At 8: 50 on Saturday morning, Li Mu arrived at Baidu's office in Yan Jing. Baidu was in the process of rapid development and expansion. Even on the weekend morning, there were still hundreds of employees working overtime. It was normal for the technical and product departments of the Internet company to work overtime. Li Mu had long been used to it.
When the receptionist heard that he came for Jack Zhou, she hurriedly took him to a conference room. Jack Zhou had told her before that an important guest would come to talk about cooperation today, and she should inform him as soon as he came.
Just after Li Mu sat in the conference room for two minutes, a man in his thirties with a gentle look, wearing a suit, leather shoes, and rimless glasses pushed the door and came in. As soon as he saw Li Mu, he was stunned at first. After a while, he reacted and asked tentatively, "Are you Mr. Li Mu?"
Li Mu nodded. "That's me."
Jack Zhou was stunned.
He had communicated with Li Mu several times via email. Combined with the two projects Li Mu operated, he guessed Li Mu's character with his own intuition. He always felt that this man's age must be between 30 to 35, and he must have had overseas study or even work experience. He was even likely to have worked in a world-famous Internet company. However, he never dreamed that this man looked so young as if he was only about 20 years old.
Although he was very surprised, Jack Zhou still calmed down quickly. He warmly shook hands with Li Mu and said a few courteous words, "Mr. Li, please wait for a moment. Our VP will be here soon."
VP was the abbreviation of vice president. People in the industry liked to use English abbreviations to show that they were high and mighty. Li Mu had long been accustomed to this, so he nodded and did not say much.
As the person in charge of investment, Jack Zhou was usually the one who negotiated with the invested object and played the game on the capital level. However, after several communications with Li Mu, he failed to find any breakthrough point from Li Mu, which made him feel a little frustrated. Today, when he met Li Mu, he found that Li Mu was so young, which made him feel more frustrated in his heart.
A few minutes later, three middle-aged men and a 27-year-old woman came to the conference room. Jack Zhou hurriedly introduced them, focusing on the VP Tan Yaocheng.
Li Mu had heard of this man's name. He worked in Baidu until 2006. After Baidu went public, he retreated unscathed. Then he became an angel investor and invested in many projects, which were relatively successful. He could be regarded as a big winner in life.
Tan Yaocheng did not expect that Li Mu was so young. In fact, he had set a face image for Li Mu in his heart. He did not expect that there was such a big deviation, which was almost the same as Jack Zhou. He was also shocked for a long time before he accepted this reality.
Jack Zhou also introduced other people to Li Mu, such as the technical director and the operation director. Li Mu did not pay much attention to their names, because he knew that there was only one person he needed to conquer now, and that was Tan Yaocheng.
As for the technical director and the operation director of Baidu, what did they have to do with him? Only when he reached a financing agreement with Baidu, these people would play a role.
Tan Yaocheng was also a person who paid attention to efficiency in doing things. So, after a simple courtesy, he began to go straight to the point. "Today, I invited Mr. Li to come here mainly because of Baidu's interest in the two websites Yiting and Tieba. Jack Zhou should have talked to you before. We have the intention to buy these two businesses in a package, and this intention is very sincere. I wonder if Mr. Li …"
Li Mu smiled slightly and raised his hand rudely to interrupt him. "Mr. Tan, about the package acquisition, I have made it clear in the email to Mr. Zhou a long time ago that I will not accept any company's package acquisition intention."
Tan Yaocheng did not expect that Li Mu did not even think about it. He did not even ask Baidu's current price and directly refused the package acquisition. How could such a young man do things so decisively, even to the extent of being arbitrary? Was he too confident in himself, or was he too confident in the future of Yiting and Tieba?
Although Li Mu refused so straightforwardly, Tan Yaocheng still did not give up. He smiled and said, "Mr. Li, don't you want to hear our latest offer? Some time ago, we communicated with investors far away in Silicon Valley. The current offer is much higher than the offer that Jack Zhou gave you before. "
Baidu was very optimistic about the two businesses of Yiting and Tieba, especially Tieba. This was simply a community artifact. With it, there would be a giant magnet to gather users. Combined with the advantages of Baidu, it would inevitably be made into a leader in the community field. They also made an English version of the status quo, analysis, and evaluation of these two businesses and sent it to the investors in Silicon Valley. In the end, the investors gave a clear reply: If Baidu could buy these two businesses, the investors would increase Baidu's capital by 10 million US dollars.
