By 8:30 AM, Li Xi had already arrived at the company.
This was a good habit he had maintained since joining the company; as long as he wasn't on a business trip, he would always appear at the company on time.
He had basically stopped returning to school, except for exams, and was instead putting all his energy into his work.
"Mr. Li? Good morning."
HR specialist Song Xinyue knocked on the door of Li Xi's office and then walked in with a smile.
Behind her were three young people.
Li Xi, who was drinking water, put down his cup and said with a smile,
"Are these the new interns?"
"That's right, please sign here. These three are now under your care."
After speaking, Song Xinyue turned to the three people behind her and said,
"This is Mr. Li Xi, Vice President of Renren.com's business group, responsible for the company's marketing operations."
Li Xi waved his hand, smiled at one of them, and said,
"No need for introductions, that's my classmate."
Under the surprised gazes of the other two interns, Mo Weidong smiled wryly, touched his nose, and in accordance with workplace rules, respectfully called out,
"Mr. Li."
Li Xi burst out laughing:
"Same old, just call me Li Xi, don't bother with all that pomp and circumstance. You guys go to your workstations to familiarize yourselves, we'll eat lunch together."
Renren.com was no longer the makeshift setup it once was.
After the organizational structure reform and the establishment of the board of directors, especially with so many new people joining, people no longer called each other by their full names; they mostly used their titles.
For example, now, very few people throughout the company dared to call Chen Pingjiang by his full name; they mostly called him Chairman Chen.
This wasn't so-called bureaucracy, but rather a way to express respect, simplify addresses, and emphasize status.
Chen Pingjiang had thought about using nicknames, after all, it was very popular in internet companies now, as if not having a nickname or an English name meant it wasn't an internet company.
Of course, the two most famous places for using nicknames were: one, Alibaba; and two, bathhouses.
Nominally, nicknames could promote flat management, remove bureaucracy, create an open atmosphere, and prevent competitors from poaching talent.
But in reality, nicknames could not prevent bureaucracy; on the contrary, using nicknames to pretend equality was ridiculous, as names like "Feng Qingyang" (Wind Clear Yang) and "Sweeper Monk") inherently carried strong implications.
Besides, it would cause confusion for partners, "Should I call you 'Mr. Ma' or 'Mr. Feng'?", artificially creating division.
In the end, Chen Pingjiang gave up on using nicknames, finding unified Chinese titles to be quite good.
Leaving Li Xi's office, Mo Weidong felt a surge of emotion.
The current Li Xi was hard to associate with the previous Li Xi, who used to work odd jobs everywhere and was comparatively more reserved.
In just one year, he had become more outgoing and had the aura of a superior.
Kong Yanzhe, an intern from Dongjiang University of Science and Technology, walking next to Mo Weidong, nudged him with his arm:
"Bro, we'll be relying on you from now on. Damn, the department head is your classmate, your regularization is practically guaranteed."
Another intern also joined the conversation:
"By the way, why didn't you apply to Renren.com with your classmate back then? Otherwise, you'd be a 'Mr. [title]' by now, right?"
Mo Weidong smiled bitterly:
"At that time, Mr. Li and I did agree to interview at Renren.com together, but there was still a lot of stuff going on with the student council, so it didn't work out in the end. By the time I completely stepped down from student council work, Renren.com was hardly recruiting current university students anymore, mostly recruiting people from society."
Kong Yanzhe and the other intern were stunned to hear this, thinking to themselves,
"Is this person crazy? Giving up such a good future for some trivial student council matters?"
In fact, the moment Mo Weidong saw Li Xi, he was filled with deep regret.
One can only say that choice is greater than effort, and choice determines life.
"This is Gao Ting, who will be your supervisor."
After arriving at the department, Song Xinyue began the handover:
"Here, Manager Gao, they are all yours."
Supervisor Gao Ting smiled as she saw Song Xinyue off, then turned back to talk to the three interns.
"Introduce yourselves?"
"Kong Yanzhe, Dongjiang University of Science and Technology."
"Yu Feng, Dongjiang University."
"Mo Weidong, Dongjiang University of Finance and Economics."
Yu Feng, the only one among the three from a 985 university, was just about to receive some form of compliment from Gao Ting.
Unexpectedly, Gao Ting turned to carefully examine Mo Weidong next to her, greeting him warmly with an admiring look:
"Oh? I didn't expect you to be from Dongcai (Dongjiang University of Finance and Economics)?"
Kong Yanzhe, from Dongjiang University of Science and Technology, which was also in Xianlin University City, understood why the supervisor admired Mo Weidong as soon as he saw his expression.
Yu Feng next to him was still a bit confused; this scene felt a bit off.
But the next second brought him even more shock.
It seemed as if the words "Dongcai" had opened a floodgate, as old employees, either directly or implicitly, continuously tried to get close to Mo Weidong.
As if sensing Yu Feng's confusion, Kong Yanzhe chuckled and leaned over:
"Are you curious why you, from a 985, aren't getting attention, but Mo Weidong is more popular?"
Yu Feng nodded curiously.
"The boss of this company is from Dongcai, you know? Chen Pingjiang."
"Of course I know that."
Yu Feng thought that if it was just because of Chen Pingjiang and Li Xi, people wouldn't be so enthusiastic about Mo Weidong, would they?
