My Age of Investment

   Chapter 1527 Uber

   "Christina is also using your products, so she bought an iPhone 4 especially for this."

  Xia Jingxing said with a smile: "What does this mean? It means that Instagram is a truly touching Internet product, and it can even bring goods to Wisdom Fruit."

   Seeing that Xia Jingxing avoided talking about help, and suddenly mentioned Kristina, Strom and Krieger were a little surprised, but then both of them had a faint sense of pride in their hearts.

   Even Facebook CEO is using their product, isn’t that an endorsement?

   But soon they stopped laughing.

  Xia Jing changed his words and said, "Christina said that this product is very compatible with Facebook, so she has to study it carefully."

   As soon as these words came out, the scene suddenly became a little embarrassing.

  Strom and Krieger looked at each other, not knowing how to answer for a while.

   Was really targeted by Facebook? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The good part of    is that the choice of the entrepreneurial track is very correct, and even social giants have paid attention;

The bad aspect of    is that once the giants enter the market, Instagram will face great market competition pressure.

   Liu Xiaoduo and Ricky looked at Xia Jingxing with surprise, didn't they come to help their old friend? No matter how you look at it now, it seems that you have come here to threaten people. This thing is so neat... that the entourage of them feel embarrassed.

   Sure enough, Kevin Strom became a little angry, and said bluntly: "Daren, you didn't come to see me, did you? Are you here to help Christina with the gauntlet?"

Mike Krieger, the little fanboy in front of the idol, is no longer as polite to the idol as he was before, and said in a sarcastic tone: "Since the captain of Daeron Retired, the course of the Facebook ship has begun to change. Got a little confused.

   How long has it been since Facebook launched an innovative product? Copying Facebook Messenger from WhatsApp doesn't count.

   And as far as I know, the word of mouth of the heavily invested Messenger users has never surpassed that of WhatsApp. "

   Liu Xiaoduo couldn't listen anymore and was about to scold the two, but was stopped by Xia Jingxing's eyes.

  Xia Jingxing smiled, "Why do you always like to tie me to Facebook?

   I do not represent Facebook, nor do I represent Facebook. My biggest connection with Facebook is Vision Capital.

   Christina took a fancy to the photo social track, which does not mean that Facebook will immediately launch a similar application.

   As the CEO of Facebook's second largest shareholder, Vision Capital, I gave her a suggestion to acquire Instagram for common development.

   She embraced the suggestion and commissioned me to talk to you both.

   As long as you both nod, she can offer a check for $100 million, in cash or Facebook stock equivalent. "

   Kevin Strom now finally understood what Xia Jingxing's so-called help was, and replied lightly, "Daren, this is not the help I want."

   "Kevin, listen to me first."

  Xia Jingxing explained patiently: "Christina assured me that as long as you agree to join the Facebook family, Instagram can continue to be managed and operated by your team, while giving your team the greatest autonomy in management and operation.

  Christina appreciates the talents of both of you very much and thinks that this product can have long-term and dazzling development in your hands.

At the same time, as a loyal user of Instagram and CEO of Facebook, she very much hopes that this product can be quickly promoted from San Francisco to the world under the blessing of Facebook's global social network, allowing hundreds of millions or even billions of users Experienced this product and absolutely fell in love with it.

  Spotify is a good example. With the help of Facebook, this music streaming application from Sweden has been successfully promoted to all parts of the world and has hundreds of millions of users.

   With the help of Facebook, applications of various operating systems such as Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry can be launched at the fastest speed, and the manpower and server problems that plague Instagram will no longer be a problem. "

   As Xia Jingxing said these words, the expressions of the two of them became much better.

  Xia Jingxing and Kristina did not directly launch similar applications, but went to the door to discuss acquisitions on an equal footing, which actually gave them a lot of respect for a small company like them.

  Silicon Valley and even the United States are not as equal and free as foreign people boasted. They also advocate the law of the weak, and the big fish eat the small fish. During the creation of Facebook, Yahoo and Google were maliciously suppressed and even copied, but they just survived.

   As for whether Instagram, which has a good momentum of development, can survive the fierce market competition, it is hard to say for the time being.

   The two of them actually understood this in their hearts, so their attitudes were no longer as tough as before.

   Kevin Strom said: "Daren, does it have to be an acquisition? Can't it be an investment?"

  Xia Jingxing smiled and said, "It is related to the main business of social networking, and it must be a wholly-owned acquisition."

   Hearing this, Kevin Strom and Mike Krieger fell silent.

