Chapter 370 Talented people emerge from generation to generation

Monday, April 9th.

In the third solar term of autumn, the white dew has not turned into frost in Modu, and the sun is still scorching.

The "Yangzhi" private cuisine restaurant located in Sinan Mansion has its own door and courtyard. There is a small balcony on the street side of the three-story building. There are few pedestrians in the alley and old street in the morning, so it is quite comfortable to move a chair and bask in the sun.

A middle-aged man dressed in casual sportswear rode a bright red Mobike to the door, crossed his legs on the ground, took out his mobile phone and fiddled with it for a while.

Finally, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a helpless grin, kicked the stand open to park the car, looked around anxiously and walked into the restaurant, looking back every few steps.

Xie Jingxing couldn't help laughing on the balcony, and recorded the whole process with his mobile phone and sent it to Hu Weiwei: [A temporary car locking function needs to be added. ]

[Mr. Zhang? (covering mouth and laughing)] Hu Weiwei replied immediately.

【not busy?】

The conversation suddenly felt boring after Xie Jingxing's rhetorical question ended. It's not like his boss is asking him to play with his phone during work. He was just casually showing concern. What a joke.

“This bike is of good quality and feels quite heavy when riding.”

Zhang Tao was wearing a pair of Under Armour sneakers and standing on a high stool. He looked like an elderly man. Compared with his high spirits a month ago, he was now much calmer and more relaxed.

Xie Jingxing walked around to the bar, poured a glass of ice water, then turned back and took out a bottle of Balvenie whiskey from the wine cabinet: "They are trying to reduce the manufacturing price of the next generation of bicycles to less than 1000 yuan, and they will be lightweight by then."

"Then they are operating in a heavy asset business." Zhang Tao was quite surprised.

OEM capacity, two-way smart locks, and most importantly, the literary young aunt Hu Weiwei's pursuit of bicycle quality. This is the so-called differentiated competition between Mobike as a product and ofo as a transportation network.

Xie Jing Xing briefly explained and raised his glass to say, “Congratulations.”

"Everyone is happy, which is inseparable from everyone's joint efforts." Zhang Tao clinked glasses and drank half of the glass of wine in one gulp.

Xie Jingxing looked at him and wanted to say something. He hesitated for a few seconds and finally just picked up the wine glass and took a sip. The two looked at each other in silence and shook their heads and laughed.

We are all adults, and all decisions, whether rational or irrational, have logic to follow.

A rift is a rift and cannot be mended. We just need to maintain the existing cooperative interests and move forward. Looking back would be too superficial.

"In the current shared bicycle market, the only one that can compete with Mobike is ofo." Xie Jingxing returned to the topic and set the tone.

At a fundraising dinner in Beijing the night before, Liu Qing mentioned to him that the new Meituan APP had Mobike embedded in its homepage, providing it with a traffic entry point.

Nowadays, several shared bicycle platforms have sprung up on the market, including Hellobike, whose A round of investment was led by GGV Capital, and Bluegogo, which emerged from nowhere and claimed to have received 4 million yuan in investment within two months of its establishment.

The entire industry is turning into a colorful rainbow war, with many competitors emerging and each one is extremely competitive, ready to scare their opponents to death with just the opening of their mouths.

However, Xie Jingxing only mentioned ofo, targeting the battle for mobile payment port agents.

This is similar to the feedback Zhang Tao got from his personal experience with shared bicycle products. In the completely crazy Internet industry, people cannot be scared to death by shouting slogans, they have to be fought.

"We provide traffic entry for Mobike and run the risk of being banned by Alibaba," he bluntly stated the point.

Xie Jing Xing had no choice but to say: "Just close it, I won't worry about the debts."

"Looking at their financing scale, it should be difficult for them to spend money to buy our traffic entrance, and it's meaningless for us to earn this little money. So let's discuss it. How about we use the traffic entrance as a strategic investment?" Zhang Tao said calmly.

Putting aside the food delivery business, the two independent apps, Dianping and Meituan, have a combined daily active users of more than 20 million, and business models such as in-store dining are largely related to the usage scenarios of shared bicycles.

This is a traffic resource that is larger than the entire shared bicycle industry combined, and it is unrealistic to simply buy it with money.

Xie Jingxing was very upset. He initially suggested Hu Weiwei to start Mobike, but he never anticipated the current situation.

The shared bike bubble worth tens of billions of dollars was blown up by him two years in advance, but there is a high probability that he will be the one who ends up paying for the bubble!
Just think of it as money spent on your own mobile payment port strategy.

Xie Jing Xing calmly comforted himself, his fingertips flexibly dancing as he turned the wine glass: "You guys discuss the details of the cooperation. My idea is that it is definitely not a good idea for Alibaba and Tencent to continue playing like this. New DAE has its own position."

"What do you mean?" Zhang Tao was prepared.

"Mobile payments."

Xie Jingxing paused for a moment and added: "The entire market is too rigid now. We have paid a high cost in the competition with Tencent and Alibaba. In this case, why can't we do mobile payment ourselves?"

"The purpose is not to compete with anyone. A war in our own little land will only bring us losses."

Zhang Tao was speechless for a moment. The M&A tide was sweeping across all industries and sectors, and the isolation between Internet companies had reached its limit. -- Wang Xing, the instigator, Meituan's ban on Alipay led to Alibaba's full counterattack against Tencent. Tencent naturally could not stand to lose, so it responded by launching WeChat to ban Taobao sharing links and other Alibaba products.

