Time has come to mid-2016. Li Mu’s capital injection of 2 billion yuan at the beginning of the year has been burned up to 7788 yuan.
After burning so much money, Yuandian Technology has also made great progress. The number of daily Toutiao users has more than doubled from 100 million at the beginning of the year. The current total users are as high as 230 million, of which more than 150 million are active users, which is already the largest number of domestic users.
The largest comprehensive news information media platform.
Since its release at the beginning of the year, Douyin has been supported by Toutiao’s mature algorithm and big data, coupled with a large number of promotional advertisements. It has become very popular as soon as it was launched, with currently as many as 70 million users nationwide.
In the early days, the content of Douyin was mainly music, supplemented by content, allowing users to experience the feeling of magical music penetrating their ears.
The core user group is the young people born in the 1985s and 1990s, who are most receptive to new things. The combination of video + music is enough to arouse their interest.
Although the current 70 million users of Douyin have not attracted much attention, user stickiness is extremely high, and the average user retention time has also shown a very obvious upward trend.
This is an excellent sign.
This represents the appeal of Douyin's short videos to young people. As long as traffic rates are reduced and more users use short videos, Douyin's users will usher in explosive growth.
This is all good news. The only bad news is that it is burning money too fast. Currently, the company only has a few hundred million left in its account. It can maintain the company's operations, but it cannot do so if it wants to vigorously promote Daily Toutiao and Douyin.
Simply Origin Technology is good enough and is being targeted and favored by more and more venture capital institutions. As long as it starts financing, the funding problem will be solved.
Li Mu has also been in contact with many venture capital institutions recently. These people do not understand the general trend like him and do not know the future popularity of Douyin. There is still a certain distance between the valuation of Origin Technology and the standards in his mind.
The venture capital firm with the highest bid only gave it a valuation of US$3 billion.
Moreover, since this was Origin Technology’s first financing and there was no capital, many venture capital institutions opened their mouths and put forward many stringent requirements.
For example, the right to exit first, the right to veto...etc., how could Li Mu agree to these conditions that are related to the lifeblood of the company's development?
Financing is like this. It requires startups to compete with capital. From valuation to the rights and obligations of both parties, everything must be discussed and clearly defined.
Such financing negotiations sometimes last for several months. During the negotiation process, some start-up companies run out of funds and cannot survive. In order to keep the company alive and not lose everything, no matter how harsh the capital's requirements are, it can only
promise.
In reality, there are many such cases where capital parties take advantage of the lack of funds in start-up companies and delay financing negotiations for several months, draining the other party's funds and no longer having the confidence to bargain.
In order to prevent the company from going bankrupt and losing everything, even if the capital side offers harsh conditions, they can only grit their teeth and agree.
Li Mu would never let Yuidian Technology fall into this situation, draining the company's funds little by little and letting capital plunder it.
He is lucky. In the past six months, the virtual currency market has been booming.
Last year, the Elf Coin began to plummet from 6,000 yuan per coin and stayed sideways around 1,000 yuan for a long time.
It was during that period that Li Mu spent 160 million to buy 150,000 Elf Coins at a price of just over 1,000 yuan.
As the market has boomed this year, the price of Elf Coins has also begun to rise. Now the price of a single coin has exceeded 24,000 yuan. It has quadrupled compared to last year's highest price, leaving countless people stunned.
Although there will be market trends in the future, who knows!
Li Mu decided to clear his position in exchange for development funds from Yuandian Technology. Only when he has enough cash flow can he have the confidence to negotiate with those investment institutions.
Next he started to take action. Even though the market was hot and the daily transaction volume was tens of billions, it still took Li Mu more than a week to sell all these elf coins to cash out. By this time, the price had risen to 26,000 yuan each.
With 150,000 Elf Coins, Li Mu cashed out a total of 3.8 billion in cash, making him rich instantly.
