

就算数量相等同样是三百，P3P4跟P7P8那能一样么？哦，还有好几个P9P10的.
Even a strong man can't stand three poops. Even if Ali was strong, he couldn't stand this. How could these "traitors" on the list do this?
When he came to his senses, he couldn't stay there any longer, so he ran back to draft the second email, and he had even thought of the title.

《Danger! Beware of the outflow of senior talents from the company, and suggest that superiors take early measures! 》

The crowd watched for nearly an hour before gradually dispersing, as everyone discovered that the Qingyun list was also synchronized on the Qingteng Academy mini program.

Night falls, 8pm.

The gate of Qingteng College opened, and a black business car slowly drove out, then stopped abruptly at the door because there were several "statues" in front blocking the way.

Inside the car, Lao Mo pointed to the front and said, "Boss, look!"

Chen Mo took in the bizarre scene through the front window and frowned.

What the hell?

Then he got out of the car, looked at the one who was running out of energy and the two who were staggering, and asked the security captain nearby about the situation.

When I heard that one of them knelt for 10 hours in weather of minus 10 degrees Celsius, the other two also knelt for almost 5 hours.

Chen Mo was very moved. There are still people with such perseverance in today's society.
At this time, the three people on the opposite side found that the real master had finally appeared, and the "statue" also revived. They looked at Chen Mo eagerly and pleaded weakly.
"Mr. Chen, I just want a make-up exam."

"Qingteng's loss of a talent like me is a great loss to the other side."

"Give me a chance, and I will give you a future."

Then the three of them saw that the man not far away seemed very moved. They thought that their hard work paid off and they finally moved the other party with their actions. Then they heard the other party speaking slowly, at a volume just loud enough for them to hear.

".Please remember these three people and enter them into our Qingteng Academy."

Damn, I didn’t expect that a part-time job would bring such unexpected benefits?
Thinking about the days of eating and waiting for death in the other side, the three of them were delighted.

They were about to thank him when they found that the other party had not stopped talking. When they heard the words "blacklisted, never hired again!", the exhausted buddy's eyes went dark and he could no longer hold on and collapsed to the ground.

Seeing this, Chen Mo looked at the crowd and media watching around him, his face full of grief and reluctance, and whispered in the ear of the security captain,

".You guys are doing a good job. Don't help in this situation, otherwise it will be hard to explain. For humanitarian reasons, let's call 120 and then report to the police. Thank you for your hard work!"

"Understood, boss. It's not hard. We will serve the other side!" The security captain saluted in unison and then summoned his men to carry out the boss's latest orders.

Chen Mo looked at the space and distance, smiled, got on the car and told Lao Mo, "We can still go around, let's go!"

Through the car window, Chen Mo's original compassionate expression disappeared. His face was expressionless and his eyes were cold as he looked at the three people beside him who were trying to struggle to get up, but because their lower bodies had no feeling, they were unable to do so and the figures were getting farther and farther away.

He withdrew his gaze and closed his eyes to rest.

Who knows if these three people are all assassins arranged by the enemy, used for acting or fishing? Whether they are true or false, we have to be on guard, otherwise, once the door is opened, the reputation of Qingteng Academy will be tarnished.

And the chances of this being a drama were high, because he had just heard the security captain say that a few people who looked like media had been watching outside for the entire day.

Even if we take a step back, even if the candidates are really late, they may choose the wrong place to kneel. They should at least be 3 meters forward of the gate so that their cars cannot get around.

He can be late for such an important occasion, he acts on passion and impulse without thinking through various situations in advance, he wants to achieve his own selfish goals through moral blackmail, what's the difference between such a person and a struggler.

Perhaps Chen Mo three years ago felt sorry for himself.
But now Chen Mo is as solid as a rock.

That night, news about the Beyond Qingteng Academy emerged one after another on the Internet, with all parties doing their best to report on it from different angles.
"An Ivy League school on the other side of the river, half of the Internet talent pool!"

"Ten Moves, Yet Rejection Version 2.0, from Chen Mo's ruthlessness!"

"On the road to success at Qingteng Academy, among the countless geniuses, who will be the hero?"

"Modernized Imperial Examinations: Innovation or Conservatism?"

"There is always cheating in exams. The facial recognition technology of the other side makes its debut, and the anti-cheating measures are effective. "

Along with various news, netizens also began to show their own way of eating melons and not moving.

