Chapter 140: Chapter 130: Sect Leader Lei: Aren’t You Taking Advantage of an Honest Man?

The two chatted for a while before Chen Yansen got up to leave.

He was an extremely pragmatic person. Since Lao Ma had no money, he’d just go find a rich whale.

Just as he was about to head back, he was pulled aside by Liu Qiangdong for a drink.

Chen Yansen thought for a moment and didn’t refuse.

Handsome Dong was clearly still fuming over what Lao Ma had said earlier. Whenever the conversation turned to Ah Li, he would start making sarcastic, passive-aggressive remarks.

Chen Yansen’s impression of Brother Dong was decent enough. Although his personal life was a bit of a mess, it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black—Chen Yansen wasn’t exactly a saint himself.

The two were two peas in a pod. They went from talking business to talking women, finally sharing a knowing smile and agreeing to head to the next event after the conference ended.

"Tonight, I’ll introduce you to Zhang Lei of Gao Ling Capital."

Handsome Dong promised, slapping his chest.

Chen Yansen nodded, then got up to find Gao Weilin and Song Yuncheng. The three of them walked over to the Xiaomi table together and greeted Sect Leader Lei.

"You’re getting into the phone business?" Lei Yijun asked, looking at Chen Yansen with a strange expression.

The last time Chen Yansen visited the Xiaomi R&D center, Lei Yijun hadn’t paid much mind. But later, when he discovered headhunters were poaching Xiaomi’s engineers, he couldn’t sit still.

After some digging, he ferreted out the company that had commissioned the poaching. Then, looking through the web of equity relationships, he saw Chen Yansen’s familiar name.

That’s when it all clicked!

It turned out this kid had used the visit as a pretext to steal trade secrets from Xiaomi.

At the time, Lei Yijun hadn’t let his guard down, seeing that Chen Yansen was a journalism major—a liberal arts student—working in the shopping guide e-commerce sector.

However, what Li Wanqiang had told him was, at most, a primer on common industry knowledge. Only the supply prices for some electronic components were slightly sensitive.

But every company’s procurement volume is different, so prices vary.

Chen Yansen could find out this information just by hiring a supply chain procurement director; it hardly qualified as a company secret.

Although Lei Yijun was a little annoyed, he didn’t have a falling out with Chen Yansen over it.

"Uh... I guess you could say that. From now on, President Lei and I will be in the same industry."

Chen Yansen hadn’t wanted to admit it, but seeing the certainty in the other’s eyes, he just smiled and replied.

"It seems the competition in the smartphone industry is about to get even more intense."

Lei Yijun laughed heartily, looking completely unconcerned.

As far as he knew, Apple, Huawei, Samsung, LG, OPPO, and others all had plans to release new phones in the second half of the year. One more Chen Yansen was of no consequence.

He was confident Xiaomi was different from these companies. He planned to forgo hardware profits and focus entirely on software for monetization.

From the day Xiaomi was founded, he had been working on integrating the supply chain. He would even personally visit some suppliers. He refused to believe a kid like Chen Yansen could figure out the phone business.

’Young people never learn how painful it is until they take a hard fall!’

"President Lei, I don’t really understand the supply chain side of things. You’re a senior in this field, could you give me some pointers?"

Since his cover was blown, Chen Yansen dropped the pretense and humbly asked Lei Yijun for guidance.

Later, some people would claim Sect Leader Lei’s success was all down to marketing, but Chen Yansen was a businessman and didn’t believe that nonsense.

Xiaomi’s success was clearly built on the art of extreme supply chain management.

’Seriously, man, you actually have the nerve to ask!’

Lei Yijun looked at Lin Bing, then glanced at Li Wanqiang. ’Is this kid playing dumb? We’re competitors, and you’re asking me for advice on supply chain management?’

’How utterly absurd!’

"Actually, the supply chain resources for core phone components are mostly controlled by the industry leaders. My approach is to take my team and communicate with suppliers one by one..."

Lei Yijun paused, looked at Chen Yansen, and decided to explain his management philosophy after all.

