Chapter 559: UC President!

The next morning, Jiang Qin woke up in a guest room at young master Cao’s house, had a quick breakfast, and then asked if there were any entertainment plans.

Lu Zhichuan had set dinner for the evening, so he had most of the day free.

The young master said, “Leave it to me,” and then took Jiang Qin across half the city to an internet café.

He said because the screens were big and it ran smoothly without any glitches.

“Do you know how many investors want to meet me and I don’t go, but here I am… with a dog like you, surfing the internet?”

“This way it’s easy to report, with Cao Guangyu at the internet café, watching Yan Shuangying without any girls around.”

After hearing this, Jiang Qin suddenly stopped objecting and turned to watch Yan Shuangying on the screen, betting on someone else’s gun being empty.

But actually, it’s not that there were no girls in the internet café; there were plenty of bad girls.

For instance, directly opposite Jiang Qin, a guy with dyed yellow hair casually had a girl sitting in his lap, her calves tattooed, not bothering to hide much under her short skirt.

As the internet era progressed, many people online ridiculed those from the outskirts of the city who wore tight pants and loafers, calling them tacky.

But the happiness of these guys with dyed hair is truly unimaginable to decent folks.

They just need to buy a flashy moped and tilt their heads, and they can have different girls every day.

Sometimes one moped can carry two girls, with black stockings and short skirts, all sorts.

“Damn, it actually started sucking.”

“Wow, this young man…”

Jiang Qin watched with interest and after a while, checked his phone to ask when Feng Nanshu would be back.

In the afternoon, as the sun began to set in the west, melting the clouds scattered across the sky, Jiang Qin and Cao Guangyu finally left the internet café and went to a restaurant by the West Lake.

The restaurant had an ancient charm with white walls, grey tiles, and hanging eaves, looking quite impressive.

The host, Lu Zhichuan, was already waiting outside and came up to shake hands as soon as he saw Jiang Qin arriving.

“President Jiang, long time no see.”

“Long time no see, let me introduce you, this is young master Cao, a financier from Hangzhou passionate about charity.”

Lu Zhichuan looked surprised, stepped forward and shook hands: “Young master Cao, hello.”

Cao Guangyu grinned crookedly, thinking old Jiang always poses this way outdoors, then put on the airs of a young master, even playing entrance music like a gambling king.

Soon, the three of them entered a private room together.

Besides Lu Zhichuan, there was another individual joining them for dinner

He wore a dark blue suit with a white shirt inside, appearing to be around thirty years old.

“President Jiang, let me introduce Mr. He Xiaopeng, president of UC Mobile Business Group.”

“President He, nice to meet you.”

He Xiaopeng stood up to shake hands: “I’ve long heard of you, President Jiang.”

Young master Cao also stood up to shake his hand, then leaned his explosive chest on the table.

This meal was just a normal dinner, without much business intent.

Lu Zhichuan was aware that Alibaba no longer had a chance to invest in Group-buy.

However, He Xiaopeng’s presence was specially arranged by Lu since he wanted him to get to know Jiang Qin better.

Initially, the shift in group buying was partly because nobody really understood Jiang Qin, especially at the beginning.

So far, Lu Zhichuan had invested in three projects for Alibaba.

Lashou Network, UC Browser, and Pea Pod App Market.

Currently, Lashou Network was barely surviving, while UC was still thriving, having recently secured over a hundred million in advertising revenue.

But Jiang Qin’s Tonight’s Headlines suddenly entering this market cast a shadow in Lu’s heart, feeling like being chased by a dog on a night walk.

He Xiaopeng was also looking at Jiang Qin.

Shenma Search had launched a week ago, and its user numbers were rapidly increasing, reaching unprecedented heights.

However, the bombardment of advertising around Singles’ Day had garnered some poor reviews in the app market.

But this is what development demands; businesses can’t really be just about the audience; making money is the main goal.

UC’s services are free after all, a bit of advertising is nothing to fuss about; such a shift in business models can indeed reduce the user experience, which is normal.

As for Tonight’s Headlines, it had stopped promoting due to a copyright infringement issue and hadn’t made any significant moves, just dragging its feet.

This suggests they don’t really intend to handle it properly.

Delaying is a common tactic in business, delaying payments, delaying salaries…

But delaying isn’t always good, especially when involved in copyright infringement, as it just makes it seem more shameless.

He thought that President Jiang’s ambitions were not really in the news platform; the investment must not be large, or otherwise, he would have set up a news department.

