If Gu Kun directly said that he would give preferential treatment to early Alipay users, it would definitely be inappropriate and he would be rejected by Japanese customers.
However, Gu Kun has always insisted that this is a project led, invested and intervened by Lanzhou Bank, and that in the future he will treat all people equally and try to enter the markets of various friendly neighbors in Asia.
Even if local countries have regulations that prevent Lanfang Capital from using "e-commerce payment tools" and those countries have developed similar platforms themselves, Lanfang will treat the practitioners of those platforms equally and provide financial visa exemptions.
, this is a very correct outlook on things.
His subtext to Mr. Yamazaki is: I am just optimistic about all e-commerce practitioners in the world in the future. I feel that people in this industry will easily make a lot of money and pay more attention to credit, so it is safer and easier for such people to come to Lanfang.
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If you Japanese don’t want me to go, you can do it yourself, but if your entire country misses the Internet economic era and stagnates, then you can’t blame me if you can’t enjoy this small dividend.
Of course, Gu Kun knew that neither Yamazaki nor JTB, nor even ordinary Japanese citizens, would look down upon this unfair preferential treatment, and would not even notice the difference. Gu Kun only wanted to stand on his own
If you stand firm and hold the bowl of water level, you have already shown kindness to others, and if someone notices it in the future, you cannot blame him.
After hearing this explanation, Yamazaki was just slightly embarrassed but actually smiled indifferently: "It's probably the new gadgets of those bubbles on the Internet. It's rare that Gu Sang still thinks about this mess after the Internet bubble burst.
, I heard that you were one of the few people in the investment community who spoke out early about the bubble problem, but how could you not let go after the tide receded?"
It can be heard that Yamazaki looked down on the Internet people in 2001 and did not want to understand it at all. It is no wonder that 2001 and 2002 were the deepest periods of the Internet winter. In Japan, in addition to the Yahoo browser, there were still people using the Yahoo search engine.
Even news portals are rarely viewed, and even if they are, they are still on Yahoo.
Almost all other Internet services are in a state of complete ruin in Japan. Yahoo can be maintained not by technology or business strength, but simply because Yahoo’s major shareholder is SoftBank’s Sun Zhengyi. Sun Zhengyi is Japanese and Japan’s only
Of course, the Internet market must support Sun Zhengyi in the cold winter.
In Japan's neighboring countries, China and South Korea, in 2001 and 2002, the Internet industry was slightly more alive than Japan's half-dead state - mainly because the online game industries in China and South Korea were developed. In these two years, the Internet industry
The only highlight is the game.
In fact, Gu Kun led Ma Feng to survive the cold winter two years ahead of schedule and accelerate his rise, and he would have benefited from the gaming industry to some extent. If it hadn't been for half a year ago, Boss Bao of Zhonglian Game Platform and Ma Feng came together to ask Gu Kun
When reporting on the current status of the investment project, Eryitianzuowu was advised by Gu Kun to take the path of "turning the online game recharge system into an e-commerce payment tool".
According to the original inertia of history, Ma Feng will have to suffer in the cold winter for at least 20 more months before he can barely see a way out with his own eyes.
Therefore, Yamazaki's indifference and contempt at this moment is understandable.
But he still had an extra thought, and with the mentality of popularizing literacy and science, he asked Gu Kun: "But, Gu Sang, can you tell me what kind of tool Alipay is? It's good for us to learn from each other and learn more.
of."
Many other guests nearby also listened with their ears pricked up. After all, people in other countries do not have as strong a negative view of the Internet economy as the Japanese.
Of course, Gu Kun did not hesitate to take the opportunity to promote it. He introduced it in a familiar manner: "The thing is like this. I am sorting out some of the projects I invested in in the past few years. As you know, I joined the scene a few years ago.
When I speculated in Internet concept stocks, it was actually not my intention and I did not enter the market proactively.
There were times when I took the initiative to enter the market. That was in 1996. At that time, Internet stocks in Silicon Valley generally had very low stock price valuations. I was based on the mentality of value investing. I really felt that there was a future and some profits could be made.
I bought it. After I bought it in 1997/98, Soros came to stir up trouble, and I was forced to sell all Internet stocks. I had to resist for the sake of our own well-being as Southeast Asians.
Later, for the sake of pallet during the Hong Kong stock market boom, I traded stocks myself and became a major shareholder. Fortunately, at that time, several Internet concept stocks in Hong Kong stocks were quite popular, so I had to run in those directions to escape, and slowly replaced my chips before I could escape.
Just like that, in the end, there were still a bunch of late-stage companies with a total value of more than one billion U.S. dollars that were not all gone and were lost. Fortunately, the big ones were gone. Just based on the part that was gone earlier, all my capital was already gone.
I made it back, and there was quite a bit of profit.
The two unfinished companies I dealt with this time, one is called Zhonglian Games and the other is Ali Baba, were one of the things I didn’t get rid of at the beginning. But I think this year, the only way out for the Chinese Internet market is,
We can only rely on online games, so we can support Zhonglian’s products and make a supporting recharge service tool.
It is convenient for citizens in third-tier and lower-tier Chinese cities who cannot buy points cards. They can go to the Internet cafe owner to buy them on their behalf. The specific operation is to give the boss cash when going to the Internet cafe to surf the Internet. The boss can pay online for any game that joins this recharge platform.
