My Age of Investment

Sitting in the comfortable and spacious back seat of the Phantom, Xia Jingxing crossed his legs, looking relaxed and comfortable, but he was actually listening carefully to Ricky's work report sitting next to him.

"Daren, Yelp was founded in October 2004 by ex-PayPal engineers Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons.

In the first year of their establishment, they established a firm foothold in the San Francisco market and became an entertainment guide for the local new generation of Internet workers..."

Ricky briefly introduced the development process of Yelp, and then talked about the current situation.

"Currently, they are looking for opportunities to expand to other cities.

But they also have a heavyweight rival, Citysearch, an Internet review site founded in the 90s.

This website was established earlier than Yelp, has more users, and covers a wider area.

In addition, for the restaurants and various stores that have settled in, Yelp will help them create information and archive pages on the platform for free.

But to get more exposure, stores need to buy Yelp's premium service.

However, as I read in detail, the service didn't sell very well.

In addition to this profit model, Yelp has not found other feasible profit methods.

Generally speaking, Yelp is still in its infancy stage, and its product and business model are still full of immaturity. "

Xia Jingxing nodded. Yelp is actually the American version of Dianping. It is a website for local life services. Users can find restaurants, book tables, write about their dining experience, and rate restaurants after dining.

"You have been in contact with the two founders, how was the chat? What is their attitude?"

Xia Jingxing looked at Rich with a smile. After he learned about the Yelp project from Qiu Zhiyi, he didn't start it himself, but gave Rich to follow up.

As the head of Rainwater Fund, Ricky has joined the company for some time, but he has not yet officially invested in his first project.

Xia Jingxing entrusted this matter to him, in addition to allowing the other party to complete a historic breakthrough, there was also a sense of comparison in it.

"It was a good chat!"

Ricky shrugged.

"They heard that our vision capital invested in LinkedIn, and Peter Thiel invested in Facebook, so they have a certain affinity with us."

Xia Jingxing smiled, the famous "PayPal Entrepreneurial Gangster", except for Musk who has a bad relationship with him, everyone else gets along very well with him.

Invisibly, this also broadened his contacts and won him a reputation in the industry.

"And then? Are they willing to accept the capital injection from Vision Capital?"

Ricky smiled lightly: "We have talked about the valuation and financing scale, and they generally agree.

It's just that before formally finalizing the cooperation, they hope to meet with you, the real big boss. "

Xia Jingxing didn't doubt that he was there, even if they didn't ask him to meet, he would still ask them to have a chat.

The decision-making process and operation mode of each venture capital firm are different.

But most of them are investment managers who are looking for projects everywhere, and the talks are almost done, and finally handed over to the investment committee for a decision, or arrange for entrepreneurs to meet with the founding partners, that is, the real big boss of the venture capital company. The big boss "faces each other" to see if he can make a difference.

The car stopped in front of an office building in San Francisco. Xia Jingxing, Rich and Zhang Chenguang got out of the car and walked into the office building together.

Yelp has only completed an angel round of financing of US$1 million invested by the MRL Ventures business incubator, so it is still not strong in terms of financial strength, and it is still crowded in the business incubator.

After Xia Jingxing, Rich and Zhang Chenguang walked into the business incubator in the building, they immediately saw dozens of young people working in the open office area.

The office environment is not bad, at first glance, it looks like a large Internet company.

In fact, these dozens of people may belong to dozens of different companies.

These young people are very focused, sitting on simple and plain office chairs, looking at the computer screen without blinking their eyes.

There are also young people sitting together in twos and threes, discussing products, and jumping out a few professional terms from time to time.

The arrival of the three of Xia Jingxing didn't disturb the entrepreneurs gathered here at all. Many people raised their eyelids and then continued to work at their desks.

"Daren!"

A young man in his twenties with messy black hair in the shape of a chicken coop suddenly jumped up from his work station and walked quickly towards Xia Jingxing and his party.

Such a big movement finally attracted the attention of other young entrepreneurs, and they whispered to each other.

"This is?"

Xia Jingxing was taken aback by the stern shout, and seeing a black-haired young man walking towards him quickly, he hurriedly asked Ricky.

"This is Yelp's founder and CEO, Stoppelman."

