On the morning of September 2nd, several senior management and people in charge of technology and product development from Baidu Company in Yanjing also sat in the conference room early.
In the conference room, the vice president asked everyone what they thought of the new minimalist forum called "Tieba" launched by Yiting.com. 80% of the people gave one evaluation: awesome.
What’s awesome is the creativity of this product and its integration capabilities.
Yiting.com itself is a platform that provides music listening and downloading. Its users are all fans of various singers, and the celebrity Tieba currently opened by Tieba happens to be an independent small forum based on each singer himself, which is excellent Gathering fans of a singer into a post bar under his name.
This will not only increase the viscosity of the original users of Yiting.com, but also attract users who do not listen to music on Yiting.com but like certain singers, because there is an exclusive forum named after the idol, so many fans gather here, and the community The effect is very powerful.
The vice president said sadly: "Why don't we have such advanced product thinking? If we build a Baidu Tieba based on search services, we can become the largest online community in China in one step!"
He is right. Baidu Tieba will have more than one billion registered users in the future, and it will indeed be the largest Chinese community in the world. Although they appear to be unscrupulous in buying and selling Tieba, the scale is there after all, and this is undeniable.
The director in charge of new product development, the one who asserted at the last meeting that Yiting.com's products were too single, is now extremely embarrassed. He originally thought that as long as Baidu launched MP3 downloads, Yiting.com's death would not be far away. Unexpectedly, it didn't take long for someone to come up with a heavyweight product like Singxing Tieba, just to slap him in the face.
Angrily, the executive blurted out: "In this case, we will also make Tieba, MP3 and Tieba together!"
The vice president glanced at him, shook his head and said: "I don't need you to give me such a hindsight conclusion. What I want is your innovation ability, understand? What I want is not that after you see others playing MP3 or playing Tieba, We are not going to plagiarize and catch up, but we want you to create a powerful product like Tieba for us. As a leader of new product development, you can’t always pick on others’ opinions!”
The executive's face turned red after being told that, and he was too ashamed to raise his head.
At this time, the vice president's mood calmed down a little, and he said: "We will definitely do MP3 and Tieba, but have you ever thought about the fact that now such a large group of singers has been created by Yiting.com? Now, if we start, how should it work? And I checked, their Tieba is not only tied to Yiting.com, they even have the top-level domain name tieba.com, and this domain name is now open, that is to say, They combined the expertise of Yiting.com to create Tieba, but they wanted to build Tieba into an independent product."
Li Mu also considered establishing an independent Tieba. After all, Yiting.com only brings together music lovers. If Yiting.com is used as a carrier, it can only be a singer Tieba. This is not enough for Li Mu, so he uses tieba.com. I got up and made a Tieba homepage with a search function. Users can directly enter the Tieba homepage, and then search for the name of the singer to enter the singer's Tieba.
At the same time, Li Mu has instructed Kong Lingyu to develop the Tieba registration function. In the future, his own Tieba will also have the function that users can create at will. Moreover, Kong Lingyu is also leading a group of part-time employees to collect information on all stars in the fields of film, television, sports, variety shows, etc. It is expected that it will not take long , Tieba will be open for registration, and Tieba of all celebrities will also be online. At that time, Tieba will go beyond the limitations of Yiting.com and singers.
At the Baidu high-level meeting table at this time, several managers who had returned from overseas were dumbfounded. They began to think about an independent split so quickly. Who is the person behind Yiting.com
In fact, Li Mu's idea is to create an ecosystem. Yiting.com and Tieba are just the beginning of the ecosystem. Li Mu has many plans for this ecosystem in the future.
The simple plan to gain popularity is to allow Yiting.com to start in the field of music listening and downloading, and then bring together users with music listening and downloading needs. The current Tieba has begun the first step in the ecological chain, communityization.
After the community has started, there are so many things that can be done. Personal space, photo albums, stealing vegetables, pastures, and parking spaces are all magic weapons in the community field in the future. Moreover, Taobao’s domain name is still in its own hands. In history, Alibaba The reason why Taobao was not founded until 2003 was also due to the special nature of the SARS period. If I had started one or six months earlier than Alibaba, relying on the users I had accumulated, it would have been easier to start than Alibaba.
An operations director lamented: "The other party has the top-level domain name of Tieba, which is very passive for us, unless we change the name to not Tieba, and then quickly develop a mature product, launch it as soon as possible and pass it through Baidu in the future Search keywords to guide traffic to our own Tieba products.”
The person in charge of technology development was surprised: "Although Yiting.com has a good concept, from a technical perspective, the things they play are not difficult and are easy to imitate. Moreover, after all, their strength is limited and they have little to rely on. In a short time and a half, If we can't find a profit model, it will probably reach a bottleneck period soon, so I think we are overestimating them? We have such powerful resources and we will be able to replace them soon after product development. "
The vice president shook his head: "You can't just look at the problem from a technical perspective, nor can you think that others will not be able to sustain it if they don't have a profit model. Their concepts can shock us, and they will definitely shock others, especially venture capital. Although now, The impact of the Internet bubble is still there, but capital has such a keen sense of smell that it has begun to realize that the next spring of the Internet is coming, and they are also looking for suitable projects in advance. If Yiting.com obtains angel round or Series A financing, there will be With the support of large capital, it should take only one or two years for them to achieve a market value of several hundred million with these two products.”
These words made the technology speechless.
It is correct to say that the Internet plays with creativity, technology, and users, but in the final analysis, it plays with capital.
Behind every Internet giant, there is strong capital support, such as Sequoia, SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, etc. Capitalists have a lot of cash waiting to invest in good projects. Without the help of capital, China’s top BTA companies in the future will not be able to One can get up.
