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Before returning to China, Lin Fan did something big.
Jeremy looked at Lin Fan with sharp eyes and asked: "Sir Lin, before you decided to invest in Yelp, you should have investigated the city search company, right?"
Lin Fan nodded lightly.
Jeremy continued: "Can you tell me? Why invest in us and not them?"
"It has been established for too long, the growth of the company's scale has stagnated, and it has lacked entrepreneurial passion."
Lin Fan's reason surprised Jeremy.
He originally thought that Lin Fan would say that he liked a certain function of Yelp, a certain quality of the team.
But looking at it conversely, isn’t this because their team is younger and has more entrepreneurial passion?
Jeremy smiled and said: "Then let me talk about the difference between us and urban search!
City Search turns user-generated information into an online city guide, providing information about businesses in the dining, entertainment, retail, tourism and professional services categories in cities across the United States.
But we are different. Yelp encourages people to share comments through praise and attention, which is something that similar online products have not done before.
In other words, we plan to add a social network concept to the review website."
Lin Fan smiled.
Jeremy continued: "Let me tell you a little story about the development of Yelp!
In February this year, we launched Yelp version 2.0, but we did not have sufficient funds for national promotion, so we decided to first focus on making Yelp famous in San Francisco.
Then we hired a marketing expert in popular communications, and with his help, we invited the most active users on the site and threw them an open bar party.
Through these parties, we identified the most active commentators on the site and dubbed them the Yelp "Elite Force."
The organizer of the party is called a "community manager".
These people were not paid a penny, but maintained their sense of belonging to the site through parties sponsored by Yelp.
In addition to contributing high-quality reviews to the website, they also continue to help us expand our merchants.
This can be considered the offline version of social networking!
With Facebook's support, I believe we can do a better job and greatly accelerate Yelp's expansion."
Hearing this, Lin Fan understood that this brother had found a group of people who worked for free.
But this is also a skill, to be convinced.
He had almost imagined the party scene. A group of people were drinking wine and chatting about which restaurant you had eaten at recently and which restaurant I had eaten at. Then everyone benefited from each other, and finally summarized the discussion and posted it to Yelp
On the platform, it becomes a high-quality review of each restaurant.
This kind of high-quality reviews refer to detailed reviews from the dining environment, to surrounding transportation, to service attitude, etc., which have great reference value.
It's not the kind of food that can be compared with "it's delicious" or "it's not delicious".
For a start-up local life review website, this kind of high-quality UGC content can cultivate a good community atmosphere.
In short, it is to serve as a warning to future users: if you see it, just comment like this and don’t fix the useless ones.
Lin Fan carefully savored the other party's words. The password for Yelp's rise in his previous life also incorporated the concept of social networks.
At present, Yelp's product has basically taken shape, and it has also found a low-cost expansion method, that is, entering a city, holding a party, screening out the most active users, and then enriching the city's restaurant and store reviews, and then a large number of
Ordinary users are attracted...
This is a virtuous circle that can promote Yelp to make steady progress.
Cooperating with Facebook can help Yelp divert a lot of traffic and accelerate Yelp’s expansion.
Lin Fan smiled calmly: "You can't always let activists work in vain, right?
You have to give people some benefit so that this thing can last for a long time, rather than just a temporary passion."
Jeremy nodded, "Yes, so after the financing is completed, we plan to give the community managers a full-time job so that they have sufficient motivation and energy to organize parties and expand merchants.
For active users of the website who actively comment, we also plan to introduce a points system to earn points by posting comments, and the points can be redeemed for restaurant and various store shopping coupons, discount coupons, etc."
Lin Fan felt that the other party was evading important matters, so he simply made it clear: "It's impossible for Facebook to divert traffic to you for nothing. Even if I come forward, I can only give you a preferential price at most, and it is impossible to completely waive the cooperation fees."
The golden retriever Russell on the side asked: "Sir Lin, how much money do you think we need to raise?"
“Let’s raise at least ten million dollars!”
Lin Fan also enthusiastically helped make a fund allocation plan: "5 million US dollars will be used for Yelp's daily operations, and the other 5 million US dollars will be used for Facebook advertising.
As long as all the data on the website are added, Yelp's valuation can increase tenfold in six months."
Russell smiled bitterly, "Sir Lin, Yelp's pre-money valuation is only 20 million US dollars. If we raise 10 million US dollars, 33.33% of the shares will be diluted. This is too much. We will need to raise funds later."
Jeremy nodded in agreement: "Yes, ten million in financing is really too much. In fact, five million is enough.
We can’t afford to put ads on Facebook yet.
In fact, we just want Facebook to open the interface so that the two websites can share with each other."
Lin Fan smiled, "Tell me, how to share to Yelp on Facebook?"
Jeremy scratched his head, this is not easy to fool!
Lin Fan felt that this kid had really gotten into the habit of having prostitutes for nothing. Not only did he have active users for nothing, but now he was targeting investors.
Jeremy saw that Lin Fan didn't speak and just kept looking at him playfully, finally feeling a little embarrassed.
However, he has always been a thick-skinned person and said with a smile: "In that case, Sir Lin, we will still raise 5 million. After the next round of financing is in place, we will go to Facebook to cooperate."
