Chapter 999 The Most Difficult Thing Is Not From 1 to 100, but From 0 to 1

In the midsummer of 2005, Dormitory 213 of Peking University and Tsinghua University.

"Xie Qiao, how is your graduation thesis?"

Faced with Xu Lin's inquiry, Xie Qiao said with a bitter face: "I revised it many times, and finally passed it last week. I hope I can pass the graduation defense smoothly."

"Hehe, I finished it a month ago. Don't say that this internship is really useful. The theme of my thesis is: On the inheritance and development of Chinese in the entertainment industry." Xu Lin patted his chest and said proudly.

Xie Qiao sighed: "I really envy you for finding an internship unit. I submitted many resumes but none of them came back. I finally got an internship certificate from Qin Chuan."

"That's because you have high requirements. For my internship at a magazine, not to mention the low salary, I have to be on call 24 hours a day. All I track all day are celebrity gossip. It's not interesting at all. I tell you, I will never believe in celebrities again in the future. They are all glamorous on the surface, but in fact, they are all a mess behind the scenes." Xu Lin complained.

Xie Qiao comforted him, "Not all of them are like that. At least Qianxi will not."

"That's true. Qianxi has Lao Qin to protect her." Xu Lin said with emotion, "Lao Qin is really willing to spend money. I heard that Qianxi Entertainment spent tens of millions of yuan just to recruit people in the early stage. If I can't make it, I will go to Qianxi and be her follower."

"By the way, Qianxi should come back for the graduation defense, right?"

"That's for sure."

While the two were talking, two new roommates in the dormitory came over with new notebooks. It turned out that they wanted to ask them to help get Xiao Qianxi's signature.

At first, Xie Qiao and Xu Lin didn't think much of it. On the day of the graduation defense, many classmates in the class asked them to help get signatures. They realized that Xiao Qianxi was really famous.

"Why don't we wait for Qianxi to come and ask her to sign a few more autographs, and then we can sell them at 50 yuan a piece, and 10 pieces will be 500 yuan..."

Xie Qiao rolled her eyes at Xu Lin: "Look at your lack of ability, how much can an autograph be worth? I won't bargain for a hundred yuan a piece of autographed photos."

"Haha~~~"

Just as the two were joking, Xie Qiao's phone suddenly rang.

"Hello, Qianxi, have you changed your number? We are in the classroom, where are you?"

"Okay, then we'll wait for you outside."

Not long after, the familiar Audi stopped in front of the two.

Xu Lin stepped forward and was about to give Xiao Qianxi a bear hug: "Qianxi, I miss you so much."

Xiao Qianxi dodged to the side and pointed behind him: "If you don't want to be on the entertainment headlines, it's better to keep your distance."

Xu Lin scratched his head, looking depressed, and Xie Qiao winked at her proudly, then hugged Xiao Qianxi's arm.

"Alas, people judge people by appearance, vulgar."

Xu Lin sighed to the sky, making Xiao Qianxi and Xie Qiao laugh.

After a while of laughter, Xie Qiao asked with concern: "Qianxi, how are you preparing for the graduation defense?"

"It's okay, there should be no problem." Xiao Qianxi said in a relaxed tone.

"Xie Qiao, don't forget that Qianxi gets scholarships every year."

"That's right."

Xie Qiao was a little embarrassed. Since Xiao Qianxi became a star after participating in "Happy Girls", she always felt that it was a little unreal.

"By the way, where is Lao Qin? He should also come back today to participate in the graduation defense, right?" Xu Lin asked curiously.

Xiao Qianxi nodded: "Well, we came back together last night. He is probably preparing for the defense now, right?"

As Xiao Qianxi said, Qin Hao was at the door of the classroom, waiting for his number to be called.

However, when Qin Hao entered the classroom, he found that not only Principal Li was there, but also many school leaders, and even cameras were set up.

No wonder the students who just entered the defense looked a little unhappy when they came out.

"Principal Li, there is no need to make such a big scene, right?" Qin Hao smiled helplessly.

Principal Li laughed: "Who made you skip classes all day long? If you can pass the graduation defense so easily, wouldn't it show that our Peking University and Tsinghua University's academic qualifications are not valuable enough?"

