Reborn with Consumption System

Classmate Ping’an was even more anxious than Han Lie had expected, and he didn’t bother to hide it at all.

Movie King Lie was there slowly flipping through the catalog, while he kept explaining nonstop, proactively offering all kinds of opinions.

He didn’t look like a Party A daddy holding an Imperial Sword at all, but more like... a big smooth-talker?

Instead, it was Han Lie who sat steady as Mount Tai, unhurried and calm.

The whole dynamic of host and guest was completely reversed.

But you can’t look at this from a God’s-eye perspective.

In essence, Yu Ping’an and Han Lie were each offering the other the resources they had, forming a complementary cooperation; their value judgments were not only influenced by the times, but even more by their respective levels of understanding.

In Yu Ping’an’s view, the value of the quantitative strategies Han Lie could provide was far greater than the project information he himself was offering.

Startup projects in all of Huaxia are as countless as the sea; every year hundreds of thousands of companies are born and die. Over so many years, how many unicorn-level companies have actually appeared?

Doing angel investing tests not just your eye, but more importantly, your luck.

Normally, if one out of a few hundred companies of the same type manages to run out of the pack, that already counts as striking gold, with very generous returns.

Yu Ping’an didn’t hide this point while doing his popular science.

"God Lie, I’ve listed out this year’s hottest tracks for you. Ranked first is e-commerce; there have already been 86 investments of over the million level.

Ranked second is mobile internet, 70 deals.

Ranked third is financial services—this is a field I strongly recommend; it’s definitely going to explode over the next few years.

Right behind are online education and healthcare, but for internet + healthcare you have to deal with the Chaoshan clan; there are relatively fewer projects that have gone through my father’s hands.

Overall, every project I’ve put in the catalog has its merits. At the very least, their founders are all people who actually want to do serious business, not scammers. This can cut down 95% of your headaches.

But with these fragile egg-level early-stage companies, even if you invest in 100, there might not be a single one that breaks out. I suggest you still focus on starting from Series B and C wherever possible.

The first 20 companies in the catalog are basically all young companies that have raised up to Series B. They’re a bit pricey, but relatively safer. As long as you can make sure the exit mechanism is sound and put in some effort to keep an eye on them, even if you don’t make money, you won’t lose too much..."

He’s really putting his heart into this, bro.

Han Lie felt Yu Ping’an’s earnestness, but when he looked at that neat line on the project brief, he really couldn’t help but shake his head.

—ByteDance, financing target 100 million Mi Yuan, total valuation 500 million Mi Yuan.

Tsk tsk, you call this expensive?!

Compared to its seed round and Series A, ByteDance was indeed much pricier now, but then think about what it looked like when TikTok swept across the globe... expensive my ass!

Forget it, forget it, let’s not talk about vulgar things. Your boy isn’t interested in money.

How high ByteDance’s market cap would soar in the future actually didn’t matter at all.

What Han Lie really valued was its influence.

BAT couldn’t get in, Pinduoduo was just an e-commerce platform focused on lower-tier markets, Didi was dead, and Meituan’s attributes were what they were.

The only internet company that could be said to possess truly powerful influence was this dark horse, ByteDance.

Han Lie could make money from other places.

The other things he wanted could only be provided by ByteDance.

If possible, for this 100 million Mi Yuan in Series B, Han Lie would even be willing to take it all.

Uh, that’s a pipe dream, don’t think about it.

Better to set a more realistic goal—25 million, 5% equity; if he pulled that off, it’d already be a win.

Han Lie tried hard to hide his interest in ByteDance and started asking from the top.

Meituan, Jiuxian.com, Koudai Shopping, Mogujie, Ele.me, Dhgate, Shequn 001, Palm Huitong, Qiandai Bao, Qu Fenqi, Magic Capital Yinshang Information...

The first 20 projects were all big names that had once left their mark in history.

ByteDance, mixed in among them, wasn’t particularly eye-catching.

"Even Meituan’s on here? Something like that shouldn’t leak out to outsiders, right?"

Han Lie deliberately brought up the most valuable Meituan to break the ice with some small talk.

Yu Ping’an shook his head. "That’s just there for us to bullshit over. Their Series C is in the final stage; 300 million Mi Yuan for about 7.8% equity, split among three institutions. Even my old man’s Yunfeng Capital doesn’t want to get involved, so of course I’m not going to recommend you follow in."

In Han Lie’s understanding, investing in Meituan now should still mean quite a decent return, but Yu Ping’an didn’t seem to see it that way?

Yu Ping’an laughed.

"First, you have to consider whether you can even get in. Second, you have to consider how big a price you’ll pay. Third, you have to consider its competitors. Fourth, you have to consider profit expectations... In short, it’s not a particularly worth-fighting-for project."

Han Lie finally understood—he was a reborn, habitually using a God’s-eye view to analyze problems, seeing only the upside.

And what about normal people?

What they saw was layer upon layer of danger inside the fog.

So every decision they made had to be taken with extreme caution, doing their best to balance risk and return.

Han Lie wasn’t even on the same channel as them; what they thought about and what he thought about were worlds apart.

Fine, drop the act. Just ask about ByteDance directly!

"Then what’s up with this ByteDance? I quite like their jokes app. You’re not interested in investing in them either, President Yu?"

"ByteDance, huh?"

Yu Ping’an thought for a moment, then replied, not entirely sure: "Their Series B money was from DST, right? That Russian VC fund.

This company isn’t in the mainstream’s line of sight right now. Jokes and news sites—don’t you think their thinking is pretty weird?"