Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

On November 29th, Mao Chaorong selected a group of key employees from Today Technology. They departed from Pudong International Airport, bound for the Los Angeles branch.

He never would have imagined that after planning to return to his home country to start a business, half a year would fly by, and after all that, he would end up right back in the Lighthouse Country.

Meanwhile, with the support of Senlian Capital, Qu Fang founded a company in Hu City called Xingyin Technology.

Xiaohongshu, an app based on Instagram, officially entered the development stage.

Ma Wenteng’s reaction was muted when he heard the news. After all, behind the scenes, WeChat was furiously copying the product features and business logic of Orange Pay.

Little Ma knew he was in the wrong, and given the good partnership between their companies, he didn’t think losing Mao Chaorong and Qu Fang would have any negative impact on Penguin.

Besides, Liu Zhiping’s recommendation of talent to Chen Yansen had already received his tacit approval.

Talent?

The one thing the country wasn’t short on was talent!

With seven to eight million university graduates every year, even if you only picked one in ten thousand, you could easily find seven or eight hundred people.

What made Little Ma most pleased in the last couple of days was the verdict in the lawsuit between Penguin and 360. Zhou Hongyi had to pay him five million.

In a way, Penguin had ultimately won the "3Q War."

Meanwhile, at the 360 Headquarters in Yanjing, Zhou Hongyi was furious but helpless. The higher-ups had spoken, forcibly putting an end to the 3Q War.

had no choice but to pay up.

"That son of a bitch Ma Wenteng!" Zhou Hongyi swore, fuming.

Fortunately, the strong sales of the 360 Mobile Phone were his greatest consolation. Over the past six months, it had sold a cumulative 7.1 million units, far surpassing the market performance of the Xiaomi Mobile Phone.

"I’ve been saying it all along: there’s no technical skill in making phones. A certain brand named after a grain holds press conferences for two or three hours, but the users aren’t buying it. The sales figures are a real slap in the face! It just goes to show that our domestic phone buyers are all clever and discerning!"

Zhou Hongyi, having taken a blow from Little Ma, immediately turned around and vented his frustration on Lei Yijun.

He didn’t name names, but who didn’t know he was trashing Xiaomi?

Some rabble-rousing netizens, fearing Lei Yijun might not respond quickly enough, flooded the comment sections of Lei Yijun, Li Wanqiang, and Lin Bing with screenshots of Zhou Hongyi’s Weibo post.

Just as Lei Yijun was about to fire back, Li Wanqiang stopped him. "Boss, I’ll handle this!"

"Sect Leader Zhou, since you claim there’s no technical skill in making phones, do you dare develop your own operating system? What’s the difference between a phone brand without its own OS or supply chain and a carrier-customized phone?"

Three minutes later, Li Wanqiang went on the offensive, not holding back in his scathing reply.

"If I were President Chen of Senlian Capital, I’d terminate the partnership with 360 Mobile Phone immediately. Let’s see if you’d still dare to shamelessly claim making phones requires no technology," Lin Bing fired off, right on his heels.

"Everyone knows President Chen of Orange Technology and I are old friends! Orange Technology holds the core patents for mobile operating systems, battery management systems, camera algorithms, and fast-charging technology. Does an assembly-line brand like Xiaomi really dare to pick a fight? Let me ask you: where did Xiaomi’s voice interaction engine technology come from?"

Zhou Hongyi quickly shot back, smugly flaunting his close personal friendship with Chen Yansen and, in the process, revealing the secret behind Little Love.

Three days prior, Lei Yijun had announced on Weibo that Xiaomi would launch a free smart voice interaction software on December 10. The features and product name were still tentative, but the announcement instantly attracted a massive amount of traffic.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun became so incensed that he finally couldn’t resist jumping into the fray himself. "I have the utmost respect for both Chen Yansen and Orange Technology, and I’ve always believed that one day, Orange Technology will become the Mountain Star of Hua Country! Do what you do best, and do it to perfection. We salute our industry peers and walk alongside them!"

Lei Yijun’s reply was ambiguous, containing only praise for Orange Technology.

He didn’t address Zhou Hongyi’s accusation at all.

"President Lei, I’m a huge Xiaomi fan. Just between us, where did the voice interaction engine tech really come from?"

"Is that even a question? It’s a no-brainer. Orange Technology most likely provided the technical solution."

"President Zhou, when is the 360 Mobile Phone getting a smart voice assistant? You’re on such good terms with President Chen, you mean to tell me you can’t get a tech license?"

"Can someone please explain whether Xiaomi’s smart voice assistant was developed in-house or not?"

In no time, netizens were hotly debating in the comment sections of both Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun.

Seeing this, Lei Yijun knew that if he didn’t clarify the situation, the negative online chatter would impact the launch of Little Love.

So, with help from the engineering and public relations departments, Lei Yijun published a carefully worded blog post. It could be summarized as follows: the voice recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis technologies were provided by Orange Technology, but the core semantic technology was developed in-house by Xiaomi.

In other words, he was admitting that what Zhou Hongyi said was true.