Hearing Ricky's words, Zhang Chenguang quietly moved back to his body.

He was also taken aback by the stern shout just now, when someone suddenly called the boss's name, he didn't dare to hesitate, he rushed forward quickly, blocking Xia Jingxing's body, keeping his eyes on the foreigner who was rushing towards them.

In particular, pay attention to whether the foreigner is carrying any sharp weapons on his hands or body, and whether there is any malice on his face.

Now that the threat was temporarily lifted, he stood beside Xia Jingxing, secretly on guard.

"Darren, nice to meet you, I'm your fan, Jeremy Stoppelman, just call me Jeremy."

The young man was very enthusiastic. After approaching Xia Jingxing and his party, he smiled and held out his right hand to Xia Jingxing.

"How many centimeters?"

Xia Jingxing murmured something in his heart, thinking that the name was still powerful, and it was fortunate that this brother didn't go to China to study.

"Hello, Jeremy, nice to meet you too."

Xia Jingxing also opened his mouth to speak at the scene. After shaking hands with Jeremy, he looked around from the corner of his eye, only to find that a large number of foreigners were watching.

Jeremy realized that he had been careless. He yelled so loudly that everyone here probably heard it.

He himself has been in the startup incubator for so long, so he naturally knows how hungry these hard-working brothers and sisters around him are.

As long as the incubator comes to invest, everyone's eyes will be green.

Now that there are big entrepreneurs and investors like Dai Lun, it's not bad, and they all look like they are ready to pounce at any time.

Jeremy also noticed that several people were rummaging through boxes and cabinets, looking for various documents, probably looking for business plans.

"Everyone come with me!"

Jeremy didn't dare to stay for a long time, he protected Xia Jingxing and his party, and walked to his company's workstation in "Wolf Surrounded".

Seeing Jeremy desperately protecting food, many young entrepreneurs temporarily extinguished their small thoughts and watched Xia Jingxing and his party leave.

"This is my partner, Russell Simmons."

After bringing him to the work station, Jeremy introduced Xia Jingxing to a big golden retriever who was standing up and ready to greet everyone.

"Daren, nice to meet you."

Russell looks frail. He is in his twenties. He has light blonde hair and a non-mainstream hairstyle, the style of Fahrenheit. coordination.

Xia Jingxing shook hands with Jin Mao, looked around, and asked, "Is there a quieter place?"

"Yes, yes, come with me!"

Jeremy said that he and Russell hurried forward to lead the way, and brought the three of Xia Jingxing to the shared office of the incubator.

After calling Xia Jingxing and the three to sit down, and pouring a cup of coffee for each of them, Jeremy smiled and said, "The environment here is relatively simple, Darren, don't hold it against you."

"How? It's better than Stanford's incubator."

Xia Jingxing picked up the coffee and motioned to Jeremy, "At least there is coffee."

After finishing speaking, Xia Jingxing picked up the cup and brought it to his mouth, taking a big sip.

Seeing Xia Jingxing being so down-to-earth, Jeremy and Russell were relieved a lot, with smiles on their faces.

"I heard that you two want to have an interview with me?"

Putting down the cup, Xia Jingxing took a look at the two of them and said calmly.

"Yes, Darren, we are very satisfied with the terms offered by Vision Capital..."

Speaking of this, Jeremy paused for a moment, met his partner's eyes once, and then looked at Xia Jingxing again.

As soon as he gritted his teeth, he said like beans poured out of a bamboo tube: "Yelp wants to develop a function that recommends restaurants and stores among friends. We want to chat with you, Darren, and see if we can introduce Yelp to cooperate with Facebook." one time."

"That's it?"

When Xia Jingxing saw the two men hesitating, he thought it was something serious.

"Yes, that's it!"

Jeremy also added: "Can you? Darren, we really want to launch this feature."

"Yes, yes, but I heard that you only raised $5 million."

Xia Jingxing shook his head lightly, frowned and sighed, "It's hard to get things done with this little money!

You want to use this sharing function to use the Facebook relationship chain to carry out viral marketing, am I right? "

My little thought was completely seen through by this young man who was several years younger than him.

Jeremy's heart was broken, and he finally stopped hiding, and began to elaborate on his plan.