Of the 3.8 billion in cash, Li Mu injected 3 billion into Origin Technology, and kept the remaining 800 million as pocket money and emergency reserves.
With the arrival of 3 billion in funds, the company's cash reserves have become full again. Not only has it gained confidence to negotiate with venture capital institutions, but a new round of expansion plans has quietly started.
The company's development has once again entered the fast lane, and Li Mu has also begun to fulfill one of his long-cherished wishes.
In August, Li Mu returned to his hometown in a high-profile manner, which is an ancient county in the central region. He once again looked at the orphanage where he grew up; looked at the retired director and aunt; looked at the 30-plus-year-old
A high school teacher who is now nearly 50 years old, looked at an elementary school teacher who had taken good care of him since childhood.
Subsequently, after Li Mu communicated with the local government, he officially announced that Origin Technology would donate 100 million to the orphanage where he once lived to build a modern and high-standard orphanage in the county.
This incident instantly caused a sensation in the county. In the history of this unknown central county, no company or individual has ever donated 100 million in one go.
Li Mu was born as an orphan and started from scratch at a young age. He still plays with high technologies such as the Internet, which has attracted the attention of countless people.
In addition, Li Mu was the county's science champion back then and had a reputation as a top student. There were quite a few people who knew him and had heard of his name. This made this incident even more popular and even somewhat legendary.
However, this is just the beginning. Not only a drop of water can be repaid with a spring of water, but also a bottle of water can be repaid.
Through the files of the County Education Bureau and his own memories, Li Mu went through all the teachers who taught him from elementary school to high school in his mind.
Those teachers who had taken care of him, taught seriously and responsibly, or were selfless, kind, and good people were all found.
All added up, there are 198 teachers.
Later, Li Mu recalled the aunts and caregivers who were kind to him and took good care of him in the orphanage. From childhood to adulthood, there were 31 of them who met the criteria for more than ten years.
Now in 2016, housing prices in counties in the central and inland areas are not expensive, and residential areas with good conditions only cost around four to five thousand.
Li Mu chose a property from a well-known domestic developer with good hardware and supporting facilities. After some negotiation, he spent 120 million to buy three buildings with a preferential price of 4,500 yuan per square meter, totaling 232 suites and 26,700 square meters.
rice.
There are a total of 229 teachers and aunts and caregivers in the orphanage. Li Mu plans to give each of them a house, which can be regarded as repaying the care and concern for him over the years.
Among them, the head teacher of the first grade of elementary school has always taken good care of him since he knew he was an orphan. He has always taken care of him during the six years of elementary school. After graduating from elementary school, he often came to the orphanage to visit him.
There is also the high school class teacher, maybe because he is a top student and an orphan, he also takes great care of him and often invites him to his home for dinner.
There is also the aunt and director of the orphanage. Perhaps because he has studied well and is smart since he was a child, she really cares about him and takes care of him more than other orphans.
For these three people who were particularly good to him, Li Mu chose the best room type and location, and gave each of them two large three-bedroom apartments. This just completed the three buildings and 232 suites.
When donating to the orphanage, Li Mu did it in a very low-key way. He did it in the name of his company. He gave each of the teachers and the aunts at the orphanage a house. Li Mu did it in a very low-key way and used his personal account to pay for it.
However, the matter of giving a room to a teacher who had taught before was so eye-catching that it spread quickly and became a hot topic on the Internet. Li Mu also became someone else's "student".
Coupled with his legendary experience of being born as an orphan and starting from scratch, he became famous in China for a while. Affected by this, his subsidiary Yuandian Technology also attracted a lot of attention, and users of Daily Toutiao and Douyin also welcomed a
wave increase.
Returning to the Shanghai stock market, Li Mu used the name of Origin Technology to donate 100 million to his alma mater. He did this in a very low-key manner, but it still attracted the attention of many people.
After a series of donations, his long-cherished wish came true, and Li Mu felt refreshed and completely enlightened.
From now on, I can live a good life and be busy with my career.