Chapter 184 Financing and Hot ReleaseJust now, Zhang Yiming has tried the Kuaishou app for a while. Although its algorithm is backward and many of the recommended videos are not what he wants to watch, Even so, Zhang Yiming still has the urge to watch short videos non-stop. It's really too addictive. At this time, Zhang Yiming had already realized that artificial intelligence algorithms and short videos are really a perfect match. If you make a short video app yourself, you can then use ByteDance’s artificial intelligence algorithm for recommendations. If an LS likes to watch young ladies, I will recommend more beauties to him. If he likes entertainment information, I will recommend all kinds of celebrity gossip to him. If he likes to listen to music, I will recommend classic songs to him. If he likes movies, I will recommend wonderful film and television clips to him... As long as one is a human being, he has his own preferences. Whether he likes young ladies, entertainment stars, cars, chess, or even likes to watch donkey hoof repair and carpet washing, the artificial intelligence algorithm can recommend the videos he wants to watch. The more Zhang Yiming thought about it, the more excited he became. If this kind of app was successful, he couldn't imagine how high the user stickiness would be, and how huge the market potential would be. Penguin’s WeChat or QQ only has a single social attribute. Alibaba’s Alipay is just a payment interface. They all lack entertainment.
Short video apps are not only entertaining, but also have social attributes and even payment attributes. If you think about it more deeply, this app seems to encompass everything. Live streaming, finance, novels, food, movie promotion, etc., everything you can think of seems to be included. "Mr. Zhang, Kuaishou app has another fatal problem," Yang Hao continued. "Any more questions?" Zhang Yiming straightened his face and pretended to listen attentively. "The video review on the Kuaishou app doesn't seem to be very strict, and there are many videos with problematic social values," Yang Hao said very seriously. Short videos are a new thing, and we are in the process of feeling our way forward. The content is diverse, and although it is very interesting and attractive, there are also many videos with serious problems in their social value orientation. A spirited young man, with a third eye painted on his forehead and tattoos on his arms, made an appointment for a fight via video. Fake charity. After filming the joke, they asked for the donated money back. They even attracted countless fans because of this, and a typical representative of them was later directly banned. Vulgar rap, social dance, etc. were also named and banned because of this incident. Just post videos to get traffic. Everyone must have heard of the word "Oli Gei". It was originally a very positive word, but because of Lao 8's video it instantly became synonymous with shit. Yang Hao briefly told Zhang Yiming about some common negative energy videos on Kuaishou short videos, and Zhang Yiming frowned after hearing them. Although he knew that people have all kinds of weird behaviors, Zhang Yiming still found it hard to understand why some people would eat glass. "Mr. Zhang, if you make a short video app, you must take the manual review seriously. Looking at any new thing, it is disorderly and left unattended in the early stages, but as long as it grows big, it will definitely be regulated. You should understand this principle," Yang Hao said this with a serious expression. In the past, when Douyin was first launched, for a long time, its total number of users and daily active users were less than those of Kuaishou. There was a big reason why it later surpassed Kuaishou, which was that Kuaishou was summoned by the higher authorities and asked to make rectifications, and the app was removed from the shelves and suspended for a month. Douyin seized this opportunity to launch large-scale advertising, especially in the southern region, resulting in the number of Douyin users far exceeding that of Kuaishou. At that time, people in the circle jokingly said, Douyin in the South and Kuaishou in the North.