   In fact, Xia Jingxing has just said very clearly, why can Spotify get the support of Facebook? Because it was wholly acquired by Facebook.

  If there is no wholly-owned acquisition of Instagram, it is just an investment. If Instagram jumps back in the future, Facebook will suffer a big loss, which is equivalent to using its own resources to cultivate an opponent for itself.

   Xia Jingxing did not rush, and quietly waited for the two to make a choice.

Kevin Strom glanced at Ricky Milner, who was sitting next to him without saying a word, and was overjoyed. Suddenly, as if he had thought of something, he said, "Daren, there should be alternative options for your help. Bar?"

  Xia Jingxing noticed Strom's eye movements, and admired the other person's care a little, smiled and said, "The second option is to develop independently and invest with Vision Capital."

  Kevin Strom smiled, as he guessed, Vision Capital is still interested in investing in Instagram.

   He was reminded by the other party's investment in WhatsApp, so he guessed that there were alternatives.

   "With your investment, you won't interfere with the management and operation of Instagram?" Strom asked again.

  Xia Jingxing smiled and shook his head, "This is the most basic condition, we will abide by it."

   Kevin Strom nodded lightly, then fell silent.

   Xia Jingxing didn't say anything anymore, he had already presented both options, no matter which one Strom and his partner chose, it would not be a disadvantage for him.

  For WhatsApp, he also holds the same attitude. Anyway, it is all in his bowl, and a piece of the pie is indispensable.

   Seeing that the two suddenly stopped talking, Mike Krieger asked impatiently: "Daren, how large do you think Instagram can grow into a company? Can it be as great as Facebook?"

  Liu Xiaoduo pursed his mouth. This person was just saying that Facebook copied WhatsApp, and now he starts to praise Facebook for its greatness. How can people be so unprincipled.

  Xia Jingxing smiled and said, "Do you want to hear the truth or the lie?"

   "Of course it's the truth!" Krieger replied without hesitation.

  Xia Jingxing glanced at Strom and found that the latter was also staring at him, and seemed to be very concerned about this issue.

   "From my years of experience in the Internet and investment industry, it is difficult for Instagram to survive independently, because your commercialization will be very difficult."

  Xia Jingxing stared at Strom and said, "It's not that I deliberately belittled Instagram, but the tone of your products.

  Once a large number of advertisements are launched, it seems to deviate from your original intention of making Instagram a work of art.

   But without ads, you can’t possibly charge users membership fees, right?

Image social networking is also a way of socializing for the general public. Just like text social networking, it should be free. This is different from music and video streaming, which involve professional content production. Even if the platform does not eat, content producers must Fill your stomach.

   Without advertisements and membership fees, we can only make ideas about monetization methods such as e-commerce and games, but I feel that this will destroy the product style of Instagram, and it is not a good choice. "

  Kevin Strom smiled, "You mean that Instagram is not suitable for independent development, but more suitable as a brick under the base of a giant?"

   "Strictly speaking, it is."

  Xia Jingxing spread his hands and said frankly: "It is just like Twitter's positioning. It only helps Facebook's social matrix to gather users and generate traffic. Monetization has to rely on the huge back-end business system built by Facebook."

  Kevin Strom nodded subconsciously. After some conversation, he had to admit that Xia Jingxing had an extremely profound understanding of Instagram and Internet business monetization.

   Instagram does have the hope of becoming tens of millions of users or even hundreds of millions of users, but it may not be easy to make money, and this is also where he and Krieger are not good at.

   "Daren, give us a week to think about it, and we also need to discuss with investors."

As soon as   Strom finished speaking, Xia Jingxing nodded and said, "Okay! No matter what choice you make, it will not affect our friendship."

  Kevin Strom smiled at Xia Jingxing, then nodded heavily.

  …

  …

   In the next few days, Xia Jingxing and Ricky attacked everywhere, visited a number of start-up companies, and successively finalized investment in multiple projects.

   On this day, the two walked out of Vision Capital’s Silicon Valley office together and came to the side of the road.

  Ricky raised the Fuxing FX3 mobile phone in his hand to Xia Jingxing and said, "Today we will go to this company."

  Xia Jingxing glanced casually, and found that the App page on Ricky's phone had a familiar feeling. When he took a closer look, he found that it was a taxi interface, and quickly asked Ricky to hand over the phone.

   After seeing the familiar English font of "UberBlack", Xia Jingxing was a little surprised: "This is?"