From this, it could be seen that the investors were also very optimistic about the future of the integration of these two businesses with Baidu.
Before Tan Yaocheng came in, he had already given a new offer to Li Mu. 25 million RMB, after tax. This price even made his heart beat faster. A project that had been established for a few months had such a high value. It was simply a miracle in the Internet field.
In the end, he did not expect that Li Mu would say indifferently at this time, "Believe me, Mr. Tan. With the current size of Baidu, you can't afford the price of a package acquisition."
The few people in the conference room all looked embarrassed.
Tan Yaocheng was shocked again. What was the background of this kid? He didn't even ask for the price and directly said that Baidu could not afford it. Wasn't it a little too arrogant?
However, Tan Yaocheng combined the information that Li Mu had previously disclosed and roughly guessed Li Mu's real intention. It was only financing, not selling.
Tan Yaocheng asked, "Mr. Li is very optimistic about these two businesses? What do you think of the future development of these two businesses? "
"Let's put it this way." Li Mu leaned forward slightly and said to the few people with full confidence, "If I compare the future prospects to a grenade, then the Easy Listening Network is just a fuse ring on the grenade."
Speaking up to this point, Li Mu made a circle with his fingers and said, "Please note that it's just the ring on the finger on the fuse ring. It's just an entry point that I found from the online music download field. As for Tieba, it's the fuse of the grenade. The fundamental purpose of the existence of the Easy Listening Network and Tieba is to detonate the real grenade. So, if you ask me how big the future development prospects are, you can compare the power of the fuse and the grenade."
Tan Yaocheng frowned. If the fuse could not be trusted, how much power could it have? It was only negligible. How could it be compared to the grenade? In other words, what Li Mu meant was that the current Easy Listening Network and Tieba were nothing at all. The two added together were just a fuse for his grenade. This kid was so arrogant at such a young age. Was this really good?
Tan Yaocheng decided to give the young man in front of him a wake-up call. He said in a tone of experience, "Although the creativity of the Tieba model is very good, you still lack enough traffic and capital support. Once this model is imitated by companies or individuals with a lot of traffic and capital, I believe they will soon surpass your Tieba and suppress it until it can't lift its head."
The so-called companies with a lot of traffic and capital were actually talking about Baidu itself. The implication was nothing more than a warning to Li Mu that if he rejected Baidu, Baidu could surpass him in minutes.
However, Li Mu said, "If there are companies or individuals who want to imitate my Tieba, it is indeed not difficult. But even if they imitate Tieba after me, they will only be following the trend without a goal."
When the words "following the trend" came out, everyone could feel Li Mu's ridicule. In fact, when they saw Easy Listening Network and Tieba, their first thought was to follow the trend and introduce similar products …
At this time, Li Mu ignored the awkward expressions of the people present and continued, "If anyone here has been paying attention to Tieba, then he must know how fast Tieba's product development speed is. In a little more than a month, we not only launched the singer Tieba, but also launched the Tieba check-in function and the membership upgrade system. Then, we launched the celebrity Tieba that includes all the film and television singers, variety show hosts, and other celebrities from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. After that, we launched an even more powerful function, which is the user-created Tieba! Let me ask you, which company can do such a fast and high-quality product update speed? If it were other companies, it would take at least half a year or even longer to achieve this, right? "
What Li Mu said was indeed true. This kind of product development speed was simply inhuman. The reason why Tieba could do it was because Li Mu understood the success and failure of various Internet products in the future. Every function he asked Kong Lingyu to develop was the successful experience accumulated by others in his previous life after a long time of research, development, and trial and error.
Tan Yaocheng also fell into deep thought. Although Li Mu's words were harsh, it was the unmistakable truth. The product update speed was so fast, and each update's function was almost amazing. This kind of person was really difficult to imitate. He had just imitated someone else's version 1.0, and then someone else's version 3.0 was already out. If he did not have such a strong product development team, he would never be able to catch up.
Seeing that Tan Yaocheng did not speak for a long time, Li Mu cleared his throat and said, "Just now CEO Tan mentioned traffic and funding. You may not know this, but now there are more than four million registered users in Tieba, and more than two hundred thousand daily active users. With such a fast growth rate, are you still worried about traffic? Even if others have more traffic, without a high conversion rate and stickiness like Tieba, it is basically useless. "
"In addition to traffic, there is also funding. I admit that funding is the bottleneck for my next step of development, but I want financing to make up for this problem. I believe that even if I don't take Baidu's money, I still don't have to worry about financing."
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