While the two villains were fighting, they did not forget to cry out for injustice and report each other's commercial monopoly, and they frequently did all kinds of outrageous things.

A group of little villains suffered collectively. Sina Weibo, Toutiao, New Dangdai-Meituan and the like have all been affected by the ban to varying degrees, except Didi.

Alibaba and Tencent both want to block it, but they can’t do it…

In this case, New DAE-Meituan has suffered considerable actual losses. We couldn't do that when we were fighting to the death and needed the help of the two villains. Now that we have a monopoly on the industry, it really doesn't make sense for us to be your agents.

As Xie Jingxing said, regardless of whether individuals are willing to join the mobile payment war and get a piece of the pie, it is hard to accept just watching the war happen at one's doorstep and having all the pots and pans smashed and suffering losses for nothing.

Do you really think I'm a primitive medieval colonist?
"We control the traffic entrance ourselves, so theoretically there is no problem in doing mobile payment, but... we need to consider the timing of entry, as market competition pressure still exists."

Zhang Tao was intrigued and took a sip of wine, implying that he was already thinking about how to deal with Tencent.

Mobile payment is strongly associated with traffic entrances, such as WeChat to Tencent, Taobao to Alipay, and Baidu's 20 billion investment in local life.

After the merger of New Da'e and Meituan, Baidu Nuomi's market share has risen to the second place in group buying. Its head does not have to worry about resigning voluntarily for the boasts he made last year, but he has to start considering whether he will be fired by Robin Li.

There are rumors that Lu Qi, the technological guru and the pride of Chinese people in Silicon Valley, is about to return to China to join Baidu and take the helm, abandoning its failing local life business and cutting off its mobile payment and financial business, turning all his efforts to technological creation.

On the other hand, the dispute over Baidu-led Ctrip's acquisition of Qunar.com is still ongoing, and the online travel market may not be integrated until this month, next month, or the end of the year.

Therefore, the new DAE-Meituan is facing market competition pressure, whether it is the small-scale and money-burning Koubei.com or the deadly Baidu Nuomi. Relying on the 90%+ market share and requiring platform merchants to "choose one of two", it can crush its opponents to the ground and beat them up.

So when the new Big Hungry Meituan enters the mobile payment market, will the situation still be so simple?

If the answer is yes, Zhang Tao is willing to join the battle immediately.

"First, apply for a mobile payment license, and then prepare the relevant business team and product function research and development internally. It's September now, and can we launch it after the new year when everything is done?"

Xie Jingxing seemed unconcerned: "By then, the integration of New Da'e and Meituan will be almost complete. External competitive pressure is another matter. We can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater."

"The traffic entrance is in our own hands. What Tencent and Alibaba think is their business. Competition is inevitable." He concluded after drinking the wine in his glass.

Zhang Tao did not comment, saying, "Don't worry today about what difficulties may arise tomorrow. Most of the uncertainties in entrepreneurship come from this."

Everyone understands the logic, but facing competitors like Tencent and Alibaba, the anxiety is obvious.

"Do you know P2P?" Xie Jingxing poured himself another third of a glass of wine.

Zhang Tao nodded with interest and thought: "I have learned a little bit about it. I heard that the return on investment is quite high. My family also bought some diversified financial investment configurations."

"From my perspective, this thing is a very evil financing tool, with no threshold or risk control. Rich people can invest millions, poor people can invest hundreds of dollars, and even students can invest with a hundred dollars in pocket money."

Xie Jingxing said in a gloomy tone: "How much money can I raise if I use this thing to raise funds?"

"... hundreds of billions?"

Zhang Tao pretended to be ignorant even though he knew the truth, so it was not good to say more. After the stock market crash, Master Xie became famous and was crowned the king of the market. The fund with a minimum investment threshold of several million raised 30 to 40 billion yuan in more than a month.

If the conditions are relaxed to a minimum investment of 100 yuan, it is hard to say how much money can be raised, and Xie Jingxing dare not even think about what investment he will make with the money.

A hundred yuan investment could mean a student’s weekly pocket money, or it could be money for an old man or woman to buy medicine.

For investors, the loss of an investment with a threshold of several million is painful, or at most a huge loss; for investors with an investment with a threshold of only a hundred yuan, the loss of money is a death sentence.

"I don't know how much money I can raise, but one thing is certain: if I can raise more than 100 billion yuan."

Xie Jingxing chuckled jokingly: "With a fund size of hundreds of billions, I can only use this money to lend out in order to achieve the super high long-term annualized rate of return given by P2P in the market."

"Uh, what do you mean?" Zhang Tao didn't understand.

Xie Jingxing exhaled a breath with a faint smell of alcohol: "Old dogs can't play new tricks. The ancient business of lending has been passed down to this day with unparalleled vitality. Just wait and see, in a few years, consumer finance will be the common choice of all Internet giants."

"Mobile payment and consumer finance are very profitable businesses, enough to support us to compete with any competitor."

He slid his glass and bumped it against Zhang Tao's glass, making a crisp sound. "Don't feel burdened. Didi is a way for Alibaba and Tencent to compromise, and New DAE-Meituan will be another way for them to compromise."

"The banker takes turns sitting, and next year it will be my turn."

(End of this chapter)