Chen Yansen wasn’t afraid of being fed lies. With his current abilities, he could easily judge whether someone was lying just by observing their emotional fluctuations.

The two chatted until the luncheon ended. Feeling he had gleaned enough information, Chen Yansen stood up and thanked him.

"President Lei, did you really tell him all that?" Li Wanqiang asked, puzzled.

"That’s all just methodology. The same task, executed by different people, often leads to two different outcomes. Besides, that kid kept calling me Brother Lei and ’senior.’ Could I really just feed him a bunch of nonsense?"

Lei Yijun spread his hands with a helpless look.

It was a pity that "Let the Bullets Fly"—a film worthy of being a world heritage treasure—hadn’t been released yet. Otherwise, "Jun’er" would have definitely exclaimed: ’Isn’t this just bullying an honest man!’

That’s right!

Chen Yansen loved to bully honest people. "Honest" meant "easy to talk to," which meant he could bully you again and again.

It’s just like being able to endure hardship. If you’re willing to suffer, there will be endless suffering for you to endure.

After a short break, the afternoon networking session was announced to have begun.

"President Chen, the investment manager from SoftBank is very interested in FoxTao, but they want FoxTao to merge with Ah Li, using a combination of equity and cash for payment..."

Gao Weilin, sitting beside him, reported in a low voice.

"I only accept cash payments." Chen Yansen waved his hand, cutting Old Gao off.

"Then that only leaves Tiger Fund. But they aren’t keen on a full acquisition of FoxTao. They’re only willing to purchase about 10% of the equity, saying they have more faith in your management abilities."

Gao Weilin paused, then mentioned another venture capital firm.

"I heard Lotte lost to Augusta when competing for Ebates’ financing. In terms of growth potential, we’re no worse than Ebates—in fact, we’re even stronger. Find the right opportunity and leak the news to Lotte."

Chen Yansen said after a moment of thought.

"Sell to the Little Days?" Gao Weilin was taken aback.

"Lotte has invested a lot of money in the internet sector over the past two years. Last year, they even partnered with Qian Du to establish an e-commerce platform called Lekutian. This shows they’re very interested in the domestic e-commerce market."

Chen Yansen said calmly.

He knew in his heart that based on FoxTao’s development trajectory, it would peak in performance in 2012 and 2013, only to decline sharply in 2014.

Perhaps due to pressure from Ah Li and Jingdong, or perhaps due to the deteriorating industry environment.

He could suppress the growth of Mogujie, Meili Shuo, and What’s Worth Buying, but at most, he could only maintain that advantage for a year or a year and a half.

An industry like shopping guides, with no technical barriers, was bound to be battered and broken sooner or later.

Chen Yansen didn’t want to cling to a product with no future, watching its valuation drop day by day.

In the future, among the few publicly listed shopping guide e-commerce companies, the most successful one, What’s Worth Buying, would have a market cap of just over 6 billion, less than his Feiyu Technology. Another one would be even more pathetic, with a value of just over 2 billion.

Therefore, selling FoxTao was the best choice.

If he remembered correctly, Lotte spent 1 billion US Dollars to acquire Ebates in 2014. On that deal alone, Lotte lost seven or eight hundred million US Dollars on paper.

Those foreigners from the Lighthouse Country had swindled the Little Days so badly they were black and blue.

Chen Yansen’s thinking was simple. Ebates’ monthly sales were only 500 million, not even half of FoxTao’s.

Instead of letting the Lighthouse Country swindle Lotte out of 1 billion US Dollars two years from now, he might as well do the swindling himself.

’FoxTao’s business model and profitability were much stronger than Ebates’. Asking for 2 or 3 billion US Dollars wouldn’t be excessive, right?’

Of course, that was all contingent on the Little Days taking the bait first.

"I’ll give it a try." Gao Weilin happened to have the right connections, so he agreed without hesitation.

Chen Yansen didn’t pay attention during the afternoon conference, passing the time by watching a movie the whole way through.

During the evening banquet, he brought Song Yuncheng along and went around chatting with the bosses of the Group Buy industry one by one.

These people had spent quite a bit on advertising on FoxTao.

