"Okay, I will start to gradually observe the work efficiency of old employees." Xu Wei paused and said: "Mr. Zhou, Mr. Lin, ofo suddenly began to isolate the employees we sent, and even wanted to drive our people away. What should we do about this matter?"

After hearing this, Lin Youde said to Zhou Yujie: "Mr. Zhou, why don't I go to ofo company in person and talk to David?"

Zhou Yujie shook his head and said, "It's probably useless to talk about it. David publicly declared that he would not be an affiliate of any company."

Ofo's founder is several college students, which is not unique to Internet startups, and the same is true for Ele.me. However, most entrepreneurs will introduce professional management teams to manage the entire company after a certain scale, but ofo does not.

David has a strong background relationship. His family comes from a ministerial-level cadre family. He was also the president of the student union when he was in school. So one of the biggest mistakes he made was thinking that he could control everything and control the entire ofo company.

Therefore, the early management ofo was relatively extensive, but fortunately ofo's business model was unique, and it also received support from Toutiao and various venture capital. In addition, Zhou Yujie arranged a lot of people to enter ofo's management, which also made ofo's operations gradually become more formal.

But formality means that everyone will be restricted, including the founder. In the early stages of development, due to the support of Toutiao traffic, and competitors led by Mobike began to seize the market, ofo and Toutiao have cooperated well, which is a honeymoon period.

However, with the expansion of scale, ofo's scale has begun to fail to support David's ambitions. In order to compete for more markets, David has repeatedly expanded on a large scale, completely ignoring the company's funds and conducting large-scale shared bicycle procurements. This will naturally be rejected by the Toutiao team. Although David was eventually suppressed as a major shareholder, the conflict between the two sides is getting bigger and bigger.

The most troublesome thing is David's infinite ambitions. You should know that whether at home or abroad, the second-generation Internet giants will basically be acquired, controlled, or invested more or less by the first generation, such as Meituan, Yaozhaoche, Kuaidie, etc., behind them are Tengxun or Alibaba, which is very rare for independent types like Toutiao.

But David believed that he should be completely independent. Even if ofo has the capital of a giant, it is absolutely uncontrollable. Therefore, in subsequent financing, ofo introduced Alibaba's capital, intending to let Alibaba fight Toutiao.

Lin Youde said: "David is actually a bit too confident and crazy. He just raised $700 million this time and is planning to purchase a bicycle worth 3 billion yuan and provide more radical subsidies. This way of playing can consume all the funds in three months. At that time, if you can't raise funds, ofo will completely collapse."

"The valuation of 4 billion US dollars makes him too arrogant. In fact, there is no good profit model for shared bicycles at present. Just charging by time will definitely not support the cost and daily maintenance of shared bicycles." Zhou Yujie shook his head and said.

In fact, few people use a bicycle a day. Even if it costs half an hour, you can earn a few dollars a day. Daily maintenance is a huge cost, let alone procurement.

The most fatal thing is that the market size of shared bicycles has a ceiling. Not everyone likes to ride bicycles. When you encounter a near one, you can walk and a far one can do buses. There is only one situation where shared bicycles are inconvenient, that is, buses are inconvenient. If it is winter, rainy days, windy days, the hottest days in summer, etc., people will not choose to travel, which leads to a very low actual usage rate of shared bicycles.

Of course, in the shared bicycle business model, the most profitable thing should be the deposit. The huge deposits are concentrated together, and you can make money by doing finance. But the problem is that this is a successful business model under the monopoly model. Nowadays, the deposit will only become less and less under the competition of many companies, and some even cancel the deposit, which is also fatal to ofo.

Lin Youde asked, "Then what should we do now? Ali is standing on David's side now, and we don't have enough say."

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Since Alibaba likes ofo so much, sell all the stocks we have in our hands to them."

"Sold them all?" Lin Youde browed and asked, "Then are we going to invest in other shared bicycles or build them ourselves?"

Although the market size of shared bicycles itself is not large, it still has a certain effect on the payment ecosystem. Toutiao’s current core business is to assist Quxin Payment, and the shared bicycle market cannot be lost.

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Build it yourself. Ofo is now at a high price. If we sell all the stocks in our hands, we should be able to make hundreds of millions of dollars. This money is enough to build our own bicycles. The most important thing is that ofo and Mobike have some small brands that have cultivated user habits. Now we are entering the market."

In 2015, Zhou Yujie did not directly enter the shared bicycle market, but knew that this industry is a low return and high investment, and its value can only serve the payment system. Unlike takeaway and online car-hailing, which can be worth hundreds of billions of yuan, the heavy asset model of shared bicycles is no worse than takeaway.

If Toutiao had entered the market early, it would be very likely that Tengxun and Alibaba would also enter the market directly. This field is not like takeaway, and Toutiao's core big data cannot help. In this way, you can only burn money desperately, which is too unprofitable.

Now, the giants have not entered the market. Ofo has almost cultivated the market. There is already a large amount of user data on Quxin. If ofo operates well, Toutiao will definitely help it become the number one shared bicycle brand in China. But now that the relationship has broken down, we can only fight each other.

Lin Youde said: "Then we are also preparing to remove the links on Quxin's local life?"

"Of course." Zhou Yujie said: "But we still have to wait until we take the shareholding. Alibaba should not refuse us. As long as we withdraw from ofo, then hundreds of millions ofo's users can only use Alipay to pay."

Lin Youde nodded and said, "That's right, Cai Chongxin should not refuse this condition."

Zhou Yujie said: "Let's take action as soon as possible, don't have too many dreams. In addition, we will not really start over if we build our own business. Look for it in the market. If there are medium-sized shared bicycle brands, a complete team must have. The most important thing is that the brand name is easy to remember."

Shared bicycles without any barriers can basically be made with money. Therefore, controlling operating costs, controlling procurement costs and controlling publicity costs have become the top priority. Ofo's name seems high-end, but in fact it is not practical when promoting. Most users remember the "Miniel" shared bicycles, rather than the inexplicable three letters.

Many times, a brand has a good name and will achieve twice the result with half the effort when promoted.

Lin Youde said: "This is no problem. I will ask Tao Weidong to check the information about this immediately and strive to complete the acquisition within one month."

Zhou Yujie thought for a while and said, "In addition, I am going to let Didi provide a subsidy. I want to cross-bank crackdown on the shared bicycle industry."
Chapter completed!