Throughout May, Pinduoduo's listing became a hot topic in various news. The Internet company with a market value of more than US$25 billion has been established less than three years ago. In terms of the number of users, it has exceeded JD.com, which has been operating for ten years, second only to Taobao, the e-commerce overlord. Any one is enough to become the love of countless economic analysts.

What economic experts like to compare most is Alibaba. As an e-commerce giant with financing of up to US$21.8 billion in 2014, although Pinduoduo's performance is far from the market, from the perspective of the market, Alibaba has risen to its limit, and Pinduoduo's model has obviously not yet reached its peak.

At the same time, overseas Amazon has also begun to rise rapidly with its previous layout for more than ten years, and its market value has repeatedly broken new highs. Its founder Bezos rushed to the fifth place in the global rich list, which also made the e-commerce industry a favorite of international hot money, and Pinduoduo's stocks are naturally sought after.

In the bustling evaluation outside, after obtaining new funds, Pinduoduo prepared to designate the next development plan.

"Chairman, now Pinduoduo has successfully listed and we have tens of billions of cash in our hands. So what should we do next?" Wang Xiaowei asked happily.

This time, Pinduoduo received more than 2 billion US dollars in cash. With previous financing and borrowing funds, now there are at least 30 billion yuan in the company's account. Such a large amount of funds naturally cannot be put in the account to earn interest, so it must be spent.

However, how to spend it, where to spend it, whether it is used to advertise, subsidize, or specifically assist a certain industry, these are all careful decisions, which require the boss Zhou Yujie to decide. After the decision is made, their management will designate a series of plans according to the direction.

This is also the style of the entire Toutiao system. Zhou Yujie decides the strategic direction, and then other management teams specify the route. Judging from past history, there is no mistake yet. The entire Toutiao senior management now makes various decisions by the executive chairman unconditionally.

However, with the increase in market share of several major businesses, Zhou Yujie rarely participates in detailed planning. Only new projects such as Douyin and Pinduoduo will be occasionally followed by him.

Zhou Yujie chuckled and said, "Do you think there is a lot of money in our account? What do you think compared to Taobao?"

"It's naturally far worse than Taobao." Wang Xiaowei said a little embarrassedly: "But the current scale of the entire headline is not much worse than Alibaba."

Alibaba's most core business is Taobao, but Toutiao's most core business is obviously not the turn of Pinduoduo. Compared directly, it may be unfair.

Zhou Yujie nodded and said, "Although Pinduoduo's listing is very successful, the pressure is actually starting today. After listing, we are unlikely to raise funds on a large scale again, and various operations must be more formal. This is a new challenge for Pinduoduo."

It is not that you cannot raise funds after listing, but you can also increase stocks in the stock market. However, this behavior will be monitored by the China Securities Regulatory Commission and you will no longer be able to raise funds by just attracting venture capital before listing.

But Zhou Yujie still chose to go public. His first purpose is not to raise funds, but to increase his popularity. In recent years, with the traffic of Toutiao and Quxin, although Pinduoduo's expansion has not reached its limit, if you want to go further, you must rely on traffic outside Toutiao.

The Spring Festival is a good time, but it is not something you can get it every year. Listing is a good way. The hype, sensation, every move after listing will be hot news.

Wang Xiaowei nodded and said, "Pinduoduo currently has two solutions. One is to continue to conduct large-scale traffic diversion, increase new users and cultivate user habits, but doing so will cause our funds to be consumed dramatically.

The second solution is to gradually launch a profit plan. With our current size, profitability is not difficult, but this will inevitably lead to a decline in user growth, but many major shareholders suggest that we do this."

Zhou Yujie asked with a smile: "Do you think they are short-sighted?"

Wang Xiaowei shook his head and said, "On the contrary, I think they are very smart. These people are elites in the financial and Internet fields. How could they not know that only long-term investment can they obtain higher income in the future? It's just that they have already made high profits and are not willing to wait for us any more."

"No, so we don't have to pay attention to them. The voting rights are in my hands." Zhou Yujie said lightly.

A small number of ordinary Internet startups, driven by various help and promotion by venture capital, eventually went public. However, after listing, most venture capital investors were like a different person. They encouraged Internet companies not to make profits and to seize the market. However, after listing, they hoped that the company could make profits immediately and even sacrifice the future as a price.

Are they stupid?

No, these venture capital companies need to take advantage of the opportunity to go public to cash out, because in the entire Internet history, except for some top companies and other Internet companies, the stock price has not increased much in the n years after they went public.

For example, Pinduoduo, which was originally listed in 2018, only 4 times in 2021, the stock price has only increased by about 4 times. This kind of profit is already very good. Other normal companies may have increased less than double in three years. However, venture capital prefers to invest in newly established companies because once they are pushed up, the profit will be hundreds or thousands of times.

Therefore, venture capital is more keen to make the Internet companies that have just been listed start to make profits immediately, and then they push behind the scenes. When the time comes to the cash-out period and the stock price is the highest, they can take the opportunity to cash out on a large scale to make profits.

Wang Xiaowei asked: "Then how should we promote it next?"

Zhou Yujie said: "I am going to start from two directions. The first is agriculture, and the second is the clothing industry. Simply put, it is to start from eating and drinking. These two are necessary needs for everyone.

The clothing category is very simple. We directly communicate with the clothing factory and shoe factory to let them use the Pinduoduo platform at the best price. We will provide additional traffic to strive for win-win results for the three parties.

As for food, whether it is staple food, fruits, meat or snacks, I need to use the best algorithm to form the lowest-cost group buying model. The main consideration here is logistics. These things are of heavier quality and are prone to deterioration. The algorithm must be done well in this aspect.

In terms of traffic, Toutiao will gradually reduce Pinduoduo's advertisements, while TikTok will gradually continue. You should also study the effects of video promotion."
Chapter completed!