Volume 3: Taking Roots 2016 Chapter 738 What's there to say
It has to be said that the chips Xu Yangtian offered were full of sincerity. 10% of the shares may not seem like much, but after learning about it just now, Zhou Dongsheng also roughly understood the specific situation of the Xiyin project in Xu Yangtian's hands.
Xiyin has been deeply involved in the field of cross-border e-commerce for many years, but it was not until three years ago that it received the favor of capital and obtained a negligible amount of one million US dollars in financing from overseas capital, completing its A round of financing.
Afterwards, unlike other Internet companies that would continue to expand their scale once they received capital support, Xu Yangtian chose to do the opposite.
Not only did it not start the expansion mode, but it continued to expand its supply chain system, and even borrowed money to support small and medium-sized suppliers, even at the expense of the company's own profits.
It can be said that he spared no effort to build his own supply chain system. Three years have passed, and Xu Yangtian has not yet completed the second round of financing.
The supply chain system that was built with so much effort has achieved immediate results. Over the past three years, Xiyin's performance data in the cross-border e-commerce market has been rising steadily.
The performance of the annual GMV (gross merchandise volume) is a good example. Last year, it barely reached a scale of several hundred million, but this year it is expected to reach a strong GMV of 4 billion ...
This growth curve is definitely sexy enough for the Xiyin project. At least for investors, it is definitely tempting. If this growth curve can be maintained...
There is no doubt that Xiyin will become a unicorn in the field of cross-border e-commerce, and even has the potential to be as good as Pinxixi.
Of course, everyone knows that there are unexpected events in life. The road to entrepreneurship is never a smooth one. You never know when the curve will suddenly fall into a trough...
Such things are naturally common in the investment field. In Zhou Dongsheng's view, Xiyin is such a case.
Perhaps at some point in the future, I encountered some insurmountable obstacle and it suddenly came to a halt, so I "knew nothing" about it.
Of course, it is not ruled out that the latter is doing well in a field that he is not familiar with. After all, he is not an omniscient and omnipotent person.
However, Zhou Dongsheng still finalized his investment intention with great interest, as his foresight advantage was gradually eroded by time...
It is time to prepare yourself mentally and face the reality that "investment involves risks". This day will come sooner or later, so why not prepare yourself early?
Let’s start with the current project, and then Zhou Dongsheng and Xu Yangtian began to “bargain”.
Although Xu Yangtian said it very frankly, doing business is naturally a process of asking for a high price and paying a low price. From investors to small vendors, it is no more than this principle.
It’s just that the chips involved are different, so the prices are naturally different.
Among them, although Xiyin’s GMV is expected to reach a transaction volume of 4 billion this year, this figure naturally plays a certain reference value in the valuation.
But it is just a reference. For e-commerce companies, things like transaction scale are often inflated, and PE valuation is more based on price-earnings ratio and profit.
The so-called valuation refers to investors’ expectations for the company’s future. Projects that can reach 10 times the PE valuation often have unlimited potential and are highly regarded by investors.
For example, Pinxixi, but Xiyin is obviously difficult to reach a level comparable to it. Whether it is the risks of cross-border e-commerce or the limitations of a single vertical category, they are all major factors affecting valuation.
After some negotiations, Zhou Dongsheng finally won Xiyin's Series B financing alone with 20 million US dollars + musical.ly, an overseas bridgehead, as bargaining chips.
Xu Yangtian was very satisfied with the price. Money was secondary. The main thing was that with the help of the musical.ly platform, Xiyin could complete its strategic expansion in overseas markets faster.
In Xu Yangtian's view, the supply chain system he built with great effort is like a huge swimming pool dug in advance. Both the production capacity and the speed of product updates and iterations have achieved a qualitative leap.
At present, this swimming pool is far from saturated. We only need to inject sufficient flow into it to quickly expand its scale and complete the expansion.
Where does traffic come from? Xu Yangtian, who also started his career by using Internet celebrities to attract traffic and acquire customers, is naturally very familiar with this.
That is why he set his sights on musical.ly, a traffic powerhouse, because the former is a short video community that has risen rapidly overseas in the past two years and is popular in Europe and the United States, especially its user group is mainly young audiences.
Young people are a battleground for most fields, not to mention that Xiyin is positioned as a fast fashion women's clothing brand?