"That's right, in today's graduation defense, if you can't come up with something new, don't think you can pass it easily." Another school leader agreed with a smile.

Well, this is forcing the duck to do something.

Qin Hao was speechless for a while, but the mere graduation defense was naturally not difficult for him.

"Dear tutors and leaders, my graduation thesis is: On the importance of electronic payment in the next 20 years..."

The difficulty of general student graduation thesis lies in collecting data, so many detailed data are often vague. Once asked about key data during the defense, it is easy to show your timidity.

But for Qin Hao, it was a piece of cake. He knew the data of the entire Internet industry very well, and he also had the data of Yiguo as support, which could be used to deduce the data fulcrum of the entire Chinese Internet industry.

"Qin Hao, you just said that electronic payment will become the winner of the Internet industry in the next five years, but as far as I know, there are not many people who have opened online banks, less than one-tenth, and many people don’t even have bank cards and are still using passbook transactions. According to the current development speed of Internet users, electronic payment cannot influence the development of Internet companies, right?" A school leader questioned.

Qin Hao said slowly: "That's because so far, there are still too few projects that can encourage everyone to consume online."

"For now, consumption in the Internet industry is mainly concentrated in two categories, one is e-commerce and the other is game recharge."

"However, consumption in these two industries alone has attracted at least 30 million people to open online banking, and it is growing at a very fast rate every day. What if more Internet industries can attract users to consume? The Internet industry is the most difficult It’s not from 1 to 100, but from 0 to 1. As long as users have a good consumption experience, they will fall in love with this feeling.”

"The problem now is simply that many Internet companies have not yet found a business model that suits them."

Principal Li raised his hand and asked: "As far as I know, Tesco has previously adopted a model of online ordering and offline payment. Since you are so optimistic about the future of electronic payment, have you made plans in this regard?"

Qin Hao said sternly: "The reason why Tesco adopted the offline payment model before was partly to dispel customers' concerns, but also because at that time we were unable to meet the conditions for establishing an electronic payment interface with UnionPay."

Regardless of the fact that UnionPay later launched Cloud Quick Pass and wanted to develop electronic money, it seemed to attach great importance to electronic payments. In fact, UnionPay itself was only officially established in 2002, and its attitude towards electronic payments is actually quite resistant. Just imagine. , it was originally just a simple transaction between the bank and the customer, transfer and transfer of funds, and a transaction was considered completed.

However, after joining third-party payment, all transactions must go through a third-party payment platform, and once the user is not satisfied with the purchase of the product and applies for a refund, the third-party payment platform will have to transfer the money to the user again, which makes this account difficult to handle. Very tedious.

So much so that when Taobao first launched Alipay, bank financial personnel prayed every day that Taobao would go bankrupt.

Qin Hao doesn't have Jack Ma's background. Taobao was able to launch Alipay in 2004 when Taobao was founded in 2003.

It took Tesco two full years to open up channels in all aspects and launch Tesco's third-party payment platform: Yipay.

"What about now? How many users of Tesco use electronic payment? What is the proportion?" Principal Li asked curiously.

Qin Hao drank some water, moistened his throat, and said slowly: "Currently, Yipay, a third-party payment platform owned by Yigou, has a total of 13 million registered users, of which 73% have used the electronic payment function, with a ratio of 5.8 to 1. ”

As soon as this data came out, the scene was in an uproar because this ratio far exceeded the normal level of the industry.

"Is your data accurate? How did you achieve it?" Principal Li asked.

Qin Hao answered unhurriedly: "The data is of course accurate. Tesco will launch Series B financing in the second half of the year. These data must be reviewed by investors. As for how to do it, it is actually very simple: spread money."

"Spread money?"

The school leaders present were all confused.

Qin Hao said calmly: "For example, now a customer places an order. After completing the order, it will jump to an electronic payment interface. At the same time, the user will be reminded in eye-catching fonts that using electronic payment will randomly receive 1-5 yuan. Waiting for coupons.”

"In other words, in order to attract users to use your Yipay, each order needs to pay a cost ranging from 1 to 5 yuan?" Principal Li frowned. This is not a small amount of money. You must know that Yigou has 13 million Yipay. Paying users, this is not throwing money away, it is simply burning money.