Kong Yanzhe continued,
"Mr. Li Xi, whom you just met, is also from the University of Finance and Economics. Besides, 70% of the senior management are from the University of Finance and Economics, so can you understand why students from the University of Finance and Economics are so popular in our company?"
Yu Feng finally stopped being curious:
"When one person achieves enlightenment, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven."
It must be said that the situation where the "Finance University faction" held power within the company, making colleagues of the same rank look up to them wherever they went, objectively existed.
Even Chen Pingjiang had noticed this phenomenon, which is why he now basically does not recruit current university students, almost all new hires are from external society, trying to dilute the identity and circle of the Finance University.
This doesn't mean Chen Pingjiang is suppressing the Finance University's reputation, but rather, based on objective facts, he strives to treat everyone fairly.
Whether you're from Finance University or Dongda, once you join Renren.com, everyone is on equal footing.
............…
While various VCs/PEs were studying Renren.com and Chen Pingjiang.
Chen Pingjiang was also observing them.
So far, several big fish like Sequoia Capital, IDG, SoftBank, Matrix Partners, and Today Capital had already taken the bait.
Since the explosive growth of China's internet wave in 2006, various international venture capital firms also began to march south and north.
Especially with the rise of Facebook and the arrival of the Web 2.0 era, the influx of hot money into the internet industry intensified.
Qihoo.com received $20 million in venture capital in February 2006.
ChinaBBS simultaneously received $30 million in venture capital.
Chen Yizhou's Mop and Donews also received $48 million in venture capital from international investment institutions such as General Atlantic, DCM, and Accel Partners in March 2006.
After being battered by the internet winter, and with venture capital regaining tolerance and patience towards startups, user loyalty, like the "eyeballs" of old, became the yardstick for capital to measure a website's value.
Community-based websites happened to possess this characteristic — they had vast user groups who were highly loyal to the community or community-related applications.
This could be seen from the various investments received by different types of social networking sites like BBS, Blog, and SNS.
70 venture capital institutions active in the Chinese market showed even more enthusiasm for Web 2.0.
After all, in the Web 2.0 era, entrepreneurs might lose opportunities, while venture capitalists might lose wealth.
Figures showed that in 2005, domestic and foreign institutions engaged in venture capital in China raised a total of $4 billion in new funds, making it the year with the most fundraising in China's venture capital history.
SoftBank Asia raised approximately $640 million for its second fund, becoming the biggest winner in venture capital fundraising.
IDG and the famous Silicon Valley VC Accel Partners jointly launched the IDG-Accel Growth Fund.
Both parties invested $25 million each, and the remaining $250 million of capital basically came from world-renowned LPs.
In addition, nearly 20 venture capital institutions, including CDH Investments, IDG, TDF, and Intel Capital, completed new rounds of fund raising.
In January 2006, venture capital firm DCM announced its plan to invest 4 billion RMB in China over the next 10 years.
In February 2006, Tang Yue announced after resigning as CEO of eLong that he would establish an investment fund exceeding $100 million within the next two months.
2004 was called China's online gaming year, 2005 was the search engine year, and 2006 was the Web 2.0 year.
But the concept of Web 2.0 was still too broad.
Would it be BBS, Blog, or SNS that would break through?
This question finally got the correct answer in 2007, with the rise of SNS websites represented by Facebook.
By its Series B funding round, Facebook's valuation had reached $550 million.
Even more frightening, Facebook's Series C funding round had already started not long ago, and Zuckerberg's perceived valuation was as high as $15 billion.
Yes, you heard that right, in just one year, Facebook's valuation increased by 27.27 times.
It is worth mentioning that Li Ka-shing from Hong Kong invested $60 million in November 2007 and March 2008 respectively, only accounting for a mere 0.4% equity.
Facebook was too expensive.
As a result, venture capital firms turned their attention to China.
At this time, besides Xiaonei.com, there was also the rapidly growing Renren.com.
Although Xiaonei.com had a first-mover advantage, it temporarily did not lack money, and its customer base was singular.
Renren.com was different; it targeted the white-collar market and developed the first social game, which then became a huge hit.
Thus, it is understandable why Renren.com kept investment institutions enthusiastically flocking to it, after all, for investment institutions, Renren.com had not even started its Series A round yet; it was a virgin.
Of course, there was also a larger background to this.
Whether it was MySpace in the US, Cyworld in Korea, or Chen Yizhou's Mop, all had found reliable profit models.
This further strengthened investor confidence and increased the valuation of social networking sites.
This wave of Web 2.0 startups was ferocious.
Even if Renren.com didn't look like the most likely to succeed, it was the one with the best hand.
SoftBank's Sun Zhengyi was a big fat sheep, and this guy was really damn rich, incredibly wealthy.
His investment style was known for being aggressive and forward-looking.
Chen Pingjiang really wanted to take his money, but SoftBank played too big, demanding too much equity.
To be honest, Chen Pingjiang neither needed too much money nor wanted to transfer too many shares.
But it was also impossible to keep SoftBank out.
If Sun Zhengyi was rejected now, according to historical progression, this son of a bitch would eventually directly invest $430 million in Chen Yizhou's Xiaonei.com, taking a 35% stake.
That would be tantamount to giving Chen Yizhou a bullet, a bullet specifically for taking down Renren.com.
(End of this chapter)
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