Su Wan

Chapter 279

Gu Ran took the opportunity to grab the young girl's slender wrist, gently rubbing the back of her fair hand with his thumb.

Seeing this, Ye Zhenzhen quickly pulled her hand back as if she had been electrocuted.

She guiltily glanced toward the podium, confirming that the old professor flipping through his lesson plans hadn't noticed them, before puffing out her cheeks and glaring fiercely at Gu Ran.

But this completely harmless glare was nothing short of flirting to a certain thick-skinned guy.

Instead, he took the chance to capture one of her small hands again. The girl was helpless; since he insisted, she could only let him have it, her ears turning red.

Ye Zhenzhen turned her head in resignation, staring at the blackboard. With her other hand, she opened her textbook and started taking notes, unilaterally declaring she would ignore the rogue beside her.

A smile played on Gu Ran's lips. While playing with her soft, boneless hand, he looked down at his phone.

On the screen, good news sent by Li Sinan kept refreshing.

WeLiao's daily active users had hit a new high, and the voice call feature was receiving great acclaim.

His fingertips unconsciously tapped the surface of the desk.

WeLiao's desperate counterattack must have already set off a magnitude-ten earthquake thousands of miles away in Shen City.

......

Time rewinds to the beginning of the National Day holiday.

Shen City, Penguin Building conference room.

The core executives of the WeChat business department sat up straight, the atmosphere slightly oppressive.

"Click, clack, click..."

The sound of high heels striking the marble floor approached from a distance.

The conference room doors were pushed open, and a young woman in a high-end, capable suit walked in.

Su Wan, the daughter of a core Penguin director, a high-IQ returnee with a Ph.D. who had just come back from Silicon Valley, and the newly appointed head of the WeChat department.

She walked straight to the main seat and pulled out her chair.

Although she didn't seem to have the overbearing arrogance of a second-generation heir, the elite oppressiveness radiating from her very bones still made the executives present afraid to breathe too loudly.

Su Wan pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose and placed a thick stack of market research reports on the table.

"Is this the answer sheet you handed in?"

She opened the report, pointing coldly at the dismal retention rate, and said, "WeChat V1.0's data is a complete mess."

"You can't even copy a product correctly, failing to even touch WeLiao's core user base. Holding Penguin's resources, are you making a product, or making photocopies?"

The WeChat executives present blushed slightly.

Being beaten like this by a newborn company was indeed thoroughly humiliating.

Su Wan didn't give them a chance to self-reflect, directly throwing out the aggressive V2.0 plan she had formulated.

"The headquarters' board of directors has specially approved it."

At the end, she closed the report on the desk. "A quota of one billion, to crush WeLiao."

"Plus, a comprehensive ban on WeLiao across all app stores on the internet."

One... one billion?!

A complete internet ban?! Penguin was rich, but money didn't just fall from the sky!

Among all the companies, departments, and projects within the Penguin Group, the current WeChat team was still just a small, unpresentable studio.

They couldn't even compete with the newly born GR company. If mobile instant messaging didn't have such a promising future, their department would have been dissolved long ago.

Capital is cold-blooded; it never releases the hawk until it sees the hare.

Although they learned through the grapevine that this Su Wan was likely the child of a big shot.

But at this level of support from the board, everyone in the conference room couldn't help but gasp collectively.

Su Wan's gaze swept across the room. "I want WeLiao to disappear from the internet within a month."

Hearing that astronomical budget and the utterly devastating channel ban, the executives' low morale, which had been constantly crushed by WeLiao, was instantly ignited by money.

After all, what in this world couldn't be solved by throwing money at it?

If there was, it just meant you hadn't thrown enough!

October 8th, the last day of the National Day holiday.

One billion in hard cash turned into overwhelming advertisements and cash red envelopes, smashing into the national market like a mudslide.

Major portals, pop-up ads, and splash screen recommendations were all aggressively dominated by WeChat's icon.

At the same time, domestic mainstream app stores simultaneously removed WeLiao's installation packages.

At this moment, it was as if WeLiao had already disappeared from the world; only WeChat's shadow could be seen across the entire internet.

Su Wan held a coffee cup, standing in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of her office, looking down at the bustling traffic of Shen City.

On the giant screen behind her, WeChat V2.0 showed a rapidly skyrocketing download volume.

She took a sip of black coffee. She didn't feel the expected smugness; her gaze merely stared blankly out the window in calm contemplation.

She had studied WeLiao; this software was very innovative.

Although she personally thought highly of it, in her business understanding, such a rootless grassroots team would inevitably face a broken capital chain and user loss under capital's dimensional strike. It was only a matter of time.

Furthermore, Penguin now held an absolute crushing advantage. WeLiao couldn't possibly survive, but she just had an indescribable feeling.