"To be precise, except for the first order, which is likely to be 3-5 yuan, what users will get after that is basically an immediate discount of a few cents."

"Why set it up like this?"

Qin Hao spread his hands: "As I said just now, the most difficult thing in the Internet industry is not to go from 1 to 100, but from 0 to 1. As long as users have used electronic payment and dispelled their worries, they can subsequently experience the benefits of electronic payment. It’s convenient and they will use it even if there is no discount.”

"Then why do you continue to give users instant discounts?"

"Of course, it is to let existing users help promote it. In fact, many of our new users signed up after hearing the promotion from old users. Sometimes, even if we say 10,000 words, it is not as good as one word from people around us."

Principal Li frowned slightly: "The cost of such publicity is too high."

Qin Hao just smiled and did not explain forcefully. We are still in the middle of the Internet era. Once we enter the mobile Internet era, the payment portal will become a battleground for Internet companies. Is Penguin strong enough? Before WeChat Pay became popular, people were still in constant panic.

Regarding Qin Hao's graduation defense, the deepest impression on the students in the same period was that it took so long that the students waiting behind were so anxious to urinate that they did not dare to go to the toilet for fear that they would miss it.

When Qin Hao came out of the classroom, it was already an hour and a half later. The buddy's face was green. Later, he wrote a post on the Shuimu Beiqing Forum: What is the mentality of being ranked behind Qin Hao for the defense? , actually gained a lot of popularity.

Of course, the most popular post on the forum is Xiao Qianxi's return to school for her graduation defense. There's no way it can be helped. Who makes the most popular post this summer is "Happy Girls".

After attending the graduation defense, Qin Hao treated Xie Qiao and Xu Lin to a meal, and took Xiao Qianxi to visit the capital for two days.

Two days later, Qin Hao could only focus on Tesco again.

The main reason is that in the second half of the year, he is preparing to start Tesco’s Series B financing.

The reason why we are so anxious to raise Series B financing is not because Tesco has no money. On the contrary, although it has burned a lot of money to promote Yipay, Tesco's cash flow is still relatively sufficient.

It was mainly to prepare for the financial crisis in 2008. According to Qin Hao's plan, the B round of financing will be carried out in the second half of the year, and Yiguo's valuation will at least increase fivefold. When the C round of financing is launched in the second half of 2006, the valuation can reach at least 15 billion US dollars.

By then, with a large amount of cash in hand, it can not only smoothly survive the Internet winter brought by the financial crisis, but also acquire some high-quality Internet companies and expand Yiguo's territory.

Of course, the premise of all this is that Yiguo must maintain rapid growth in the next two years and crush its peers to become an industry unicorn.

It is not easy to do this. Taobao is undoubtedly a very strong competitor. Although Jack Ma is a little crazy, his strategic vision is unique in the entire Internet industry.

Take the past two years as an example. Although Yiguo has a fairly mature business system with its offline store model and is favored by many capitals, Taobao has always been behind Yiguo with its all-encompassing product categories.

Taobao's biggest disadvantage at present is that its business model is not mature enough and has been in a loss-making state. Jack Ma is facing huge financial pressure, especially since Qin Hao had previously poached his "god of money" Masayoshi Son. Although Jack Ma later found another investor, the other party was not as generous as Masayoshi Son.

The debate on the business model within Alibaba has never stopped. Many executives feel that Yiguo's business model is already very mature, so it is better to learn from Yiguo's business model, but Jack Ma insisted on going out of Taobao's own business model.

This also made some Alibaba executives gradually dissatisfied with Jack Ma.

Just one week after Qin Hao participated in the graduation defense, a post began to circulate on the Internet. The content basically sorted out several key points of Qin Hao's graduation defense. This post first appeared on the Shuimu Beiqing Forum, and was later reposted to the Tianya Forum, and later attracted some reports from paper media.

There are many different opinions on the several arguments raised by Qin Hao on the Internet. Some netizens think he is very far-sighted, while others think he is whimsical.

However, what these netizens did not know was that because of this post, domestic Internet companies generally held high-level management meetings that night. According to some netizens, the offices of senior executives were brightly lit all night.