Chapter 1223 Welcome to Join

“There is really no shortage of money at the moment,” said Mr. Ma. “The first tranche of US$5 million and the second tranche of US$25 million are nothing to Mr. Feng who is used to big projects. What, but to us, it is a huge amount of money, to us, it is more money than all the money in the world put together,"

He said this again, and exaggeratedly drew a big circle in the air with his hand.

"With Mr. Cai's scientific management, there is still a lot of money left,"

The CFO of Ali who accompanied him still looked gentle and elegant, smiling and nodding.

Looking at the richest man Ma, who looked very thin now, Feng Yiping still shook his head, "I still feel something is wrong,"

"Regardless of the size of the investment, I have always been a prudent person, and both of you can understand this. If we are not prudent, then our company will not be far from bankruptcy,"

“Mr. Feng is right, the larger the investment, the greater the potential risks, so it is relatively more rigorous,” Director Cai said.

"Yes, that's it," Feng Yiping picked up a piece of paper from the table, "Actually, I have been paying attention to Mr. Ma and our Alibaba, whether it is Alibaba before or our Taobao now,"

Mr. Cai nodded first. Feng Yiping's words made him feel comfortable.

Because Feng Yiping, who was born as a salesman, still habitually uses "our" instead of "yours", and most people in China, including many salesmen later, still use "our" when negotiating with customers. Words such as "I" and "you" are clear-cut.

"This is a random calculation I made this morning based on public information. It may not be true, but you two can take a look."

He handed the piece of paper to Ma Shaofu, "Alibaba's initial investment was 500,000 yuan, the first financing was US$5 million, and the second financing was US$25 million. This is our total investment,"

"We used to burn almost all money. Now our main income comes from fees charged to export service providers, which are mainly members of Chengxintong. The annual fee for members of Chengtongtong is 2,300 yuan per year. I don't know the membership fees of Chengtongtong." The specific number is probably 50,000, so the revenue is close to 120 million,"

"We can consider this part to be one-third of Alibaba's total revenue. Calculated this way, Alibaba's total revenue last year should be less than 400 million yuan,"

"I don't know how much net income there is, but according to reports, Alibaba was not profitable at least last year,"

"I also built a website. Let's not talk about the construction cost of the website. Let's talk about the promotion expenses, which account for the largest proportion of daily daily expenses in the early stage. If my estimate is correct, Alibaba spent at least 100 million on promotion in the United States. In China, Yes, even if it’s 50 million,”

"And according to my understanding of Taobao, this should be a much more comprehensive website than the few professional websites I have in China. It should be a very expensive job. The investment so far is not to mention two 100 million, at least more than 150 million, plus the construction of Alibaba website, at least more than 200 million,"

"Then, after adding labor costs and office costs, from 2000 to now, after two financings and operating income, there is not much left. How can there be money?"

Feng Yiping counted them one by one. Ma Shoufu was smiling at first, but later he was stunned, and his face turned red for the rare occasion, "Mr. Feng, you are really good at math,"

Director Cai was a little solemn. It seemed that Mr. Feng lived up to his reputation. The figures he calculated really seemed to be derived by rounding the key figures in the company's financial report.

"I'm actually average in math," Feng Yiping laughed. He knew that Ma's richest man was pretty average in math when he was in school.

After he became the richest man, this became a reason for many children who struggled with mathematics to defend themselves.

"Or is it that the Taobao I think is not the Taobao Mr. Ma currently wants to build?"

Well, money is not short of money. This is actually Ma's mantra when facing investors. Many start-up companies are actually as conflicted as him.

First of all, the company's development requires large amounts of capital investment. However, all founders do not want to over-dilute their control rights at the capital level from the beginning.

But who would have thought that this time, he would meet a serious person like Feng Yiping, who is the least able to lie about numbers. Ma, who has always been very confident in front of investors and has a very straight waist, felt so embarrassed for the first time. For the first time, I became less confident.

This is also what Feng Yiping wants to achieve. No matter how much he admired him in the past, investment is investment now.

