My Age of Investment

Qiu Zhiyi left in confusion. He didn't understand much of what Xia Jingxing said to him today.

What about crowdsourcing part-time jobs, urban sub-stations, and an army of local promoters...

I understand the superficial meaning, but I don’t know what to do and how to manage it.

After watching Qiu Zhiyi leave, Xia Jingxing shook his head gently.

Lao Qiu's cultural level and education level are still a bit low. Even if he wants to support the other party to establish a takeout delivery platform, it is simply impossible to make it bigger and stronger.

If he could do it all by himself, Xia Jingxing felt that he was seriously lacking in energy. The best way would be to save the money and participate in the project as a co-founder, angel investor, VC investor, PE investor, secondary market investor, etc. .

It doesn’t involve too much energy, and you can get a lot of development dividends. Let the founders work for you. How cool!

The takeout delivery model involves offline operations and is very cumbersome. It would be inappropriate to leave it to any company such as Facebook, YouTube, Android, or Tesla. Without that gene, it would easily involve energy and affect the main business. development, the gains outweigh the losses.

However, it is not easy to find a person or a team with whom you can start a business. You need to meet multiple conditions, otherwise you will cry in tears if you are turned away from the customer.

Of course, given my industry status and that of Vision Capital, it is not so easy to be kicked off halfway.

You need someone who is capable and obedient, but that’s not easy to find!

Xia Jingxing suddenly thought of a person, Dong Aizhi, the founder of Lucky Takeaway, a subsidiary of Good Luck Restaurant.

This girl originally worked part-time as a waitress at Lucky Restaurant. Due to her outstanding performance, she suddenly became a supervisor part-time. She also single-handedly built the early delivery team and service system of Lucky takeout.

After Xia Jingxing took a fancy to her, he took her over from Qiu Zhiyi. Now she has returned to China and works as an investment manager under Fu Jixun.

Zhang Tao, who took over the job from Dong Aizhi, was also full of praise for the girl and wanted to poach her to Dianping as the chief operating officer.

In addition, Dong Aizhi also serves as a director of the American restaurant review website Yelp and a consultant for Lucky takeout. He often travels between China and the United States and is very familiar with the restaurants and takeout markets in both countries.

The only drawback is that Dong Aizhi is not an American.

Food delivery is not as likely to cause information security sensitivities as social media, but food delivery employs a lot of people!

As far as Xia Jingxing knows, Yankee delivery workers often protest and demonstrate, saying that the company violates labor laws and requires the company to give delivery workers a basic salary, which is 120% of the local minimum hourly wage. In addition, 100% of the tips given by customers must go to the takeaways. member.

There has also been a class-action lawsuit launched by deliverymen against a delivery company on the grounds that the company stole their tips, and the company finally settled the matter out of court for millions of dollars.

If it were like domestic takeout in the United States, I might be able to order the house for you.

Xia Jingxing thought for a while and decided to put the food delivery project on hold for now. Firstly, finding a suitable partner was the first step. Secondly, he still needed to wait for the smartphone coverage to increase a little and the performance of the mobile phone to be improved.

Of course, the main problem is the partners. The mobile app is not easy to use and can be improved gradually, but people are really hard to improve.

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After finishing matters in Silicon Valley, Xia Jingxing took a plane to New York.

When he arrived at No. 85 Wall Street Building after a long journey, he saw Abel who came to greet them as soon as he stepped out of the elevator.

"Hahaha~, Darren, we really guessed it right. Lehman is the stinkers on Wall Street!"

Abel walked up to his boss in three steps and couldn't wait to start sharing today's big news.

Xia Jingxing nodded slightly, with a slight smile on his face, "I already know about this. Lehman lost US$2.8 billion in the second quarter. Lehman really hid it deeply enough, and it is only now that it has begun to disclose the risks."

Abel said with a smile: "Just like you said, if you put the explosives together and detonate them, the best CEO in the United States this year is none other than Fuld."

Xia Jingxing did not stop and continued walking to his office. As he walked, he asked, "How is the stock price of Lehman Brothers now?"