Many candidates who were present at the event posted various pictures of the interior of Qingteng College online and shared their experiences.

There were even reporters who mixed in, not pretending to be candidates, but candidates who had become planning positions through self-study, and they had passed the exam.

This guy shared his thoughts on Weibo, claiming that tonight is his last report as a reporter and that he will report for admission to Qingteng College tomorrow.

The incident has spread widely online, but the most miserable people are the human resources employees of many Internet companies, who have been unable to sleep all night today.

Especially at Alibaba headquarters, the human resources director looked at the latest "battle report" sent from the "front line" and then looked at the data on the human resources system he was responsible for.

He felt a big red word "Danger" above his head.

During the Spring Festival holidays in previous years, companies encouraged employees to take leave two or three days before the holiday, and the approval for leave after the holiday would be slightly stricter.

Because few employees will focus on their work before the holidays, and their minds have already become idle. Instead of being inefficient and slacking off, it is better to just take a holiday.

Coming back after the Chinese New Year means the beginning of the year is in spring. Leave will only be granted under special circumstances, such as the death of a family member, marriage and other major life events. Not being able to buy a return ticket is not an excuse.

Since Qingteng College starts right after the holiday, it has actually attracted their attention a long time ago.

Therefore, this year the company has deliberately strengthened the post-holiday approval process. In the past, employee leave applications only required approval from both the superior and the person in charge. This year, the department VP is required to make special approval, which is very strict.

But even so, there are still situations in the company where employees ask for leave but are not granted leave, and the reasons for asking for leave are varied and varied.

My cat has just been neutered, and as a mother, I have to be by its side during the most difficult time.
Why do I lose sleep when I think about going back to work after the holidays? I have no energy recently and need to take a leave;
What about my dog ​​being pregnant, the baby is mine, and I need to take time off to deal with it?

With so many people asking for leave, you can see all kinds of weird things.

Thinking of the 283 people from Qingyun Road alone in the "battle report", the director quickly checked the system data.

How many P7 employees in the company asked for leave after the holiday? 491 people!
The total number of people who requested leave is 1638. You should know that these people are still executing first and reporting later, and there are also those who just execute without beating.

He checked again and found that the number of employees absent today was 2294. Well, that was nearly one-tenth of the total number of employees in the company. How many of them really had something to do, and how many of them were just pretending to be absent and secretly going to Qingteng to take the exam?
he does not know.

How many resignation applications will he receive in the next few days?
He didn't know either.

The unknown is the scariest thing.

Even if the company has a non-compete agreement, he still feels unsure. It's not a panacea. Although there is a gap in size between Bi'an and Alibaba, the gap is not that big. If the other party really collects all the receivables, the lawsuit will be difficult to handle.

The director felt that this was not only a career crisis for himself, but also a crisis for the entire company. After all, each of these people was a core employee with top 30% performance. If they all left, the company would be in turmoil.
hiss.
The director only felt a chill coming from his tailbone and going straight up to the top of his head. After a shudder, he felt cold all over.

Instead, he now hopes that no matter how difficult the exam of Ivy League College is, he will not be able to pass it.

He couldn't bear this thunder, so he quickly wrote a report overnight and reported to his superiors, trying to share some of the blame.

At the same time, New Oriental headquarters.

Chen Xiangdong led the New Oriental management team members to the roadside to welcome the triumphant "warriors" returning home.

Half an hour later, he listened to the overall situation report from the team leader in the office.

In this year's entrance examination for Ivy League College, New Oriental's overall pass rate reached 10%, although it was far less than the average pass rate of 17.4% of Ivy League College.

They don't even consider who they are competing with. You should know that those competing on the same stage with them are elites from big companies and young talents from all over the world.

Moreover, among the students who did not pass the exam, some of the more outstanding ones also found their jobs through various "recruitment agencies" outside Qingteng College.

What is even more gratifying is that there are 23 people from New Oriental on the Qingyun list. Although 22 of them are teachers, this is not important.

What’s important is that compared with other training institutions, New Oriental’s performance can be said to be ahead of its peers, and it has defended its position as the leader in the industry.

All of the above are live advertisements for the upcoming enrollment of Ivy League classes. They are golden signs. If you want to promote those students, this is your trump card.

