My Age of Investment

The due diligence process for Workday (working days, working hours) has finally been completed. Rainwater Fund, the second VC fund under Envision Capital, allocated USD 15 million in equity investment in accordance with the investment agreement.

At the same time, Envision Capital and Manhours held a small financing press conference in a high-end hotel in Pleasanton, and invited many prospective corporate clients and journalists of Manhours to attend the meeting.

Xia Jingxing never likes extravagance until he succeeds in starting a business and has sufficient funds.

Right now, Gongshi has not officially launched the first enterprise-level product, and the road to entrepreneurship has not even taken the first step.

Xia Jingxing believes that we should be more frugal and put more funds and energy into product research and development.

But Duffield, the chairman of Manhour Company, insisted that his company is being suppressed by Oracle, internal morale is low, and customers have little confidence in his company. They need a high-spirited financing press conference to boost their morale, and at the same time give Potential partners and clients have some confidence.

Seeing that what the other party said was reasonable and well-founded, Xia Jingxing didn't object any more. In the final analysis, after the money was invested in the working company, how to use it was the business of the invested company.

They invest in institutions, and they only need to supervise that the equity investment funds are not misappropriated for private use.

On the day of the press conference, Lin Yaocheng even came here specially from China.

Seeing Xia Jingxing and his party at the entrance of the hotel, Lin Yaocheng, who was wearing a formal suit, walked up to him quickly.

"Jing Xing, I haven't seen you for more than two years, but you are still so handsome!"

Lin Yaocheng was very good at talking, he just flattered him when he came up, and even patted Xia Jingxing's shoulder affectionately.

Xia Jingxing exchanged a few pleasantries with the other party, and walked side by side to the hotel together.

After walking and chatting with the other party for a few words, Xia Jingxing asked, "By the way, has the company settled the remuneration for you?"

"It's over."

Lin Yaocheng nodded with a smile. His intermediary business was very simple, and it took almost no effort to get it done. The remuneration was also very expensive, a total of half a million dollars.

Seeing Lin Yaocheng's incomparably bright smile, Xia Jingxing's heart moved: "You have not been staying in China for a short time, do you have any good projects for me?"

Lin Yaocheng glanced at Xia Jingxing in surprise,

He quickly reacted and nodded with a smile: "Yes, yes, I will make a list for you later, and you will be absolutely satisfied after reading it."

Xia Jingxing smiled slightly. Now he wanted to add some peripheral eyes and ears. Seeing that Lin Yaocheng was very interested in this kind of pimping, he wanted to recruit the other party for his own use and help Vision Capital find projects.

Of course, Lin Yaocheng only has the right to recommend projects, and the decision-making power is still decided by Envision Capital.

After entering the hotel, Xia Jingxing shook hands with Duffield and Busri, the two founders of Manhour Company, and after a brief chat, they walked to the stage together.

There were quite a few people at the scene, Xia Jingxing took a rough look, there should be one to two hundred people.

There were several chairs on the stage, and Xia Jingxing, Rich and the two founders sat down next to each other.

After Duffield briefly said a few words about the company and the industry, everyone began to accept questions from the audience.

After all the procedures were completed and the financing press conference was over, Xia Jingxing had lunch with Duffield and Busri.

At the dinner table, Xia Jingxing threw out the concept of cloud computing, and hoped that the two of them could lead Manshi to develop into this field.

The concept of cloud computing will not be proposed until next year by Amazon and Google.

The concept at this time is still very abstract, and there are no concrete cases in reality. Duffield and Busri are also a little dizzy.

"Daren, if you want to develop in the direction of cloud computing as you mentioned, having a large number of enterprise customers is the most necessary foundation, right?"

Although Duffield is nearly 70 years old, he has been active in the front line of technology, and his understanding ability is not bad, so he grasped the key points at once.

"Yes, this is an infrastructure that sells computing resources like water and electricity. Enterprise customers can obtain them at any time, use them on demand, expand them at any time, and pay for them..."

Xia Jingxing explained to the two of them again, this time along the lines of the SaaS product they wanted to create.

Busri reacted, "This overlaps with the first human resources software we are developing?"

Xia Jingxing smiled, not only did they coincide, but they were exactly the same, okay?

Cloud computing is mainly divided into three service models, and the division of these three layers is mainly from the perspective of user experience.

SaaS software as a service, providing applications as services to customers;

PaaS platform as a service, providing the development platform as a service to users;

IaaS infrastructure as a service provides virtual machines or other resources as services to users.

Manhour Company belongs to the first SaaS service of specialization, providing human resources application, financial management application and other services.

Big companies like Ahri, Google, and Amazon provide all three services.

It can be understood as the difference between the full platform and the vertical segment.

Xia Jingxing replied: "The concept of the first product that Gongshi Company is currently building is very good, and if it continues to develop along this road, it will definitely be able to occupy a place in the subdivided field of SaaS.

It's just that there are a few places you need to pay attention to..."

Xia Jingxing, who was born as a programmer, actually only knows half a bucket of water about cloud computing. He didn't study hard and only knew superficially.

He had seen the first human resource product being developed by Manshi Company, and it was basically fine, except for some small problems in some details.

At this time, he raised a few words, which made Duffield and Brismouth suddenly realize that they can still play like this?

Immediately, the two of them were somewhat dubious. After all, the improvements proposed by Xia Jingxing had not yet been verified, and it was uncertain whether they would be effective.

"You can try to explore one or two in the direction I said, maybe there will be unexpected gains."

Xia Jingxing didn't say much. After all, cloud computing doesn't pay attention to creativity and functions like websites, but involves many technical things.

He can't contribute too much by himself. This is a technology-intensive industry.

At the same time, the most important thing is for customers to be the guinea pigs. After the product is released, the customer's feedback will be used to make corresponding improvements, and to continuously improve and polish the product.

The reason why Ari and Amazon’s cloud computing is popular is that there are many sellers on the platform, enough guinea pigs for experiments, and a lot of feedback.

This is very beneficial for research and development.

A company like Facebook, which mainly serves C-end individuals, engages in cloud computing. Compared with B-end companies, it is inherently at a disadvantage.

"Okay, Darren, thank you for your suggestion. No matter what the final result is, Manhour will remember Envision Capital's help to us."

Duffield smiled and picked up the wine glass, and the old man's partner Bliss hurriedly followed behind to raise the wine glass, and they clinked glasses with Xia Jingxing together.

Xia Jingxing nodded, this can be regarded as his empowerment to the invested company.

"Haha, Darren, I understand why you want to invest in us."

Through today's conversation, Duffield vaguely saw the bright future of Gongshi Company, a track for them to gallop.

He believes that Xia Jingxing invested in a start-up company that has not even officially launched a product at a valuation of 150 million US dollars because he saw the gold mines hidden in this track.

The only thing he regrets is that maybe if he insisted on it at the beginning, he might be able to close the deal at a post-investment valuation of US$200 million.

Then he thought, the information that Xia Jingxing told him today was worth more than 200 million US dollars.

In fact, what Xia Jingxing said was not that great, it just cleared the haze of the road ahead and strengthened the two founders' confidence in success.

Xia Jingxing said with a smile: "At present, we are still far from success, and the customer is the key.

There is an old saying in China, "It's hard for a clever woman to cook without rice"..."

Xia Jingxing briefly explained the allusion, and then said with a bit of emphasis: "Purpose the product well, expand the number of users, and kill Oracle."

"I like the last line!"

Duffield raised his eyebrows, raised his glass to gesture to Xia Jingxing, and drank it down in one gulp.