Recharge electronic point cards. This prevents Internet cafe owners from stocking up on niche game point cards for fear of not being able to sell them out. It also eliminates the need for physical point card issuance channels.
I have done research, and I feel that Chinese players’ understanding of online games is still too superficial. They have never seen good products, and they are not like the fiercely competitive market like Koreans, where there are enough games for them.
Pick and choose the most fun ones to play. For Chinese users, who can reach relatively underdeveloped cities first and let the locals buy points cards, then the locals will play. The content and quality of the game are not important.
Just have it.”
This is the truth. Legend's success has nothing to do with quality. This product is so popular in Korea that it can't be beat anymore, but the key is that it has low computer requirements and low Internet speed requirements. The PK rhythm is also slow, and the Internet speed is slow.
It won’t die. Then, add an operator’s marketing genius of “making point cards available in remote cities”, and you will win.
This is a preconceived business. Marketing and popularization are greater than technology and art. Of course, this kind of opportunity only comes once. Once the players have opened their eyes, it will not be easy to use.
(Note: Chen’s operational achievements still need to be recognized. After all, he is not the first person to make online games in China. There were Stone Age and earlier games before him. But the people before him didn’t catch it, and they were generally too technical.
Relatedly, it’s all the tall and powerful people from Zhongguancun who enter the game industry with airs and look down on the small town market.)
"You just sell game point card recharge services?" The Japanese customer and several other colleagues from the Middle East looked incredulous after hearing this.
It seems that he still feels that it is not worth it for Gu Kun to give such conveniences and benefits to people who run such a low-level business, and he also feels humiliated that he lost at the hands of such a group.
Gu Kun also quickly said something to keep the table: "Of course it's not just about selling point cards, we also provide payment services for users who buy books online. For example, if a Chinese wants to buy a book online at Dangdang, he can first buy it online
Decide what you want to buy, then go to the Internet cafe nearest your home, pay cash to the Internet cafe owner and dictate your needs, and then the Internet cafe owner will help with the operation, and use Alipay to pay Dangdang.com to place the order.
Boss Li from Dangdang.com welcomes our Alipay to provide this service, so it has been connected to the backend. You can go to the homepage and any book promotion pages for sale. There are conspicuous text prompts on them - 'Users can go to the nearest
Internet cafes with Alipay business provide remote payment'."
Of course Gu Kun knew that selling books would not make a few dollars, but he did it just to use it as a fig leaf. After all, in the eyes of today's Chinese business leaders, games are not a serious industry. If Alipay was born for games in the early days,
, the pattern will become smaller in the future.
Historically, the reason why Chen's career was not very successful is that when he started, people were left with the stereotype of "this is someone who makes online games." This is not to say that online games cannot be made, but it must not leave an impression on mainstream society.
The impression of “only doing online games/starting from online games”.
That will only make you more successful in your online gaming career, and the mainstream society will be more hostile to you, and in the end it will be difficult to clear your name and go ashore for transformation.
In contrast, if you set up an elegant business of "helping people sell books" as a foil, even if the book itself does not make money or even loses money, it can be used to accumulate karma, and the entire social reputation will be different.
Moreover, in 2001, when Gu Kun wanted to use e-commerce payment to provide free services for retail business, he could only find a business selling books. After all, other 2C e-commerce companies were far from emerging.
As for Li Guoqing's position, if someone is willing to provide him with payment tools for free, that's what he wants, and the two parties naturally hit it off. This happened when Ma Feng's Alipay closed the closed beta test at the end of the summer and was officially launched.
Kun instructed Ma Feng to talk to Li Guoqing. Since the process went smoothly, I won't go into details.
All in all, what Gu Kun sees now is this result, and he is taking advantage of the black swan incident in which the Lanfang tourism industry has suffered a decline in the number of white customers, pretending to sincerely solve the problem.
Both public and private.
After his explanation, those Japanese and even other tourism customers from other countries who had not received the "visa-free discount" finally felt better and more balanced.
After all, it is a very noble thing to provide convenience to businessmen who sell books online. It reduces the inequality in education and the difficulty of acquiring knowledge in society. Why don't you object to giving convenience to such a talented person?
"Okay, can I ask how many users this so-called Alipay currently has?" Mr. Yamazaki, a layman, couldn't ask anything else, he could only ask this.
Gu Kun: "There are not many users at present, less than 20,000. After all, it has only been officially launched for more than a month. There are more than 14,000 outlets in China and more than 500 in Lanzhou."
Lanfang has a registered population of 70,000, but there are nearly 300,000 permanent residents, as well as tourists. Generally speaking, for a residential area with a few thousand people, it is not too much to have two or three Internet cafes, right?
Therefore, there are now three to four hundred Internet cafes in Lanfang, with an average of one for every 1,000 people. As Gu Kun's hometown, of course all Internet cafe owners in Lanfang must be Alipay users, otherwise they will not even be qualified to open Internet cafes.
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Mr. Yamazaki shook his head: "You Lanfang people really value the Internet. The national population is one 20,000th of that of Huaxia. The number of Internet cafes that join Alipay is one-thirtieth of that of Huaxia. The per capita rate is seven hundred times higher."