The subsidiary split went very smoothly. In fact, there was nothing that could go wrong because the internet industry, unlike others, doesn't rely on terrain or water resources; as long as there's an internet connection and a computer, it's fine.
Pokeni is located in Tokyo, which is the first place in Japan to be covered by various high technologies.
Moreover, this subsidiary is just downstairs.
There were quite a few empty floors in this building. Aoki Haruhi rented the 14th floor, then found the 13th floor below it was also empty, so he rented that as well.
With an office location and the company registration process complete, Aoki Haruhi didn't do much in terms of decoration; he just moved a portion of the staff downstairs first.
These people are the ones who will specialize in internet development in the future.
The company already had expansion plans, and as soon as April arrived, another batch of new recruits would come in. The office space on this floor might not be enough, so establishing a subsidiary was actually a natural progression.
Based on the principle of voluntary participation, Aoki Haruhi first invited individuals to sign up, especially programmers and artists. Those who wanted to participate in internet production could sign up first, as spots were limited.
However, once you went downstairs, your employment relationship would definitely be transferred to the P-net subsidiary. Only a few management personnel could retain their parent company employee status while working for the subsidiary.
But only subsidiary personnel could enjoy the subsidiary's own income bonuses; these had to be differentiated.
To encourage employees to move, Aoki Haruhi even offered an attractive condition of a 50% salary increase.
In his previous life, Aoki Haruhi had worked for a period under a boss who owned two subsidiaries. Employees between those two subsidiaries could be 'borrowed' from each other. Aoki Haruhi himself, being quite skilled in technology, often had to handle programming 'borrowed' work for both companies.
However, in the end, he could only receive payment from the company where his official records were kept.
This made him feel very annoyed, as he had contributed to both of the boss's companies and helped solve many difficulties beyond the scope of business.
This experience made Aoki Haruhi realize how black-hearted and exploitative capitalists could be.
Therefore, this time, to make the 'borrowed' personnel feel better, he offered a special preferential treatment: although you are 'borrowed' by the subsidiary, I will compensate you through other forms of bonuses.
All contributions and performance made within the subsidiary can be reimbursed through bonuses from the parent company.
It could be said that Aoki Haruhi was already very considerate of his employees.
Pokeni is now quite wealthy, so as long as you respond to the company's plans and calls, there will definitely be enough money.
However, this mobilization plan was actually not going smoothly.
Initially, Aoki Haruhi thought these people might be too shy, so he made some changes to the application system: employees could send emails to the CEO's mailbox to apply. You didn't have to discuss it with others, and you could avoid being criticized by others.
But almost a week after the mobilization plan was announced, Aoki Haruhi still hadn't received any applications.
This was strange.
So Aoki Haruhi called the main person in charge, Akanishi Ken, the head of programming, into his office.
"Akanishi-san, what do you think is going on? No one is signing up even with salary increases and bonuses? Is there a problem?" Aoki Haruhi asked, puzzled.
Akanishi Ken was slightly startled, scratching his head with some difficulty.
He didn't have much hair on his head to begin with, and his scratching made it look even more sparse.
"CEO, this matter, well, it's simple yet difficult to explain."
Akanishi Ken gave an awkward smile, "For the employees, Pokeni is our home. Now, although a subsidiary has been established, and it's just upstairs and downstairs, and the working environment, the target audience, and the work content all seem to have not changed much.
But in everyone's hearts, there's a very clear psychological shift—
That is, from now on, I will no longer be an employee of Pokeni, but an employee of P-net.
It's equivalent to being driven out of one's home."
"You can say people are nostalgic, or unwilling to change the status quo, or even that everyone is afraid of being 'abandoned.' In short, this is human nature. Can you understand this feeling, CEO?
Working for so many years, and then having to leave.
It's actually very difficult to make that decision."
Oh, is that how it is?
Aoki Haruhi nodded.
"I understand."
Although Akanishi Ken spoke very tactfully, Aoki Haruhi generally understood the situation.
Firstly, as Akanishi Ken said, it's human nature. In his previous life, when Aoki Haruhi worked at NetEase in China, he actually encountered such a situation—
Many old employees of the Fantasy Westward Journey and Journey to the West project teams, even though they had opportunities to establish new studios or go to new studios, preferred to stay in the old projects, acting as marginal personnel, rather than becoming key members and core staff in new projects.
