A grand stage was indeed a wonderful thing.
During the recording of CCTV's Economy Person of the Year gala, Tan Jincheng made the acquaintance of quite a few heavyweights, coming away with significant gains.
Yet if one were to speak of his greatest haul, it had to be Neil Shen, the founder and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China—a true titan in the industry.
Sequoia Capital China had been established just last year, and its founder, Neil Shen, was selected alongside Tan Jincheng this year as one of the Top Ten Economy Persons of the Year.
At thirty-nine years old, Shen Nanpeng had invested in twenty companies across technology, agriculture, insurance, animation, and various other sectors in the short space of a year and a half since founding Sequoia Capital China.
His most famous investments this year were likely Qihoo and Dianping. Beyond his role as an investor, he was also a co-founder and director of companies like Ctrip, Home Inn, and Focus Media.
If anyone was the hottest figure in the venture capital scene this year, it was undeniably Neil Shen.
At the recording venue, Shen Nanpeng was quite curious about this entrepreneur who was eighteen years younger than him. He really wanted to hear how this young man had persuaded Old Kuang to invest four million dollars in his website.
He knew Kuang Ping well. Both had previously operated in the United States and returned to China to enter the investment business, making them old acquaintances.
He knew that Kaixin.com—especially after Happy Farm went live—possessed potential, but in his eyes, it wasn't worth a valuation of two hundred million yuan. At least not right now. After all, he had only put one million dollars into Dianping.
An investor's money could be easy to get, yet equally difficult. A single good idea might compel them to toss millions your way to burn in a matter of minutes, but the key question was how to convince them.
"President Tan, I hear Kaixin.com is discussing a collaboration with QQ Zone? Have you ever thought about partnering with Dianping as well? If you're interested, I can pull some strings."
Dianping also needed users—even more urgently than Kaixin.com. Integrating Happy Farm could bring substantial traffic and users to the website, which would be immensely beneficial for Dianping.
"That would be fantastic. Our Happy Farm is more than eager to collaborate with more companies,"
Tan Jincheng said with a smile.
Getting more websites to adopt Happy Farm was naturally ideal. It was akin to opening franchise stores; once everyone used the genuine version, pirated copies would have no room to thrive.
However, for now, Orange Technology's technical capacity was still limited. Interfacing with too many websites at once would temporarily overwhelm them.
"President Tan, how do you position Orange Technology going forward? Are there any other developments planned?"
Shen Nanpeng opened the conversation, asking tentatively.
Tan Jincheng gave a light laugh.
"Is Mr. Shen looking to invest in our Orange Technology? If not, I shouldn't be sharing this too freely."
"What's this? Does it involve trade secrets? Surely the company's positioning is something you can talk about?"
After pondering for a moment, Tan Jincheng said,
"As for positioning, right now it's social networking plus gaming. As for the future, it's hard to say—really hard to say. I haven't fully decided yet."
In truth, Orange Technology had no fixed positioning in its early stages. If pressed, its positioning was simply to make money—to achieve profitability as quickly as possible through game and app development, becoming a profitable internet company.
As for the later stages, it would definitely move toward big data. However, big data required vast amounts of user data for training, and whether they could succeed was still unknown.
"If I had to give Orange Technology a positioning, our positioning is to be an internet company that makes money."
That was what Tan Jincheng had said to Kuang Ping when seeking his initial investment.
Through his analysis of the Web 2.0 era and his vision for the upcoming mobile internet age, Tan Jincheng had described Orange Technology as a company capable of achieving self-sufficiency and profitability in its early phase.
It would not require investors to burn massive amounts of cash; it only needed network connections to facilitate partnerships. By drawing more users to Kaixin.com, the platform could eventually incubate a unicorn company dedicated to artificial intelligence and big data.
Investment, after all, was about pitching a grand vision to investors. Tan Jincheng had painted an extraordinarily large picture: inject a bit of money, step in to connect business partners, foster collaborations, and the company could become self-sustaining.
In China, truly profitable internet companies were few and far between at the moment. Everyone was burning money—their own, investors', or capital raised from the stock market.
When true profitability would be realized was a concern shared by many investors.
Dealing with investors was ultimately about dangling the carrot. Whether they bit depended on whether the vision was satisfying enough. If Shen Nanpeng intended to invest, Tan Jincheng would inevitably have to paint that picture for him once again.
However, if it was merely a simple collaboration with Dianping, there was no need. This was, after all, company strategy and not something to blab to just anyone.
"There is something else I can share, though. In a day or two, we're making an official joint announcement with Yongcheng University to launch an agricultural support program."
The early preparations for the agricultural support program were mostly handed over to Yongcheng University.
Abundant in administrative resources, eager for such a fame-boosting opportunity, and well-funded, they operated far more efficiently than Tan Jincheng could on his own.
Four impoverished counties with rich produce but poor transportation were selected across the eastern, southern, western, and northern regions.
Yongcheng University partnered with local authorities on the project, with products from the farmers being jointly purchased by Yongcheng University and Orange Technology.