How to put it... it seemed... too easy?

Throw a billion at it, and it succeeds?

She found it somewhat hard to believe. Even if she looked down on such a grassroots company deep in her bones, she wouldn't let her guard down.

If the GR company was truly a bunch of incompetent fools, then before she arrived, the WeChat team, relying on Penguin's promotion, would have taken them down long ago.

.......

Morning of October 9th.

While Gu Ran was accompanying his sister to class, Su Wan sat in her leather office chair, waiting for the victorious news of WeLiao's strangulation.

Time passed minute by minute, and the office door was finally pushed open violently.

The head of the data monitoring department didn't even knock. Sweating profusely, he stumbled and rushed in.

"President Su... something happened!"

The supervisor clutched a freshly printed urgent data report in his hand, his voice trembling, "WeLiao's data hasn't dropped... it actually went up!"

Went up?

How did they do that?

Su Wan frowned slightly and reached out to take the report.

On the paper, a green curve representing WeLiao's daily active users shot straight into the sky at a steep angle that defied market rules.

She looked at the data, not quite understanding it.

"Explain," she uttered softly.

The supervisor swallowed hard and reported with difficulty, "WeLiao launched a 'voice call' feature in the early hours of the morning! At the same time, they plastered offline posters all over internet cafes and university cafeterias in the national lower-tier markets! Our promotional campaign didn't penetrate this layer at all!"

Internet cafes?

Cafeterias?

Can you even do internet promotion in places like that?

What kind of unorthodox method is this???

Several core executives who had rushed over upon hearing the news stood at the door. Hearing these words, they too fell into shock.

They also couldn't understand how Penguin's overwhelming online blockade could be torn open by a few crappy posters stuck to public toilet doors.

After a moment of silence, a calm expression returned to Su Wan's face. She pushed up her glasses and said to the supervisor, "Retrieve the detailed market feedback and project it onto the screen."

The large screen flickered for a moment, then switched to the fanatic feedback records of internet cafe managers and students from all over using WeLiao's "voice call" feature.

Su Wan stared intently at the screen, becoming more and more speechless the more she watched.

For a moment, it felt as though her college degree had been fed to the dogs. GR Company's offline promotional strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside perfectly bypassed Penguin's heavy online firepower zones.

And that completely free, crystal-clear voice call feature was an epoch-making, dimensional strike against WeChat's current text-and-image-only social networking.

MicroChat didn't die; instead, it took advantage of the market hype generated by Penguin to viciously leech off them.

Before Su Wan could even recover her wits, the head of the channel department rushed into the office.

"President Su! We received news that people from GR Company are already heading to major mobile phone manufacturers like ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, and Lenovo to negotiate factory pre-installation agreements!"

Hearing the words factory pre-installation, Su Wan's expression froze.

If GR Company succeeded, MicroChat would be directly embedded into the phones' foundational systems, and Penguin's proud channel blockade would become completely invalid.

Their one billion investment would pretty much be money down the drain.

"Send someone to intercept them! No matter what conditions GR offers, Penguin will double it!"

Then she leaned back in her chair and pinched the bridge of her nose.

She finally realized just how outstanding the vision and strategy of that young founder far away in Qinglin City really were.

After calming down for a moment, Su Wan continued, "Notify the tech department. All vacations are canceled!"

With that said, she stood up and led the way to the office area.

"Work overnight to clone MicroChat's voice call feature!"

It was humiliating. The mighty Penguin was ultimately forced back onto the old path of plagiarism.

But she had no choice. Faced with this instant-kill, nuclear-weapon-level feature, if WeChat couldn't produce a countermeasure, they would only be left further and further behind by MicroChat.

High pressure rapidly spread throughout the entire WeChat business department.

Countless programmers were forced to give up their rest and throw themselves into endless overnight overtime.

In the spacious office area, the dense sound of keyboard typing merged into a deafening roar.

Driven by the rhythm dictated by Gu Ran, the WeChat team completely fell into an exhausted, passive state of playing catch-up.

Qinglin University lecture hall.

Gu Ran put away his phone.

On the podium, the old professor was writing on the chalkboard.

Ye Zhenzhen had her head down, earnestly taking notes.

He leaned over and lowered his voice, "Sister, let's eat at the cafeteria at noon. I want braised pork."

The young woman's pen didn't stop. She turned her face and gave him a coquettish eye-roll. "Hmph, a broke guy like you is still a picky eater."

Gu Ran smiled and continued to rub the girl's fingers.

He turned his head to look at the early autumn sunlight outside the window. By now, Li Sinan should already be sitting in the conference rooms of ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, and Lenovo.

Just you wait, Penguin. The real war has only just begun...