Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

In 2012, anyone with a portfolio of offline merchant contacts could easily find a business development job, whether at a group-buy or a food delivery website.

Jinsha Venture Capital, Maitun Investment, and Renite Fund all began leveraging their personal networks to find a new buyer for Lashou Network.

Although there’s a saying in the investment world—”Don’t invest with the intention of screwing someone over, hoping a fool will be left holding the bag”—it’s not so funny when you’re the one left holding it.

When Zhu Xiaohu’s call came, Chen Yansen asked, exasperated, ”President Zhu, do I look like a fool to you?”

”If you’re willing to take over, Jinsha Venture Capital, Maitun Investment, and Renite Fund will make a follow-on investment of fifty million US dollars.”

Zhu Xiaohu said with a dry laugh.

They were investment firms, not professional managers. They were skilled at investing money, but when it came to actually running a startup, they might be even worse than Wu Bo.

After thinking long and hard, staring at his contact list for what felt like an eternity, Zhu Xiaohu had still decided to call Chen Yansen.

A tree is known by its shadow, a man by his name. In the business world, Boss Chen’s reputation was rock-solid.

FoxTao, Orange Technology, Pinbei Mall, Kuai Pao, Fast Taxi, and Toutiao—his projects spanned from offline to online, from e-commerce to O2O local services, and not a single one had failed.

Zhu Xiaohu had no doubt: this was the power of reputation.

”What’s the price?”

Chen Yansen asked with a casual smile.

Lashou Network had raised 110 million US dollars in its Series C funding round at a valuation of 1.1 billion. If the asking price was over 200 million US dollars, there was no point in even discussing it.

Frankly, Chen Yansen was somewhat interested in Lashou Network. It had a service network covering over 400 cities and nearly 6,000 employees nationwide. If he could acquire it, not only would he gain a massive trove of merchant resources for Kuai Pao, but he could also drag Meituan and Dianping deeper into the quagmire of the group-buy business.

Give Kuai Pao another two or three years, and once the era of 4G and the mobile internet arrived, it could rely on Orange Technology, Today Technology, and Pinbei to channel traffic its way. At that point, even if Wang Xin had three heads and six arms, he wouldn’t be able to defeat the fully-fledged Pei Yi.