Volume 4 Crazy Growth 2017 Chapter 811: Fame and Fortune
No matter what, no matter how fierce the competition between the two major shared bicycle companies is, to some extent, the biggest beneficiary is still Zhou Dongsheng, who is sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai.
After all, as an early investor in the two major shared bicycle companies, it is also the only "fence-sitter" and has cheap chips when it entered the market at a low price.
Looking back at the past, Zhou Dongsheng only obtained two rounds of financing with a few million US dollars, but now, in just a year and a half, he has already achieved a return of hundreds of times.
Despite the subsequent ever-expanding financing, Zhou Dongsheng also made additional investments to ensure that his shares would not be diluted significantly.
Even so, the advantage of being an early investor is still very obvious, that is, the cost of the chips in their hands is much lower than that of latecomers.
This is undoubtedly the unique charm of the primary market. Compared with the ever-changing stock market, there is a mix of good and bad players, from large investment institutions to retail investors with little influence.
Despite this, the stock market is open and transparent to a certain extent... ahem, the most important thing is that the investment threshold is extremely low, allowing many leeks to experience the addiction of being an investor.
In comparison, the natural threshold of the primary market is enough to discourage countless people. After all, the entry threshold of millions means that this is destined to be a game for a few people.
For the card table in the primary market, the threshold is one thing, but getting on the table is another. There may never be a shortage of gamblers who lose everything in the stock market, which fully demonstrates the saying "All in is a kind of wisdom."
However, in the primary market, this approach is obviously not feasible. Even if you want to go all in, you may not be able to find a way.
After all, the primary market is a two-way selection process. The relationship between investors and entrepreneurs is clear-cut and relatively equal, and in principle they do not interfere with each other.
Entrepreneurship requires you to be both a father and a mother. Investing is naturally aimed at reaping the benefits without doing anything else. If you have to put in the effort in addition to investing the money, then what’s the difference between that and starting your own business?
Of course, in order to protect the interests of investors, it is natural to take some necessary measures, which depends on the rules agreed upon by both parties.
Such rules and regulations often do not need to be disclosed to the public, and the relevant details are entirely up to outsiders to analyze and imagine. Often only the parties involved will understand the details. This is also one of the differences between the primary market and the secondary market.
The weight of the so-called "fame and fortune" is undoubtedly more obvious in the primary market, and the former is even far more important than the latter.
As for Zhou Dongsheng today, he has achieved both fame and fortune in the true sense, and has become a rapidly rising upstart in the primary market, attracting the attention of many people.
In the eyes of many people, Zhou Dongsheng's investment path is undoubtedly a true interpretation of the word "miracle". In just two years, with only a few investment projects, all of them have accurately grasped the pulse of the times.
For investors, if they can successfully make an investment that catches the trend of the times, it will be enough capital for them to brag to others for most of their lives.
"See that pig on the wind? I blew it up there!"
In addition, investors will undoubtedly be able to reap sufficient returns from it, and the fame and fortune are completely insignificant.
However, in Zhou Dongsheng's hands, such feats are somewhat countless. Others are investors, but he is almost becoming a wholesaler.
The pigs in this trend are just like the ones he raises, they are sold one after another, and each one is worth a lot of money, which is truly the envy of others.
Although we are envious, his haphazard investment strategy is difficult to imitate and replicate.
After all, looking at Zhou Dongsheng's current business empire, he started from accumulating huge capital from Internet celebrity media, and when he first invested in the gaming industry, he created a top IP that became popular all over the world with one stunning move!
Even top domestic game companies like Tencent and QQ Group are flocking to this game IP. After all, the value of such a phenomenal game is no less than a gold mine, and a rich mine with abundant reserves.
Zhou Dongsheng, who had a gold mine in his hands, took this opportunity to start a soaring journey and tried to invest in short videos, e-commerce and other fields.
With the rapid rise of Douyin and Pinxixi, and their recognition by giants such as Tencent, it has once again proved that Zhou Dongsheng's ability is by no means luck or fluke.
