Yu Xing had arranged to meet Liu Wanying and Liu Zhishan at the amusement park. Besides keeping the appointment, his main purpose was to nudge things along on the company front.
Yet after he brought Zhong Zhiling and Lü Haiying to join them, he never mentioned a word of business to Liu Wanying. Instead, he threw himself completely into playing for half the day.
Around noon, Zhong Zhiling went to buy water, and Lü Haiying took over, taking Liu Zhishan on the carousel. Only then did Yu Xing wipe his sweat and walk over to Liu Wanying, who was resting nearby.
"You played even wilder than Shanshan," Liu Wanying said with a laugh.
"When adults play with full commitment, kids can feel it, and they'll be happier too," Yu Xing said with a beaming smile. "When you play, play with everything you've got—just like when you work, you should work with everything you've got."
Liu Wanying gave the young man who had just sat down a sidelong, half-amused glance: "I thought you'd manage to hold back and not bring it up."
She had already guessed what she'd be hearing today.
"There's business to be done, after all." Yu Xing didn't hedge, saying frankly, "I really do need to trouble you, Sister Ying."
"Anxious already, are we? Shouldn't you two be doing some preliminary work first?" Liu Wanying asked.
Yu Xing reached for the backpack Zhong Zhiling had left on the ground and said earnestly, "It is pretty urgent, but we've been doing preparation work too."
He handed over a folder he'd taken from the backpack.
Liu Wanying glanced at her niece, who was happily riding the carousel, then reached out to take it. She flipped through it and saw that behind a copy of an ID card there was also a "Survey Report on College Students' Romantic Relationships in Huaxia."
"Oh, what's this?" Liu Wanying was a little surprised. Examining the rather professional-looking data, she asked, "Where did this data come from?"
"These are the results of our survey covering nearly every university in Jinling," Yu Xing said solemnly. "Strictly speaking, it should be called the 'Jinling College Students' Romantic Relationships Survey Report,' but I changed the name to grab people's attention later on."
Liu Wanying couldn't help laughing: "You really know how to do research."
She shook her head slightly. "I didn't expect you'd go to this trouble. I figured entrepreneurs like you would just charge in headfirst."
Liu Wanying noticed there was more material behind it and flipped through idly, finding a customer analysis: using Jinling's 115,000 graduates this year to estimate 1,100 couples, and using Shencheng's 149,000 and Hangzhou's 104,900 to estimate 1,400 and 1,000 couples respectively.
There was also a consideration of team size: with Jinling's 1,100 couples as the target customer base, they planned to build a rapid-expansion team of 100 to 140 employees.
Liu Wanying looked at this series of figures and frowned slightly. "A rapid-expansion team? A hundred to a hundred and forty employees? Where are you going to hire that many people on short notice?"
"Sister Ying, my plan is, once the company is set up, to offer stamped internship certificates to rising seniors at different universities," Yu Xing described his idea. "As long as they're willing to come, it doesn't matter how long they stay. Basically, it's about recruiting three people from each university in Jinling and having them handle converting potential customers at their own schools."
Usually, universities require seniors to submit internship certificates.
Jinling has nearly fifty universities. Three people each—that's roughly a hundred and fifty.
Liu Wanying was taken aback. She hadn't thought of this; it really was a pain point only college students would easily notice...
Hmm, and having employees go back and work on the couples at their own schools—that's a familiar work environment.
She turned to look at Yu Xing, whose eyes were gleaming, and asked with great interest, "How will you set their pay?"
"We'll split into two or three big teams, and different teams compete on performance. The better-performing teams naturally get higher team commissions, and each employee gets their own commission based on their individual performance bracket," Yu Xing expounded. "I asked about KFC summer jobs—over there it's currently 7.2 yuan an hour, with a maximum of 200 hours a month, which is 1,440 yuan."
"We'll set up an internship pay model of an 850 base salary plus performance commission. Right now the price per order is lowered to 299 yuan, and the top commission tier takes 200 yuan."
"Of course, that's the plan for now. Once things are running, we'll see how to adjust. In any case, apart from labor costs, we don't really need much else."
So said Yu Xing.
Liu Wanying said nothing, flipping through the folder again—once through the survey report, once through the customer analysis, once through the team introduction.
And she thought over this commission structure too.
An order was only 299 yuan total, and the top commission was 200 yuan.
Liu Wanying set down the folder, mentally running through the emerging project plan she'd been exposed to over the past few days.
Product core: the probability of a love contract being successfully redeemed is extremely low.
Product demand: college students nationwide share a similar environment, and romantic relationships themselves come with a certain economic threshold.
Product team: mainly current students, given internship certificates—fast hiring, and willing to hand out most of the commission.