Because the Fantasy Westward Journey and Journey to the West projects were stable and profitable.
They also had more dividends, and they could earn more bonuses for doing less work.
New projects were an unknown. As core members of a new project, if the project succeeded, they would naturally earn more, but if it failed, they couldn't return to the old project.
Humans are animals that fear risk.
There might also be the 'attachment to home' component Akanishi Ken mentioned, which might be even more pronounced in Japan than in China, but Aoki Haruhi's judgment was—
They were uncertain about the future of the new subsidiary.
Uncertainty means opportunity, but it also means risk.
This was also Aoki Haruhi's problem.
He drew a big picture for Masayoshi Son, and Masayoshi Son, being such a 'gambler' and someone already involved in computers, software, and the internet, knew upon hearing Aoki Haruhi's pitch that he could go all-in with a heavy investment.
But the company's employees actually didn't understand this big picture.
It also indicated that Aoki Haruhi hadn't drawn the picture well enough.
Aoki Haruhi self-reflected, determined to draw the picture well in the coming days, letting the employees know how brilliant the future of this 'P-Net' subsidiary was.
Only when people see hope for the future will they have enough motivation to strive.
Think about it, why do people send their children to college no matter how poor they are? Isn't it because there's a saying, 'Knowledge changes destiny'?
If knowledge couldn't change destiny, who would still be willing to send their children to college?
It would be enough to just be able to work and support oneself.
Secondly, it also showed that within the company, the current programmers and artists actually lacked 'bold' and 'ambitious' people.
This inevitably made Aoki Haruhi a little disappointed.
Without aggressive employees, he couldn't expect them to become the leadership of the new company.
Aoki Haruhi had thought these guys were shy, but he didn't expect the truth to be like this.
It was heartbreaking, truly heartbreaking.
"In that case, let's designate a portion of employees to go over first, those who will do basic infrastructure. Then, all official employees of the subsidiary will be new recruits, specializing in internet-related fields. Artists will also be entirely new hires.
You and Sakata should compile the specific list of required personnel and submit it to Ayase Akane for processing.
Once the new recruits are trained, we'll transfer these old employees back. In addition to their normal parent company salaries, we'll give them additional bonuses each month.
Employees who perform well will receive more bonuses.
You can formulate the detailed rules and regulations, and I'll implement them." Aoki Haruhi said.
Since everyone was unwilling, he could only call out names like a teacher.
"Understood, CEO." Akanishi Ken nodded.
The CEO's decision-making was truly swift and decisive; he immediately found the crux of the problem.
Rather than having unwilling people build the subsidiary, it's better to recruit entirely new staff. At least the new recruits are blank slates and will have a stronger sense of identity and belonging to their first company.
...
Aoki Haruhi believed that as long as the first subsidiary succeeded, and after going public and sharing the profits, a large number of employees would probably be scrambling to work for the second subsidiary.
This first one was the most crucial.
So he himself would have to devote more energy to it in the future.
He also needed to cultivate a product manager with a keen sense and creativity.
This was even harder than cultivating a Producer.
After all, the cultivation of game Producers has a discernible path; game has been developing for decades, and there's a complete set of training procedures.
But if you want to cultivate a product manager for an internet product, that's very difficult.
Because this person needs to be able to integrate existing information, uncover user needs, and have a thorough understanding of the internet, physical products, and the market. Only then can they create sufficiently good internet products.
It requires foresight.
There's no set pattern to follow; it relies more on the individual's talent, which is actually very difficult.
Aoki Haruhi's basic idea was to find a smart young man, then he would lead him to work on requirements for a period. Even if he didn't have much creativity, at least being able to execute Aoki Haruhi's ideas would be acceptable.
After all, Aoki Haruhi knew the internet development prospects for the next 30 years, so as long as execution was in place, everything would go smoothly.
"But CEO, the subsidiary is open, the only question is, what will P-net do?" Akanishi Ken wasn't quite sure.
Pokeni only has a game forum right now, can you really do anything fancy with that?
"Two core things."
Aoki Haruhi had actually thought things through quite clearly these past few days.