But it’s real “strength”!
It was at this time that the general public suddenly realized that it was not that Zhou Dongsheng was lucky enough to dig up the gold mine, but that he did possess unique exploration skills.
The rapid rise of the two major shared bicycle companies since then has become a strong proof of this statement. After all, one or two can be successful, but not three. How can there be such a lucky person in the world?
Ordinary people may not believe it, but investment institutions that have taken the pursuit of profit and avoidance of harm to the extreme have already secretly chosen to follow the trend. Even if they cannot eat the meat, they will at least have a sip of the soup.
After all, in the huge capital market, the most scarce thing is not money, but chips, or to be more precise, chips for making money.
Compared with those who are penniless, institutions or individuals with strong capital are sometimes the more anxious ones.
After all, being penniless may still allow one to live a happy and debt-free life. On the contrary, if an institution with abundant capital cannot make the funds flow, it is equivalent to losing money all the time.
Especially when you see your peers making money, doesn’t that feel more painful than losing money yourself?
Perhaps there are no retail investors in the world at all, or perhaps everyone is a retail investor (ridiculous).
When Zhou Dongsheng's ability to make money became a fact that everyone could see, he naturally became a weather vane in the eyes of some people.
And as more and more facts emerge as evidence, the status and weight of this weather vane will rise sharply.
At this point, even one or two ordinary investment decision-making mistakes will not easily shake Zhou Dongsheng's status in the industry. Instead, it will make people feel that this is human nature.
If a person never makes a mistake, there is generally only one possibility, that is, he dies young and leaves the stage before he has the chance to make a mistake.
Even though Buffett is regarded as the God of Stocks, his investment journey is not all smooth sailing, but as long as the profits always run ahead of the losses, it is enough to remain invincible.
As for the fact that you will always earn more than you lose, theoretically if you live long enough, you may have the opportunity to become a priest.
Now Zhou Dongsheng is only in his early twenties. Even though he is a gifted man, in the eyes of most people, he has not made any mistakes yet, so his behavior is not too outrageous.
And when Zhou Dongsheng scored twice again, following two investments in the shared bicycle field, he once again chose to spend a large amount of money in the shared economy sector and selected two projects.
And this time the move was even bigger than before. While directly acquiring a project, the company also did angel investment work and made an additional investment in a startup team.
While taking these two approaches, he is undoubtedly very optimistic about the prospects of shared power banks, and even made a "bet of the century" with Principal Wang in the public opinion field.
Such betting gimmicks have always been one of the most popular shows among the general public, so they have naturally never gone out of style.
Before this, this kind of bet was considered an exclusive treatment for bigwigs. The industry bets between bigwigs such as Lao Wang, Hangcheng Ma, Lei Jun, and Miss Dong were undoubtedly well known to everyone.
After all, these bigwigs are all well-known industry leaders, and they themselves are naturally very clear about this truth. And the simple and crude method of "betting" is undoubtedly a way to cash in on their fame.
Otherwise, a private bet between these industry leaders would obviously not become known to everyone.
If he could protect his own offspring so well, how could he not be able to keep a mere bet?
Of course, the bet involves the scope of betting, which may not be appropriate to disclose to the outside world. After all, the question of whether the big guys spend money privately is...
I don’t know if others have anything to say, but Brother Dong definitely has something to say.
Well, the big guys making bets has become commonplace for the general public.
At the same time, the vision and status of the big guys also determine that the content and scope of the gambling game are often topics that are difficult for the general public to reach.
For example, superficial content such as industry prospects and the future are undoubtedly too far away from people's lives.
However, Zhou Dongsheng and Principal Wang are undoubtedly young leaders who have received much attention in the public opinion field in recent years.
At the same time, the huge difference in status between a typical grassroots person who started from scratch and the son of the richest man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth undoubtedly added a lot of topic to the bet itself.
