On the morning of September 2, Baidu, which was far away in Yanjing, several senior management and technical and product development leaders also sat in the conference room early.

In the conference room, the vice president asked everyone what they thought of the minimalist forum called "Tieba" newly launched on Yiting.com, and 80% of them gave an evaluation: awesome.

T on the idea of this product, as well as its ability to integrate.

Easy Listening itself is a platform that provides music auditions and downloads, and its users are all fans of various singers, and the star stickers currently opened by Tieba happen to be based on each singer himself, an independent small forum, which brings together the fans of a singer into the Tieba under his name.

This can not only increase the viscosity of the original users of Yiting.com, but also attract users who don't listen to songs on Yiting.com, but like certain singers, because there is an exclusive forum named after idols, so many fans gather here, and the community effect is very strong.

The vice president said bitterly: "Why don't we have such advanced product thinking? If we build a Baidu Tieba on the basis of search services, we can become the largest network community in China in one step!"

He is right, in the future, Baidu Tieba has more than one billion registered users, and it is indeed the world's largest Chinese community, although they seem to have no discipline in buying and selling Tieba, but after all, the scale is there, which is undeniable.

The director who is responsible for the development of new products,That is, the one who asserted that the product of Yiting.com was too single at the meeting,Now embarrassed to death,He originally thought,As long as Baidu launches MP3 download,The death date of Yiting.com is not far away,Unexpectedly,It didn't take long for people to come up with a heavyweight product like a singer sticker,It's just to slap him in the face。

In a moment's time, the executive blurted out: "In this case, let's also make stickers, MP3 and stickers together!"

The vice president glanced at him, shook his head and said: "I don't need you to give me such an afterthought, what I want is your innovation ability, understand? What I want is not for you to see others playing MP3, others playing Tieba, and then prepare to plagiarize and catch up, but to you can also create us a powerful product like Tieba, as a leader of new product development, you can't always pick up people's teeth!"

The executive's face was flushed when he was said, and he was too ashamed to look up.

At this time, the vice president's mood eased slightly, and he said: "MP3 and stickers, we must do it, but, have you ever thought about it, now that such a large group of singers has been made by Yiting.com, how should we operate?" And I checked, their Tieba is not just tied to Yiting.com, they even have a tieba.com top-level domain name, and this domain name has now been opened, that is to say, they integrate the expertise of Yiting.com to make Tieba, but they want to make Tieba an independent product. ”

It is also Li Mu's consideration to create a post bar independently, after all, Yiting.com only brings together music lovers, and if you use Yiting.com as the carrier, you can only do singer stickers, which is far from enough for Li Mu, so he used the tieba.com and made a homepage of the sticker, with a search function, users can directly enter the homepage of the sticker, and then search for the name of the singer to enter the singer's sticker.

At the same time, Li Mu has instructed Kong Lingyu to develop the post bar registration function, and in the future, his own post bar will also have the function of users to create at will, and Kong Lingyu is also leading a group of part-time employees to collect all the star information in the fields of film and television, sports, variety shows, etc., It is expected that it will not be long before the post bar will be open for registration, and all celebrities' post bars will also be online, and when the time comes, the post bar will get out of the limitations of easy listening network and singers.

At this time, at the Baidu high-level conference table, several managers who returned from overseas were dumbfounded, and they began to think about independent splitting so quickly, what kind of person is behind Yiting.com?

In fact, Li Mu's concept is to create an ecosystem, and Yiting.com and Tieba are just the beginning of the ecosystem, and Li Mu has a lot of plans for this ecosystem in the future.

The simple plan to become popular is to let the easy-to-listen network start in the field of music audition download, and then bring together users who have music audition and download needs, and now the post bar has started the first step of the ecological chain, community.

After the community began to start, there are too many things that can be done, what personal space, photo albums, stealing vegetables, pastures, and grabbing parking spaces are all magic weapons in the future community field, and now Taobao's domain name is still in their own hands, in history, Ali will not create Taobao until 2003, the reason is also because of the particularity of the SARS period, if you start a year or half a year earlier than Ali, relying on your own accumulated users, it should be easier to start than Ali.

An operations director sighed: "The other party has a top-level domain name for Tieba, which is very passive for us, unless we change our name, not called Tieba, and then quickly develop mature products, go online as soon as possible and give our own Tieba products through future Baidu search keywords." ”

The person in charge of technology development was surprised: "Although the concept of Yiting.com is good, but from a technical point of view, they play these things are not difficult, and it is easy to imitate, besides, after all, they have limited strength, and they have nothing to rely on, and if they can't find a profit model for a while, it will not take long to develop to a bottleneck period, so I think we think too highly of them? We have such strong resources, product development, or it won't be long before they can replace them." ”

The vice president shook his head: " You can't just look at the problem from the technical level, and you can't think that others will not be able to support it without a profit model, their concept can shock us, and it will definitely shock others, especially venture capital, although the impact of the Internet bubble is still there, but the sense of smell of capital is so keen, and they have begun to realize that the next spring of the Internet is coming, and they are also looking for suitable projects in advance。 ”

This remark made the technology speechless for a moment.

It is not wrong to say that the Internet plays with creativity, technology, and users, but in the final analysis, it plays with capital.

Behind every Internet celebrity, there is a strong capital support, Sequoia, Softbank, Goldman Sachs, etc., etc., capitalists have a lot of cash waiting to invest in good projects, without the help of capital, none of the top BTA companies in China in the future can get up.