They established local cold-storage warehouses and partnered with logistics companies.
Once users reached a certain level in Happy Farm, they could choose to convert their in-game crops into real-life fruits and vegetables, which Orange Technology would ship to them for free.
"Won't that cost a fortune? Besides, a completely free model can't be profitable, can it?"
Shen Nanpeng asked with a furrowed brow.
Not only would it fail to generate profit, but it would also eat up all the earnings from the game. How could that be called self-sufficiency?
"Of course it's not just that. Simply giving produce away to game users wouldn't consume that much agricultural product. If that were all, we wouldn't need to build produce warehouses at all, nor could it truly be called helping farmers."
Happy Farm currently had only three million users in total. Sending one package of produce per user wouldn't consume much, and even if all Kaixin.com users were included, it wouldn't justify building four separate cold-storage facilities.
No matter how rich Yongcheng University was, they wouldn't throw money away like that.
"Since it's an agricultural support initiative, we can't limit ourselves to integrating it with the game. Moving forward, we'll also put the purchased produce on our website for sale, effectively adopting an e-commerce model."
Who could afford to just give things away forever? Besides, no completely free charitable effort could ever be sustainable in the long run.
"E-commerce?"
Shen Nanpeng asked in a deep voice.
Pony Ma wasn't the only one capable of seeing through the secret behind this. As a titan in the venture capital world, Shen Nanpeng needed only a few sentences from Tan Jincheng to grasp the commercial interest behind the agricultural support plan.
Agricultural products were not merely produce; behind them lay a powerful industrial chain, and Sequoia Capital had investments in this sector as well.
"You could say that,"
Tan Jincheng replied somewhat perfunctorily, not wishing to go into detail.
Seeing Tan Jincheng's demeanor, Shen Nanpeng couldn't help but smile. Who would have thought that this Little Boss Tan was so guarded?
As a venture capital heavyweight, Shen Nanpeng was an honored guest wherever he went. Even if he expressed the slightest inclination to invest, entrepreneurs would welcome him with open arms, eagerly explaining their business philosophies.
Yet this young man was an exception. Did he really not want investment at all?
"E-commerce is no easy field to tackle,"
Shen Nanpeng said with a meaningful tone.
I don't really care about doing e-commerce either; I just want to use Orange Technology to make money. As for what specific sector we operate in, I don't care at all. How far we can take this depends on how much noise Qingqing, Cheng Hao, and the others can make.
"We'll do our best. I'm not sure how far we can go, but as long as we can help some farmers solve their sales issues, Orange Technology is more than happy to do so,"
Tan Jincheng laughed.
Doing a good job in supporting agriculture served as a golden shield, providing strong protection for Orange Technology, so the company would definitely find a way to keep it going. Besides, the profit potential in this area was by no means small.
They couldn't defeat Alibaba in general e-commerce, but in niche segments, there was still room to do well. In the early stages of e-commerce, many niche e-commerce sites emerged—such as Vipshop—and performed remarkably well.
Furthermore, although Tencent's foundation lay in social networking, they had never given up on e-commerce. However, they genuinely lacked the DNA for e-commerce, throwing vast sums of money into it without success.
When they couldn't build it themselves, they acquired. Dianping, which Shen Nanpeng was currently investing in, would later see Tencent buy a stake.
Yet Dianping didn't make massive waves either; it wasn't until Brother Dong and Pinduoduo came along that genuine competition against Alibaba was achieved.
If Orange Technology possessed e-commerce DNA, its foundation for future cooperation with Tencent would be even stronger.
In short, everything Orange Technology did for now was geared toward making money—earning from investment institutions, games, and agricultural products—and saving those earnings to train big data in the future, laying a solid foundation to support his automotive ambitions.
Although Tan Jincheng was unwilling to elaborate further, Shen Nanpeng kept Orange Technology in mind. The collaboration between Happy Farm and Dianping was indeed something he wished to facilitate, as it would benefit both Dianping and himself.
As for whether to participate in Orange Technology's Series B funding in the future, he would wait and see.
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Beicang.
While Tan Jincheng expanded his network into higher circles, Zhang Yunsong was doing the same.
After receiving Pony Ma's approval, the collaboration negotiations between Orange Technology and the QQ Zone project team progressed rapidly.
Cheng Hao and Huang Xitong would jointly oversee the data integration, while the contract terms were negotiated by Zhang Yunsong, Gu Qingqing, and their respective teams.
The two sides could have finalized the contract terms before Tan Jincheng's return on the 14th, but Zhang Yunsong had intentionally slowed the pace down.
For no other reason than wanting to wait for Tan Jincheng to return.
The chairman of Shanchi Group had been named an Emerging Economic Person of the Year—an honor their own boss had received two years ago.
Although Shanchi's analysts might not match Tencent's, they were in manufacturing and real enterprise, making him theoretically no lesser than his own boss.
Having already established contact and shared drinks together, Zhang Yunsong naturally wouldn't miss this opportunity to forge a deeper connection.
He worked in investment projects, after all—who knew if it might come in handy in the future?
(End of Chapter)