Zhang Yida stood on a green shared scooter and skated over from a distance at a speed of 20 yards per hour.
The filming team standing behind the camera gestured and said, "OK, Mr. Zhang, the shooting is over."
Zhang Yida ignored the different looks from all kinds of people on the street. After parking his scooter, he smiled at the filming team: "Thank you for your hard work. I just wanted to take a dither shot on a whim, and Ryan asked you to take a trip."
"It's not hard work, it's our honor to serve the chairman." said a white man with a mohawk haircut.
Zhang Yida secretly laughed, the truth is the same all over the world, lower-level employees like to flatter their superiors.
He flew to the United States yesterday and began a global industry inspection tour.
When I went to the streets of Silicon Valley today to observe the distribution status and user usage of Green, I saw many people using shared electric scooters.
On a whim, Zhang Yida also wanted to experience it and take some shaking photos.
Then Musical.ly North America President Ryan was very considerate and sent a video shooting team to assist Zhang Yida in shooting the video.
"Mr. Zhang, I think you would be more handsome if you did a Chinese kung fu on the scooter."
Hearing this, He Qingxuan, who came to the United States with Zhang Yida, laughed "haha". Seeing a group of foreigners looking at her in confusion, she smiled and said:
"You are really right. Have you seen Kung Fu Panda? Mr. Zhang's hometown is Sichuan, the hometown of pandas.
Not only does he know kung fu, he also rode a panda to school every day when he was a child."
Zhang Yida saw a group of foreigners who were about to be deceived by He Qingxuan, so he quickly stopped her and said: "Don't listen to her nonsense. Not every Chinese knows Kung Fu. I don't have a panda mount at home."
You don’t have enough understanding of China. If you have time to travel to China, you will know.”
"It's almost noon, let me treat you to dinner!"
Upon hearing Zhang Yida's words, the camera team immediately cheered.
…
afternoon.
Zhang Yida and He Qingxuan returned to Green Company. When they saw employees with different skin colors in the company, Zhang Yida secretly thought that it finally looked like a multinational group.
Entering the CEO's office, Zhang Yida said to a white man sitting on the boss's chair: "Howard, I went to Silicon Valley in the morning and observed it for a few hours and found that the frequency of use of our scooters is quite good."
Howard said very proudly: "Of course. When we launched the first batch of 500 shared electric scooters in Silicon Valley some time ago, it attracted onlookers.
Many users have also left us messages on our official website, saying that the number of scooters released is too small, they often run out of scooters, and asked us to release more scooters.
Subsequently, we put in another 5,000 vehicles, which alleviated the shortage of vehicles."
Zhang Yida nodded and asked: "Except San Francisco, how are the settlement plans in other cities going?"
"It's very ideal. The public relations department is lobbying government officials, and several large supermarkets in Los Angeles and Chicago have reached cooperation intentions.
I believe that in a few months, our Green scooters will be available in the top 20 cities in the United States."
Zhang Yida nodded, this Howard was still very capable, and it was not in vain to spend a lot of money to poach him from the position of a senior executive of a large group company.
"Have you encountered any problems?" Zhang Yida asked again.
“The main thing is the battery life! The current battery life is only 30 kilometers, and users basically need to charge it after five or six uses.
Charging requires us to send people to various neighborhoods to collect the scooters for charging, and the labor cost is very high.
Now we are developing the second generation of scooters, with the goal of increasing the scooter’s endurance to 50 kilometers.”
Zhang Yida frowned. If we still need to build an offline operation team, the cost will indeed be high.
Unlike China, the United States has very high labor costs, express delivery and takeout are expensive, and delivery times are slow.
It is impossible to maintain an offline dispatching team of tens of thousands of people like Huimin Bicycle.
"Howard, I have an idea." Zhang Yida had an idea and continued: "Shall we outsource the charging?"
"Outsourcing?" Howard asked confused.
"Yes." Zhang Yida continued to express his thoughts:
“Outsource the charging of shared electric scooters to approved individuals or private groups to reduce operating costs, and then we can focus more on other businesses, such as bicycle promotion and launch, operation, and research and development
."
Howard was thoughtful and asked, "Is this possible?"
"You continue to listen to me. First of all, these contract employees need a car, a place where they can charge, indoors or a garage with a socket, and a mobile phone with a built-in positioning APP.
For charging an electric scooter once, our Green company will give them $5.
A person can get $100 for charging 20 scooters a day.
Our battery capacity is 187W/h. According to U.S. electricity rates, it costs about 5 cents to fully charge it. 20 units are equivalent to 1 US dollar.
Recycling and distributing electric scooters requires the use of vehicles, so the actual cost also needs to deduct gas costs.
After all, being an outsourced charger is still profitable.
