Chapter 505 KuaiGo goes global and fires its first shot in North America! Meng Yuanzhi: I will give you everything you want
On October 28, based on the Crystal Project, Xunlei launched the Wanke Cloud NAS, which is itself a private cloud disk.
However, due to the application of shared computing and blockchain technology, as well as the emergence of Wanke Coin, many people regard it as a mining tool.
The official price of a Wanke Cloud NAS is 399 yuan. On the day of its launch, the 100,000 units in stock were sold out in just ten minutes.
The starting price of Wanke Coin also soared from 0.01 yuan to 0.17 yuan!
In just one day, it increased more than ten times!
“If you missed out on Petercoin, do you also want to miss out on Wankecoin?”
Just based on this advertising slogan thought up by netizens, the number of participants in the Wanke Cloud NAS pre-sale page quickly exceeded one million.
Seeing this, the scalpers hired programmers overnight to write flash sale software in order to get a piece of the pie.
At the same time, the "group buying loan" founded by Wang Xin has grown bigger and bigger, and the platform's capital volume has exceeded 10 billion.
The concept of sharing economy is becoming increasingly popular in the market, and this trend has quickly spread to the investment circle.
For a time, all kinds of entrepreneurial projects with the "sharing" label, such as shared bicycles, shared cars, and shared offices, became popular targets for capital pursuit.
Investors have rushed in, from early seed rounds to A and B rounds, and funds continue to pour into these tracks, as if as long as the word "sharing" is involved, it means huge market potential.
Colorful shared bicycles began to appear in large numbers on the streets and alleys, quickly penetrating from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier cities. OFO bicycles occupied the mainstream market, Didi Bike and Ofo Bike were in the second tier of the industry, and Bluegogo, Youbai, Coolqi, Xiaoqiang, Xiaolu, Lightning and Wukong Bikes, etc., shared the remaining market share.
With dozens of companies fighting each other, the competition is becoming increasingly fierce.
OFO bikes were also affected and were forced to be involved in the subsidy war. Previously, riding bikes was free in first- and second-tier cities, but now it is a nationwide war.
Dozens of shared bicycle brands are burning money together, causing investors to be very worried.
Everyone is gritting their teeth and persevering!
On the evening of the first day after Chen Yansen returned to Xucheng, he received a call from Hu Weiyi.
Simply put, she plans to start the B round of financing when OFO's bicycle market share is the highest, in order to store "bullets and food" for the upcoming shared bicycle war.
Chen Yansen agreed to the other party's proposal without any hesitation.
At the same time, shared car outlets are being rolled out in major business districts and communities, attempting to change people's travel habits with a "pick up and return" model.
The shadow of mobile toilets still looms in the minds of potential users, leaving them with the stereotype that shared cars are "dirty, messy and poor".
Immediately afterwards, Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun once again started to curse each other online over the issue of pre-installed software on mobile phones.
The "fight" between the two has become one of the daily entertainments of netizens. No one pays attention to the cause of the incident. Everyone is analyzing who curses the most dirty between Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun.
Chen Yansen sat in the back seat of the Ghost car, casually sliding the screen and taking a quick glance to read the hot news of the day.
What caught his attention was that Taodiandian had entered the Shanghai takeout market and was comprehensively developing the takeout market in East China with Hangzhou, Jinling, Luzhou and other places as its centers.
After all, Ma Liyun wants to compete with Senlian Capital in the O2O field!
"When Li Yanhong calmed down, Lao Ma jumped out. It's really the Asian Colosseum. Without hundreds of fights, it's hard to determine the winner."
Chen Yansen sneered and thought to himself.
Under the pressure of Lingxi, 360, Sogou and Penguin Soso, the market share of Baidu's search business fell below 40% for the first time.
Ever since Chen Yansen authorized the Morse language model to 360 Search, Sogou Search, and Penguin Search, Baidu's strategic defense line in the search engine has shown a trend of collapse.
A few days ago, Zhou Hongyi sent him a message jokingly, saying that Baidu is also developing AI language models, hoping to use this to turn the tables.
But how could Qiandu catch up with Chen Yansen's technical accumulation of more than two years in a short period of time?
Orange Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has already gone through the most difficult period of exploration, from building the algorithm framework to accumulating training data.
The number of annotated high-quality corpora alone has reached billions, the underlying model has undergone hundreds of iterations, and even the hardware acceleration card is an architecture that the team has independently optimized.
If they can produce a barely usable AI language model within half a year, it would be considered an impressive technical team.
Chen Yansen did not look down on Robin Li, but he had walked this path himself and knew too well how many difficulties there were in developing language models in 2013.
It is simply unrealistic to expect those people at Baidu who are used to slacking off to do this.
However, as Didi Chuxing tightened its defenses, Kuaidi Chuxing's market share increased by another 5%, reaching 85% overall, making it the undisputed leader in the online ride-hailing industry.
Didi Chuxing's market share has dropped to 8%, and the remaining 7% of the market is divided among AA Travel, Yidao Car, E-Da Taxi, Dudu Taxi and Taxi Xiaomi.
In Chen Yansen's view, although the battle between Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache cost a lot of money, it also cultivated the market.
There is an endless stream of challengers!
But at this time, Cheng Weixing was not in China. Instead, he went to New York and joined forces with Huang Zheng, Zhou Shouzhi, Mao Chaorong and others to establish a Kuaidi Taxi branch in North America and released a launch announcement on the Mimo short video.
"KuaiGo! Global express, just one click away!"