Song Yuncheng had dealt with many of the Group Buy channel managers, but this was the first time she had met the actual bosses.

They chatted about the results of the campaigns in April and May, then discussed the Group Buy business schedule for the second half of the year.

A few of the bosses who had just secured funding were not shy with their offers.

The boss of WoWo Group casually threw out the number "40 million," stunning everyone else, who silently cursed the bastard for being insane.

He dared to be so extravagant right after receiving a 200 million US Dollar investment from CDH Investments and Tianyou Capital.

Chen Yansen smiled and praised, "President Wang has a good eye."

The moment he turned his head, he cursed, ’Dumbass,’ and instructed Gao Weilin, "In the future, when you run into entrepreneurs like this, stay as far away as you can."

"Understood, boss." Gao Weilin hastily replied.

He just thought the Mainland bosses were too extravagant, willing to pay the astronomical price of 40 million for just two online sales campaigns.

As soon as they finished discussing the collaboration, Liu Qiangdong came over and pulled him along to meet Zhang Lei from Gao Ling. They got into a car and headed straight for the largest private club nearby.

Gao Weilin followed of his own accord. Chen Yansen told Song Yuncheng to go back to the hotel first.

The upcoming venue was not suitable for her.

Just as he expected, as soon as he entered the private room, he saw two girls in gauzy, ancient-style dresses dancing barefoot on a small stage.

Their figures were graceful; they were clearly professionals.

Besides Gao Ling’s Zhang Lei and Liu Qiangdong, the general manager of Blue Moon’s online business was also in the room.

The four of them weren’t drinking, but had gathered to talk about a collaboration.

A distributor under Blue Moon had worked with FoxTao twice. The second time, they were discovered by the brand, triggering a price control rule violation and a warning.

The helpless distributor compensated FoxTao, and the branded Group Buy was temporarily taken offline, which affected the user experience.

Finding it troublesome, Chen Yansen had the Investment Attraction department only work with brands like Tide, Ariel, and Liby, kicking Blue Moon off the partner list.

As a result, over the next few months, these three brands would run a branded Group Buy on FoxTao one week and be on Juhuasuan the next, completely devastating Blue Moon’s online sales.

And so, using their connection with Handsome Dong and Zhang Lei, Blue Moon had proactively come to them, wanting to discuss an exclusive collaboration. They opened with an offer of a 10-million-level campaign.

Chen Yansen smiled, using tea in place of wine, and clinked glasses with the other party.

He wasn’t the type to give up on making money just to be petty. Besides, the issue with Blue Moon wasn’t even a minor disagreement.

Liu Qiangdong was the same, directly proposing a 30 million spending budget. He planned to deliver eye-catching results for the 618 shopping festival to justify things to his investors.

After all, Jingdong operated on a heavy-asset model. They had tens of thousands of delivery drivers alone, for whom they had to pay social insurance and housing funds. Profitability was a distant dream, so they could only use sales figures to appease investors.

Chen Yansen naturally agreed to it all, smiling as he promised to give Jingdong preferential treatment with traffic resources.

Liu Qiangdong nodded in satisfaction, feeling that this little brother from Huian was a stand-up guy who valued loyalty.

Ignoring Zhang Lei’s attempts to stop him, he insisted on opening a bottle of Moutai, and the group started drinking again.

As for the matter of directing more traffic to Jingdong, that was just drunk talk from before the drinking started; it couldn’t be taken seriously.

Chen Yansen would do as much work as Handsome Dong paid him for.

He knew full well that once Liu Qiangdong made Jingdong big enough, he would absolutely turn around and stab him in the back.

After three rounds of drinks, the group dispersed.

Chen Yansen and Gao Weilin were driven back to the hotel by Liu Qiangdong’s driver.

Then, the two went back to their respective rooms.

Gao Weilin first called an old classmate who worked at Lotte Investment. After the call, he intended to find Chen Yansen to report the situation, but after knocking on the door for a long time, there was no response.

He stood in the hotel corridor, glanced at Song Yuncheng’s room, a thoughtful look on his face, and finally turned and went back to his own room.