Chapter 106 Help You Cut It

In addition to releasing cloud computing open source products, Tongcao Technology also announced another thing at the same time:

Tongcao Technology established a "SAAS Special Investment Fund" to encourage SAAS applications in various industries. The total amount of the first phase of the fund is 1 billion yuan, and it is planned to be invested within one year.

1 billion is a medium-sized equity investment fund. But if the investment is completed within one year, it is a signal:

Mr. Cao is going to buy! Buy SAAS products.

This matter is just short of Tongcao Technology shouting at the top of its voice, you guys hurry up and make SAAS for me, I'm throwing money!

It is simply an obvious weather vane. Cloud computing is the underlying IAAS. At least for now, the number of talents accumulated in Dongguo is not enough.

But doing SAAS is different. The traditional software talents in the past can be transformed!

So, a vigorous SAAS entrepreneurship began for a while, known in history as: the first year of Dongguo SAAS.

Not only that, Cao Shen also specifically pointed out a key investment direction:

Intelligent manufacturing.

So, under the call of money and prospects, entrepreneurs in these two directions are surging.

There must be a brave man under a big reward, that's the truth.

"System, why is the cloud computing framework called YL, and the container orchestration called XDD?" These two strange names were given by the system itself when the product was released. After all, let the system have a little more sense of participation, um, and a little more sense of responsibility.

[These two names are my current voice! ]

"Hmm? What do you want to do?"

[You want to move, 嘤嘤嘤...]

Uh...

Cao Shen reached out and dug up the mess thrown on the system: "I'll give you some air."

[I want to roll my eyes at you! You finally found me here! ]

"Uh, system, will you get moldy if you keep it here? Do you want me to push you to the balcony to get some sun?"

[Host, the temperature outside is minus one degree now, and I'm still bare-legged, without shoes, won't your conscience hurt? 】

"Oh, you make a lot of sense, forget it."

[Hello, host, you have gained very little health recently. Can you try harder for my miserable but hard work? 】

"I complain every day on the Entrepreneurship Heroes. I am so exhausted. System, you just saw that I came for eight years at a time last time, and you are swollen. I am small, but my appetite is big!"

[I will definitely have long legs in the future! I clenched my fist, although I couldn't clench it.]

Cao Shen is not in a hurry to save his life now. It's good for the system to be a decoration now. It doesn't matter.

When she can jump around, who knows how to make it.

It's better to be quiet for a while!

Xiao Gang has the habit of attending the daily morning meeting of Obsidian Assets. For many years, he has basically attended every day unless there are special reasons.

In addition to the daily briefings on the status of various industries and the status of assets held, and the discussion of future risks and opportunities, the most debated issue in today's morning meeting was the issue of Taotao Technology.

Since the last Spring Festival Gala, Taotao Technology's stock has been falling, and it was just one step away from falling below 20 billion US dollars at the close of yesterday.

Obsidian Assets owns 27% of Taotao Technology's shares, which were held before Taotao went public. The ban was lifted and it could be sold more than half a year ago, but Obsidian Assets has been holding it.

The main debate today is whether to buy or sell!

Those who support buying said:

Taotao's failure this time was an accidental event, and now it has returned to normal. The stock is just at a low point, and you can buy some.

Now the e-commerce market is booming, and mobile payment not only has great potential in the future, but the concentration of players will become higher and higher, and Taobao payment will become a scarce target in the capital market.

Therefore, the overall trend is good, and occasional jitter events are opportunities to absorb funds in the face of an upward trend.

Those who support the sale said:

Although e-commerce and payment are the general trend, Taotao Technology has not performed well as an individual target. Now it is squeezed by B2C e-commerce and its traffic growth is weak.

Under the situation of super bonus of e-commerce traffic, the number of new users is less than one-third of the top B2C e-commerce.

Not only that, the number of new orders is less than one-quarter of B2C e-commerce, which shows that not only the number of new users is not good, but also the purchase conversion rate is not good.

In addition, the average customer price and the total consumption of each customer are almost unchanged, which shows that the potential of a single user to spend money here is not good, and the product category cannot meet user needs.

The traffic and user consumption are not good, which has led to the high-quality merchants that Taotao Technology has finally found to migrate to B2C e-commerce.

