Playing is playing, joking is joking, but Chen Pingjiang didn't dare to joke about the entrepreneurship competition.
If this thing failed, Kuang Minghong would probably kill him. Most importantly, with more and more staff, the office space was becoming increasingly insufficient.
Currently, the office space was just a small two-story storefront in a commercial area.
Upstairs was where Miao Bingwei and Wen Yan lived, and downstairs was packed with twenty to thirty people.
Although many people were often out of the company, doing promotions or running errands, if they returned, there would be no place to sit, and the meeting room was getting smaller and smaller, unable to accommodate many people.
It was necessary to get a few offices from the entrepreneurship park; this place would then be converted into a dormitory.
In the following days, Chen Pingjiang immersed himself in the library, researching information and preparing his PPT.
His work was truly twice as effective with half the effort.
Firstly, he was quite familiar with the history and future development of this industry; secondly, the biggest difference between Renren.com and other projects was that it had already successfully launched and was developing well, which was his greatest confidence.
In the blink of an eye, the entrepreneurship competition began.
Early on the tenth, Chen Pingjiang, dressed in a suit, rushed to the lecture hall.
When he arrived at the lecture hall, the entrance and interior were packed with a large number of teachers and students.
It must be said, the entrepreneurship competition organized by the University of Finance and Economics was quite lively this time, clearly a lot of thought and effort had gone into it.
Zhu Guangtong, nominally the advisor for the Renren.com project, also appeared in the lecture hall and quickly waved when he saw Chen Pingjiang.
"Just you?" Seeing no one else following Chen Pingjiang, Zhu Guangtong's face changed immediately.
Chen Pingjiang, however, didn't think much of it,
"Why do I need so many people? It's just a roadshow PPT."
"But other teams all have a five-person setup: a captain, a technician, a marketer, a financial person, and even a project manager."
Zhu Guangtong was referring to small competitions; some large entrepreneurship competition teams even had 10-20 people.
Chen Pingjiang looked back and around, and indeed saw groups of students gathered in twos and threes, making their final preparations.
These students all had urgency and anxiety on their faces, looking quite nervous, unlike Chen Pingjiang who just strolled in with his hands in his pockets.
Chen Pingjiang chuckled, putting an arm around Zhu Guangtong's shoulder,
"Why are you so nervous? I'm doing the roadshow by myself anyway. I'll just add two more names, and if they ask, I'll say they're sick."
"You really are... you know how much the department values the entrepreneurship competition, yet you're acting so flippant."
Zhu Guangtong complained.
It was too late to say anything now; he could only blame himself for not keeping an eye on Chen Pingjiang earlier.
He had already decided that if they lost, it wouldn't matter if he was criticized, he must find a way to get Renren.com into the entrepreneurship park.
Some entrepreneurship competitions allowed individual participation while others required teams.
Individual participation was more suitable for internal school competitions and projects in the ideation phase, where one person could complete early validation work.
However, if a project had reached the incubation or accelerator stage, to demonstrate the team's execution capability, one should participate as a team, especially for product services like Renren.com, where teamwork offered significant advantages.
"Oh, Lao Zhu, why are you so nervous? It's not that I don't have a team; it's just that my team is busy working for me and making money. If they come to the competition, who will do the work?"
After comforting Zhu Guangtong, he found a seat, and soon the entrepreneurship competition began.
The first project was about wedding services.
The girl on stage spoke a lot, rattling off information.
In summary, the wedding market was booming and large in scale, but there was no well-known chain brand.
The startup team aimed to seize this opportunity to create a one-stop wedding service platform integrating wedding cars, hotels, wedding dresses, photography, wedding planning, and more.
The PPT was well-made, clearly showing a lot of effort, with various data presented effortlessly and detailed content.
Indeed, it really seemed like a good idea.
However, Chen Pingjiang just smiled.
The project sounded good and had a lot of market potential.
But to implement it and develop it into a chain brand, the difficulty was too great, almost impossible.
Even by 2023, there was no large chain brand in this area nationwide.
Most wedding brands focused on wedding planning, mainly concentrated in first and second-tier cities.
If this business plan focused on wedding planning and private customization, it might be much better, but building a one-stop wedding service was impossible.
If wedding cars, hotels, and wedding dresses were all self-operated, how much capital cost would be needed to cover it? It's a typical heavy asset business.
If a "one-stop" service was built through cooperation, it would require a strong public relations team and guaranteed channels.
If any link went wrong, it would not only ruin a wedding but also the future prospects of the company.
Not having control over channels led to such awkward situations.
Take wedding cars as an example: there aren't many high-end wedding cars in cities.
If competitors paid high prices to poach them, and there were no wedding cars for the pick-up on the wedding day, it would be a huge mess.
When a major client comes, they want to specify a particular hotel, date, and banquet hall.
But what if there's no availability and they're unwilling to wait? You're forced to coordinate with the hotel.
After watching for a while, Chen Pingjiang started to feel sleepy.
After all, the University of Finance and Economics was not a 985 university like Dongjiang, or a science, engineering, or electronics institution.
The former had abundant school resources, and the latter had many patented inventions, so entrepreneurship projects from those might be worth watching.
But the awkwardness of the University of Finance and Economics was that all the projects in its entrepreneurship competition were product-service related, or clearly in a red ocean market.
There were those doing agricultural product farming, those doing e-commerce and opening Taobao stores, those making drinks, and those making snacks.
Occasionally, a computer science student would propose a campus part-time job service platform project, which was decent, but unfortunately, they lacked understanding of marketing, promotion, and operations.
There were even extremely broad topics like healthcare, which made Chen Pingjiang shake his head.
"Are you sure a university student can handle something like this?"
After watching several projects, Chen Pingjiang finally understood why Kuang Minghong was so anxious.
Product-service projects lacked highlights, and patent-invention projects were almost non-existent.
Being stuck in the middle was the most uncomfortable.
Either they were generic projects with no imagination, sounded unappealing, and lacked distinguishing features—why would anyone believe a university student could pull it off?
Or they were grand and empty, lacking substance, relying purely on imagination, just making a PPT.
Such an internal school entrepreneurship competition was essentially picking the tallest among the short ones.
Around eleven in the morning, Chen Pingjiang received a notification that it was his turn to go on stage.
Zhu Guangtong and Kuang Minghong both cast their gazes and nodded to him.
Chen Pingjiang had no idea how to spell "stage fright" or "nervousness," and immediately began his roadshow.
When the first page of his PPT appeared on the big screen, a commotion erupted in the lecture hall.
Opening with a royal flush!
"SNS Social Platform - Renren.com"
(End of this chapter)
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