Guo Lie smiled happily and said, "Yida, you are really good at joking. She is a Victoria's Secret supermodel, so she likes losers like us."
Before Zhang Yida could speak, Xiong Xiaoge said first: "What's wrong with the Victoria's Secret supermodel? Guo Lie, don't belittle yourself. You are one of the best post-90s entrepreneurs in China. Are you not worthy of them?"
He patted Guo Lie on the shoulder and said, "Start your business well. When the bell rings, you will be successful and famous."
Guo Lie smiled bitterly, "Girls nowadays are very realistic and they don't look down on people like me.
In the past, a friend introduced me to a partner, and they asked me if I could buy a house or a car? Do you have a loan?
I just said that I am fully committed to starting a business, and I will consider it when the company is on the right track.
Then when the girl heard that I was starting a business, she asked me about the direction of my business. Have I received financing? How many people are there in the company? What is the revenue level? "
Speaking of this, Guo Lie sighed, "So, let's put aside personal issues for the time being and focus on starting a business first."
Zhang Yida doesn't quite believe this rhetoric. A startup CEO who has received three rounds of financing with a total financing amount of nearly 100 million yuan is not popular in the dating market?
I'm afraid Guo Lie's vision is too high, and ordinary girls don't like him; outstanding girls only think of him as a good potential stock, but they are not considered a big shot.
Noticing Zhang Yida's slightly perfunctory smile, Guo Lie thought that the other party didn't believe it.
He continued to explain to Zhang Yida: "Yida, you are in the upper echelon now and cannot appreciate the hardships of us entrepreneurs at the bottom.
Girls don’t care about your angel round financing or Series A financing. They only care about whether you have money in your personal pocket?
Can you buy her a bag, and can you take her to romantic Türkiye, Tokyo and Paris?"
Can we just talk to each other? Why are you still singing?
After complaining a few words in his mind, Zhang Yida continued to maintain a smile on his face, "Allie, haven't you bought a house or a car yet?"
“We can’t afford it for the time being,” Guo Lie said calmly. “After all, we are still a start-up company, and we cannot pay our executives salaries randomly.
Once this precedent was set, the wage structure was destroyed.
I believe every penny of financing should be spent wisely.
In fact, when I was working at Penguin in 2011 and 2012, I saved a little money, and with the help of my parents, I was able to make a down payment.
Later, I left my job and started my own business, so I used the money to start a company.
Nowadays, housing prices have risen so fast that buying an ordinary three-bedroom apartment in Nanshan costs five to six million.
Maybe when the company goes public, I can consider buying a house."
These words are very beautiful. Although Guo Lie is not very thoughtful, he still has a high level of commerce.
He is expressing his determination that he will not buy a house until the company is listed.
Sometimes entrepreneurs will use any tricks in order to obtain financing and give investors confidence.
"Haha, are you making big ambitions?"
Zhang Yida glanced at Xiong Xiaoge, did you, a venture capital veteran with more than 20 years of experience, teach you?
"Two of my senior brothers have expressed this kind of grand ambition. Senior brother Li Bing said that Wei Lan would not buy a house until it was listed on the market, so he and his sister-in-law Yi Zhi have been renting in a high-end apartment;
As for Senior Brother Xiaochuan..."
Zhang Yida explained further, "Senior brother Xiaochuan is an alumnus of my high school and both graduated from Chengcheng No. 7 Middle School."
"Senior Brother Xiaochuan is even more ruthless. He's already running for the fourth grade and he doesn't have a girlfriend yet."
Zhang Yida said with a smile, "He said that if Sogou doesn't go public, it won't find a girlfriend. His old mother will be so worried!"
The old lady often chats with me and asks me if I can help introduce a girl."
Guo Lieshen agreed, this is what it means to be a great man. How can a man be influenced by the love of his children?
“During Jimeng’s Series B financing, all the new shares were issued, and no individual cashed out some of the old shares?”
Zhang Yida's question confused Guo Liewen and asked: "Don't you have to go public to cash out the company?"
Zhang Yida coughed twice and looked at Xiong Xiaoge, "Mr. Xiong, you are so stupid..."
Xiong Xiaoge made a gesture of surrender with his hands and smiled bitterly, "I can't really blame IDG for this. We did not participate in the Series B financing, which was invested by Meitu and Lightspeed China.
I also suggested to them at the time that the founding team should be allowed to cash out 10% of the financing amount, which is US$1 million.
But the two of them refused on the grounds that they could not allow the founding team to be too content with their enjoyment.”
Guo Lie didn't expect that there would be such an episode. No one had told him about it!
Zhang Yida shook his head and chuckled, "It is normal to have equity transfer restrictions. If the founder cashes out, who will start the business?
But there are two sides to everything.
Entrepreneurs in our country have a hard time, and their living conditions are not optimistic.
More than 80% of founders are between the ages of 25 and 35. People of this age generally have shorter working years and do not accumulate enough wealth, but they are also the ones who spend the most.
It costs money to fall in love and get married, it costs money to have children and support your parents in their old age, it also costs money to buy a house and a car, and all kinds of expenses.
The salary of founders of Chinese companies is also very low. They receive no salary before the angel round; after receiving the angel or A round, they can get a monthly salary of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan;
Only in companies that have reached the maturity stage of Series B or Series C can the life of the founders be easier, and they will not be criticized if they give themselves a monthly salary of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, or even a million yuan annual salary.