However, this degree must be grasped well. If you force someone into a corner all of a sudden and make it impossible to turn around, then naturally it will be difficult to continue the conversation.

So after showing that you understand the situation very well, you have to prepare a step for the other party.

This step was well prepared, and Ma Shoufang stepped on it without looking, "Mr. Feng, what kind of website do you think the Taobao we are going to build will be?"

"In my opinion, if Alibaba is to help small businesses expand exports and solve their survival difficulties, then Taobao is to help many people use Taobao to start businesses, thereby increasing their income and improving their lives. So we There will be many categories involved on the website,”

In the current Taobao promotion copy, you can often see something like this, "Laid-off workers start a business on Taobao to become well-off", or something like this, "Disabled guy regains confidence in life by selling local specialties on Taobao" and the like .

It was completely different from the high-end and classy reports that were common later, such as "a certain store's single-day sales exceeded 10 million" and "Taobao accounted for a certain proportion of China's GDP".

"I think our ultimate goal should be to put all products on the website and all services on this platform, so that all legal entities and individuals who recognize the e-commerce business opportunities can use this platform,"

"The construction of such a platform, as well as the improvement of related supporting and support systems, is not a simple matter, and it cannot be built by just spending a little money,"

“I want to ask you two, isn’t the Taobao we want to build the way I envisioned it?”

"Of course that's what you imagined. Of course you want to put all the products and services on the website," Ma Shoufang said. He felt that Feng Yiping's two sentences expressed his true feelings.

"So this is not cheap?"

The two men laughed a little sheepishly.

Feng Yiping also smiled, "Okay, I can actually understand this concern, but for me, there is really no need to have such concerns,"

"To be honest, I am the most troublesome person. I originally hoped to only work three hours a day at most, but now I often work thirteen hours a day. I am too busy with my own affairs, let alone have other thoughts. ,"

This is what Mr. Ma and the others are most worried about.

In addition to the phrase "there is no shortage of money," they often say another phrase to other investors, "If you think you can do it better than us, then you can do it."

Many investors who were pointing fingers were defeated by their words. Those people acted like strategists and came up with ideas. Who wanted to do it if they were allowed to be responsible for the operation of a start-up company? Who can do it?

However, these words are obviously not suitable for Feng Yiping.

If he does it, he will do it, and it doesn't necessarily mean he won't do it well.

As we all know, he is not only a scholar and an investor, but also a successful businessman.

"Of course, I will not be a purely financial investor. I am not modest in saying that in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, I can really provide greater support now, that is, compared with SoftBank, our largest institutional investor. It is by no means inferior, you can go and verify this,"

The richest man, Ma, nodded. Judging from the information he had collected in a hurry, what Feng Yiping said was indeed true.

"I have another advantage that SoftBank cannot match. We all know that when Taobao succeeds and whether it succeeds, it depends on whether we can cultivate this market and cultivate more users, so at least the previous For a few years, publicity is very important, that’s the key of the keys, right,”

These words simply spoke to their hearts. As expected, these people who have had successful entrepreneurial experiences are different from those investors.

"During this period, my domestic websites and foreign websites can all import traffic to Taobao. Our domestic Automobile.com, Jiayuan.com, the official websites of various companies, and NEXTDOOR in the United States can all import traffic to Taobao." flow,"

"Very welcome, very welcome," Ma Shoufang immediately grabbed Feng Yiping's hand. Under eBay's siege, this was their biggest concern at the moment. If Feng Yiping could really do this, it would be a great help to them.

"One more thing, don't we think that only domestic entrepreneurs can better understand domestic entrepreneurs?" Feng Yiping said.

"We don't have any problem," Mr. Ma nodded vigorously, "There is no problem, Mr. Feng, Alibaba welcomes you to join,"

"You'd better call me by my name," Feng Yiping held his hand.

"That's fine, I'm a few years older than you, so I'll ask you to be older for a while, and you can call me Lao Ma,"

"Old horse,"

"A flat,"