"Come on, Mr. Zhao, sit down." Zhou Yujie greeted with a smile.

"Thank you." Zhao Yuan replied politely.

Without Zhou Yujie's instructions, the beautiful assistant brought up the two prepared teas.

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Mr. Zhao, this is a high-end Tieguanyin that someone gave me. It is generally difficult to buy on the market. I don't understand tea ceremony very well. Mr. Zhao, come and verify it for me."

"Mr. Zhou is in love." Zhao Yuan laughed. He likes tea tasting very much, which is not a big secret in the industry. Ordinary small companies will curry favor with investors' preferences, but Zhou Yujie in front of him is different. He is able to care about it, which is a kind of respect for people.

Zhao Yuan tasted a sip of tea and praised: "Good tea, mellow taste."

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Mr. Zhao likes it so much, so I'll send someone to your hotel later."

"Thank you." Zhao Yuan was not pretentious either. He was just a piece of tea. No matter how expensive it was, it was just a demand for Zhou Yujie.

Zhao Yuan continued: "Mr. Zhou, our Sequoia and Toutiao are also good partners. Sequoia did not get the main investment in Quxin's two financings. This time, we hope that we can truly carry out strategic cooperation."

Zhao Yuan attaches great importance to Toutiao, so he has a detailed study of Toutiao's development history and financing choices.

The fundamental reason for Toutiao's rapid development in the early stage was that Quxin occupied the field of "Stranger Social" with a shake, and then internally attracted Toutiao and AppTreasures.

Subsequently, Toutiao retained these users with a big data accurate recommendation model that outsiders didn't know at the time. With the help of AppTreasure, Toutiao's entire company retained them with three software.

Therefore, Quxin is the core of Toutiao's rapid development. If there is no Quxin, Toutiao's big data recommendations will take a lot of time to develop slowly even if they are powerful.

The existence of Quxin threatened the social overlord Teng Xun. In order to further develop, Quxin began to raise funds. Obtaining funds is only part of it, and more importantly, obtaining external traffic entrances.

Looking at the domestic market, only Baidu has such ability, and Baidu's capital is not lower than Sequoia. Therefore, during the first second financing, Zhao Yuan did not deliberately compete for the leading position because this did not meet the development needs of Quxin.

However, with Zhou Yujie launching the cooperation model between Quxin and Meituan, Quxin data has experienced explosive growth, and the mutual traffic diversion model within Toutiao has passed users to Toutiao and AppTrea.

Later, because Tengxun and Lashou.com also began to copy the models of Quxin and Meituan, Quxin's user growth rate also slowed down with the increase in market share.

In this case, Toutiao chose to preinstall Toutiao for Toutiao, which is also a potential way to increase users.

With Toutiao's rapid progress in the mobile Internet field, most traditional PC giants have begun to fully deploy the mobile Internet, including Baidu, but Baidu discovered its own problem, that is, the position of search engines in the mobile terminal is not as important as before.

So, Li Yanhong chose the most traditional model - copying, responsible for the business model of successful people, and then defeated his opponents with his huge traffic. This is the business model that Internet giants like to do the most.

At present, the most successful model in the mobile Internet field is naturally Toutiao. The social software Baidu cannot copy it, but anyone can do the information distribution and application treasure download platform, especially the engine that has mastered a large amount of user information in China.

Nowadays, Baidu has begun to publish various news under its APP, and has also begun to set different types of delivery according to users' preferences. In addition, Baidu has launched Baidu Mobile Assistant, and the template is another application treasure.

Although anyone can do big data news and application markets, since Baidu has done it, although Toutiao will not turn aside, the relationship is definitely far worse than before. Therefore, Zhao Yuan believes that Sequoia Capital can have a step closer to Toutiao.

Unfortunately, Quxin did not burn money with Teng Xun to grab the market, but instead started to provide services seriously. This also led to Quxin not being short of money in the short term, let alone Toutiao. Zhao Yuan once hinted several times, but was politely rejected.

Zhao Yuan is not very interested in AppTreasure. Although the application market operation model is clear, the future is limited. However, if AppTreasure raises funds, Sequoia will also participate.

In recent months, Toutiao's newly launched Today's Selection has also entered Zhao Yuan's sight. Although this industry focuses on offline operation investment, Zhou Yujie did not lack money in the early stage, while ordinary companies in the o2o industry are the most in short of traffic. Every time they spend money on the market, the most expensive thing is to purchase traffic. Online traffic is often not available. If it is offline, it requires a lot of recruitment to promote it.

For Zhou Yujie, traffic is simply endless. The precise advertising delivery model has made Toutiao a high-quality traffic engine. It is easy to promote the Today's Preferred One, not to mention the mobile social software Quxin.

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Since today's preferred option wants to attract financing, Sequoia is naturally one of our best choices. But in addition to financing, I also need some help in other aspects!"

"What aspects, Mr. Zhou said, I will do my best if I can do it." Zhao Yuan said confidently. Sequoia's capital involves various fields, and except for direct traffic support, nothing else is a problem.

Zhou Yujie said: "Today's selection is not short of traffic, nor is it short of funds. However, offline expansion requires a lot of human resources investment. In other regions outside Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, we are preparing to use the franchise model to expand, but the choice in this aspect is very important. We do not have much information on this aspect at present, and we do not allow us to choose slowly in terms of time. So I hope Sequoia Capital can provide me with some help in this aspect."

"I understand the construction of franchise channels." Zhao Yuan nodded. The o2o industry is a combination of the Internet and industry, and has a strong demand for Internet traffic and offline operations, and both are indispensable.

For example, traffic giants like Tengxun, QQ group buying is a slag, and Baidu and Alibaba have also planned group buying, but they have not yet started. To be honest, it is just that offline teams are not good.

Toutiao is also a traffic-based company, and it is not short of traffic, but offline is also a shortcoming.

Zhao Yuan thought about it and said, "Mr. Zhou, Today Youxuan can be said to be the first platform to make large-scale takeaways. Other places have never started this industry.

There is no such thing as those who want to find experience in this area, but takeout and group buying are both offline and online industries. Group buying websites have a history of three years, and the funds invested by all parties exceed 10 billion yuan. With so much money over such a long time, many local organizations specializing in offline expansion have been cultivated in major cities in China.

Although takeaways are a bit different and require an additional team of takeaways, it is always much better than starting from scratch.”

Zhou Yujie asked: "Sequoia Capital has this information?"

"No." Zhao Yuan said with a smile: "But our resources are spread all over the country. Information on this aspect can be delivered to my desk soon if you are willing to collect it."

This is Sequoia Capital's confidence. Over the years, Sequoia Capital has invested too many Internet companies, technology companies, promising industrial companies and even real estate companies in China. In addition, Sequoia Capital rarely participates in management, and even if the investment fails, there will be no disputes. This business model has given Sequoia a very strong connection in China, and most people will give Sequoia Capital face, even Bat, the same is true.

"Okay, that's the best." Zhou Yujie smiled. For mobile Internet business, time is more important than capital.

Zhu Wenbin's team has Meituan's management experience. They can manage franchisees and have a very good management model. However, it is another matter to distinguish the quality of franchisees. Moreover, this process is very time-consuming. The energy of senior management should be focused on how to expand the market. At least for the moment. Only when the market stabilizes and the team expands in the future can you slowly think about franchisees.

Since you need to raise funds now, investors naturally have to provide some help.

Zhao Yuan then asked: "Mr. Zhou, how much funds are prepared to raise today?"

"I will give up 10% of the shares if you Sequoia are interested, you can invest separately." Zhou Yujie directly quoted his own price.
Chapter completed!