Rebirth 1999: Opening up the era of black technology

Chen Xiao immediately realized that the thank you letter sent by Baidu some time ago was probably not a spam email, but an invitation for cooperation.

Chen Xiao's brain was running rapidly, thinking about Baidu's current situation.

Baidu should have just completed its first round of financing in 2000.

Iy partners and Peninsula Capital Fund purchased 4.8 million shares of Baidu at US$0.25 per share, occupying approximately 24% of Baidu's shares. At this time, Baidu owned approximately 20 million shares.

In other words, Baidu's current market value is about 5 million US dollars, or about 42 million RMB.

Why does Chen Xiao remember it so clearly? That’s because the investment by two companies in Baidu was listed as a classic investment example.

A few years later, when Baidu went public on the Nasdaq, both companies made a lot of money and received returns hundreds of times.

Chen Xiao thinks that her career has just begun, and it is still a small technology company. It only makes a little money through the 11181 website and Internet cafe management system.

I didn't expect Baidu to come to my door on his own initiative.

Zhang Xian asked Chen Xiao for his opinion: "Chen Xiao, take a look, or you can wait in the conference room."

Jiangcheng is a poor place, and its annual GDP is not even as large as a company's revenue.

Whether a company from Shanghai or Yanjing comes over, the local government must warmly receive it, not to mention the above who just said hello.

To be very realistic, what if these giant companies invest in Jiangcheng?

Chen Xiao nodded and said, "Then let's go to the conference room now."

In the conference room, Yang Bin was discussing with his team.

Everyone in Shengda Company was filled with indignation and felt very unhappy.

No matter how you say it, Shengda is a company with a market value of hundreds of millions, and its annual revenue this year is likely to exceed 1 billion.

Shengda's target is Xiaguo Internet giants such as Xinlang, Souhu, and Wangyi.

Zhonglang and Netyi were listed in the United States just last year, and Sohu was just listed on the NASDAQ in the United States in July this year, and both made a lot of money.

Shengda's goal is to be listed in the United States as soon as possible.

So they didn't take Chen Xiao and that little plug-in seriously at all.

I originally thought that this investigation would lead to a certain reconciliation with Chen Xiao and obtain the source code of the plug-in.

But he didn't expect that this little kid Chen Xiao would not give Shengda face at all.

In the discussion just now, some Shengda staff members have already made harsh remarks.

Some things that cannot be solved by law can be solved by other methods.

In this era, it should be easy to use some power to prevent Chen Xiao from studying, or to ruin Chen Xiao's reputation.

No matter how bad things go, pressure can be exerted from above, making it impossible for Chen Xiao's company to operate normally.

When a company opens for business, many approval procedures are decided by relevant departments.

Just when everyone was having a lively discussion, they suddenly discovered that Chen Xiao had turned back again.

Everyone immediately shut up.

But Chen Xiao went to the conference room next door.

More than 10 minutes later, Zhang Ke, the head of Baidu’s marketing department, and his colleagues came to the Cultural Bureau.

Everyone saw Chen Xiao in the conference room.

After some introductions, Zhang Ke confirmed that the developer of .11181 was indeed Chen Xiao.

I didn't expect that Chen Xiao is so young and doesn't look like a programmer at Baidu Company at all. He started to go bald in his 30s.

Zhang Ke was very enthusiastic, regardless of the fatigue of the journey, and said: "I finally found you!"

Zhang Ke said: "Our technicians have sent you at least three emails of thanks and invitations for cooperation, but there has been no response."

Chen Xiao smiled and said: "I didn't expect you to come!"

After some pleasantries, Zhang Ke didn't waste any time and directly expressed Baidu's desire to cooperate.

"The 11181 website is very well done. We hope that your website can add Baidu's search engine to the homepage so that Baidu's search bar can be displayed in front of users more intuitively."

Baidu has no choice but to do this. After all, he can't make much money just by providing services to websites such as Xinlang, Wangyi, and Souhu. Moreover, the right to speak is still in the hands of others, making Baidu's survival very difficult.

Baidu's primary goal now is to expand its influence as much as possible, and to explore profit points as much as possible to make its financial statements and development potential look better.

In this way, we can gain the upper hand in negotiations with venture capital companies such as IDG.

Li Yanhong has decided to promote the business to a wider range of individual users and implement bidding ranking.

Only in this way can you make your statements look better and successfully obtain the second round of financing.

However, Xia Guo’s personal Internet market is still in its infancy, and very few users know about Baidu.

At this critical stage, if we can cooperate with the 11181 website, which has a very broad user market, it will be of great benefit to Baidu.

The influence of the 1181 website is very wide. It not only occupies a sufficient market in Jiangyang Province, but also with the crazy expansion of the Internet cafe management system (because it is free) and the popularity of Shuiyue Legend plug-in, in many provinces in the southern region of Xia Kingdom.

Internet cafes and 11181 websites basically lock the browser's homepage.

Because the website's advertising fees are very low, Chen Xiao really doesn't make much money relying on this website.

But the significance of a website is not to earn that little advertising fee, but to occupy the market as quickly as possible and gain the favor of capital.

Zhang Ke has two cooperation plans in his hands.

The first is to use cash to purchase the homepage interface of the 11181 website and promote Baidu’s search engine in a way similar to advertising.

Another way is to invest in the 11181 website and see if you can become a shareholder of the website.

The first method is more realistic, the second method is risky, but if the 11181 website achieves greater success in the future, Baidu's income will also be very generous, and it will be more like Baidu's angel investment.

Although Baidu doesn't have much cash in hand, he should still have the strength to cooperate with a small website.

The unit price of the first plan proposed by Zhang Ke is still calculated based on pv, which is 1 yuan and 2 per 10,000 pv times.

This price is a bit higher than the advertised price.

Zhang Ke held his breath and looked at Chen Xiao.

Chen Xiao's original purpose of building the 11181 website was to attract investment so that he would have more original capital to do more technology projects.

Especially since I have just lit up the ordinary lithium battery technology tree. This technology is a basic technology for both current MP3 players and future mobile phone and new energy vehicle projects.

But research and development will cost a lot of money.

Chen Xiao definitely doesn't have this strength now.

Baidu can cooperate with himself, which is a very good start.

But Chen Xiao didn't expect that the first user interested in the 11181 website would be Baidu, whom he didn't like very much.

Seeing that Chen Xiao remained silent, Zhang Ke took a deep breath and said, "We have a second plan in hand."

Chen Xiao did not immediately respond to Zhang Ke's words but said:

"Minister Zhang, I have an immature suggestion. What do you think?"