“President Jiang, what have you been busy with during your trip to Hangzhou?”

“Not much really, just had some fun with young master Cao.”

Lu Zhichuan glanced at Jiang Qin, thinking he couldn’t believe this guy would really indulge since he even shunned the foot spa to buy rainbow ice cream on the roadside.

Young master Cao wasn’t embarrassed at all, pouring out scenes of indulgence he’d seen in TV dramas.

Lu initially listened amusedly, but the more he heard, the more familiar it sounded, until his smile gradually stiffened, realizing this was exactly the TV drama scene he and his wife watched last night.

Meanwhile, He Xiaopeng started a conversation with Jiang Qin: “President Jiang, have you used our UC?”

“Yes, UC is a groundbreaking product, the shift from PC to mobile internet couldn’t just follow old strategies, President He, focusing on user experience is very clever.”

“Thanks for the compliment, President Jiang. I’ve also used Tonight’s Headlines for a while, it’s quite thrilling. What direction do you plan to take it?”

Jiang Qin pursed his lips: “Frankly, I’m not sure myself, Tonight’s Headlines is just a side project.”

He Xiaopeng frowned at that: “A side project?”

“The Group-buy founding team had a journalism major; he always wanted to enter the news industry, so I gave him a chance.”

“Oh, so Tonight’s Headlines wasn’t your idea.”

Jiang nodded: “I run a group-buying business, dealing with transactions, I don’t really understand high-end industries.”

He Xiaopeng then raised a glass to Jiang, his earlier feelings confirmed: Tonight’s Headlines really was just an incidental product.

But soon, Jiang spoke again: “Even though it’s a side project, we still intend to do well with Tonight’s Headlines.”

“Really?”

“President He, you might be aware that there were rumors about Group-buy’s broken capital chain, this taught me the importance of public opinion. Without Tonight’s Headlines, we wouldn’t even have a platform to speak out, just left to be slaughtered.”

Jiang raised his glass: “So I’d like to learn from President He, how should one approach this market?”

He Xiaopeng sighed after hearing this: “Honestly, without getting involved, it’s hard to do well. I’d advise President Jiang not to continue.”

“So you mean Tonight’s Headlines has no future?”

“Pretty much, a platform lacking rigor won’t go far in this field. President Jiang, you might not even realize some articles in Tonight’s Headlines contradict each other.”

He Xiaopeng couldn’t help but smile faintly: “I used Tonight’s Headlines for a while, one article claimed unpeeled apples cause cancer, another said they’re more nutritious unpeeled, such contradictions really don’t inspire trust.”

Jiang leaned back in his chair: “That’s indeed a pity.”

“You’ve achieved remarkable success in group buying, President Jiang, but everyone has their weak fields.”

“If I let those who like peeling apples see only the cancer-causing article, and those who don’t like peeling see only the nutritious one…”

“What did President Jiang just say?”

Jiang’s last sentence was a bit soft, almost like a tongue twister, causing He Xiaopeng not to hear clearly.

When asked, Jiang waved his hand and sighed deeply, draining his glass.

After a while, the meal ended, and they waved goodbye.

Lu Zhichuan felt muddled, as if someone had narrated a whole story from “The Descendants of the Golden Powder Family”: “That guy is definitely a fake young master, even the watch he was wearing is fake!”

He Xiaopeng, on the other hand, had a slight smile as he walked away.

“President He, what do you think of Jiang Qin?”

“He seems quite genuine, keeps it real, indeed what you’d expect from a college graduate. You all saying he’s a dog, that’s just prejudice and arrogance.”

“?”

As he spoke, He Xiaopeng hailed a cab and bid farewell to Lu, heading home.

He has a habit before sleeping of opening his email to check all the messages.

One of the emails was this month’s competitive application analysis.

He opened it and saw the first part was about UC’s user growth, daily active users, and promotional effectiveness depicted in charts.

During the Taobao Singles’ Day period, their numbers had fallen, but following the launch of Shenma Search, the growth sped up dramatically.

He Xiaopeng turned the page intending to see Baidu and Tencent’s data but froze for a moment.

This time, the analysis following UC’s wasn’t Baidu but Tonight’s Headlines.

The company’s staff have a fixed template for creating presentations, they don’t change the order casually, which makes it easy to prepare and for leadership to review.

He Xiaopeng flipped further, glanced at Tonight’s Headlines’ user growth and his eyes widened.

“This must be a mistake, right? Why is it a vertical line?!”