In extreme cases, Taotao Technology may only have merchants with poor competitiveness in the future. If the products and services are not good, the user experience will be poor, which will lead to user loss, which will lead to a vicious cycle.

The buyer continued to refute:

B2C is more suitable for standardized products, while e-commerce actually has a considerable long-tail market, which is more suitable for C2C platforms like Taotao.

The seller counterattacks:

Even in the long-tail market, if small merchants on this platform do not have the opportunity to grow from small to medium, and from medium to large, the platform ecology will lack a healthy environment.

I have been working here for one year, three years, and ten years, but I am still a small workshop. Obviously, I lack motivation. Moreover, small merchants have poor risk resistance, and they may disappear after a while.

If all the platform merchants are gone, how can the platform grow!

The core of C2C is to build a good ecosystem and make the merchants on it bigger and stronger. If the ecosystem is not good, there will be no growth in the future.

The buyer is dissatisfied:

Taotao Technology has already begun to improve the ecological capabilities of the platform, provide traffic support to high-quality merchants, so that they have the opportunity to grow bigger, and conduct credit evaluation, loan business, and financial support through Taotao Pay.

The seller continues:

This isn’t just right. Once you get big and have a brand, you’ll go to the B2C platform. Moreover, the current perception of users is that Taotao technology is to buy cheap and long-tail products.

How many brands can you support in a short period of time to elevate the entire image of Taotao in the hearts of users?

Before you can do a good job, B2C will snatch away the traffic brought by dozens of brand promotions.

The core problem of Taotao Technology now is that there is nothing to compete with B2C e-commerce companies for traffic dividends.

On the surface, the Tao Pay Spring Festival Gala happened in a matter of a few days, but in essence, payment is a highly security-sensitive matter. Users have already lost trust in Taobao, and trust issues are difficult to repair.

A colleague from the consumer chain industry interjected:

He was right just now. The establishment of a high-quality brand cannot be achieved by directing traffic in a short time. This requires the support of the supply chain, and improving the efficiency and quality of the supply chain is a long-term process.

Moreover, most domestic suppliers with strong supply capabilities serve existing brands, because only big brands can provide large and stable orders to the supply chain.

The supply chain capabilities of small merchants are inherently weak. With their order volume and stability, it is difficult to find high-quality factories and suppliers to provide services for them.

Everyone expressed their opinions, and after an hour of discussion there was no winner.

Obsidian Asset has always encouraged different opinions, but Boss Xiao just listened silently and did not express an opinion. If he always exports his opinions, it will easily lead to bias in everyone's opinions.

After listening for an hour and a half, Xiao Gang returned to his office and asked the people below to continue the discussion.

This is what investment is like. Listening to both pros and cons can help you get more information and think critically. He also encourages employees to discuss, absorb and think more.

Back in the office, Xiao Gang's assistant Duan Xushan was called in.

"Taotao Technology suddenly encountered technical problems, and the website was upgraded and maintained. Have you found out the cause?" Xiao Gang asked, leaning on the back of his chair.

Duan Xushan has been Xiao Gang's assistant for more than ten years. He is not an analyst, but a lawyer. Therefore, he actually helps Boss Xiao with some "special" tasks on weekdays.

"There is no evidence that it was Cao Shen who did it, but the optical cable in Tongcao Technology's Beiki data center was damaged on the 30th, and someone in the market took on the job of a large-scale DDOS attack on Tongcao Technology."

Xiao Gang raised his eyelids: "Is there any evidence?" This was to ask if there was any evidence for what Taotao Technology did.

"If it is necessary, there are clues. Do you need me to go..."

"No need," Xiao Gang raised his hand: "Even if this kind of thing is caught, it means compensation, and Taotao Technology will find someone to take the blame. Some people in the capital market may think this is an offensive performance. In the face of money, character is often just a bargaining chip.”

"Then, is this a dumb deal?" Duan Xushan touched his chest: "Fortunately, Cao Shen fought back and withstood it!"

Xiao Gang smiled: "It's quite impressive. He strives for success, so we have to help him strive for success. Otherwise, we are his investors. We have to do something."

Duan Xushan looked solemn: "Mr. Xiao, your orders!" He had followed Xiao Gang for many years. There were only a handful of times when Mr. Xiao said that he wanted to argue, but once he said it, someone would suffer.

