In essence, Li Yuqing is not a "rooted" Internet businessman. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoBecause his original intention of stepping into the Internet circle was not to do the Internet, but just to make the Internet available to him and help him do a good job in the traditional content industry.

As early as 1993, before the rise of the Internet industry, Li Yuqing, who had just graduated and went to sea for a few years, opened a publishing house called Kewen Company in Beijing.

Later, with the rise of the Internet, Li Yuqing felt that this thing could be combined with the traditional media industry, so he put down his business and went to study in the United States for a while. Then he met his future wife Yu Yu in the United States, and the goal he wanted to catch up with in his life - Bezos's Amazon company.

In the United States, the rise of Amazon-style book e-commerce deeply shocked Li Yuqing, and after returning to China in 97, he began to reorganize his publishing house. After two years of exploration, in November 99, he officially launched a Huaxia book e-commerce website that benchmarks the Amazon model - Dengdang.com.

Only 3 months after the official operation of the company, that is, in February 2000, Li Mingqing received an angel round of investment, from a Chinese institution, the Tiger Fund - the other party gave the packaging valuation of the bell and the Kewen Publishing House was 3.2 million meters, and the total valuation of the Tiger Fund was 4 million meters after injecting 800,000 meters, and the Tiger Fund accounted for 20% of the shares.

From this point of view, Li Yuqing is a better fate - as we all know, only a month later, there was the Nasdaq 313 stock crash. Li Yuqing's financing was early, and he only set up 800,000 meters of working capital at a high level.

When the money first arrived, Li Yuqing was also proud of the spring breeze, burning money for promotion, selling books at a loss to support traffic, and doing such things as doing no less. The appearance of eating will definitely not look better than Didi taxi or Ele.me subsidy maniacs more than ten years later.

However, this kind of reckless loss did not last long, and the 313 NASDAQ stock market crash made Li Yuqing sober up a little and became "thrifty", and after more than five months, the bubble completely collapsed, and Li Yuqing's life was even more difficult.

After Tiger Fund invested him in February, his company was worth 30 million yuan (1-to-8 exchange rate). When he looked for venture capital again in September, no one gave him money even if it was estimated at the current value of 10 million. Two-thirds of the water fell at once - in the cold winter, there was a shortage of money everywhere.

Therefore, at this juncture, the valuation of Li Yuqing's dangdang company is really not comparable to Legendary Entertainment, which has tangible assets of nearly 10 million yuan.

In the face of Gu Cheng's cooperation, he couldn't get up.

Both sides of the negotiation know this - Gu Cheng is here to pick up the leaks.

Gu Cheng finished drinking tea and said slowly: "I heard that Mr. Li considered expanding his business scope a while ago to stabilize the market and survive the cold winter, and then focused on the e-commerce of audio-visual publications, I don't know why he didn't do it in the end?"

Li Qingxin said, "You're not here to see a joke?"

However, since it is cooperation, if you are soft, you still have to say openly and honestly: "I have thought about it, but I don't have money for the time being." I'll think about it next year when I sell books to earn some money. ”

Gu Cheng said his thoughts straightforwardly: "I have money, why don't I open an audio-visual e-commerce, bundle it with Mr. Li's book e-commerce, or borrow channels for publicity and drainage from each other - consumers who are willing to buy genuine books online must be of relatively high quality and good copyright awareness." I believe that there are many people among them who are willing to listen to genuine music and watch genuine movies. ”

Li Yuqing's face was a little ugly: "Is this cooperation? My Dengdang is already the largest book e-commerce company in China, although life is sad, but no one in my peers can shake my status in the rivers and lakes." You have opened a new audio-visual e-commerce company, and there is no fart traffic, which is called 'mutual drainage'? Obviously, you are unilaterally soliciting customers by the bell network, okay!"

"Don't be impatient, I said that it is cooperation, of course there are other conditions. Gu Cheng said unhurriedly, "First of all, I can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a recently collapsed audio-visual e-commerce shell, reorganize it, and the other party has accumulated tens of thousands of users."

Secondly, I can inject 500,000 yuan into your dangdang network, which only accounts for 5% of your equity - which is equivalent to injecting capital according to the valuation of 10 million, giving you some funds to solve your urgent needs.

Finally, my legendary entertainment company will soon launch an online recharge system, which is currently for Internet café owners to help gamers punch point cards, and will be officially used on New Year's Day next year - but I am sure that within a year, this recharge system will be expanded to a B2C electronic payment system, and then it will be used by our audio-visual e-commerce and dangdang network. ”

The first two reasons mentioned by Gu Cheng are quite decent, and they are indeed good for Li Yuqing, but they are not good enough to make him give up the opportunity of "plugging in audio-visual e-commerce in the future".

However, Gu Cheng's third article sounded a little interesting, and Li Yuqing smacked it and didn't understand it for the first time.

So he was ashamed to ask: "Can you explain in detail the electronic payment tools you said?"