"If the structure needs to be enlarged, why bother holding on to that little bit of equity."
Lin Fan looked like he hated iron, which made Jeremy dumbfounded.
If Lin Fan hadn't exposed his fox tail, he might have been deceived.
"That's it, let's not mention it, we will raise US$7.5 million!"
Jeremy endured the pain and cut his flesh. After saying these words, he quickly gave his partner Russell a hint in his eyes, causing the latter to swallow what he was about to say.
Lin Fan estimated that it was almost done and he couldn't push too hard. He nodded and said: "Okay, let's sign the contract!"
Jeremy said with a smile: "Well, our angel investor, Max Levchin, the owner of MRLVentures Entrepreneurship Incubator, is next door, so we have to communicate with him."
"Okay, let's go together!"
After saying that, Lin Fan stood up and led the way out of the office.
When I saw the office door suddenly opened, young people lined up outside, waiting for an opportunity, quickly stepped aside.
After Lin Fan went out, he even lifted his pants. In fact, he was just straightening out the hem of his shirt.
Behind him, Jeremy and Russell were smiling as they walked.
Looking at this situation, the PY transaction was successful?
Among the onlookers, some cast envious looks at Jeremy and Russell.
Anyone else looked at their watch and saw that it took half an hour to finish?
Don’t they all say that Sir Lin is a real man in ten minutes? Why did it take so long this time?
Lin Fan ignored the strange looks from the young people next to him. Jeremy led the way and visited Max again.
Max has blond hair, is about thirty years old, and once served as the CTO of PayPal.
His name is very similar to Musk's, and both of them cashed out large amounts of cash through PayPal sales.
Musk took the money to build a small rocket, so he founded a business incubator, worked part-time as an angel investor, and occasionally tried his hand at starting a business.
What’s interesting is that Max also founded a social network company this year called Slide to do slide social networking...
Therefore, Lin Fan did not regard Max as a competitor.
On the contrary, Lin Fan also wanted to encourage the other party to develop third-party tools for Facebook.
In the previous life, the Slide Company did this and was a well-known third-party developer of Facebook.
Max was very happy for Lin Fan's arrival.
Last year, when he celebrated his 29th birthday, he was "scammed" out of $1 million in angel investment by Jeremy and Russell because he was drunk.
At that time, the two of them only had a small idea, not even a business plan or a team.
When he sobered up the next day, he regretted it.
Now, if Yelp wants to develop, it needs new investors to join. Although Lam Capital wants a lot of shares, the investment amount is also quite large, and it is also willing to promote cooperation between Yelp and Facebook.
After a brief chat, Max readily agreed to the financing plan.
Then, Lin Fan asked Rich to sign an investment agreement with Yelp on behalf of Lin Capital, and planned to use an investment of US$7.5 million in exchange for 27.3% of Yelp's equity.
The due diligence process of Workday (working days, working hours) has finally been completed, and the second VC fund under Lam Capital has allocated US$15 million in equity investment in accordance with the investment agreement.
At the same time, Lam Capital and Work Hour Company also held a small financing press conference at a high-end hotel in Pleasanton, and invited many of Work Hour Company's intended corporate customers and reporters to attend the meeting.
Although Lin Fan is not short of money, Lin Fan has never been fond of luxury.
Lin Fan believes that he should be more frugal and put more money and energy into product research and development. If he has money, he should not waste it. His own money is not blown by the strong wind.
No, it seems to have been brought by strong winds.
However, Duffield, the chairman of Working Hours Company, insists that at present, their company is suppressed by Oracle, internal morale is low, and customers have little confidence in their company. They desperately need a high-profile financing press conference to boost their morale and at the same time give them
Potential partners and customers have some confidence.
Seeing that what the other party said was reasonable and well-founded, Lin Fan no longer objected. After all, after the money was invested in Manshi Company, how it was used was the business of the invested company.
They invest in institutions and only need to supervise that equity investment funds are not misappropriated for personal use.
On the day of the press conference, Lin Yaocheng came all the way from China.
When I saw Lin Fan and his entourage at the door of the hotel, Lin Yaocheng, wearing a formal suit, quickly came up to greet them.
"Mr. Lin, I haven't seen you for more than two years, but you are still so handsome!"
Lin Yaocheng was a good talker, and he flattered him when he first came up, and even patted Lin Fan's shoulder affectionately.
Lin Fan exchanged greetings with the other party and walked side by side to the hotel.
After walking and chatting with the other party for a few words, Lin Fan asked: "By the way, has the company settled your remuneration to you?"
"It's over, it's over."
Lin Yaocheng smiled and nodded. His intermediary business was very simple and he could complete it without much effort. The reward was also very high, a total of half a million US dollars.
Lin Fan saw Lin Yaocheng's bright smile and his heart moved: "You have been staying in China for a long time. Do you have any good projects that you can recommend to me?"
Lin Yaocheng glanced at Lin Fan in surprise, then quickly responded and nodded with a smile: "Yes, yes, I will compile a list for you later. You will definitely be satisfied after reading it."