"Contact CA for me and tell him that I have 27% of Taotao Technology shares and make a large deal with him. In exchange for the Microelectronics shares and LithoM in his hand."

CA, short for Chaos Asset, is also one of the shareholders of Taotao Technology. It currently owns 22% of Taotao Technology and is an American M&A fund.

The trick is to acquire control of the target company's equity, then reorganize and transform it, and then sell it after a period of time. What CA likes is to split and sell the acquired companies.

The reason why it owns 22% of Taotao Technology is not because it invested money before, but because it sold a logistics company to Taotao Technology in its early years and performed an equity swap.

It did not replace as much as 22% at first, but later it bought some from other shareholders.

Taotao Technology’s previous acquisition of logistics companies was also to improve the logistics efficiency of the entire Taotao, but it went south. This department later suffered huge losses and was eventually disbanded.

Microelectronics Technology is a Bayan-based wafer foundry, while LithoM is a Helan-based lithography machine manufacturer.

Duan Xushan always carried out Boss Xiao's tasks resolutely, but this time he was a little curious, so he asked:

"Mr. Xiao, didn't Microelectronics Technology's research and development of the 22nm process fail this time?

The market is in decline, and the stock price has dropped by 40%. The outside world has always believed that it will be eliminated as a result. Moreover, Eight Stars and Eight Arrows has developed a 22nm process, and this market will belong to it from now on.

With the Microelectronics stock in hand, CA is probably eager to sell it quickly! "

"Isn't this great! It will make it easier for us to negotiate with CA. We can get all the shares of Microelectronics from CA, plus the shares from our offshore company, and a little bit from Obsidian, we can The total is over 51%.

When the time comes, remember to remind me to talk to Liu Han and let Microelectronics set up a joint venture in China and provide some land and policies. The current domestic manufacturing process is still at 130 nanometers. It would be good to spend some money to acquire the technology and train some talents. "

"What about LithoM? This company is already very mature, its revenue is relatively stable, and it has passed the period of rapid growth. The most profitable time has passed."

Xiao Gang nodded: "Yes, after the rapid growth period, the valuation will not be inflated. This kind of company with core technology and technology monopoly is still a scarce target even if the sales growth is limited.

Our country is in short supply of this, so buy it and save it first.

By the way, help me register a few offshore companies later, and collect LithoM's stocks again, so that the outside world won't see the relationship with Obsidian. "

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it as soon as possible!

CA has always wanted to control Taotao Technology and then split it up and sell it off. However, the overall valuation of e-commerce is now relatively high, and he doesn’t have that much idle cash on hand. This transaction should be easy to do. "

"Well, CA has always wanted to separate Taotao Technology's e-commerce, cloud computing and payment. Sell cloud computing to AWW in the United States so that they can enter the East China market. Sell payment to PPL in the United States so that PPL can enter the East China market. The market already has licenses and a large number of users.

These two businesses are still very attractive to overseas companies that want to enter the Dongguo market. If CA is sold separately, it can be sold at a good price. So, we gave him a good gift! "Xiao Gang said with a smile.

"Then we really want these companies to enter our country and grab market share? AWW's cloud computing technology is indeed very strong. It can obtain access qualifications by acquiring Taotao Technology, and it uses technology combined with Taotao's localized services. It will be very competitive.

But doesn’t Cao Shen also do cloud computing? Will this be a big impact? "

Xiao Gang smiled and shook his head: "No, they can't get in. However, before the transaction is completed, we want them to think that they can get in as long as they make the acquisition."

Duan Xushan stopped asking. Xiao Gang's background has always been a mystery. Since Boss Xiao said that these people can't get in, they definitely can't get in!

Although through acquisition, it seems that you can enter the company through a curve, but Boss Xiao has the ability to cut the curve for you.

If Taotao Technology removes cloud computing and payment, it will only be a bare-bones e-commerce company, and the e-commerce company is not doing well. Isn't this equivalent to cutting Taotao Technology into a "human stick" and sending it to Cao Shen.

It will then depend on whether Cao Shen wants to take over Taotao's e-commerce business like TT Technology, or whether he wants to destroy it directly.

This tone is such a big fight...

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Under normal circumstances, the PK of opinions in regular meetings must bring data, models, etc., so-called rational and well-founded. But the author is too lazy to check the data from N years ago, so he just gives the opinions of all parties. I guess you can read the data at a glance...