"Celebrating 4 months since the launch of Diandaibei.com, the number of registered users has exceeded 80 million, and the transaction volume has exceeded 8 billion."
Zhang Yida was sitting in the audience, looking at the lines of big characters typed on the LED screen on the stage, and sighed to himself: Throwing coins is indeed the most classic tactic in the Chinese Internet industry!
Liandaibei was officially launched on August 8, 2015, and had been operating for just over 4 months by the end of this month.
Having achieved such fruitful results, Hu Gang and Wang Xiaojie must not be willing to keep a low profile, so they held such a grand press conference in a five-star hotel.
As an important partner of Handing Group and a fellow Sichuan fellow of the two bosses, Zhang Yida was also among the invited guests.
A fat man wearing glasses on the stage was preaching:
"In the eyes of the outside world, we are a bit silly in borrowing money. We have burned 2 billion yuan in marketing and promotion in the past few months. We are an example of people who are stupid and have too much money.
In fact, this is not the case. Anyone who knows the Internet knows what we are doing.
We have gained a lot during this period. First of all, our main acquaintance lending model has been successfully verified, confirming that it is a sustainable business model.
Secondly, we gained 80 million users in 4 months.
In the history of China’s Internet development, this is a miracle.”
The audience in the audience burst into thunderous applause that lasted for a long time.
The reporters also took photos excitedly, and the flashlights lit up the entire conference hall.
This is a big deal! Within a few months, 2 billion yuan was spread out.
Although I know that Lian Lian Bei must have "scattered money", and he has spent a lot of money.
But the reporters were quite shocked when they heard the other party admit that he had squandered 2 billion.
Zhang Yida spent 815 million during the Spring Festival last year, which shocked the entire industry and amazed people across the country.
Unexpectedly, this year there will be a richer one.
The reporters started writing the article. They had already thought of the title and called it:
"Shocking! The emergence of an upstart in Internet finance"
"Shocking! Lianbibei gained nearly 100 million users in four months"
"Burn 2 billion, the most handsome guy in the mutual financial industry in 2015"
They guessed: With such an eye-catching title and exciting content, the news topic in this issue must be good!
Zhang Yida didn't recognize the person speaking on the stage, so he asked around people around him, and found out that the person on the stage was named Wang Lu, and he was the CEO of Lianjiebei. He was highly valued by Hu Gang and Wang Xiaojie.
In addition, this Wang Lu actually graduated from Peking University, so he is considered senior brother Zhang Yida.
Zhang Yida was speechless, fearing that Peking University’s moral integrity would be compromised in a few years!
All the "loan kings" were trained by Beijing University. In addition to himself, there are also Tang Lin, Yang Yihu and a group of other online loan tycoons. Together with this Wang Lu, you can complete several tables of mahjong.
In a few years, these people will become "loan kings" who lend tens of billions to hundreds of billions a year.
Aoki is similar, and has also cultivated many talents who have devoted themselves to Internet financial entrepreneurship.
Taking the top 100 Internet financial companies in the country as an example, 80% of the executives are from top domestic universities such as "Qingjing, Zhejiang, and Beijing".
Obviously, lending, an ancient skill that has been passed down for thousands of years, has developed to this day and has begun to require technical content.
Wang Lu, CEO of Jiedianbei, then said on the stage: “The next development strategy of our platform will be divided into three steps.
The first step is to continue to maintain large-scale marketing and customer acquisition in 2016 and build a national-level social financial application;
The second step is in 2017, based on a good user base, using advanced and reasonable business models to bring the platform into a break-even state;
The third step is that in 2018, the platform will enter large-scale profitability and be listed on the Hong Kong stock market."
The people in the audience were also frightened by Wang Lu's speech, especially the first step he said. Listening to this tone, he will burn money as fiercely as this year next year.
So everyone in the audience started discussing in low voices:
"It's awesome. We've already burned 2 billion yuan this year. How much more will we have to burn next year?"
"A national-level application must have 3.5 billion users."
"According to this money-burning method, I'm afraid we will have to throw another 10 billion into it."
“Is Hantai Group so rich?
I heard that the leeks have become smarter in the past two years, and Hantai Group is not as easy to harvest in the secondary market as before, right?"
"Then it depends on whether Boss Wu and Boss Wang's sickles are fast enough and sharp enough."
"Why are you so worried? Handing Group's reputation as the king of the New OTC Market is not just talk.
Last month they only added 10 billion yuan, so there is plenty of money."
"Yes, they have a market value of 110 billion yuan. The two big guys Hu and Wang have amazing financial skills!"
…
After Zhang Yida heard Wang Lu's words, he smiled without saying a word and said to himself: Burning money is also an art, and it has to be paid attention to. Your burning method will cause problems sooner or later.
If the platform does not provide enough services, users will gradually become die-hard fans if they come in.
Take Ruixiang as an example. Without Magic Pay, at least half of its active users would die.
Without the major financial supermarket sections, accounting butler, and credit card manager, I am afraid that all active users will be lost.
The financial management and lending functions alone will not be able to retain many users due to the "cash back cash" scheme offered by LoanBai.
But it was impossible for Zhang Yida to tell them these words.
They didn't believe me even if I told him, and they thought Zhang Yida was jealous of them.
Zhang Yida plans to continue watching the show honestly! After the two big bosses are done messing around, Zhang Yida will go and receive their inheritance.
In the past few months, Han Tai Group spent HK$15.5 billion to acquire FTLife, a life insurance company in Hong Kong.
Zhang Yida is very greedy. He can also see that these two big guys want to take the full license route of the financial holding company.