   "It's an online taxi booking startup called Uber.

They launched an app last month. Just press the car call button in the app, and soon a black car will appear in front of the user, and then take the user to the destination, and the entire ride cost will be automatically credited to the user. Is it interesting that there is no need to pay on the spot in the credit card associated with the account? "

  Ricky just finished his introduction, and a black BMW 7 Series galloped not far away.

   After seeing Ricky beckoning, the car slowly stopped in front of the two of them, and then a middle-aged white man in a black suit stepped out of the car, and opened the door for the two of them professionally.

  Ricky looked at Xia Jingxing who seemed to be stunned, and said with a smile, "Isn't it cool?"

   "A little bit!"

   Then, Xia Jingxing and Ricky got into this luxurious online car-hailing car.

   Along the way, Ricky began to introduce Uber to Xia Jingxing, and the driver in the front row also chatted with the two from time to time.

   Through the introduction of the two people, Xia Jingxing roughly understood the development of Uber at this time.

  Although the app was only launched last month, the company was founded last year, and then started non-stop product development and testing, and started a trial operation with three cars in New York earlier this year.

After    found that it worked well, Uber officially launched its ride-hailing service in San Francisco in May this year.

However, the services in the past few months were still relatively primitive, and there was no app to call a car, but last month, Uber accumulated a lot of money and took advantage of the critical moment of launching the app. Many Uber rides appear on the streets of San Francisco.

Moreover, the models used by Uber at this time are also very high-end. The all-black Lincoln City sedan, Cadillac Escalade, BMW7 series and Mercedes-Benz S550 make the service look more advanced and attract the attention of passersby. , which greatly accelerated the dissemination and promotion of Uber's online car-hailing products and services.

   Uber also has high requirements on the dress of drivers, imitating the dress of London taxi drivers, which can also be regarded as a deliberate brand promotion method.

  Xia Jingxing said with emotion: "Effectively integrating and utilizing idle car passenger resources is actually a shared service, which is similar to the Airbnb we invested in before."

  Ricky nodded hastily, "Yes, I just found out that Uber and Airbnb have something in common, so I paid special attention to this company.

I've had several rounds of talks with their CEO, Kalanick. The guy is a veteran entrepreneur with a lot of experience. He has been hanging on to me, neither rejecting nor agreeing, but at the same time he is in contact with a number of VCs. It seems that He wanted to choose a venture capital firm that offered the best conditions for cooperation. "

  Xia Jingxing nodded lightly, "Okay, I see, let's go meet him together."

  Ricky smiled slightly. He usually presides over the investment work of the Silicon Valley VC Fund, but since the boss is here, he naturally wants to abdicate and make up for it.

   Because of Xia Jingxing's investment vision, he is a well-known poison in the circle!

   The car drove for about an hour and finally stopped slowly in front of an office building in San Francisco.

  Xia Jingxing and Ricky got out of the car and walked upstairs to Uber.

   As soon as the two walked to the door, they met Travis Kalanick, the founder and CEO of Uber, who came to greet them.

   When the entrepreneurial star who made Sun Zhengyi cry saw Xia Jingxing, his eyes were shining, and he shook hands and greeted Xia Jingxing very enthusiastically.

   "Daren, I didn't expect a big man like you to come to visit our small company in person. It really makes us feel very honored."

Kalanick is no longer a fledgling young man. At the age of 33, he has many entrepreneurial experiences that are not too successful. He does not have the subtlety of an ordinary entrepreneurial rookie. Xia Jingxing laughed.

   "Your taxi service is very good. When we just came here, we specially ordered a car to experience it.

  I think such a good service should not be limited to San Francisco, it should belong to people all over the world! "

   Hearing Xia Jingxing's words, Kalanick almost jumped up in joy, he was a bosom friend!

The reason why he deliberately delayed the progress of financing negotiations is to wait and see the emergence of such a visionary and powerful investor as Darren Xia, who can also help Uber quickly complete its layout in China, the United States and the world. .

   After going through a lot of hardships, now he has finally ushered in his first ideal investor.

   "Daren, please come in!"

   Kalanick respectfully made a "please" gesture.

Seeing this scene, Ricky was a little speechless. When he came here a few times before, this old boy was not so enthusiastic. Now that the big boss is going out in person, Kalanick nodded and bowed, respectfully following the Japanese. Same.

   Seeing that Xia Jingxing had followed Kalanick into Uber with a smile, Ricky quickly followed.

   (end of this chapter)