Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

The next morning, after breakfast, Chen Yansen strolled leisurely up to the second floor of the Innovation Park.

He saw Zhuang Rui, Zhang Wenbo, and Hu Yun sprawled out on a single straw mat, tangled up together in an awkward sight, snoring away.

"Holy shit! You three are something else!"

Chen Yansen couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t in a hurry to wake them. Instead, he whipped out his phone and started snapping away.

"Hey! Wake up, all of you! Get dressed. The customer service girls will be here for work soon, don’t scare them off."

After taking the photos, Chen Yansen kicked Hu Yun awake with a mischievous grin and shouted.

"Fuck! I swear I was wearing a shirt when I went to sleep!" Hearing the commotion, Hu Yun groggily opened his eyes. When he realized he was shirtless, he couldn’t help but yell.

"Zhuang Rui, you son of a bitch! Why were you poking me with a stick in the middle of the night?" Zhang Wenbo said, rubbing his butt with a look of displeasure.

"Pfft! Who poked you with a stick? You must have been dreaming!" Zhuang Rui yawned. He blindly grabbed for something and came up with a black t-shirt. Realizing what it was, he immediately cursed at Hu Yun, "You’re such a slob, throwing your dirty clothes on me."

"..."

Hu Yun was speechless, almost laughing out of frustration. He wasn’t even sure himself if he had taken his shirt off or if someone else had done it for him.

Chen Yansen glanced at Zhuang Rui and took a deliberate step back. "Hurry up and go wash up," he urged. "This whole room stinks."

"Hehe, Brother Sen, want to guess what yesterday’s final numbers were?" Hu Yun asked with a grin as he got dressed.

"I can’t guess. Just tell me."

Chen Yansen pulled over a chair, sat down, and poured himself a glass of water before asking in a measured tone.

He could have just checked the data himself by logging into the backend on his computer. But Hu Yun and the other two had, after all, pulled an all-nighter at the Innovation Park, and he couldn’t bring himself to dismiss their enthusiasm.

"New user growth was 81,000, with 6,459 orders. Total sales volume was 201,600 yuan, and gross profit was 32,800 yuan."

Hu Yun rattled off the numbers, having clearly memorized them.

"Oh, not bad! Keep it up!" Chen Yansen smiled faintly, offering a casual word of encouragement.

To college students like them, these results were astronomical, an unimaginable achievement. But to Chen Yansen, it was just so-so. After deducting costs, it was barely more than generating some buzz.

FoxTao’s real growth prospects depended on new user retention, first-order conversion rate, and repeat purchase frequency.

Hu Yun sighed softly. He could sense Chen Yansen’s perfunctory attitude and lack of real excitement. Even though Chen Yansen was a freshman and he was a junior, he felt like he’d never seen a single expression of panic or surprise on the younger man’s face.

’We’re all eighteen or nineteen years old, so how can the gap between us be this huge!’

The three of them got dressed, rolled up the straw mat, and slowly ambled back toward their dorm.

About ten minutes later, Song Yuncheng walked into Room 206, cradling a laptop. Ever since FoxTao had provided her with a work computer, she no longer had to borrow her roommate’s, and her design skills had improved by leaps and bounds.

"Pres... President Chen, good morning!"

Song Yuncheng looked up and saw Chen Yansen. After hesitating for a few seconds, she managed a greeting.

"After the ’Bargain to 0 Yuan’ feature went live, what’s the customer service volume like? Can Meng Xibo, Zhu Xiaopeng, and the others handle it?"

Chen Yansen acknowledged her greeting and then asked a question.

’Handle it?’

Song Yuncheng was slightly taken aback. Although she didn’t quite understand the English word, she could guess its meaning from the context. She thought for a moment before replying, "It gets a bit overwhelming during the peak hours at noon and in the evening, but they can manage during the lulls in inquiries."

"Submit a request to Zhuang Rui to put an FAQ with standard answers on the customer service interface. That should lighten their workload. Then, have Xu Xingxing post a recruitment notice for three more part-time customer service reps."

Chen Yansen instructed her after frowning in thought for a moment.

"Three more customer service reps?"

Song Yuncheng was stunned, not immediately understanding his reasoning.

"It’s called planning ahead. We can’t wait until the customer service team is completely swamped to hire more people, can we? Training alone takes three days."

Chen Yansen explained patiently, giving her a look like she was an idiot.

"Oh, I understand."

Song Yuncheng’s face flushed red. She nodded in embarrassment, took out her notebook, and wrote down the two tasks Chen Yansen had mentioned.

’B2C marketplace, site search, a CRM system for merchants, a payment license... Damn it, you really can’t rush these things. It’s pure luck that I’ve gotten this far with just a skeleton crew and haven’t had a major disaster yet.’

Chen Yansen leaned back, muttering to himself. He was frustrated, yet he felt the future was bright.

His competitors were still focused on product discounts, while he had already moved on to cash-back rebates. When they inevitably caught on and copied him, he would launch brand-focused group buys to elevate the platform’s image. And when others finally started courting brands and merchants, he would be playing the entire industry chain.

’Always stay one step ahead, leaving them no chance to even copy me.’