Yang Hao didn't want Douyin to be involved when Kuaishou was summoned for questioning. "Okay, I got it," Zhang Yiming nodded, indicating that he understood. Every businessman knows how serious it is to be interviewed. Even the most powerful company cannot withstand a piece of paper. "Mr. Yang, why do I feel that you are so familiar with short videos? Did you think about short video apps when you invested in ByteDance last year?" Zhang Yiming looked at Yang Hao curiously. The analysis Yang Hao just made was not something he could just say casually. It took at least a few months or even half a year of preliminary investigation to be done in advance. ByteDance's Series B financing was led by Yang Hao. Zhang Yiming naturally paid special attention to Yang Hao. He had a general idea of Yang Hao's movements in the entertainment industry in the past two years. In the past two years, Yang Hao has been doing very well in the entertainment industry. He has invested in dozens of film and television projects, large and small, and has produced five or six hit movies. He should be very busy, and it doesn't seem like he has the time to investigate the field of short videos. "It's a secret," Yang Hao smiled mysteriously without explaining. "Haha", after hearing Yang Hao telling the secret, Zhang Yiming stopped asking questions and just laughed along. "By the way, Mr. Yang, what do you think about ByteDance's Series C financing?" After talking about the short video project, Zhang Yiming turned the topic to the main topic. During the B round of financing, Yang Hao requested to retain the right of priority financing. Now that ByteDance's financing news was released, Yang Hao immediately came to the company to interview Zhang Yiming and told him about such a promising project. Zhang Yiming knew clearly that Yang Hao must have some ideas about this C round of financing. In its previous round of B financing, ByteDance’s valuation was US$5000 million. With the joining of Yang Hao, ByteDance’s B round valuation was raised to US$ million. The valuation of the C round of financing naturally rose. The valuation of the previous C round of financing was only US$5 million, but now Zhang Yiming's psychological expectation valuation has reached US$10 billion. Currently, three leading capital firms, namely Sequoia Capital China, Sina Weibo Fund, and Shunwei Capital, are quite interested in ByteDance. "For the Series C financing, I will not lead the investment. I will just follow the investment to prevent my shares from being diluted." It’s not that Yang Hao has no ideas about the C round of financing, but if a company of ByteDance’s level wants to grow bigger and stronger, it needs more partners to help it. Especially for the Douyin app, it is going to go abroad. Without the help of foreign capital, it is impossible to go abroad. If I hold too many shares, it will inevitably affect the future development of ByteDance. It would be good if I can ensure that I am not diluted in the C round. You may still have funds to participate in the D round, but later on, when ByteDance's market value reaches hundreds of billions or trillions, 1% of the shares will be tens or hundreds of billions, and the possibility of you wanting to participate is slim, as the shares will definitely be diluted in the later stage. "Okay, then let's do as you say, Mr. Yang." Zhang Yiming heaved a sigh of relief when he heard Yang Hao say that he was just following the investment and would ensure that the shares would not be diluted. To be honest, if Yang Hao continues to lead the investment, it may not be a good thing for ByteDance. If a company wants to develop, capital is of course the most important thing, but when it reaches a certain scale, other resources may be more useful than money. After he and Zhang Yiming had basically agreed on the C round of financing, the two chatted politely for a while before Yang Hao got up and left. During the interview with Zhang Yiming, although he did not explicitly say when the Douyin app would be developed, Yang Hao judged from the other party's serious expression that it would definitely not be too late, at least much earlier than in his previous life. "Douyin, Douyin", Yang Hao's face reveals excitement when thinking of this giant product, and he is really looking forward to the day when it comes out. - Walking out of ByteDance’s office building, Yang Hao still felt as if he was in a dream. This is ByteDance! Everyone in China knows that Douyin is awesome in China, but few people know that TiKTok is even more awesome abroad. According to statistics from foreign information companies, TikTok's global downloads have exceeded 30 billion, which means that almost half of the world's Internet users have downloaded TikTok. TikTok's global daily active users are as high as 10 billion, which means that one in seven people in the world open Douyin every day. In just a few years, TikTok's downloads have repeatedly surpassed those of established social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. These are all real data, not the kind that is full of water in Huawei's App Store. Any browser can have tens of billions of downloads.
