High School Belle Fell in Love with Me

Chapter 575 - 252: Li Yang Gets Married

Kuai Pai headquarters.

Currently, Kuai Pai is a project that consumes a lot of money, with the profit potential yet to be realized, apart from advertising.

Most projects are burning cash, like campus promotions in universities which cost around thirty million a month, even when not going all out, since there’s no competition from similar platforms in the market.

Although Douyin has been around for a few months, it’s still mainly focused on music and is considered a niche platform.

Kuai Pai has too many users; after selling fifty thousand of customized Wang Card with Unicom, user traffic doubled, with daily active users reaching ten million and click rates surpassing a hundred million.

At this time, Douyin only has two to three million daily active users, even boosted by Toutiao and Xigua Video, with click rates lower than Kuai Pai.

And there are team expenses, bandwidth server fees, and operational costs.

Approximately two billion a year.

Moreover, Xiangnu is currently working on pushing Kuai Pai internationally, targeting a North American music app, but the asking price is high, one billion US Dollars.

Kuai Pai cannot come up with this amount of money, so they must start financing.

Kuai Pai has burned over three billion, and simply can’t swallow a billion-dollar company.

But if this opportunity is missed, the app will be acquired by ByteDance and soon evolve into TikTok.

Li Yang isn’t envious of TikTok’s market value; he just believes having some influence over foreign media is beneficial.

Besides, TikTok’s entire operation isn’t complicated, mainly because... foreign entertainment apps are incredibly behind.

Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, they’re quite outdated social platforms with scant entertainment content and insufficient creative soil.

To put it bluntly, they mostly serve big internet celebrities, and ordinary people don’t have the chance to become big celebrities.

In the era of short videos, everyone can become a big internet celebrity, which is what drives countless people to rush forward.

Xiangnu seemed unconcerned about the previous issue of being deceived by photos, and after carefully analyzing the situation, asked: "Do you want your girlfriend involved?"

"Hell no, Kuai Pai is worth just a couple of bucks. If she gets involved, our shares will be diluted. I don’t care, but how about you? You’ve worked hard for a year or two just for that less than one percent of shares?"

If Jiang Banxia puts in a billion US Dollars for financing, Xiangnu’s shares will be diluted several times.

Although Kuai Pai has spent thirty billion, the capital market’s valuation is unlikely to be high – a few billion, a dozen billion perhaps, given the weak monetization methods and high expenses, and it hasn’t established a definitive market presence.

ByteDance could easily raise a billion US Dollars, not because of Douyin, but because of the entire ByteDance entity.

At that time, Toutiao had a valuation of thirty billion, and Xigua Video had even an eighty billion valuation.

Raising a billion US Dollars was no pressure.

Xiangnu asked: "Do we still want the international market?"

"Yes! Just talk to them; I’ll handle the funding. However, we’ll set up a separate Kuai Pai Overseas Group, and you’ll get 5% incentive shares."

"Oh, okay."

Xiangnu felt it was quite an offer, as Li Yang was giving her a benefit.

Although the prospect of realizing that benefit is temporarily uncertain, like a blank check.

5% incentive shares won’t be diluted, even if there’s further financing for Kuai Pai Overseas Group, her share won’t decrease.

Li Yang allocated 5% of his own share to her.

Xiangnu thought of something and continued: "There’s another thing, Penguin invested in a live-streaming platform; should we ban PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds live streams?"

After all, Mouyu hasn’t secured the rights to stream LOL, and Penguin Game hasn’t authorized it.

Li Yang waved his hand and said: "Forget it, forget it, there’s no need... a game that doesn’t provide much emotional value isn’t important to us, just cooperate with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for promotion."

LOL players are still plentiful, but certainly can’t compare to this time in the previous life.

In the past life, LOL always fostered the concept of anti-Korea, failed annually, but always had hope, keeping players intrigued.

However, since 2014, when Li Yang led the team to victory, that sense of anticipation has diminished.

Coupled with Li Yang’s words, stripping the facade off domestic pro players.

What’s left to anticipate?

Then in 2015 and 2016, the world championships were miserable losses, unable to provide much emotional value to players; big LOL streamers had fewer viewers in their streams, indicating this.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still fun, though some people experience 3D dizziness, they get used to it while playing.

Most importantly, there are lots of girls there, facilitating real-time voice communication.

Even on Mouyu, female streamers mostly work part-time as gaming companions, with quite affordable prices, a couple of bucks per game.

Such is the embryonic form of new-age entertainment, with too many internet shut-ins.

"You’re really open-minded."

Xiangnu had never seen Li Yang compete maliciously against others, at most when pressured, he’d post a couple of Weibo messages, never maliciously competing against others.

"It’s not that I’m open-minded, but that it’s meaningless. If they stream PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it at least brings us some users, creates some buzz. As long as we are doing better and better, others will only become our nourishment. If we do poorly and are consumed by others, we deserve it. Malicious competition only wastes both parties’ energy with no benefit."