At the end of January, the Spring Festival atmosphere becomes stronger.
At noon, a commercial vehicle left Prince Gong's Mansion and drove onto Xizhimenwai Street.
"The one in front is the Beijing Exhibition Hall, a joint venture between China and the Soviet Union. There is a Moscow restaurant in it. We call it Lao Mo. Authentic Russian cabbage soup and grilled fish with butter, and the waiter is dressed in a black Bragi and a white apron.
Call it fashion.
At that time, the most popular thing for people in Beijing was to have a meal at Lao Mo. Now many people miss it, and it often appears in film and television works, "Sunny Days", does Jiang Wen know?"
Yao Yuan sat in the car and explained to Milner, looking at the towering gilded spire of the exhibition hall, with a red five-star on the spire.
"I understand!"
Milner nodded and said: "You miss the red romance back then."
"No, no, that's the romance of the big boy. It has nothing to do with us. I'm just a tour guide."
Milner didn't understand this. When he saw that the car did not turn in, but drove past the roadside, he asked curiously: "Why don't we go inside to eat?"
"You are Russian, should I invite you to a Russian restaurant for dinner?"
Yao Yuan was even more amazing and said: "I just happened to be passing by, so I will introduce it to you. Let's go to Xiyuan Hotel."
Xiyuan Hotel is not far away, just past the exhibition hall. When it was re-opened, a number of high-end hotels were built in Beijing, and Xiyuan Hotel is one of them, with a history of more than 20 years.
The Penglai Chun restaurant I went to specializes in Cantonese cuisine.
Milner has been here for three days. The first day he visited the Forbidden City, and the second day he climbed the Great Wall. Halfway through the climb, both of them couldn't stand it anymore, so they came down again. Today they went to Beihai, Shichahai, and Prince Gong's Mansion.
Milner looked at a table of dishes and smiled: "Actually, I have been looking forward to you taking me to the alley. I really want to see your special food."
"Forget it, local characteristics are characteristics, but they are not necessarily delicious."
There are only four people here, Yao Yuan plus Cheng Wei, Milner and his assistant. The driver Xiao Mo is not qualified to serve.
After three rounds of drinking, both guests and hosts were happy. Milner's drinking capacity followed the tradition of Lao Maozi. As long as he couldn't drink to death, he would drink until he died. He drank two bottles of white wine.
"Yao! Thank you for your hospitality, but we must get down to business. I can't stay here forever."
"Okay, let me tell you briefly."
Yao Yuan wiped his mouth and said: "The businesses I directly manage include communities, social games, instant messaging, and PC games.
I want to package community + social games for listing. Currently, I hold 62% of the shares, SoftBank has 20%, a few senior executives have 10%, and the option pool has 8%. When SoftBank invested, the valuation was US$5 billion.
There are now 200 million community users, with 100 million monthly active users. Several social games are popular around the world, with revenue of 700 million last year.
Hugelive was launched at the end of last year and has covered the population of Hong Kong. The funding gap is at least US$100 million for daily operations, copyright purchase and external expansion.
Liu Qiangdong is in charge of the e-commerce side. If you are interested, you two can talk in detail. Meizu is headquartered in Zhuhai, and I can also arrange for you to visit and see what you want..."
"..."
Milner tasted the product and knew that the other party's primary financing projects were community + social games and Hugelive.
He did his homework before coming here and is very optimistic about the community. This is the one that is most likely to be listed. The problem is, just because the community is so successful, he will invest a lot of money but hold very few shares.
After thinking for a moment, Milner said: "I can invest 30 million US dollars in Hugelive upfront and follow up on subsequent investments. The Human Purge Project has been a success, and I keep my promise."
But with community + games, how do you ensure the added value after listing?
I bought 2% of Facebook's shares for US$200 million. I was extremely optimistic about Facebook's prospects. I believed its market value would reach tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of US dollars.
If your entire group goes public, I believe you will achieve this same result.
And you are just a community + game. If you only have a market value of more than 10 billion, then I have no need to invest."
The implication is that for example, he was valued at US$8 billion, invested 500 million, and took 25% of the shares. After listing, the market value reached more than 10 billion.
Although I made money, I made little money.
So he asked, is there any way to continue to add value?
"..."
Yao Yuan organized his language and said seriously: "The reason why social games are tied to the community is, first, if there are no games, the community will suffer losses year after year, which is not conducive to listing.
Second, it’s the issue you mentioned.
I admit that the same type of products in China are far inferior to those in the United States, and I must also consider the issue of value-added, so games are my breakthrough point."
“Do you want to add value with social gaming?”
Milner thought for a while and said: "Your social games are indeed very popular, but now that smartphones are developing rapidly, web-based games may..."
He paused suddenly and looked at the other person.
Yao Yuan also stared at him.
After a few seconds, Milner suddenly said: "Are you planning the future mobile game industry?"
"In fact, we are already doing it."
Yao Yuan took out his Meizu mobile phone, and Milner played "Happy Match" and "Angry Birds", and couldn't help but become more and more excited.
Currently, Apple and Android do not dominate the market, but anyone with some brains can see that smartphones are the general trend.
Because 3G is popularizing, mobile Internet access is getting faster and more convenient. Regardless of the system and performance, mobile Internet access is certain.
As mobile Internet access becomes more popular, mobile games will inevitably become a blue ocean.
Yao Yuan's original idea was to make a final profit through the listing of the community, and then turn to Weibo. Now it seems that it is not easy. If he wants to make a profit, he must first increase the market value.
How to pull it up? It depends on the game.
Then just keep doing it, just like NetEase. When NetEase is mentioned now, it means games! Games! Games! Who still remembers that it used to be one of the three major portals?
Therefore, Yao Yuan packaged the community and social games, excluding client games. The client games were still under his own control.
…………
Milner confirmed his investment intention and would discuss the specific amount later. He was busy looking for Liu Qiangdong. After that, he also wanted to visit Zhuhai.
It's obvious that he is interested in communities, shopping malls, and mobile phones.
If you spread it out, a single investment won't be too much.
Yao Yuan contacted SoftBank and said that a new shareholder has entered the game. Do you want to invest? SoftBank immediately sent someone to discuss it. He also approached Shen Nanpeng and Xu Xin, who also had this intention.
It just so happened that Xiong Xiaoge also found DCM, an American investment institution.
So Milner, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Capital Today, DCM, and Yao Yuan, a total of six companies, sat down and talked again.
The core topic is valuation!
The model of the community is basically the same as that of Facebook, and it also produces its own games. It's hard work, but it's not an American product, otherwise it would have taken off long ago.
The whole table was sprayed with saliva, and finally a consensus was reached.
The community’s valuation has finally reached $10 billion!