Yiting.com and Tieba are rising rapidly. I believe it won’t be long before they will be noticed by other Internet companies and investment banks. If they receive Series A investment, Yiting.com can start the money-burning mode. As long as the money-burning strategy is not The problem is, in the future rounds B and C, major investment banks will give him money to burn. Not only that, in order to get high returns on investment, when investment banks invest money, they will also invest in contacts and resources to help them develop. By then, Baidu may not have an advantage in front of it.
The head of the investment department said: "Mr. Chen, how about we contact Yiting.com first? If their price is not high, it would be good to package them up. In this case, we can directly integrate their two products into our own." products, a Baidu MP3 and a Baidu Tieba.”
The vice president nodded: "That's what I meant for today's meeting. We can contact Yiting.com first to see what the other party's psychological expectations are."
With that said, the vice president asked the head of the investment department: "How much do you think is appropriate to package them now?"
The person in charge of the investment department thought for a while: "If there is no Tieba and it is just Yiting.com, I think it will only be around 800 to 10 million. After all, this business is still blank in law. In the future, the law will gradually improve. This business will It is inevitable to be subject to risks. However, there is no legal risk in something like Tieba, and there is too much room for development. I think that according to normal valuation, Tieba alone will not be less than 20 million. If the two are integrated , the valuation will be higher, but this is also our opinion. If we really give him an offer, the price will be greatly discounted. After all, they have only been founded for more than a month, and I believe their own psychological expectations will not be too high. "
The vice president was noncommittal, thought for a moment and said, "Let's get in touch first and see what the situation is."
…
At noon, Li Mu received an email in the mailbox he left on Yiting.com. A man who called himself Jack Zhou and was the director of Baidu's investment department said in the email: Baidu is optimistic about the development of Yiting.com and Tieba, and has the intention to package and acquire it. , hoping to have an interview with Li Mu.
Li Mu simply replied: We will not accept packaged acquisitions for the time being, only financing. A maximum of 10% of the shares will be transferred in the A round of financing. You can decide the valuation. Let me know by email when you have made the decision, and I will consider it again.
Li Mu knows very well that if the MP3 business is taken out alone, the profitability will not be too outstanding, but for a company like Baidu, the overall improvement this business brings to them cannot be achieved with millions or tens of millions of cash. What is measured is the cultivation and accumulation of a large number of users, which plays a huge role in valuation.
As for Tieba, the profitability of this thing in the future is still very fierce. If we package and sell it now, wouldn’t we lose a lot of money
Therefore, he only accepts financing and will not dilute too many of his shares in the A round. Otherwise, after several rounds of financing, he may be united by capital and take away control and be eliminated.
Moreover, the earlier you dilute your shares, the greater the intangible losses you will bear in the future. Children all understand this.
As for what kind of valuation Baidu is willing to give itself, Li Mu is not in a hurry and lets them think about it slowly. In short, let’s not talk about the valuation being lower than 30 million. Moreover, if Yiting.com will If He Tieba will develop further, I will raise the price in time.
Li Mu's reply made Jack Zhou feel guilty across the computer. This guy's reply was too decisive. He refused to package it as soon as he came up. That's it. The A round was only willing to sell 10% of the shares. From this look, it was the Internet. A veteran in the entrepreneurial field!
Jack Zhou, who has been an investor for many years, understands the vision of many Internet entrepreneurs today. Most of them struggle to support a start. As soon as they see capital coming, they immediately let it be slaughtered. They are willing to sell more than 51% of their shares in the A round. There are a lot of people out there. After seeing hundreds of thousands or even millions of profits, these people often completely ignore the future and just want to cash out immediately. As a result, after cashing out, they find that they have lost ten times what they have gained. Even a hundred times.
Jack Zhou felt that the other party was only willing to sell 10% of the A round. Even if Baidu accepted it and invested, it would not have much effect for a while!
The more worried he became, the more Jack Zhou felt that the other party was a person, something extraordinary.
…
The tickets Li Mu and Zhao Kang booked were for eight o'clock in the evening on the 2nd. At seven o'clock in the evening, Li Mu carried a computer bag and left the house accompanied by his parents. Although his mother had always said that she wanted to accompany him to school, Li Mu still He refused because he didn't want his mother to accompany him to Yanjing for another round of trouble.
After leaving home, I met Zhao Kang's family waiting at the intersection of the community. Zhao Kang's parents also wanted to go to Yanjing to see him off, but when they heard that he had made an appointment with Li Mu to go together, they no longer insisted.
Seeing that Zhao Kang was only carrying a backpack, Li's mother couldn't help but said to Zhao Kang's mother: "You said these two children go to college just like a play, they didn't bring anything except a computer and a change of clothes." .”
Li Mu smiled and said: "Actually, there is nothing to bring. The school provides bedding and other supplies, and other daily necessities can be purchased locally, which saves us the effort to carry them there."
Zhao Kang's father smiled slightly and said to Li Mu: "Xiao Mu, when you two arrive in Yanjing, you two need to take care of each other if anything happens."
Li Mu nodded: "Uncle Zhao, don't worry."
Dad Li smiled and said: "Old Zhao, Yanjing is too far away and we cannot control it. We will not be able to control them in the future. Let the children go on their own."
The first volume is over, 108 chapters, 310,000 words, two months and two days, regardless of work holidays, I will not stop updating for a day, so give yourself a thumbs up. . .
The second volume is titled: "The Wind Rises with the Dapeng". Li Mu is going to start his own university life with ease, so stay tuned!
(End of chapter)