Easy to listen to the network and post bar is rising rapidly, I believe that it will not be long before it will be concerned by other network companies, as well as investment bank capital, if you get a round of investment, easy to listen to the network can start the money burning mode, as long as the strategy of burning money is no problem, in the future B round, C round, the major investment banks will break their heads to send money to him to burn, not only that, in order to get a high return on investment, investment banks will also invest in contacts and resources to help it develop and grow, at that time, Baidu may not have an advantage in front of it.

The person in charge of the investment department said: "Mr. Chen, do you want us to contact Yiting.com first, if their price is not high, it is not bad to pack them, in this way, we will directly integrate their two products into our own products, a Baidu MP3, a Baidu sticker." ”

The vice president nodded: "That's what I mean by today's meeting, we can get in touch with each other first and see what the other party's psychological expectations are." ”

As he spoke, the vice president asked the person in charge of the investment department: "How much do you think is appropriate to pack them now?"

The head of the investment department thought for a moment: " If there is no sticker, just easy to listen to the network, I think it is about 800 to 10 million, after all, this business is still blank in law now, the law will gradually improve in the future, this business will inevitably be subject to risks, however, there is no legal risk in this kind of thing, and there is too much room for development, I think, according to the normal valuation, the single sticker bar is not less than 20 million, if the two are fused together, the valuation will be higher, but this is also what we see, if you really give him an offer, this price will be greatly discounted, after all, they have just been founded for more than a month, and I believe that their own psychological expectations will not be too high。 ”

The vice president was noncommittal, thought for a moment and said, "Let's contact first and see what the situation is." ”

……

At noon, Li Mu received an email from the mailbox he left on Yiting.com, in which a person who claimed to be Jack Zhou and served as the director of Baidu's investment department said in the email: Baidu is optimistic about the development of Yiting.com and Tieba, and has the intention of packaging and acquiring, and hopes to have an interview with Li Mu.

Li Mu just replied simply: For the time being, I will not accept the package acquisition, only accept financing, and the A round of financing will sell up to 10% of the shares, and the valuation will be determined by you, and I will send me an email to tell me, and I will consider it again.

Li Mu knows very well that if the MP3 business is taken out alone, the profitability will not be too outstanding, but for a company like Baidu, the overall improvement brought to them by this business cannot be measured by millions or tens of millions of cash, which is the cultivation and precipitation of a large number of users, which has a great effect on valuation.

As for the sticker, the future profitability of this thing is still very fierce, so if you package it and sell it now, wouldn't it be a big loss?

Therefore, he only accepts financing, and will not dilute his shares too much in Series A, otherwise after several rounds of financing, he may be united by capital, take away control and go out.

Moreover, the earlier the dilution of shares, the greater the intangible losses to be borne in the future, which children understand.

As for what kind of valuation Baidu is willing to give himself, Li Mu is not in a hurry, let them think about it slowly, in short, the valuation is less than 30 million, don't talk about it, and, if there is a period of time in the future, Yiting.com and Tieba will have greater development, and they will raise the price code in time.

Li Mu's reply made Jack feel empty around the computer, this guy replied too decisively, and directly refused to pack it as soon as he came up, that's it, A round is only willing to sell 10% of the shares, this looks like a veteran in the field of Internet entrepreneurship!

Jack Zhou, who has been investing for many years, understands the vision of many Internet entrepreneurs now, most of them are struggling to support a start, as soon as they see the capital coming, they will immediately let it be slaughtered, and there are many people who are willing to sell more than 51% of the shares in the A round, these people often see hundreds of thousands or even millions of benefits, they completely ignore the future, just want to cash out immediately, only to find out after cashing out that they have lost ten times or even a hundred times what they have gained.

Jack Zhou thinks that the other party is only willing to sell 10% of the A round, even if Baidu accepts and invests, it won't have much effect for a while!

The more worried, the more Jack Zhou felt that the other party was a character, not ordinary.

……

Li Mu and Zhao Kang booked the ticket at eight o'clock in the evening on the second day, at seven o'clock in the evening, Li Mu carried a backpack and went out of the house accompanied by his parents, although his mother kept saying that he wanted to accompany him to report to school, but Li Mu still refused, he didn't want his mother to accompany him to Yanjing and toss around.

After leaving the house, he met Zhao Kang's family waiting here at the intersection of the community, and Zhao Kang's parents also wanted to go to Yanjing to see him off, but as soon as they heard that he had made an appointment with Li Mu to go together, they didn't insist anymore.

Seeing that Zhao Kang was also only carrying a backpack, Li's mother couldn't help but say to Zhao Kang's mother: "You said that these two children go to college as if they are playing, except for the computer and a change of clothes, they don't bring anything." ”

Li Mu said with a smile: "Actually, there is nothing to bring, the school provides bedding or something, and other daily necessities are added to the place, and we have to save our efforts to bring them over." ”

Zhao Kang's father smiled slightly and said to Li Mu: "Xiao Mu, when you two brothers arrive in Yanjing, what do you have to take care of each other." ”

Li Mu nodded: "Uncle Zhao, don't worry." ”

Dad Li smiled: "Lao Zhao, Yanjing is too far away, it's not for us to control, and we won't be able to control them in the future, let the children go by themselves." ”