KuaiGo is a brand name specially created by Kuaidi Taxi for overseas markets. It not only retains the pinyin homonym of "Kuaidi" (fast taxi), but also incorporates the dynamic feeling of the English word "Go", intuitively conveying the core selling point of convenient travel.
The team plans to start in New York, simultaneously connecting to local taxi companies and private car resources, leveraging Mimo short video's user base in North America and using commercials to launch its first campaign.
The overseas expansion plan was formulated by Chen Yansen. He did not want to be passive and instead of waiting for Uber to come to him, he decided to put the battlefield in the Lighthouse Country and compete head-on with Uber, Lyft, SideCar and other taxi apps.
In fact, the arrival of KuaiGo has indeed put great pressure on Uber, Lyft, and SideCar.
After all, KuaiGo's parent company, Kuaidi Dache, and even Senlian Capital, have technological and financial strength in China that cannot be underestimated.
Cheng Weixing even put a corresponding promotional video on the big screen in New York's Times Square.
For new users, you can enjoy ride discounts by using specific discount codes, such as the "new rider 5" discount code, which can instantly save $5.
For old users, there is also a discount code of "new rider 3" for an instant discount of 3 yuan.
For KuaiGo's partner drivers, gas coupons with discounts of up to 10% are provided, which is equivalent to additional subsidies and bonuses.
On the marketing side, Cheng Weixing's strategy is very conservative. He obviously wants to try and fail first, and then compete for the North American online car-hailing market on a large scale after the business model is running smoothly.
Although he has extensive experience in China, the business environment, user needs and driver characteristics in North America are significantly different from those in China.
For example, strict local labor laws require drivers to have legal working status, which limits the scope and number of driver recruitment from the source.
In terms of user habits, North American consumers attach more importance to privacy protection and are much more sensitive to apps collecting location information than domestic consumers. This forces the LBS-based precise dispatching function to add more permission instructions and security tips.
In addition, even the payment methods have to be re-adapted because locals rely more on credit cards rather than mobile payments. The existence of tipping culture also requires the pricing system to reserve a flexible additional fee module.
Cheng Weixing knew clearly that the radical domestic strategy of "burning money on subsidies in exchange for market share" would not work in North America.
Firstly, local antitrust scrutiny is strict, and large subsidies can easily be judged as unfair competition;
Secondly, users are less sensitive to price and are more concerned about the stability and security of the service.
That's why he chose to take small steps and move fast: initially, he only piloted in two cities, New York and San Francisco, with the number of drivers controlled within a thousand. He collected user feedback through small-scale operations and gradually adjusted the order-taking logic, customer service system and dispute resolution mechanism.
This "conservative" offensive approach is not cowardice, but a necessary process to break down and reorganize successful domestic experiences and re-adapt them to overseas soil.
Cheng Weixing clearly remembers Chen Yansen telling him during a video conference: "We must first learn to walk in North America before we can even think about running. Otherwise, if we take too big a step, we'll easily stumble."
That's why he is so cautious.
The other side.
As soon as Chen Yansen arrived at the company, he saw a familiar figure.
"Mr. Liang, why are you here?"
Chen Yansen walked over, knocked on the small round table in the rest area, and asked curiously.
Hearing this, Liang Jinsong subconsciously raised his head. After seeing that it was Chen Yansen, he said with a smile on his face, "Come to see my nephew."
After saying that, he pointed to the woman beside him and introduced her: "Liang Yijun, my sister, and also the mother of Cai Qiming, the director of the Pinbei Design Department."
Cai Qiming’s mother?
Chen Yansen looked at Liang Yijun, who looked only in her forties and was well maintained.
At this time, he suddenly realized that Liang Jinsong was not invited by Hu Ruihui, but came to China to visit relatives.
Two days ago, Hu Ruihui didn't say anything and Liang Jinsong didn't explain, which made him mistakenly think that Hu Ruihui was influential enough to call Liang Jinsong to Yanjing.
"Mother, uncle! Boss!"
Cai Qiming received a text message from Liang Jinsong and hurried to the rest area on the first floor.
To his surprise, Chen Yansen seemed to have already known his uncle.
"Old Cai, you will have a new colleague." Chen Yansen joked with a smile.
Afterwards, he said to Liang Jinsong, "Come up and have tea with me when you're done."
After saying that, he walked into the elevator.
"Uncle, have you met with Mr. Chen?" Cai Qiming couldn't help but ask, "Also, what did the boss mean when he said I need a new colleague?"
Cai Qiming actually guessed it, but he was not sure.
"I have accepted Mr. Chen's invitation and will start work on November 1st as co-CEO of Star Source Technology."
Liang Jinsong smiled faintly and explained briefly.
…
…
With a "ding" sound, the elevator door slowly opened.
Chen Yansen pushed the door and walked into the office. Although he had not been back to the company for half a month, the office was still spotless.
As soon as his butt touched the chair, the phone on the table rang. He picked it up and saw that the caller ID showed Meng Yuanzhi's private number.
He thought about it and knew what the other party meant, so he pressed the answer button.
"One billion interest-free loans, plus another 4 billion low-interest loans, free industrial land, a 70% discount on taxes and fees for the first five years, settlement, housing, supporting equipment and resources - whatever you want, I'll give it to you."
"As long as you keep Xingyuan Technology's headquarters in Luzhou!"
Meng Yuanzhi didn't even bother with the greetings and started talking about policies and benefits.
(End of this chapter)
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