It can be imagined that the subsequent Qingteng training classes will become New Oriental’s key business.

After listening to the report, Chen Xiangdong summarized the key points, made a draft, picked up his phone and told his boss the good news. He was very happy to hear his boss on the phone.

".That's great. I should be back the day after tomorrow to tell the teachers who passed the exam that I brought them some gifts this time to reward everyone."

The tenth day of the Lunar New Year, the second day of exams at the Bian'an Qingteng Academy!
Chen Mo did not come to the college today. In fact, his task at Qingteng College is to solve problems, inspect the environment, give a speech at the opening ceremony, and look at the overall examination situation. In addition, there will be a dialogue with Qingteng students tomorrow to increase his presence and cohesion.

Next, he passed the baton to Xu Chaojun and continued to be his hands-off boss.

If there was nothing else important, he would have been watching the Qingyun Road "competition" in the college today. Unfortunately, news came from Zhou Shouzi that the founding team and investors of Zhihu personally asked to talk to him.

According to Zhou Shouzi's analysis, the other party said that the two parties should have preliminary communication first and they probably only wanted to accept investment and did not want to be acquired.

This is the reason why Chen Mo personally came to the Innovation Works in Dinghao Building, No. 3 Haidian Road with Zhou Shouzi.

Zhihu’s angel investor is Innovation Works.

The chairman and CEO of Innovation Works is Kai-Fu Lee, who has served as global vice president of Microsoft and Google, dean of the Asia Research Institute, president of the China region, and many other positions. He is considered to be a Chinese executive who has done well in a top foreign company, which is not easy.

Chen Mo and Kai-Fu Lee had met several times before, at Xiaomi's press conference, the Internet Conference, the Economic Person of the Year Ceremony and other occasions.

The most important thing is that they have a common friend, Lei Jun.

Lei Jun, who was the chairman of UCweb at the time, came to Google China's office in Wudaokou, Beijing, and was greeted by Kai-Fu Lee, who was the president of Google Greater China at the time.

Later, Kai-Fu Lee introduced one of his subordinates to Lei Jun. This person was the vice president of Google China Engineering Research Institute, and his name was Lin Bin.

In fact, Kai-Fu Lee's original intention was to introduce the two people to each other regarding the cooperation between Google and UCWEB. However, who would have thought that two years later, Lin Bin became a founding employee of Xiaomi.

The world is so small, and friends of friends are friends, so Chen Mo and Kai-Fu Lee maintain a pretty good relationship.

Later, after Google withdrew from China, Kai-Fu Lee founded Innovation Works to build an investment institution and entrepreneurial platform to cultivate innovative talents and a new generation of high-tech companies.

The most representative of these is the mobile assistant application "Wandoujia". Pony Ma originally sold his own Bi'an Assistant to Baidu for US$10 billion. Then he turned around and wanted to acquire Wandoujia for US$10 billion, but the company refused to sell it.

Now Wandoujia is struggling to resist the invasion of Baidu Mobile Assistant and barely maintains its second place in the market among application distribution tools.

Another one that has shown great potential is Zhihu, which is actually a product modeled after the foreign question-and-answer social website Quora and then localized.

Dinghao Electronic Mall, Office Building A, 10th Floor.

Chen Mo and his team met Kai-Fu Lee and Zhihu's founder Zhou Yuan.

Kai-Fu Lee and Zhou Yuan spent nearly an hour introducing and touring Innovation Works to Chen Mo, Zhou Shouzi and other guests.

Then everyone came to a conference room, and Zhou Yuan began to introduce Zhihu's development history and current situation.

At the end of 2010, Zhihu began internal testing;
On January 2011, 1, Zhihu was officially launched;

In March 2011, Zhihu received 3 million angel round investment from Sinovation Ventures;

To date, Zhihu’s strategy is to focus on quality rather than quantity, and to implement a strict invitation system.

First, it is to ensure the authenticity of the user's quasi-real-name identity;
Secondly, to avoid generating too much spam, the real-name system allows users to ask targeted questions to people you are interested in.

Each of them is a high-quality core user. Currently, the overall user scale is under intentional control and does not exceed 10. In addition, some well-known users include Kai-Fu Lee, Wang Xing of Meituan, Wang Xiaochuan of Sogou, Xu Xiaoping of Zhen Fund, etc., innovative entrepreneurs, well-known VCs, and senior professionals from all walks of life who answer questions in it.

