Gu Kun took the phone and heard the caller's voice, which really surprised him.
It turned out to be Ma Feng, whom I had not contacted for nearly two years.
How could he find him?
While thinking about it, Ma Feng had already taken the initiative to clear up the mystery for Gu Kun: "Brother Kun, I've also heard that you helped the national team rescue the market a while ago. You were very upright and your funds were tied up in the stock market, so I didn't dare to bother you.
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Congratulations on how you are different from the past and have reached a higher level. I have never forgotten what you said to me at the beginning of last year, saying that if I need money for my new entrepreneurial project, I will notify you first, so I am here
Isn’t it coming?
However, I am not asking you for money. In fact, I have other preparations. If you are not interested, don’t force it. I heard that you are in Xiangjiang recently, right? If it is convenient these days, I will bring the new partners to meet you.
Let’s have a meal together.”
Calculating the days, after Ma Feng sold Huaxia Yellow Pages in 1996, he paid back the money Gu Kun lent him to start the business, and still had a balance of one to two million yuan. Later, he took a break and used the money to re-establish the company.
Founded an Internet company called Ali Baba.
Gu Kun also talked to him at that time, saying that if we need to expand in the future, if we need funds, just come to him. This happened around the Chinese New Year in 1997, and now it has been 20 months.
Unexpectedly, Ma Feng had already started to have a tight capital chain before, and he had successively looked for other partners' backup plans to raise money. It was just that he heard that Gu Kun's money had been tied up in bailing out the market with the national team a while ago, so he decided to
I was too embarrassed to come to the door, so I kept dragging it with the spare tire.
From Ma Feng's point of view, this decision is correct and seems more righteous. After all, when Gu Kun responded to the call of the national team, strictly speaking, it was a patriotic act of "destroying families and rescuing people from distress." How could he do it at that juncture?
Adding trouble to Gu Kun?
He had to wait until most of Gu Kun's money came back and all the leverage was paid off before he could come to discuss investment.
However, when Gu Kun listened at this moment, he was laughed at Ma Feng's worried thoughts.
He couldn't help but swear like a buddy chatting: "Damn it, you look down on me so much. Even if my liquidity is poor, how much money can I make from you? Your kind of broken Internet start-up company
, with a history of less than two years, how much money can you spend even if you raise venture capital? I can save a few pocket money for my son to buy bags - the key is that you want the project to be good.
I haven’t mentioned anything yet. I’m going to stay at the Peninsula Hotel for my flight tomorrow. What? You ask me why I don’t buy the luxury house on the top of Barker Road? I’m still not optimistic about the real estate in Hong Kong. I won’t be optimistic about it within a few years. The price will be cut in half again.
Before, I would not have bought a property in Xiangjiang."
After Gu Kun finished speaking, he hung up the phone and asked the people around him to make reception arrangements.
…
Early the next morning, Ma Feng actually took the first flight to Xiangjiang. After getting off Kai Tak Airport, he went straight to the Peninsula Hotel and met Gu Kun as promised.
Ma Feng was very polite and would never call Gu Kun brother-in-law when outsiders were around: "Mr. Gu, you are fine. You have been the leader of the country this year. As an ordinary Chinese, I should be responsible for your ruined family."
The righteous act of alleviating difficulties and protecting the market is applauded."
"It's easy to say, the destruction of the family and the bailout are a bit much. I will think that you are cursing me - I am not doing well, and I still make so much." Gu Kun received the reception in his presidential suite and pointed to the sofa opposite.
With a glance, Saranova made tea and brought it over.
Midlova has been upgraded and no longer does the work of serving tea and water. After all, she knows Gu Kun's daily business schedule better, so she doesn't want to waste people.
On the other hand, those young girls who are still in their senior year of college and in the internship period need to observe and polish their behavior on a daily basis.
"No, no, you're welcome." Ma Feng stood up to take the tea in a dignified manner, put it down straightly, and then introduced Gu Kun to the companions he had brought today.
"This Mr. Cai is a new friend I made in the first half of the year. We rowed a few times on the West Lake, and we hit it off immediately. I joined my team and became a partner. He is a senior manager of a large German investment bank.
He is very good at people, finance and investment. He gave up a job with an annual salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars to work with me, which is really righteous. So he is now our CFO of Ali Baba and has full power over money matters. This time I will
I brought him with me."
"It turns out to be Mr. Cai. I'm glad to meet you. I think I've heard of you." Gu Kun stood up in person and shook hands with Cai Chongxin.
Cai Chongxin was very surprised and said modestly: "Mr. Gu, have you heard of me? I'm really flattered."
After all, Gu Kun is already a Nanyang tycoon known for his wealth of tens of billions of dollars.
Cai Chongxin's mentality when he saw Gu Kun at the moment was probably similar to the mentality when Brother Ma saw Li Zekai next year. But this doesn't prove anything. Ten or eight years later, when Li Zekai sees Brother Ma again, he will probably
All that's left is embarrassment.
But being flattered or something like that, just a polite word from a friend in the world, being carried by a person carrying someone in a sedan chair, should not be taken seriously.
Gu Kun waved his hand very magnanimously: "Hey, Gan Luo grew up early and grew up late. I am just a young man who got his ambitions, and I know how much I weigh. I have always respected those friends who matured late and accumulated a lot of experience."