Through additional issuance, we purchase and inject assets into listed companies to increase the stock price, then issue additional issuance, and then inject again... This model is used for capital operations.
The biggest shortcoming or weakness of this model is debt and cash flow.
In its previous life, Hantai Group suffered setbacks in the development of its private equity business, its main business income declined significantly, and its cash flow was depleted due to huge debts. It was forced to embark on the road of selling and selling.
Wang Lu looked at the reaction of everyone in the audience with satisfaction. As the operator of the Jiedianbei project, he has become famous in the industry with the popularity of Jiedianbei. He was also rewarded by his boss with a 0.5% option of the Jiedianbei company.
.
The 0.5% option may not seem like much, but Wang Lu is very satisfied. According to the valuation of the loan after angel round financing of 22 billion yuan, this is worth 110 million yuan.
Wang Lu continued to speak: "Currently, Jiedianbei is preparing for the second round of financing. Interested investment institutions are also welcome to contact us."
Many investment institutions are ready to make a move. In their view, Lending Bay is very promising to become the second Payment Bay, or almost, it can become the second sharp direction.
An investor asked: "Mr. Wang, what is the current valuation of Lianhebei?"
Wang Lu said: “In May, we received our first angel investment of 2 billion yuan, and the post-investment valuation at that time was 22 billion yuan.
But after half a year of development, Diandaibei has also achieved remarkable results, and its current valuation is 50 billion yuan."
As soon as they heard about 50 billion yuan, many investment institutions that had been interested immediately backed down.
50 billion RMB is converted into U.S. dollars, which is 8 billion U.S. dollars. This corresponds to 80 million lending and borrowing users, and one user is worth 100 U.S. dollars.
Liandaibei currently does not have considerable revenue and profits. According to industry rules, it is generally how much a user gives a valuation, plus at most a business model premium.
For financial start-ups, the valuation of a single user is higher than that of other industries, but it still cannot reach US$100.
In the view of some investment institutions, the bubble here is too big.
Including the 2 billion angel investment from Lianbibei, it was also invested by Handing Group itself.
It is equivalent to hyping yourself up and has no credibility at all.
As a result, the scene became awkward and completely quiet, and no one asked Wang Lu any more questions.
Zhang Yida suppressed his laughter so as not to laugh out loud. He thought to himself: Asking you to act cool is going too far!
Wang Lu had no choice but to end this session in a hurry and enter other topics.
…
After the meeting, Hu Gang organized a dinner party.
There were more than a dozen invited guests. Except for Zhang Yida, they were all venture capitalists, including Shen Beipeng, Zhang Sanshi, Tong Shijie, Gan Renping...
Zhang Yida guessed that he wanted to attract investment. Sure enough, after drinking for three rounds, Hu Gang spoke:
"Diandaibei currently has 80 million users, and we will continue to strive towards the goals of 100 million, 200 million, and 500 million.
In this process, a large amount of capital investment is required. Therefore, Jiedianbei is about to launch Series A financing, and I hope all the bosses will support it."
Zhang Yida looked at his nose, his nose at his mouth, and remained silent.
Tong Shijie adjusted his glasses, looked at Hu Gang and asked, "I wonder what Mr. Hu's valuation of Lending Bay is? Don't talk about 50 billion yuan."
"Why can't you say it?" Wang Lu was a little annoyed, "As the brightest new star in the Internet finance industry in 2015, Liandaibei's development speed is definitely worthy of a valuation of 50 billion yuan."
Hu Gang thinks what Wang Lu said makes sense. When Ruixiang raised Series C financing, wasn't the pre-money valuation also $8 billion?
But he didn’t know that after more than a year of development, Ruixiang had reached 190 million registered users and had achieved great results in many segments such as financial supermarkets, mung bean credit, and mobile payments.
Tong Shijie said "haha" to such an arrogant person and stopped talking.
Seeing that the situation was a little awkward, Wang Xiaojie quickly smoothed things over and said with a smile: "We are all leaders in the venture capital industry. Why don't you guys estimate the price of the loan?"
"A user costs 100 yuan, and the valuation is 8 billion yuan. Your customer acquisition cost is 25 yuan each, and we at Qiming Venture Partners are willing to give you a premium of 3 times."
Gan Renping was still somewhat interested in lending money, so he expressed his own opinion.
"This is a bit low! The business model of Liandaibei cost us 2 billion yuan to explore, and the hidden costs are very high."
People present also heard another meaning in Wang Xiaojie’s words: It is impossible to sell a project that was built with hard work and at the risk of losing 2 billion for three times the price!
"Diandaibei has only proven its ability to attract new customers, but its retention rate and future commercial liquidity are still unknown."
Gan Renping expressed his doubts. In his opinion, Lending Bay is indeed in full bloom at the moment.
But what the future will look like remains to be seen by time.
In this case, who dares to give you a valuation of 50 billion? Did the money come from the strong wind?
Moreover, he has been in the investment field for a long time. Although he only does VC, he also has some knowledge of the domestic PE industry.
Knowing that Hu Gang and Wang Xiaojie are very wild, looking at this, the game of capital operation is beginning to be played on start-up companies like Liandaibei.
If I jumped in stupidly, I might be cut like a leek.
"Yida, what do you think?" Hu Gang asked.
“I think the biggest disagreement among everyone is still whether Lending Bay can retain new users who have invested heavily in it.
Only time can tell on this.
Either postpone financing until the platform’s retention rate is reflected; or add a bet on the number of active users in the future.”
Zhang Yida was not offended by both sides, and even gave Hu Gang a "cool trick" for gambling.