TikTok can only be described as terrifying. He now owns of ByteDance's shares. Even if it is diluted later, he is estimated to still have about 5% of the shares. The market value of TikTok is two to three trillion yuan, so even if he has 5% of the shares, that would be more than billion yuan. Just as Yang Hao was standing under the ByteDance office building, lost in his vision of the future, Xie Yongjun, who was standing next to him, asked. "Boss, where are we going now?" "Let's go back to the hotel first," Xie Yongjun's words brought Yang Hao back to reality. Yang Hao stayed in a hotel near ByteDance for one night and then left. Before leaving, Yang Hao told Xie Yongjun that if any problems arose in ByteDance's Series C financing, he could call him at any time. Yang Hao also knows that financing is the biggest thing for ByteDance, but financing is a very troublesome thing. Now that the financing news has just been released, it is still necessary to negotiate and contact with several leading capital companies to actually reach a financing agreement. It will take at least ten days to half a month, and it is normal to take one or two months slower. Yang Hao doesn't have so much time to wait here, so he can only arrange for Xie Yongjun to keep an eye on it. - Yesterday was the first day of the release of the movie "Assassins 2". Before its release, the pre-sale box office of "Knife of the Assassin 2" had reached million yuan. Nowadays, when theaters schedule movies, they are increasingly paying attention to the pre-sale performance of the movies. No matter how big the investment or production is, it is not as real as the movie pre-sale performance, which is the real money. Due to the extremely high pre-sale box office of "Knife of the Assassin 2" and the lack of decent competitors during the same period, the first day screening schedule of "Knife of the Assassin 2" reached a terrifying . You should know that the highest first-day screening rate for a movie before was created by Guo Xiaosi's "Tiny Times". "Knife of the Assassin 2" directly broke the record of "Tiny Times". Naturally, the media cannot miss this kind of traffic feast. "'Knife of the Assassin 2' breaks the first-day schedule record of 'Tiny Times'" “With such a high number of screenings, can “Blade of the Assassin 2” break the box office record for martial arts films created by “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”?” …… There will naturally be people who praise and people who criticize. For the sake of traffic, media people will not care about their own moral integrity. "The movie 'Assassin's Blade 2' occupies nearly half of the screening schedule. Isn't this unfair to other hard-working filmmakers in the same period?" "Director xxx cried out that it was unfair and knelt down to beg for more screenings" The film industry is so small. If you eat more, others will eat less. Many film and television companies are hoping that Yang Hao will suffer a setback. Many companies are keeping an eye on the first-day box office performance of "Knife of the Assassin 2" on August 8. I was just thinking about the box office failure of "Knife of the Assassin 2" and the joke of Yang Hao. August 8rd is not only the summer vacation period, but also a Saturday. With the combination of two holidays, the first-day box office of "Assassins 2" reached a staggering million.
Those who want to see Yang Hao make a fool of himself are destined to be disappointed. Although this kind of movie's performance is not as good as the first-day box office of "The Richest Tomato" during the Spring Festival, it is already a number that cannot be higher. - Yang Hao just returned home in the evening, but unexpectedly found someone taking a shower in the bathroom. "Could it be that Liu Shishi is taking a bath?" Yang Hao was full of doubts. The day before yesterday, Liu Shishi said that she would go on a roadshow with Senior Brother Lu Yang and others in the next two days, so she should not be at home. Then who is in the bathroom? "Shishi?" Yang Hao called tentatively at the bathroom door. "Ah! Yang Hao, why are you back? Didn't you say you were going to discuss that C round of financing?" Liu Shishi, who was in the bathroom, exclaimed when she heard Yang Hao's shouting outside the door. "Things went smoothly, so I came back early. But didn't you say you were going with the roadshow? Why are you still at home?" Yang Hao asked in confusion. "I'm going on a roadshow, but I'm still visiting movie studios near the capital these past two days. I'll probably go to other cities in a couple of days." Just when Liu Shishi was about to say something. "Creak!", the bathroom door was pushed open from the outside by Yang Hao. "Oh! How did you get in?" When Liu Shishi saw Yang Hao suddenly breaking in, she quickly covered her private parts with her hands and exclaimed shyly. "Get out quickly, get out quickly," Liu Shishi pointed the bathroom shower directly at Yang Hao, trying to drive him out. "Hehe," Yang Hao smiled with ill intention. "You are already an old married couple, why are you still so shy?" Yang Hao looked around. Yang Hao had watched the expressions and movements on the boat countless times, but this kind of bathing scene was the first time for Yang Hao. Seeing Liu Shishi's panic-stricken look, Yang Hao found it very exciting. "Come on!" Yang Hao walked up and hugged the other person. The smooth and tender skin, with these water droplets, is warm and cool, refreshing and comfortable. At first, Liu Shishi was still a little hesitant, but after a tiring day, she thought it would be a good idea to let Yang Hao do some maintenance, so she gradually relaxed her body and mind. There were traces of the two of them in the bathroom and on the sofa. …… Afterwards, Liu Shishi lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling with her beautiful watery eyes. She didn't want to move at all. She was really tired, but also felt so good. The review deleted 100 words. It seems that sensitive figures cannot be mentioned.
(End of this chapter)