After being polite, the two parties naturally chatted about Ali Baba's current business situation and financing needs.
From Ma Feng, Gu Kun learned that when Ali Baba started his business early last year, he relied on the one or two million that Ma Feng had saved from his previous business, plus a few like-minded friends, just to show off.
Collect hundreds of thousands and do it together.
The money was burned out in about a year, and it was just a shell of a website, plus some publicity and promotion, and team training.
In the early days, Ali Baba did not really have a great business. Ma Feng has been doing it for nearly two years now. In the final analysis, it only provided a platform for publishing business supply and demand information, and then advertised for users to come here to find things.
(Mainly supply information, that is, the identity of the supplier. Basically, demand information has not been released as a customer. Users with potential needs only browse the supplier information above, and if they have needs, they can call offline to discuss business)
However, as far as this pure promotion and display business is concerned, Alibaba has already generated income, which makes it look more reliable than other Internet companies that still charge no money.
The form Gu Kun saw showed that Ali, in 1998, could already charge platform usage fees, certification fees, and credit deposits from corporate customers... Although in total, they could only receive an annual fee of up to 2,000 yuan a year.
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Some trial customers who are unwilling to pay all the above fees only pay 300 to 500 yuan a year.
This miserable situation is even worse than the later 51job Zhaopin Recruitment. On Zhaopin Recruitment, corporate customers can’t post job advertisements without paying, but corporate customers on Ali can advertise without paying. They just have no credit.
The certification mark will remind viewers that "this is released casually by a third party without certification, and authenticity is not guaranteed."
"In the first 11 months of this year, there were a total of 'nearly 20,000' enterprise users. Only 3,000 companies actually gave money, and the rest were all in vain. 1.5 million yuan in annual fees were collected, but 400 yuan was burned.
Ten thousand?"
Gu Kun took a few glances at the data and knew that there must be water injection, but it was normal.
In the early Internet companies, whose data was not filled with water?
Especially for those users who don’t pay, no matter how many times they brag, they won’t betray them. Just like those websites that pirated novels in later generations, they can brag about their tens of millions of readers without having to pay them.
In the two years since he started his business, he has managed to attract 3,000 enterprise-level customers who are willing to give him some advertising fees, which is pretty good. Although in total, each enterprise customer only gives him an average of 500 yuan a year.
However, Ma Feng was neither arrogant nor arrogant, and told Gu Kun straightforwardly: "The expenses are high, mainly because of the high cost of market development. In order to rush forward faster in the early days, we gave our telemarketers a very high commission."
.30% of the annual fee paid by the corporate customers brought back is returned to the telesales service as commission, and they have no basic salary.
I came here this time not to ask if you want to invest. In fact, Lao Cai has helped me find some professional investors in the circle. However, I still keep my promise and talk to you first before meeting those investors. After all, I am here to fool around.
You have to be trustworthy. You helped me back then, so I will definitely give you a chance first under the same conditions."
Gu Kun was slightly surprised when he heard this.
It’s no wonder that Ali’s phone sales in later generations were so hard-working. For the orders that were pulled in in the early days, the three-year annual fee went to the solicitor. How could we not work hard? Then every phone call was made for his own wallet.
So Gu Kun was not polite: "Of course, I have invested in a lot of Internet companies. In Xiangjiang, before the stock market crash, I became the second largest shareholder of Yingke Digital. To tell you the truth, Yingke
The stock price is so high, but it is definitely much less reliable than you. They have no revenue, and they are just playing with capital. As long as there is revenue, and it is not revenue obtained by giving money to customers, it means that
The business model has a future.
Since Brother Ma thinks highly of me, let me tell you how big the funding gap is this time - don’t worry, I won’t blame you for asking for a lot of money, I’m doing it for your own good. If you don’t lack money, you can let me invest too much in the early rounds.
"More, I'm afraid that you will lose the motivation to continue working hard, and feel that your shares have been diluted to that point anyway, and it doesn't matter if you struggle or not."
Both Ma Feng and Cai Chongxin couldn't help but slightly praise the bright gesture of Gu Kun's words, secretly thinking that Gu Kun was indeed an open-minded person.
Not giving you more money at one time is actually to protect the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs.
In 1998, very few venture capitalists dared to say this truth directly and clearly.
Cai Chongxin and Ma Feng glanced at each other secretly, and then put the problem aside: "To be honest, we don't know how much money we need at the moment. According to the current loss-making expansion rate, we must lose several million yuan a year.
It can be afforded. In the next two to three years, according to this development rate, at most a few thousand yuan will be burned each year, and it will not exceed 20 million yuan a year.
However, recently a friend, a big shot in the Japanese venture capital industry, sent us a ts and estimated that he could give us 20 million U.S. dollars - before, we only had 2 million of our own funds when we started, which is about the same as ours.
A partner later asked a friend to add an additional 5 million, for a total of 7 million yuan.
However, that Japanese investment bank was willing to invest 20 million US dollars in exchange for 40% of our shares. In other words, it recognized our 7 million yuan principal, coupled with the team's two-year hard work to develop the market and products, the valuation could be
It’s worth 30 million US dollars. I wonder if Mr. Gu recognizes the value of our team?”