Furthermore, Lei Yijun officially announced the product’s name for the first time. The search term "Little Love" quickly shot to the top of the trending charts.

"Lei Yijun actually managed to build a smart voice assistant?" said Huawei’s Yu Chendong in disbelief.

From his perspective, even with the development tools from Orange Technology, it should have been impossible for a company with Xiaomi’s limited technical depth to complete development in just a few months.

Unless...

’...Orange Technology’s language analysis development kit is even more powerful than I imagined.’

’Regardless of whether a smart voice assistant will positively impact Huawei’s sales, I can’t afford to ignore this trend.’

Yu Chendong’s brow furrowed. He made a swift decision: he would go to Xucheng tomorrow and secure the patent license, no matter what it took.

The heads of other brands like OPPO, Meizu, and Lenovo were completely unfazed.

In their eyes, putting a smart voice assistant on a phone was a distraction from their core business. What users currently valued most were performance and value, whether the screen was big enough, the camera clear enough, and if games ran smoothly.

To run a smart voice assistant perfectly, they would also have to add extra memory.

The material cost for RAM wasn’t cheap. Depending on the brand, order volume, and supply and demand, a 1GB RAM module could cost anywhere from 60 to 150 Hua Yuan.

Raising the product’s price for a non-essential smart voice assistant was simply not worth it.

...

...

「Xucheng, Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.」

During a break from developing an instruction set, Chen Yansen quickly skimmed through the flame war between Xiaomi and 360. He muttered to himself, ’Their phone sales haven’t slowed down, so why are they trying to stir up hype again?’

Because the Orange Phone Factory handled all the manufacturing orders for both Xiaomi and 360’s phones, Chen Yansen had a rough idea of their total and monthly sales figures.

Chen Yansen didn’t dwell on it. After a short break, he got back to work.

「At the same time.」

Microsoft announced that MSN would be "retired" within a few months. Its services would be merged into Skype, marking the end of the MSN era.

Sina Weibo partnered with Ah Li, beginning negotiations for an investment and equity stake. They hoped to open up a new avenue for profit growth through commercialization.

That afternoon, employees from Lashou Network’s Hu City Branch got into a violent conflict with Meituan’s street promotion team. Several people ended up in the hospital.

In reality, the initial verbal dispute had been between the Lashou employees and a few business development reps from Kuai Pao. But before the Lashou people could get physical, they were surrounded by Cloud Speed Couriers, Kuai Pao Deliverymen, and marketing staff from Fast Taxi.

The Lashou crew was so scared they didn’t dare breathe. They apologized profusely and managed to avoid a beating.

Then, at the next intersection, they ran into the Meituan team.

Lashou’s Group Buy commission was 5%. The Meituan business reps were poaching merchants, telling them over and over, "We only take 4%, which is 1% lower than Lashou."

They were blatantly stealing business right out from under their noses!

After all, the income of a street promotion rep was directly tied to the Group Buy revenue they generated from merchants.

So, the Lashou crew, banking on their superior numbers, chased the Meituan reps for several blocks, beating them along the way.

The Kuai Pao people watched the whole spectacle from the sidelines!

Although the group-buy industry report for November 2012 hadn’t been released yet, many industry insiders believed that Kuai Pao, backed by traffic from Pinbei and Gaode Map, was seeing explosive growth in its group-buy business. Its monthly transaction volume had most likely already jumped to number one in the industry.

As the "former top dog" of the group-buy world, Meituan’s market share had all but stagnated under pressure from Kuai Pao and Lashou, a situation made worse by the loss of Shan Jiawei.

As for the "current top dog," even though its subsidy campaigns never stopped, its market share was in continuous decline due to a lack of ecosystem synergy with navigation and ride-hailing products.

Zhang Tao knew perfectly well that Dianping’s position as the market leader was in jeopardy.

Before Senlian Capital and Qian Du Network entered the fray, he and Wang Xin had been able to trade blows evenly. But in the face of these financial behemoths, neither Meituan nor Dianping had nearly enough capital or technology to compete.

Furthermore, both Meituan and Dianping’s customer acquisition costs remained stubbornly high. The longer they competed against Kuai Pao and Lashou, the more money they would lose.

It was only then that Zhang Tao, for the first time, began to seriously consider the proposal from Shen Nanpeng of Redwood Capital. Perhaps merging with Meituan was the only way for them to survive.

’But after a merger, who would be in charge? Him or Wang Xin?’

The thought made Zhang Tao hesitate once more.

He knew Wang Xin; the man would never agree to play second fiddle.

Meituan and Dianping had comparable valuations. A merger was bound to be fraught with conflict.

But if they didn’t merge, they would easily be picked off one by one by Kuai Pao and Lashou Network, ultimately sharing the same fate as WoWo Group.

After weighing his options again, Zhang Tao called Shen Nanpeng and made his position clear.

"No problem. I’ll talk to Wang Xin," Shen Nanpeng readily agreed.

He didn’t want Redwood Capital’s initial investment to go down the drain, either.