According to Jiguang Big Data survey, more than 85% of founders belong to the group without houses or cars and little savings.
In Beijing and Shanghai, where a house can easily cost millions of yuan, the vast majority of founders live a renting life.
Due to the start-up capital invested when starting the business, all the money saved from working in the early years was invested in the company.
Entrepreneurs face tremendous mental pressure. The company is entangled in various affairs, they have a deep sense of guilt for their families, external competition pressure, the pressure of rapid development from investors, etc., etc., make the founders have great mental pressure.
It’s 996 or 007 every year, and I’m exhausted both physically and mentally!
Take Zhang Rui, the founder of Chunyu Doctor, as an example. After years of hard work, the 44-year-old entrepreneur completed the Pre-IPO financing of RMB 1.2 billion last year, with annual revenue exceeding RMB 100 million and net profit in the tens of millions.
Unfortunately, the founder, who was said to have a net worth of 1 billion, died of a sudden myocardial infarction last year.
If outsiders were to judge, everyone would definitely think that Zhang Rui, the founder of the company, should have already achieved freedom of personal wealth when the company reached the Pre-IPO stage.
However, after Zhang Rui passed away unfortunately this year, from the eulogy written by his wife, we learned that Zhang Rui's financial situation was by no means what everyone imagined.
Zhang Rui not only hasn’t bought a car or a house yet, but he doesn’t even have insurance or financial management!
His only wealth is tied up in the equity of Dr. Chunyu, which is paper wealth that cannot be realized in the short term!
As an entrepreneur, Zhang Rui’s entrepreneurial spirit of “betting everything on the company” is worthy of respect.
But in fact, once you start a business, it will be difficult to take care of your family.
Most founders go out at around 7 o'clock in the morning and come home at 12 o'clock in the evening. When they get home, they just sleep. It is difficult to take care of their families. In fact, they feel a deep sense of guilt towards their families.
Appropriate cashing out and improving the family's economic conditions are a kind of explanation to the wife's parents.
In other words, isn’t one of the purposes of starting a business a better life for yourself, especially the people you love?
Most of the founders also lived a very poor life, renting a house and taking the subway, eating box lunches, dressing simply, and being excessively frugal.
Appropriate cash-out will help improve the founder's life and increase his happiness, and it will not affect the founder's entrepreneurial passion.
It is wrong for investors to beat the founder to death with a stick and not allow any cash out in order to prevent the founder from becoming a hands-off boss.
In fact, for companies in Series B to Series C, if you sell 1% of the shares, you can buy a school district house for your children in Beijing.
And 1% equity will not affect the founder's status as the company's major shareholder at all, nor will it reduce the motivation to start a business.
In addition, proper cashing out will also be beneficial to the stability and unity of the core team.
During the entrepreneurial process, many team members choose positions with higher vested interests and leave the entrepreneurial team due to family pressure.
Appropriate cashing out can actually allow team members to enjoy immediate benefits while also having considerable motivation to strive for the future."
Zhang Yida's words resonated deeply with Guo Lie.
He is not as glamorous as the outside world imagines, and each investor is better than the last.
Can he squander the company's equity financing at will?
If you dare to use the money you spend to buy gifts or bags for live broadcasts to the public account, the CFO sent by the investors will be able to tell the investors the next second.
This kind of news has spread throughout the venture capital world, and it is basically impossible to get financing to start a business again in this life.
What does Zhang Yida want to do by saying so much? Could it be that the Series C financing allows me to cash out a few shares?
Just when Guo Lie was dreaming beautifully, Zhang Yida's next words shocked him.
"Do you think Ji Meng can make China's salad cloth and even make a profit?"
Zhang Yida had a serious face and looked at Guo Lie sharply.
Guo Lie also solemnly said: "What Sarabu can do, we can definitely do, and we will not be worse than them.
As for profitability, Jimeng is also exploring advertising monetization and has achieved certain results."
“European and American users like to socialize with pictures, but Chinese people are much more reserved, and not many people like to post shameful pictures that will burn after being read.
In addition, under the attack of WeChat, Weibo, and even short videos that have become popular, can Jimeng become a new heavyweight social platform?
You must know that the user's usage time is limited. If one company takes more of the cake, the other company will get a much smaller share.
Even in the field of picture social networking, cuteness is not the first. There is also a beautiful picture department.
How to break through? Can you break out? Ali, do you have a clear route?"
Zhang Yida's series of questions directly confused Guo Liewen. These are all constraints that limit Ji Meng's growth.
If you want to go further and transform from a tool to a platform, you will inevitably need to move the cheese of many companies.
The big ones include Penguin, and the small ones include Weibo, DouShi, Kuaishou, and Meitu.
He has thought about these problems and knows how difficult they are, but he doesn't have a good solution.
We can only make products carefully and establish a foothold in niche areas first.
Seeing Guo Lie immersed in thinking, Zhang Yida struck another chord while the iron was hot: "The overseas version of DouShi, Musical.ly, is currently advancing smoothly overseas.
In the future, we will also consider launching a picture social platform to enrich our product matrix.
Ali, you are a very good product manager. Why don't we join hands and build a career together?
A global social giant, a true giant, spanning seven continents and four oceans, covering billions of users."