Lin Fan smiled slightly. He now wanted to add some external eyes and ears. Seeing that Lin Yaocheng was very interested in this kind of pimping business, he wanted to recruit him for his own use and help Lin Capital find projects.
Of course, Lin Yaocheng only has the right to recommend projects, and the decision-making power is still made by Lin Capital.
Entering the hotel, Lin Fan shook hands with Duffield and Bousri, the two founders of Work Hour Company, and after a brief chat, they walked to the stage together.
There were quite a few people at the scene. Lin Fan took a quick look and found that there should be one or two hundred people.
There were several chairs on the stage, and Lin Fan, Ricky and the two founders sat down next to each other.
After Duffield briefly said a few words about the company and the industry, everyone began to accept questions from the audience.
When all the procedures were completed and the financing press conference ended, Lin Fan had lunch with Duffield and Bousri.
At the dinner table, Lin Fan brought up the concept of cloud computing and hoped that the two of them could lead the company to develop in this field.
The concept of cloud computing will not be proposed until next year by Amazon and Google.
The concept at this time was still very abstract, and there were no concrete examples in reality. Duffield and Bousiri were also a little dazed after hearing this.
"Sir Lin, if we want to develop in the direction of cloud computing as you mentioned, having a large number of enterprise customers is the most necessary foundation, right?"
Although Duffield is nearly seventy years old, he has always been active on the front line of technology. He has good understanding and grasped the key points immediately.
"Yes, this is an infrastructure that sells computing resources like water and electricity. Enterprise customers can obtain it at any time, use it as needed, expand it at any time, and pay according to use..."
Lin Fan explained it to the two of them again, this time along the lines of the SaaS product they wanted to build.
Bhusri reacted, "Does this overlap with the first human resources software we are developing?"
Lin Fan's smile, not only do they overlap, they are exactly the same, okay?
Cloud computing is mainly divided into three service models, and the division of these three layers is mainly from the perspective of user experience.
SaaS software as a service provides applications as services to customers;
PaaS platform is a service, providing the development platform as a service to users;
LaaS infrastructure is a service, providing virtual machines or other resources as services to users.
Work Time Company specializes in the first SaaS service, providing human resources applications, financial management applications and other services.
Big companies like Ali, Google, and Amazon provide all three services.
It can be understood as the difference between full platform and vertical segmentation.
Lin Fan replied: "The concept of the first product that Work Hours Company is currently building is very good. If we continue to develop along this path, we will definitely occupy a place in the SaaS segment.
But, there are a few things you need to pay attention to..."
Lin Fan, who was born as a programmer, only knew half of what he knew about cloud computing. He didn't study hard enough, and all he knew was superficial.
He had seen the first human resources product being developed by Work Hours Company, and it was basically flawless, except for some minor problems in some details.
At this time, he made a few words, which made Duffield and Brismouth suddenly open up. Is it possible to play like this?
Then the two of them became a little dubious. After all, the improvements proposed by Lin Fan have not yet been verified, and it is not certain whether they will be effective.
"You can try to explore in the direction I mentioned. Maybe you will get unexpected results."
Lin Fan won't say much more. After all, cloud computing is not as creative and functional as a website, but involves a lot of technical things.
He alone cannot contribute much. This is a technology-intensive industry.
At the same time, the most critical thing is that customers need to be the guinea pigs. Based on the customer feedback after the product is released, we will make corresponding improvements, continuously improve and polish the product.
Ahri, the reason why Amazon launched cloud computing is that there are many sellers on the platform, there are enough guinea pigs for experiments, and there are many kinds of feedback.
This is very beneficial for research and development.
Facebook, a company that mainly serves C-side individuals, is inherently at a disadvantage compared to B-side companies when it comes to cloud computing.
"Okay, Sir Lin, thank you very much for your advice. No matter what the final result is, Manshi Company will remember Lin Capital's help to us."
Duffield smiled and picked up the wine glass. The old man's partner Bliss also quickly followed behind and raised his glass. The two clinked glasses with Lin Fan together.
Lin Fan nodded, this could be regarded as his empowering the invested company.
"Haha, Sir Lin, I finally understand why you want to invest in us."
Through today's conversation, Duffield vaguely saw the bright future of Manshi Company, a track for them to ride on.
He believes that Lin Fan saw the gold mine hidden under this track and invested in their start-up company with a valuation of US$150 million, which has not even officially launched its product.
His only regret is that maybe if he had persisted a little longer, he might have been able to close the deal at a post-money valuation of US$200 million.
Then he thought about it, the information Lin Fan told him today was worth more than 200 million US dollars.
In fact, what Lin Fan said was not that great, it just cleared the road ahead and strengthened the two founders' confidence in success.
Lin Fan smiled and said: "It is still very early to be successful, and customers are the key.
There is an old saying in China, "It is difficult for a clever woman to make a meal without rice"..."
Lin Fan briefly explained the allusion, and then said with a bit more emphasis: "Perform the product well, expand the number of users, and kill Oracle."
"I love that last line!"
Duffield raised his eyebrows, raised his wine glass, gestured to Lin Fan, and drank it all in one gulp.
