Chapter 568 Qixuan’s Bad Move
After his trip to Australia, Shi Lei returned to Wudong.
Before leaving, Shi Lei visited Huo Chengdong again. Shi Lei still had full respect for Mr. Huo. Huo Chengdong made an appointment with him that on Lao Bai's eightieth birthday, he would definitely return to China and have a good time drinking and talking.
Although many things happened in Sydney these days that were beyond Shi Lei's control, the results were quite satisfactory. Shi Lei didn't know that this period of time in China was not peaceful either.
Cao Chong was humiliated and returned to the imperial capital, desperate to expand.
Yao Er followed Shi Lei's instructions and put the domain name online, but instead of linking it to Qixuan's QR code, he made a static page that was very similar to Chongbai's homepage, but The main part in the middle of the web page says, "Due to financial problems, our company will terminate all business on May 1st."
Without deliberately doing anything, the media quickly swarmed in. For a brand-new project like shared bicycles, there is always no shortage of media attention.
As a result, within just twenty-four hours, many media, especially online media, published screenshots of pages under the domain name chongbai.
On Weibo and Moments, the two main promotion channels for shared bicycles, a large number of people frantically forwarded several information released by official media, and one by one spontaneously shouted, "Is this the end of the rush?" The situation feels quite out of control.
After Cao Chong learned about this incident, he immediately asked someone to investigate. However, how could Yao Er let him easily catch the clue? He had already transferred the domain name under Shi Lei's name and used a foreigner's information to board the plane.
But Cao Chong is not stupid. Of course he knows that this is Shi Lei's fault, so in all publicity, he emphasizes that the domain name of Chongbai Technology's official website is chongbike, not Chongbai. He also immediately started public relations to refute the rumors, saying that there would be no problem in rushing to worship. This was all caused by a competing company.
Through Cao Chong's efforts, although the official media have deleted their Weibo posts, millions of people have retweeted them.
Cao Chong used Rang Chongbai's social account to publish news refuting the rumors, but the number of forwardings of such news was very few. Although the comments below are all criticizing its competitors for being unscrupulous, the number of people is too small. Moreover, Cao Chong soon tasted the pain. Chongbai Bicycle, which originally had nearly 100,000 installed bases and more than 40,000 users in the imperial capital, had more than 30,000 people uninstall the Chongbai Bicycle APP in just 48 hours. Among the more than 30,000 people, more than half have paid a deposit.
There are more than 10,000 people, which may not seem like much, but each person has a deposit of 299, which means that more than 4 million in deposits were applied for refund in an instant. For a family that has just received an investment of 20 million, And for a company that has burned more than 15 million, it is almost equivalent to a run.
Moreover, it may be difficult for these refunded users to return to the customer list in the future.
On the one hand, Cao Chong asked the company to return the deposits of these users as soon as possible, because at this moment, once a user breaks the news that there is a problem with the deposit return, it is likely to trigger a new round of runs. On the other hand, Cao Chong constantly contacted the media and asked the media to speak for him, saying that his competitors' methods were too despicable and they would use the law as a weapon to fight back.
But Cao Chong himself understood very well that this was just shouting and shouting, hoping to make the lost users more rational. In fact, his lawyer told him that the possibility of winning a lawsuit in this kind of matter was zero. First of all, Cao Chong could not confirm that there was an inevitable connection between the domain name and Qixuan. Secondly, even if it could be confirmed that the domain name belonged to Qixuan, the page was also published by Qixuan, but Chongbai Technology was never mentioned from the beginning to the end. On the page There is only one "our company".
At best, Qixuan can only be morally condemned, and this is risky, because once Cao Chong clearly says that Qixuan competes maliciously, Qixuan can even sue him for defamation.
Cao Chong has been going crazy these days. Seeing that the company has burned almost all the investors' money, it has nearly 50,000 users and more than 10 million deposits. He just happened to increase his investment and prepare for rapid expansion. Most of the deposit was used for the second round of bicycle customization and promotion, but he did not expect that Shi Lei would make such a damaging move.
This directly caused the amount of deposits to drop by nearly half. Cao Chong had to use the company's remaining working capital to return it to those users who had run on it. The seemingly abundant funds suddenly became a little stretched.
According to Cao Chong's estimation, the funds he has on hand can last at least one month. He has even accelerated his contact with Yangcheng and is ready to wait until the next batch of bicycles are in place to put them into Yangcheng to occupy the Yangcheng market first. But now that he has been dealt with like this, the funds in his hand are not enough. Although the money has been paid to the bicycle manufacturer and bicycles will continue to be produced, he has almost reached the point where he has no money to go to Yangcheng to promote it. the point.
You must know that publicity is the most important part of a new enterprise and new industry. The hardware of shared bicycles already requires a lot of funds, and the funds for publicity will only be on top of the cost of the hardware. But now, there is no money left for Chongbai.
Cao Chong could only advance his plan and start contacting venture capital institutions. However, those venture capital companies that were originally enthusiastic seemed to have made an appointment, and their attitudes cooled down at the same time. They began to talk to Cao Chong in official terms, saying that the company needed to study the sustainable development capabilities of this project, which did not mean that they would not invest. , but the hedging quotations a week ago have shrunk by more than half now.
After a round of contact, the venture capital company with the highest offer had a valuation of only 280 million. This is a pretty good valuation for most start-up companies. However, Chongbai’s valuation in the angel round reached 200 million. Cao Chong gave up 10% of his shares in exchange for 20 million. investment. But now, he gave up 10%, and all he got was a mere 28 million. How could Cao Chong be willing to do this?
Renren Venture Capital also said that your number of users has dropped by one-third in the past few days, which proves that the market is not optimistic about your project, and it is normal for the valuation to shrink.
Cao Chong was so angry that he almost rushed to Wudong alone with a knife to find Shi Lei and chop him into mincemeat.
On the other hand, Qixuan, the layout of colleges and universities is almost completed, and it has begun to put bicycles into the city. In contrast to the market treatment of Chongbai, Qixuan bicycles have been very popular as soon as they were put into the city.
The municipal government even took the initiative to contact local media to cheer for the green travel advocated by Qixuan. The first batch of 5,000 bicycles launched actually brought Qixuan more than 15,000 installed APPs, including the number of recharge users. , shockingly more than 10,000.
This number may not seem like a lot, but it is only 5,000 bicycles, concentrated in two districts of Wudong. When Qixuan's layout in Wudong is completed, the industry estimates that in Wudong alone, the number of Qixuan users will exceed 150,000, or even higher.
You must know that Wudong has a population of only 8 million, while the imperial capital has a population of more than 20 million. Its gold content is self-evident.
The third update of the guarantee