Before long, more than half of the FoxTao team had trickled in. Each startup office was furnished with six desks, and once you added a refrigerator and a water cooler, there wasn’t much space left.

If they hired more people, even the newly rented Room 204 would probably be at capacity.

Since they were all students with different class schedules, people were constantly coming and going.

Of course, the seniors like Zhang Wenbo, Zhuang Rui, and Hu Li spent almost all of their time at the Innovation Park, except when they were busy with their graduation theses.

After the first user to receive their iPhone 4 went viral, the FoxTao website finally started to gain some traction in the industry. The marketing team’s average daily ad spend also jumped from the initial 4,000 yuan to 40,000 yuan—a tenfold increase.

The number of new daily users skyrocketed, growing like weeds.

October 24th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 97,000!

October 25th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 115,000!

October 26th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 141,000!

October 27th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 171,000!

October 28th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 163,000!

October 29th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 149,000!

October 30th: FoxTao’s new daily users reached 93,000!

In less than two months, using the "Vote for a Name" and "Bargain to 0 Yuan" campaigns, plus over 300,000 yuan in ad spend, Chen Yansen had pushed FoxTao’s total registered users to an incredible 1.09 million!

Daily active users stabilized at around 60,000!

Daily order volume was approximately 9,000!

The highest single-day sales reached 280,000 yuan, putting them just one step away from their goal of ten million in monthly revenue.

However, Chen Yansen knew that these results might just be a flash in the pan. If they couldn’t retain their users, these numbers would plummet just as quickly as they had risen.

「October 31st, the last day of the month.」

The second floor of the Innovation Park was shrouded in gloom. Compared to the previous day, everyone looked as dejected as a defeated rooster.

"Zhuang Rui, what was Penguin’s response?"

Chen Yansen asked, his eyes narrowed as he suppressed his fury.

"I spoke with their security analysts. Brother Sen, they completely ignored the talking points you gave me. They’re insisting that our links pose a risk of information leaks and account theft, and they refuse to unblock our IP and domain name."

Zhuang Rui replied furiously, letting out a rare curse.

"Fuck!"

Chen Yansen slammed his hand on the table and tugged at his collar. ’Shencheng Ma is really something else. He blocks you just because he feels like it, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.’

"What’s the new user growth going to be for today?" Chen Yansen asked Hu Yun with a long sigh.

"73% of our new users come from the QQ platform. If we can’t solve this, our new user growth will cap out at around 50,000. On top of that, Xiaonei Network, Weibo, and Qian Du haven’t made their positions clear yet. They might decide to ban us too."

Hu Yun replied with a grave expression.

He knew full well that FoxTao’s ’Bargain’ links were like a digital blight, latching tenaciously onto every major social platform.

"For now, we’ll play a game of cat and mouse with Penguin by constantly switching our IP and domain names."

Chen Yansen tapped his fingers rhythmically on the desk. After a long moment of thought, he came up with a reluctant solution.

"I guess that’s the only way," Zhuang Rui nodded and turned to get it done.

’Too bad I don’t know Hao Rui yet,’ Chen Yansen thought to himself. ’Otherwise, if I could just get a word to him, this whole thing could be solved in minutes.’

In his previous life, Hao Rui had been an executive director in Penguin Investment’s M&A department. He had led the Series A funding round for Feiyu Technology, and the two of them had a good relationship—they were comrades who had been through the trenches together.

’Sigh. Even if I knew Hao Rui, it wouldn’t work. In 2010, he’s still at Ezsen; he hasn’t joined Penguin yet.’

’Damn it! For now, I’ll just have to endure it. I’ll wait until FoxTao’s DAU reaches the next level and attracts some investor attention. I’ll try to pull some strings then,’ Chen Yansen thought, his eyes closed and his mind in a jumble.

Across from him, Song Yuncheng secretly peeked at him. It was the first time she had seen this side of Chen Yansen: powerless, helpless, and irritable. She had always thought that even if the sky were falling, he would maintain that same careless, roguish demeanor.

RING RING RING—

The office landline suddenly rang.

Xu Xingxing, who was sitting nearby, picked up the receiver and gave her practiced greeting, "Hello, this is FoxTao, may I ask..."

Xu Xingxing suddenly stopped mid-sentence. She looked up and waved at Chen Yansen.

Chen Yansen didn’t want to take the call, but Xu Xingxing kept waving him over. He finally stood up with an annoyed look, walked over to the phone, and said, "This is Chen Yansen, the person in charge of FoxTao..."

However, as he heard the caller introduce themselves, his brow furrowed, and his expression grew grim as he continued to listen.

Three minutes later, Chen Yansen hung up the phone.

He leaned against a desk, gazing at the campus scenery outside the window. He never imagined that FoxTao would attract the attention of a top-tier hunter so quickly.

"Xu Xingxing, book two plane tickets to Shencheng City."

Chen Yansen took a deep breath. This was a trip he had to make.

"Class President, who’s going besides you?" Xu Xingxing asked, her face full of eager anticipation.

"Song Yuncheng."

Chen Yansen answered curtly.

"Me?"

Song Yuncheng pointed to herself in disbelief. She’d never heard of a UI designer who was also a part-time operations manager and the head of the customer service team having to go on business trips.