As we all know, in the fast-moving consumer goods market, the value of young women ranks first by a huge margin, which is why the widely circulated golden rule in the market that "women's money is the easiest to make" has emerged.
There is no need to say much about how strong the purchasing power of young women is in the fashion clothing category. Perhaps only the spending power of men in the digital category can be compared with that of young women.
It is precisely because of this that Xiyin has targeted this direction and chosen to build a fast-moving consumer goods platform for fashionable women's clothing, because the market prospects are broad enough.
However, this field is not a blue ocean. On the contrary, both HM and ZARA are leaders in this field. If they want to compete with such fast fashion giants...
Naturally, one must play to one's strengths and avoid one's weaknesses, and give full play to the advantages in one's hands. Xu Yangtian is obviously very clear about what his biggest advantage is.
That is because China is the "world factory" with a complete industrial chain. As long as the clothes are cheaper than others and have more styles than others, there will be no worries about not being able to sell them.
This is also one of the main reasons why Xu Yangtian chose to move the company's headquarters to Guangzhou. Only by taking advantage of the industrial cluster in eastern Guangdong can he continuously provide sufficient power for his supply chain system...
This trip to Shanghai not only allowed him to get the chips he wanted, but also allowed him to get to know Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinxixi . After a long conversation, Xu Yangtian benefited a lot from the exchange of views on seeking common ground while reserving differences in business concepts.
At the same time, Pinduoduo's strong performance in the domestic market also gave Xu Yangtian full of motivation, although at present Xiyin is far inferior to Pinduoduo.
But in Xu Yangtian's mind, the prospect of his career is no worse than Pin Xixi. On the long road of entrepreneurship, one cannot judge a hero by his success ...
Let’s wait and see!
After a quick meal, Xu Yangtian returned home with high morale. Pinxixi wanted to strike while the iron was hot and join the e-commerce war in November, so naturally it had no time to take care of other things.
After finishing the meal, I hurried back to the company and continued to work day and night. It can be said that starting a business is like rowing against the current, if you don’t move forward, you will fall behind.
Zhou Dongsheng was not idle either. As the end of the year approached, he had a lot of things to do.
Even if you want to be a hands-off boss, it is not an easy thing to do, especially when the stall you set up in the beginning has now gradually started to get on track.
For a time, like a spring breeze blowing across the earth, the projects in Zhou Dongsheng's hands blossomed everywhere and began to compete with each other. As long as you didn't pay attention to them for a while, they would make Zhou Dongsheng a lot of money again. Isn't that infuriating?
There is no need to mention the two major shared bicycle projects. As usual, after completing the C round of financing of hundreds of millions of US dollars respectively, both companies have now entered a stable development stage.
In addition to continuously converting funds into bicycles to be put on the market and increasing their market share...
There have been no major moves for the time being, except for increasing investment in marketing and trying every possible way to turn financing into their own advantages.
Although many newcomers have sprung up in the current shared bicycle industry, colorful bicycles have begun to occupy the streets.
However, as industry leaders, Ofo and Mobike still firmly occupy the top position in the industry. They are not only the most conspicuous bicycles on the streets, but also naturally the bicycles chosen by most users.
In addition to these two projects, Mihayo, one of Zhou Dongsheng's earliest investment projects, has also begun its own efforts.
Once hailed as the most inconspicuous project in Dongsheng Investment's hands, Mihayo has made a stunning debut by releasing the final chapter of its "Honkai Impact 3" trilogy, which it has been carefully polishing for two and a half years!
"Honkai Impact 3" makes a grand debut!
Regarding the game "Honkai Impact 3", all colleagues at Mihoyo are full of confidence, including Cai Haoyu, and are full of expectations.
As a two-dimensional IP that Mihalyo has been deeply cultivating for many years, the Honkai series of works has long occupied a place in the mobile game market, and it is also a pioneer in the two-dimensional mobile game market.
The previous work "Honkai Impact 3" has generated a cumulative revenue of more than 700 million yuan in just two and a half years since its launch in 2014. After deducting the negligible operating costs of the game, the net profit it brought to the company is very considerable.
It was precisely because of the success of the previous work that Cai Haoyu dared to embark on the "Honkai Impact 3" project and give full play to the fine style of "fighting to support fighting".
The cash flow of the previous game is used as the research and development cost of the sequel, leaving almost no room for negotiation, in an effort to put a perfect end to the Honkai trilogy.