"The first is to implement image embedding and create website functions first," Aoki Haruhi said. "We'll start with game websites to promote game products and integrate the forum functions."
Afraid that Akanishi Ken wouldn't fully understand, Aoki Haruhi even pulled over a whiteboard and drew a bunch of web page diagrams on it.
Websites themselves don't make money; they even lose money.
If you want to create a portal website or a news website, you also need support from professionals in news media to obtain interview permissions before sending out reporters to gather news.
This is following the Yahoo and Sina routes.
One is that the website is open for free, and you still need to pay for traffic, which definitely loses money.
But this thing is a channel, which is equivalent to locking user traffic inside. In the future, traffic can be monetized. The more people there are, the more money is lost, but the more powerful the website becomes.
Monetization methods include providing advertising space, with manufacturers paying fees.
Additionally, users can be guided to projects that can be monetized, such as game.
In the future, these portal websites and game forums will all be Pokeni's game traffic channels.
Before making money, it's a mature process to lose money first to cultivate users.
Fortunately, there aren't many competitors in this field right now, and P-NET has the support of Pokeni and SoftBank, two major financial backers, so stability should not be an issue.
"Oh, I see."
Akanishi Ken nodded, taking notes in his notebook.
He thought carefully for a moment, then went out to get a camera and took many pictures of the CEO's 'website diagram'.
At that time, mobile phones weren't even fully popularized yet, let alone their camera functions.
Cameras were still highly sought after, especially those made in Japan.
It was convenient to take photos and record things while working.
He could develop them later.
Akanishi Ken was acting like he was solving a police case.
Aoki Haruhi couldn't help but smile bitterly.
"The second is search. We'll start with internal site search, then move on to network resource search."
Aoki Haruhi continued to draw on the whiteboard.
"Internal site search, or forum post search, that's easy to understand, right?"
"All resources are stored in the server. The key issue is how to improve search efficiency, allowing users to find the content they want in a short time. My requirement for you is a maximum of 5 seconds for feedback.
And the accuracy must also be sufficiently high."
"Then there's multi-node search, distributed search," Aoki Haruhi explained. "When the data volume and access volume are large enough, and multiple servers are needed to work together, how can we still achieve the same user experience? This is very crucial."
Although Aoki Haruhi spoke as if it were easy, and his drawings were simple and clear, there was immense technical difficulty involved.
To implement the search function Aoki Haruhi described, it fundamentally required web crawling technology, retrieval and ranking technology, web processing technology, big data processing technology, natural language processing technology, and so on.
And these were all blank slates at the moment.
After all, the internet was just beginning; there weren't even portal websites yet. Even if there were search functions, they were basically for small data volumes.
Initially, no one would have imagined that millions, even tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people would be surfing the internet simultaneously in the future.
The basic development model of the world is 'encountering a problem' — 'analyzing the problem' —'solving the problem.'
For someone like Aoki Haruhi to see the future at a glance and directly present the solution before the problem even arises can only be described as a rare opportunity.
Akanishi Ken listened, dumbfounded.
What on earth was the CEO thinking about all day?
Aoki Haruhi put down the marker, clapped his hands, and said with a smile, "If we do these two things well, our internet company will have no problems in the future."
Akanishi Ken nodded, though he couldn't quite grasp what this internet company would become in the future.
But for some reason, he felt it was incredibly powerful!
...
After planning the future of the subsidiary, the rest was the execution process.
After the teacher called names, Akanishi Ken and Sakata Taiji each selected a few people to transfer to the P-NET subsidiary.
There were 15 in total, and another 30 still needed to be recruited.
Completely different from the feeling of being a supervisor at the US subsidiary, these selected'senior employees' had a rather grand air of a hero going forth never to return.
"I'm leaving. I'll miss you all."
programmer Jonouchi said sadly.
Aoki Haruhi stood in the CEO's office, silently watching all of this through the frosted glass.
He frowned deeply.
Good heavens, you guys are heading to the execution ground, aren't you?
"Ayase-san, can I hug you?" Jonouchi shamelessly requested.
Ayase Akane pushed him away. "Jonouchi-san, don't make it sound like a life-and-death farewell. It's just moving one floor down, really."
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