Product brand: they'd already cooked up a love survey report...
She went through it back and forth twice, then couldn't help shaking her head. "Are college students this strong at execution when starting businesses these days? You're aiming to blow up fast, huh."
"We're still in the planning and preparation stage. We haven't even got the stamp for the internship certificates yet," Yu Xing said tactfully.
Liu Wanying looked at her brother's disciple with considerable appreciation and asked, "Do you know about one of Baihe's moves last year?"
Yu Xing shook his head.
"In December last year, Baihe released a 'Survey Report on the Marriage and Relationship Conditions of the Chinese People,'" Liu Wanying recounted. "It caused quite a stir. Have you thought about where you'd release your college students' love survey?"
Yu Xing pondered. "I want to try Xiaonei. It's quite popular with college students, and part of our future business will be done through it anyway."
Liu Wanying made a "tsk" sound, thought for a while, then said, "Now I'm actually thinking, if you treat this as a long-term business, it wouldn't be bad. Based on the Jinling experience, expand to other top cities like Shencheng, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Suzhou, Jingcheng—ten cities, conservatively."
"You'd cut down this potential customer pool a bit, but conversion rates could rise. Aim those ten cities at 10 million in revenue. Early labor costs will be high—don't plan on making money, just build revenue and build the brand."
"Two or three years later, once you're a niche brand that's captured college students' minds, trim the team down, focus on online traffic, squeeze 3 million in profit out of 10 million in revenue, and split it among the core team."
"An ordinary pathologist makes 60,000 a year. If you can land one or two years like that, it might be a lifetime's worth for an ordinary person."
Yu Xing said nothing. This really was a viable path.
Liu Wanying stared at the young man before her and said, leaving her sentence hanging, "As long as..."
Seeing she wouldn't finish, Yu Xing completed it for her: "As long as you run faster than the regulators."
"Hahaha." Liu Wanying laughed cheerfully. "Right. But Yu Xing, you should know—as long as you don't cause too much trouble, regulation is always lagging. Judging by past cases, it can lag two or three years, even five or six."
"It's the internet era now. Once something like yours reaches a certain scale, it can spread rapidly among students. Every year there are new graduates—that's roughly your peak season. In the off season, you could work on other current students, or even expand to the general public."
"Looking at it this way, working with this approach, there's a real chance to make money."
She smiled. "It just means taking a gamble. But then again, if someone wants to make money fast, how can they not gamble? There's no such thing as a free lunch."
Yu Xing sighed. "I'm a bit short on money, and it's hard to wait. Better to package the whole thing up as a product and sell it to a market that has the same need. There are fewer buyers, but the risk is lower too."
Liu Wanying looked at the documents in her hand again, still unable to help marveling at Yu Xing's execution.
Finally, she set down the documents and asked, "Exactly how much money are you short? Were you really scammed by a honey trap?"
Yu Xing had just taken a sip of water and choked on it.
He coughed for a while, then said helplessly, "Who told you that..."
Liu Wanying shrugged. "That's the speculation of your dear Teacher Liu."
Two perfectly good top students suddenly dropping out of school—there had to be something fishy going on.
"No, I just lost money in investments—lost the whole family's savings," Yu Xing shook his head. "Now I think this opportunity is pretty good, so I want to give it a try. So, Sister Ying..."
Liu Wanying closed the folder. "Three days, two at the fastest. How much registered capital are you putting down?"
Yu Xing held up five fingers, hesitated for two seconds, then switched to one.
"500 million? 100 million?" Liu Wanying nodded. "100 million is fitting too. It sounds impressive."
Yu Xing made an "uh" sound. "Sister Ying, 10 million. 10 million is enough."
Liu Wanying thought about it. Fair enough—they're students, after all.
Yu Xing asked again, "Sister Ying, can the shareholder information be hidden?"
Liu Wanying frowned, looking at the young college student in front of her. "What exactly are you up to?"
"Just an ordinary student entrepreneur," Yu Xing replied.
Liu Wanying snorted with laughter. "I don't think an ordinary student entrepreneur's first thought when starting a business would be to hide their shareholder information."
She continued, "In Hong Kong, this information must be disclosed publicly. Unless you find a nominee to hold shares, but that's risky. Otherwise you'd need a multi-layered corporate structure, or a private fund—all of which cost money. Do you have money?"
Yu Xing rose politely, gave a slight bow, extended his right hand, and said with heartfelt gratitude, "Thank you for your trouble, Sister Ying. We'll be waiting for the good news that the company's been registered. From now on, whatever lipstick you want, just tell me anytime."
Liu Wanying gave a "heh" and, smiling, extended her right hand to shake hands with this not-so-ordinary male college student.