In addition, the content of the bet between the two was a product that seemed ordinary but was commonplace in the lives of ordinary people - the power bank.
Even if the word "sharing" is added as the prefix, the positioning of this product is the same as that of shared bicycles. It is completely impossible to put the cart before the horse and position the product to a point that users feel is out of reach.
Therefore, to sum up, the content of this bet is not empty and unrealistic, but is very down-to-earth and deeply rooted in the lives of the general public.
Therefore, the attention and discussion about the bet itself naturally increased, and the enthusiasm of the general public was unprecedentedly high.
After all, strictly speaking, this is one of the few projects they can participate in, and the success or failure of the project is also related to their lives.
This may be the difference between daily necessities and luxury goods.
Even though it has been a while since the bet was made, the public’s enthusiasm is still growing, and they continue to share their discoveries on the Internet.
Especially after Jiedian and Yida Plaza reached a deep cooperative relationship, they also have the geographical advantage of being backed by Pengcheng, which has a complete electronic supply chain.
In addition, Anker Technology still holds a 20% stake. As one of the leaders in the power bank industry for many years, it can undoubtedly provide a lot of help in production.
As long as the money is in place, everything will be easy. Even though a huge amount of money has been spent to acquire Jiedian, there is still nearly one-third left of the start-up capital that the three people had each put forward as a small goal.
It is naturally more than enough to be used as the production capital for the first phase.
Therefore, after the integration of Jiedian was completed, it immediately went into full capacity and started full-power production mode, rapidly occupying the offline market at lightning speed.
Taking Yida Plaza, which is almost spread across major cities across the country, as the starting point, the main strategy is to gradually erode the surrounding businesses. The rest is nothing more than using time to build up scale.
Only by achieving scale, occupying a large share of the market and gradually forming one's own industry barriers can one further gain the right to speak in the industry.
This gradual process can only be accelerated but cannot be skipped directly, even with the help of capital.
Unless it is a high-tech industry that naturally has daunting technical barriers, such as photolithography machines, it will be difficult to stop latecomers.
As Jiedian started to expand offline, the popularity and traffic that had been accumulated online for a long time also spread offline like a dam breaking.
However, within just a few months, many new charging cabinets have appeared in Yida Plazas. The integrated multi-device design allows each cabinet to accommodate twelve power banks.
The lightweight design undoubtedly provides a lot of convenience for Jiedian's expansion. As for the cost, it seems that each charging cabinet costs hundreds of yuan, but on average, the cost of each power bank is less than 100 yuan.
And after entering mass production, the cost can be further compressed. Compared with shared bicycles, its cost is much lower than the shared bikes that are famous for their low cost.
Not to mention Mobike, and you have to know that each charging cabinet has eight power banks. The number of users it can satisfy and the ability to attract new users are undoubtedly the sexy aspects of this project itself.
In particular, the core technology of the sharing economy - deposit - suddenly began to emerge under this circumstance.
If before this, the general public might have had some concerns about deposits and worried about safety issues, then with the expansion of the two major shared bicycle companies, the general public's vigilance has already been infinitely close to zero.
You may even subconsciously think that the deposit itself is very reasonable. After all, they have given you the product with confidence, so what's wrong with collecting a deposit from you?
There is no doubt that as the sharing economy becomes more popular, this kind of user trust has invisibly laid a solid foundation, which means that those who plant trees will enjoy the shade.
As long as no one breaks this tacit understanding first, then this trust will naturally continue.
However, just as overdraft consumption is addictive, overdrafting the trust of users is itself a temptation, especially when you are at the forefront of the times.
It is easy to have an illusion that all success is due to one's personal ability, thus ignoring the favor of the times, user trust, etc.
What about the right time and right place? It's all nonsense. As long as you are strong, everything will be fine (ridiculous).
Once you get into this situation, the consequences are undoubtedly brewing in secret.
Just as the well-known saying goes, "The gift of fate has already been secretly marked with a price."
As the old saying goes, everything is destined.