By having professionals answer questions, many classic questions and answers emerge, and then spread on the Internet to attract more people to request invitations. This has also become Zhihu's current marketing strategy.

After listening to the introduction, Chen Mo frowned and held up three fingers.

"Three questions,
First, if Zhihu wants to develop, it will eventually liberalize, but liberalization will lead to a decline in the quality of answers to questions and a decrease in valuable questions, which is contrary to its original intention. How can it be solved?

Second, how can Zhihu avoid becoming the next Baidu Knows or Tianya Q&A?

Third, what are your thoughts on profit models and commercial exploration? "

"this."

Zhou Yuan was stumped by the question, and Li Kaifu, who was sitting next to him, felt a little annoyed after hearing it. Each of these questions directly pointed to the weak points of Zhihu. This guy Chen Mo would either draw his sword or draw blood.

In fact, it’s not that Zhou Yuan hasn’t thought about these problems, but he really doesn’t know how to solve them now. In the end, he could only stammer and talk about some old-fashioned problems.

Chen Mo remained silent, with a smile on his face. In response to the previous questions, combined with the subsequent development of Zhihu, he expressed his thoughts, but he only touched upon the subject in each answer, which made Zhou Yuan feel as uncomfortable as if he had been pawed by a cat.

Then he simply briefly talked about what Bi'an currently has and what Zhihu urgently needs, such as a privacy public opinion monitoring system, an intelligent recommendation system, an increasingly mature creation incentive mechanism, etc.

“.What I just said can at least save Zhihu 1-2 years of development time, but if it wants to develop into the same size as Sina Weibo, there is still a long way to go.

Moreover, it costs money to maintain and motivate core users. I think the 150 million that Mr. Li gave me in the beginning will soon run out even if you save more, right?"

After listening to this, Zhou Yuan gave a bitter smile.

Kai-Fu Lee was a little helpless. Is this guy really that straightforward? However, Innovation Works basically only invests in angel rounds. The issues that Chen Mo just mentioned are also the reasons why he is not in urgent need of continuing to invest in Zhihu.

In fact, with his ability, it would not be a big deal for Innovation Works to gather a few investment institutions and invest tens of millions of dollars in Zhihu in a round A. However, before he could make up his mind, Bi'an came to him.

"We at Bi'an came to Zhihu with sincerity. Otherwise, I would not be here in person today. We have conducted a comprehensive due diligence and valuation of Zhihu. It is about 2000 million US dollars. These are the evaluation reports. You two can take a look."

Zhou Shouzi followed his boss' words, took out a financial analysis and evaluation report and handed it over.

"Mr. Li should understand my working style, but Mr. Zhou probably doesn't know it very well. That is, I don't want to delay things for too long or have low efficiency.

One price, Bi'an paid double the price, 4000 million US dollars, in one second, Bi'an acquired Zhihu in full! "

4000 million, in US dollars. This made Zhou Yuan on the other side breathe heavier. After all, he was still worried about how to continue financing a few days ago, because in another two months, even paying employees’ salaries would be a problem, and now the core users of Zhihu are all generating electricity with love.

What if love disappears one day?

Even if it doesn't disappear, Zhihu won't be able to bear it even if it moves.

You should know that the most valuable users on Zhihu now are these professional users, which is also Zhihu’s biggest advantage compared to other platforms.

In fact, Zhou Yuan and Kai-Fu Lee had a conversation at the beginning after receiving the call from the other side, that is, investment is possible, but acquisition is absolutely impossible.

But now the other party is offering too much, a double premium. With this money, Zhihu will definitely take off. Zhou Yuan is caught in a dilemma.

Kai-Fu Lee was also shocked by Chen Mo's wealth. Generally, such a decision would only be made by those local bosses who don't know much about the industry, but Chen Mo is obviously an insider who knows the industry like never before. Is Zhihu's potential really that great?

Not to mention anything else, the 150 million RMB that Innovation Works invested in Zhihu has increased dozens of times in just two years, and he was also vaguely tempted.

Zhou Yuan and Kai-Fu Lee looked at each other and saw hesitation in each other's eyes.

To sell or not to sell? That is the question!
(End of this chapter)