It was during this period that Zhou Dongsheng came to us as an investor.
At that time, Cai Haoyu didn't even care much about Zhou Dongsheng, an unknown investor. After all, Mihayo was strong and had no shortage of research and development funds and was completely self-sufficient.
It’s just that Zhou Dongsheng moved Cai Haoyu with his sincerity.
What Cai Haoyu could not have imagined was that the growth rate of investor Zhou Dongsheng was even faster than the growth rate of his own "investment project"!
Before his own game "Honkai Impact 3" was released, investor Zhou Dongsheng began a series of dazzling operations.
Not only did it produce a phenomenal PC game that became popular all over the world, giving the PC game market, which was originally on the decline, a second wind, it also became a synonym for a new type of popular game.
Nowadays, "Chicken Eating" has become a popular game among players, and can even be compared with moba games.
Such an achievement is undoubtedly the supreme honor for those working in the gaming industry...it also means extremely generous rewards.
With just this one game in hand, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has surpassed several Mihayos combined.
And that’s not all. In addition to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Zhou Dongsheng’s investment projects are in full swing. Both Pinxixi and shared bicycles have completed financing of over 100 million US dollars.
Even Zhou Dongsheng's own entrepreneurial project, Yinian Media, has completed financing of over 100 million US dollars, which can be said to be a comprehensive victory over himself.
Not only does he have excellent investment vision, but he also vividly demonstrated "I can do it, too." As a young entrepreneur, this also made Cai Haoyu somewhat discouraged.
In response to this, Cai Haoyu chose to turn his grief and anger into motivation, and placed all his hopes on "Honkai Impact 3", the culmination of the Honkai series, in an attempt to regain some face for himself.
It’s fine if you can’t compete with others in entrepreneurship, but at least you can’t be the last one among Zhou Dongsheng’s investment projects.
Kongnamono, Mitomet Arumonka! (I don't agree with this kind of thing!)
Once "Honkai Impact 3" was launched, it did not disappoint Cai Haoyu. Relying on the accumulation of the Honkai series IP, "Honkai Impact 3" ushered in a considerable wave of explosion.
It has only been less than a month since its launch, and its monthly revenue has successfully exceeded 100 million, creating the best result in the Honkai Impact 3rd trilogy. There is no doubt that the future is promising.
Moreover, as soon as it appeared on the market, it jumped into the top three of the new game download list in the mobile game market, and even its average daily revenue remained at the top, which was a very eye-catching performance.
It's just a pity that since there is Yu, there is no Liang. When "Honkai Impact 3" was launched, the mobile game "Onmyoji" which was carefully polished by QQ Games also officially ended its internal testing and started public testing on all platforms.
To some extent, both can be considered two-dimensional mobile games, although Cai Haoyu wants to be a brave man who defeats the dragon, and even uses this as a goal to motivate everyone within the company.
But the scene in Cai Haoyu's imagination is naturally a brave man dressed in divine clothes, confidently challenging the evil dragon, and a thrilling battle between the two like a collision between Mars and the Earth.
However, the reality is that the brave man, who had just eaten and drunk his fill and walked out of the gate, ran head-on into one of the most evil dragons in the country.
He was killed in seconds before he could even make a move. What else can I say?
There was no such thing as a evenly matched contest. It was simply an overwhelming victory.
Especially after Onmyoji started its public beta, it has shown the trend of becoming a phenomenal mobile game, with daily active users easily exceeding 2 million, doubling after ten days, and exceeding 10 million after one month, instantly becoming one of the leaders in the mobile game market.
As for the monthly turnover, it directly exceeded 1 billion, and there is obviously potential and room for growth to be further explored.
This is the unfathomable strength of the big companies. They haven't even started to exert their strength yet. Just the slightest movement is enough to make people look up to them.
"Honkai Impact 3", which integrates the accumulation of the three IPs of the Honkai series, has just achieved a box office of over 100 million yuan, which is completely dwarfed by this.
The dragon is not something that can be defeated so easily. Thinking of this...
Cai Haoyu felt even more excited, this would be more challenging!
If everyone can do it, what's the point?
A brave person is someone who, even though he knows it is impossible, still faces the challenge head-on.
This is the path I chose!
Cai Haoyu's middle school soul began to burn.