Gu Cheng scratched his hair and decided to say it simply: "Let's put it this way, you understand that thing as PayPal in the United States, and I plan to call it 'Alipay' in the future." However, considering the current domestic network security environment and financial regulation, I will not make it into a third-party payment like PayPal in one step, but only do B2C payment in the first two years.

In other words, it's like a game company's 'all-in-one card' and other online bond credit systems, and after the money comes in, you can only buy the company's own products. In this way, all the supervision of the CBRC can be bypassed, and the security field is also easier to operate, which is more suitable for domestic national conditions.

At that time, because I also have a 5% stake in Dangdang.com, I can use Dangdang.com as a joint venture of Legendary Entertainment, allowing Dangdang.com users to pay online through Alipay to buy books, and even people who have not used Dangdang.com, but are legendary online game players, can also use cash points to buy books on Dangdang.com - you weigh it carefully, how many paying readers can be converted for Dangdang in the future by this condition. ”

Li Yuqing was finally shocked.

If this condition can be realized, it is indeed too tempting for him.

In 2000, there was not a single electronic payment tool in Huaxia. All e-commerce companies take the method of collecting money on the spot after the logistics delivery personnel are delivered, and ask consumers to collect money. (Jing Dong did this more than ten years later)

Moreover, Huaxia's postal remittance business is also much behind that of Omi. It is the backwardness of these Internet infrastructures that led to the death of a large number of early e-commerce companies in China after blindly benchmarking their counterparts in the United States.

It wasn't until Ahri Baba's Ma Feng made Taobao and then made an Alipay to match, that this situation was reversed in one fell swoop - historically, Ma Feng has never been the pioneer of Huaxia e-commerce, 4 years before he opened Taobao, there have been countless pioneers in China who want to lose money and grab the turf first. It's a pity that they didn't have Alipay, and they all died in the end.

Of course, Gu Cheng dared to have a showdown with Li Yuqing today, and he was not afraid that the other party would copy his ideas - because 2001 was definitely not a good time to do the C2C model of "complete body Alipay", the conditions in all aspects were too immature, and those who rashly plagiarized Gu Cheng's ideas had only a dead end.

Although the "B2C model Alipay" can theoretically be plagiarized by peers - the question is, in Huaxia in 2001, where to find a B-end merchant with the same online payment volume as the "legendary" online game?

So at this point, Gu Cheng is not afraid of following the trend of pigs and routine dogs.

"However, how can you guarantee that you will do what you said - your Alipay has not been developed yet!" Li Yuqing had no doubt about the power of what Gu Cheng said if it was realized, he was now afraid that Gu Cheng would not be able to achieve it.

Gu Cheng calmly reassured the other party: "Can we sign a gambling agreement - to grant the 2-year exclusive right to use Alipay, which has not yet been completed, in the field of book e-commerce in the future, to Dengdang.com." If Alipay is not launched on schedule, you can automatically unbind the cooperation between my audio-visual e-commerce platform and Dengdang.com, and confiscate 5% of my shares in Dengdang.com as liquidated damages. ”

Gambling agreement! Li Yuqing didn't expect Gu Cheng's courage to be so big.

In this way, if Gu Cheng didn't do what he just said, there would be no loss to Dengdang.com, and it would be regarded as giving the other party's audio-visual e-commerce platform a year's "recommended position" and "traffic entrance" for nothing, and then exchange for 500,000 liquidated damages.

"Can I think about it for a few days?" Li Yuqing swallowed, he felt that his throat was almost sticky when he thought about it.

Gu Cheng ruthlessly refused: "No, I'm very busy, I'm going to Taipei soon, and I have other important business - at most, I will leave Mr. Pan to talk to you about the details, and fax it to Taipei immediately after signing, I need this contract to talk about follow-up cooperation with others." ”

Li Yuqing gritted his teeth: "That's okay, it's just two days! After signing it the day after tomorrow, let Mr. Pan pass it to you!"

Gu Cheng finally smiled: "Then congratulations on our happy cooperation." ”

Li Yuqing also wanted to invite Gu Cheng to dinner, but Gu Cheng politely resigned on the grounds that he was busy. Li Yuqing could only send Gu Cheng downstairs in person, and a question suddenly came to mind on the elevator.

"By the way, Mr. Gu, you haven't said what the name of the newly restructured audio-visual e-commerce platform is. Tell me in advance, and I'll leave you an advertising space on the bell network to warm up. Shouldn't it just be called a bell audio?"

Gu Cheng replied: "Of course not, I have already made a note of the company - if you sell books and call it Dingdang.com, if I sell records, it's called Dingdang.com." ”

The name Dingdang.com, anyway, was not occupied by anyone in 2000, so Gu Cheng used it casually. You can temporarily borrow the popularity and drainage of the bell network, but it will not appear to be affiliated with the other party's name after it becomes bigger, and this name is also quite suitable for making music.

"Okay, then I'll make a note of that. Once the contract is signed, I'll let the art and script be maintained. Li Yuqing patted his chest and packed the ticket and sent Gu Cheng away.