“It has started to plummet, from more than 20 US dollars to 15 US dollars, and it continues to fall.

Under such circumstances, Fuld actually announced a US$6 billion financing plan. Who can value such a precarious company? "

Xia Jingxing thought, if Fuld can cut off his wrist, maybe Lehman can still come ashore.

“Have potential investors contacted them?”

Abel replied: "It is said that BlackRock and HSBC are interested in acquiring or investing in them, but these are all rumors and the two companies have not given a public response.

Now that Lehman's reputation on Wall Street is so bad, no one should dare to take the risk to save them. "

Xia Jingxing nodded and quickly walked into his office without asking any more questions. Abel followed him in.

After sitting down, Abel smiled and reported: "The US$1 billion we invested in Greenlight Capital has exceeded US$500 million in book profits. Einhorn means to continue short selling. He said that Lehman There is still room for the stock price to fall further.”

Xia Jingxing chuckled, "That guy has a very vicious vision! But having said that, other companies have been losing money for several consecutive quarters, and Lehman has only disclosed losses for one quarter. How big do you think the next one will be?"

Abel smiled and nodded, "Yes, I think many companies have started to take action against Lehman recently, but they are only taking action now, and their profit margins are not large."

"Keep reading, it's hard to say yet."

This was said to Abel, and Xia Jingxing said it to himself.

The collapse of Lehman was a landmark event and the straw that broke the camel's back in the subprime mortgage crisis. He would not rest assured until he saw that Lehman was completely hopeless.

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In the next half month, the drama starring Lehman Brothers continued to unfold. The entire Wall Street, even the United States and financial practitioners around the world were staring at this company's performance.

First, in order to quell investors' dissatisfaction and anger over the company's huge losses, Fuld, the company's CEO, dismissed both CFO Lorraine Callan and COO Joseph Gregley.

Among the three most important CXOs of a company, Fuld only retained himself.

Lorraine Callan is particularly miserable. Less than a year after taking office, she was first tricked by Einhorn, causing the outside world to question and ridicule her as CFO, and then became a scapegoat.

Then, some media released a set of statistics showing that credit-related losses from major banks and securities firms around the world had reached US$396 billion, of which Lehman's losses were as high as US$13.9 billion.

This loss figure increased significantly from previous quarters and included Lehman's proprietary business and asset management business.

In other words, most of the clients were losing money, and this incident further aroused investors' distrust of Lehman.

At this time, another piece of heavy news suddenly came out: the negotiations between the Korea Industrial Development Bank and Lehman Brothers broke down.

This bad news caused Lehman's stock price to fall directly from about $15 to $7.79, almost halved.

The main responsibility for this matter still falls on Fuld. He is too stubborn and unwilling to cut off his losses in time.

Originally, his subordinates had a good negotiation with the Koreans, but Fuld repeatedly disrupted the negotiation process and kept calling his subordinates to perform micro-management.

In the end, Fuld felt it was not enough and simply rushed into the negotiation room without any respect for the results of previous negotiations by his subordinates, demanding that they be overturned and negotiated again.

At the same time, he also regarded the Koreans as fools and insisted that they also buy the non-performing loan assets of real estate.

The Korean quit on the spot, thinking that he had been greatly insulted, and chose to leave the table, leaving Fuld alone and messy in the wind.

Lehman’s stock price is around US$15, and the Koreans are willing to pay US$20-25, which can be called a conscientious price. However, the Koreans also put forward an additional requirement, requiring that Lehman must divest the non-performing assets of its real estate loans. They Don’t have toxic assets.

Fuld always felt that he could force the Koreans to submit and let the other side take part of the subprime mortgage assets. In the end, he misjudged the situation and caused the entire negotiation to break down.

While Xia Jingxing was communicating with Jiang Ping and Liu Hai's teams and adjusting the market short-selling strategy, he kept a close eye on Lehman's situation.

It wasn't until news broke that Lehman's negotiations with the Koreans had broken down that he returned to China with peace of mind.

The trend is set! Irreversible!