novelslam Chapter 156 Meeting Lei Jun
Chapter 156 Meeting Lei Jun
Chapter 156 Meeting Lei Jun
In Room 807 of the Yingu Building in Zhongguancun, Beijing, Lin Mu met Lei Jun through Peng Zhijian's introduction.
By the end of 2010, Xiaomi had secured tens of millions of yuan in angel investment, and the first generation of MIUI had already been launched on the forum.
Lei Jun smiled and said, "Young man, I heard from Zhijian that you were coming to see me to discuss software pre-installation, right?"
"Your idea is very interesting, transplanting the practice of bundling software from the PC era to mobile. Actually, you could talk to the marketing department about this; they can make the decision themselves. There's no need for me to talk to them personally."
Lin Mu looked at Lei Jun, who sat somewhat reservedly behind the table. He never expected that this big shot would act this way in front of him, a junior, during a private meeting at Lei Jun's own company. It seemed that this was just his personal habit.
Lin Mu said with a smile, "Mr. Lei, does Xiaomi still accept individual investment? Let's add me to the angel round."
Lei Jun was initially surprised, then his expression changed slightly, and he said, "President Lin, when you used the money raised for investment this time, were there any restrictions on this aspect in the signed agreement?"
Lin Mu shook his head and said, "It wasn't money from Tencent and Sequoia. Do you know the brand Moonweaving?"
Lei Jun frowned. How could he possibly recognize such a women's luxury stockings brand? He shook his head and said, "I don't know."
Lin Mu gave her a general introduction to Yuezhi: starting as a designer, starting in Paris, and then relying on the popularity in Paris to bring it back to China, it is now thriving both at home and abroad, with flagship stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and its business is booming. The latest valuation is 5 to 6 million yuan.
Lin Mu said, "This brand was created by my girlfriend and me. I still have 20% of the original shares, so cashing out ten or twenty million won't be a problem."
Lei Jun was genuinely unaware that Lin Mu possessed such resources. He had only heard from Peng Zhijian that Lin Mu was a figure in the e-commerce industry and a master of marketing. He smiled and said, "Thank you for your high regard for Xiaomi, but Xiaomi's Series A financing has already been completed, and there are indeed no plans to add new shareholders."
Lei Jun was slightly moved. Since stepping down as CEO of Kingsoft and starting his own business, he had faced a lot of cold shoulders and distrust. There was even a time when he was about to give shares to a senior executive, but the executive told him to decide for himself. This was the first time someone had taken the initiative to come to him with money.
Lin Mu scratched his head, muttering to himself: "Isn't it rumored that Lei Jun was short of investment when he founded Xiaomi? How come this is different from the rumors? What a pity, I missed out on this opportunity. But oh well, I've already gotten enough."
Lin Mu added, "That's such a shame. Please let me know when you're launching your Series A+ or Series B funding round."
Lei Jun laughed it off, "Definitely, definitely." But in his heart, he thought that by then, Xiaomi would either go bankrupt or soar to new heights, and Lin Mu's tens of millions of investment would be nothing. As for reserve funds, he himself had billions of yuan in cash on hand.
Lei Jun proactively asked, "Regarding the pre-installation of the software, what kind of price is Mr. Lin planning to offer?"
Lin Mu said, "I can offer a very good price, one yuan each."
The initial Xiaomi phone team was very small, only a few dozen people, each with multiple roles. Lei Jun was also aware of the pre-installed software issue.
Xiaomi phones haven't even discussed pre-installation partnerships yet. In the pre-installed software market, the fiercest competition is in browsers and...
Competition among e-commerce platforms for frequently used software such as input methods and social media is not yet fierce. In fact, it can be said that the vast majority of e-commerce platforms have not yet completed the transition from PC to mobile.
Pinduoduo, on the other hand, did not have the trouble of transformation because it did not catch up with the PC wave and was rooted in the mobile platform from the beginning.
Lei Jun called over his colleagues from the marketing department, and after a few words of discussion, they finalized the cooperation plan.
Incidentally, this pre-installation price of one yuan per phone is calculated based on the number of activated phones. For example, if Xiaomi produces 100 million phones, sells 10 of them, and activates 9, then Lin Mu will pay based on the number of 9 phones, which is 9 yuan.
Don't be fooled by the low price; that's typical for the pre-installed software market. Their real revenue comes from a cut of the software's sales.
Of course, generally speaking, e-commerce platforms do not take a cut of revenue from software; the majority of revenue is taken from games.
In particular, the channel servers for various games can directly collect 50% of the revenue from pre-installed mobile phones.
In later years, Xiaomi relied on the Xiaomi channel server of "Honor of Kings" and earned 7.5 million yuan in revenue sharing from this game alone in one year.
Moreover, while the unit price of pre-installed software is low, the total volume is large. Generally speaking, software vendors won't deal with companies shipping tens of thousands of units...
If you're going to negotiate with a phone manufacturer that sells hundreds of thousands of units, you should negotiate with a manufacturer that ships millions of units. Once the total volume increases, the pre-installation fee will generally be four or five million yuan or more.
Of course, Lin Mu knew in his heart that he would definitely not lose out in this deal. Xiaomi phones have a particularly high cost performance, especially after the launch of Redmi, whose user base highly overlaps with Pinduoduo's user base.
After discussing the pre-installation partnership, Lin Mu didn't leave immediately. He continued, "Mr. Lei, I have another new collaboration I'd like to discuss with you. How about we allocate a batch of phones and sell them through Pinduoduo?"
"This will not only divert traffic to your Xiaomi official website and avoid putting pressure on traffic, but as far as I know, your Xiaomi phones plan to go entirely online and not offline, which will more or less raise questions about user trust. By selling on Pinduoduo, you can also get a trust endorsement from Pinduoduo."
This time, Lei Jun firmly refused, saying, "Mr. Lin, this won't do. Xiaomi phones resolutely refuse third-party distributors."
My goal is to achieve the ultimate cost-effectiveness, and to achieve absolute cost-effectiveness, there absolutely cannot be any third-party distributors.
Lin Mu was not surprised by this result. As the saying goes, "what goes around comes around." Xiaomi initially succeeded with this model, but later, as market competition intensified and a series of blunders occurred, its fortunes declined in 2015 and 2016.
In 2010, the negative consequences of not building physical stores reached their peak.
During that period, Xiaomi's supply chain was nearly out of control. It's said that they offended Samsung regarding screen supply, and Lei Jun personally went to Samsung's headquarters to apologize, but he couldn't win Samsung back. Meanwhile, OPPO and vivo took the opportunity to expand their offline channels aggressively. It was during this crisis that Xiaomi changed its strategy and began to aggressively expand its offline channels.
Lin Mu said, "Mr. Lei, may I order 100 phones from you?"
Lei Jun raised an eyebrow and said, "That's a small matter, okay, sure. But I really didn't expect President Lin to be so supportive of my business. May I ask, what are you going to do with so many phones? It can't be for employee benefits, can it?"
Lin Mu smiled and said, "I have my reasons." He knew that the Xiaomi phone would be a huge hit as soon as it was released.
If 30 units were snapped up in minutes, Xiaomi's official website would be overwhelmed and crash. If Pinduoduo had 100 new Xiaomi phones at that moment, it would have 100 ways to market them and capitalize on this surge in popularity.
Lei Jun pondered for a moment and said, "President Lin, I can't disclose the price of the phone for now; it's confidential. However, I heard from President Peng that you have many marketing ideas, so why don't you give me one? If it really helps Xiaomi, consider these 100 phones a gift from me; you don't need to pay for them."
"Huh? There's actually a chance to get something for free?" Lin Mu thought to himself with delight.