The most important thing is that the working hours are very flexible, which is very suitable for making extra money after get off work.”
Howard pinched his chin and said with a smile: "It makes me a little tempted. I will also work as a charger after get off work."
"Man, are you complaining about low wages?" Zhang Yida was also amused by him. A CEO with an annual salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars had to work part-time to earn extra money.
"Boss, you have to know that my child has to go to school. Private schools are very expensive."
Zhang Yida quickly stopped the topic and said: "You work hard. When Green makes a profit, I will increase your salary and reward you with an option package."
"The labor costs in the United States are too high." He Qingxuan interjected.
When she thought about it, she could work a part-time job as a recharger and her daily income would be five to six hundred yuan.
"Ms. He, our scooter charges are not cheap!
The starting price for unlocking is $1, and then you are charged according to the time of use, which is 15 cents per minute.
A user basically uses it for about 20 minutes and spends about US$4.
The number of trips per scooter per day is approximately 3.5, which translates into an average income of US$14 per vehicle per day.
After deducting daily charging, maintenance, credit card fees, customer support and insurance, the net profit per scooter is about $4 per day.
The cost of our scooter is US$360, and the cost will be recovered in about 90 days.”
Seeing that He Qingxuan seemed to be complaining, Howard patiently took out the financial model and calculated it for her.
"The key is whether our scooter life cycle can reach 3 months?"
He Qingxuan raised her own doubts. She has been working at Huimin Bicycle for a long time and is very aware of the damage situation of bicycles in China.
“We have put a lot of thought into anti-theft. The car locks are all built-in and are not easy to be damaged from the outside.
The only thing you need to worry about is the durability of the scooter.
Basically, we need to maintain a life cycle of more than 6 months after our scooters are put into the market, so that the company can achieve relatively good profits.
This is mainly a technical issue, and we have been working with joint suppliers to upgrade and iterate the scooters."
Howard gave a comprehensive answer to He Qingxuan's question, and the latter nodded and said, "That's good. I'm just a little worried."
Zhang Yida is also thinking that since there is no subsidy war for Green in the United States, profitability should not be a big problem.
"By the way, are there any competitors?" Zhang Yida thought of this problem and had to guard against it.
"I asked around and found that two Chinese people founded a Lime company. It is still in the research and development stage and has not yet launched a formal product."
Howard's words inspired Zhang Yida to mention that Lime should not be underestimated. In its previous life, it was valued at US$2.4 billion and raised US$770 million in financing within 18 months of its establishment.
Lime is already out, and Bird, another shared scooter giant, should be coming out soon.
Zhang Yida felt that time was running out and said to Howard: "Pay close attention to Lime's R&D progress. They are very likely to become our biggest competitor."
Howard frowned and said, "Why? Boss, that's just a start-up company. It hasn't even launched a formal product yet. It's still in the research and development stage. How did you come to this conclusion?"
"Because they are Chinese and are venture capitalists. In addition to being hardworking and capable, their financing capabilities should not be weak either.
Do you think the barriers to shared electric scooters are high? If their business takes off quickly, there should be a steady stream of venture capital investors investing in them."
Howard felt that Zhang Yida's worries were reasonable. What about the forerunners? There were many who were shot to death by the latecomers.
"Okay! I will speed up our launch progress. In addition, I will also pay close attention to Lime's progress and report to Huang (Huang Xiaofeng) in time."
Seeing that Howard had listened to his advice, Zhang Yida said again:
“I will next ask Huimin Travel Group to allocate another US$50 million to Green.
You need to form a strong government relations team and negotiate with as many cooperative cities as possible as quickly as possible.
Huimin Travel Group’s China war will be over soon, and we still have hundreds of millions of dollars in hand.
As long as Green can achieve results that satisfy us, these funds will be allocated to Green first."
When Howard heard this, his eyes lit up. He knew the strength of the Chinese parent company and nodded hurriedly: "Boss, I will definitely go all out to complete the task."
"In addition to the United States, the European market is also huge. If we spend too much energy in the U.S. market, the European market may be taken over by other imitators."
When Howard heard this, he became anxious and quickly expressed his position: "Boss, within this year, I will definitely complete the basic coverage of the US market. I will definitely enter the European market by the beginning of next year at the latest."
Zhang Yida shook his head and said: "No. We must enter the European market before the middle of this year. If it is later, we will have no chance."
"What about the funds?" Howard asked again.
Zhang Yida also felt that it was a bit overwhelming. According to this pace of expansion, the capital chain of Huimin Travel Group was a little tight again.
"Let's do this for now! We'll wait until the middle of the year." What Zhang Yida thought was that if it didn't work out, he could just do another round of financing in the middle of the year.