Chapter 219
Penguin's actions were faster than Gu Ran had anticipated.
The very next day after he signed the Series A financing agreement with Sequoia Capital.
A bombshell announcement sent the internet circle into an uproar.
[Penguin announces a 500 million investment to launch the "Campus Developer Support Plan".]
At the press conference, Tony personally took the stage, looking spirited and confident.
"We are committed to providing all-around support in funding, technology, and traffic for college student startup teams across all universities in the country."
"Any creative and promising campus project can apply for our support."
"Once approved, not only can they receive up to one million in startup capital, but they will also gain direct access to QQ's traffic pool of 800 million users."
As soon as the news came out, the entire venture capital circle was shaken.
Anyone could see that Penguin wasn't actually trying to support newcomers.
It wanted to use its money to crush the disobedient "MicroChat" alive.
Didn't your "MicroChat" start on campuses?
Fine, then I'll muddy the waters of the entire campus market.
Don't you rely on "Shake" and "Moments" to attract users?
Fine, then I'll encourage ten thousand teams to make ten thousand versions of "Shake" and "Moments."
Using a massive amount of homogenized products.
To dilute your uniqueness and exhaust your first-mover advantage.
This move was called "taking away the firewood from under the cauldron."
...
GR Gaming Company, conference room.
Li Sinan slapped the latest data report on the table, her face full of anxiety.
"Boss, the situation is not good."
"As soon as Penguin's 'Support Plan' came out, the growth rate of new users in our backend was immediately halved."
Li Sinan paused, sighed, and continued.
"Moreover, there are already at least a dozen apps imitating 'MicroChat' popping up on various university forums."
"Although they are all shoddily made defective products, we can't compete with what they are giving away! By giving out traffic and gifts, many students have been diverted."
A few core technicians also sighed heavily.
"Mr. Gu, this is a war of attrition. Penguin has plenty of money and people. Fighting a price war with them, our little bit of savings won't be able to hold up."
"The most fatal thing is that I heard 'WeChat' has finished its closed beta and will launch as early as next week. Once QQ starts forcing traffic to it, our user pool might be emptied in an instant."
Everyone's eyes focused on Gu Ran, who was sitting in the main seat.
Everyone was very curious.
Whether this young boss would choose to fight.
Or...
Surrender.
Gu Ran did not speak.
He listened quietly.
The conference room was filled with the heavy breathing of the crowd.
After a long time, he raised his head.
A strange smile appeared on his face.
"What do you think we lack the most right now?"
Everyone was stunned.
Li Sinan thought for a moment and said tentatively.
"Money? Traffic?"
"No."
Gu Ran shook his head.
Gu Ran turned around and wrote two large words flamboyantly on the whiteboard.
[Time].
"Penguin is a massive enterprise with a long reaction chain and a slow decision-making process. From the time they decide to copy us to the time their product launches, they need at least a month."
"And this month is our only window of opportunity."
The young man turned around, his gaze sweeping over everyone.
"They want to crush us with money and drown us with traffic. Then we'll play something different with them."
"Ms. Li."
"Here!"
"Has Sequoia's money arrived?"
"It has. Five million dollars, not a cent less."
Gu Ran nodded.
"From now on, the company enters a state of first-level combat readiness. All personnel are to cancel their vacations, work in two shifts, and be on standby twenty-four hours a day."
"I want you to use this money to do three things."
"First, expand the servers. Go buy or rent them, use the best. I want our servers to be able to handle the online requests of at least one million users simultaneously without any lag."
"Second, poach people. Go to Shenzhen, go to Hangzhou, and poach people for me. Double their salaries, give them stock options. I don't care what method you use, within half a month, I want our technical team expanded to two hundred people."
"Third,"
Gu Ran paused, a flash of madness in his eyes.
"Burn money."
"Burn money?"
Li Sinan was stunned.
The corners of Gu Ran's mouth curled up.
"Doesn't Penguin want to support campus developers? Then we'll be even more ruthless than them."
"Starting tomorrow, 'MicroChat' will launch a brand-new referral reward mechanism."
"When an old user invites a new user, for every successful invitation, they will be rewarded with ten yuan in cash, with no upper limit."
"When a new user registers, they will directly receive a twenty-yuan cash red envelope, which can be withdrawn immediately."
"In addition, we will simultaneously launch the 'MicroChat Campus Lucky Koi' event in one hundred key universities across the country. Every day, a lucky winner will be drawn from the active users and rewarded with the latest iPhone 4S!"
The conference room fell dead silent.
Everyone was shocked by Gu Ran's crazy plan.
This wasn't just burning money anymore; this was printing money and throwing it into the fire!
Five million dollars sounded like a lot.
But burning it like this, let alone a month, it wouldn't even last a week!
"Boss... this... this is too risky."
Li Sinan's voice was trembling.
"We are committing suicide!"
Gu Ran shook his head, his eyes firm.
"I am... snatching a lifeline."
"Penguin's 'WeChat' is like an aircraft carrier that has already set sail, while we are just a tiny speedboat."
"We can't defeat it on a head-on battlefield. Our only chance is to plant our flags on all the territories before it arrives at the battlefield."
"I want to make 'MicroChat' a 'must-have app' on every college student's phone in the shortest possible time."
"I want to make 'Moments' an indispensable part of their lives."
"When user habits have been formed, and when social relationships have settled. By then, even if Penguin's aircraft carrier comes over, would they be willing to give up the social circles they've already built for a 'WeChat' with the exact same functions?"
Gu Ran's voice echoed in the conference room.
Everyone understood.
This was his "scorched earth policy."
Before the enemy arrived.
Snatch all the resources and all the users!
Use money, in the shortest possible time.
To smash out an indestructible user barrier!
This was a huge gamble.
If they won the bet.
They would soar into the sky, with vast horizons ahead.
If they lost the bet.
They would be doomed eternally and smashed to pieces.
Li Sinan looked at Gu Ran's young face, which was written all over with madness.
She took a deep breath and nodded heavily.
"Alright! Since you want to be crazy, I'll be crazy with you to the end!"
...
That night, a piece of news even more explosive than Penguin's "Support Plan."
Fermented wildly on the forums of major universities across the country.
[Crazy! Register on the 'MicroChat' APP and get 20 yuan in cash! They even pay you for referring new users!]
[Holy crap! My classmate just won an iPhone 4S! The school forum has exploded!]
[Why bother downloading knock-off APPs! Brothers, hurry up and go exploit the perks!]
Driven by the lure of money, countless college students flooded into "MicroChat" in a frenzy.
In the backend, the user growth curve skyrocketed once again at a terrifying speed.
And all of this was merely the beginning.
Gu Ran sat in front of his computer, watching the wildly surging data with a calm and profound gaze.
He knew there was no turning back for him now.
Either he would be crowned king amidst this dazzling display of fireworks.
Or he, along with the five million dollars.
Would be reduced to ashes.
......
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
