Seeing Jiang Cheng navigate the crowd of big shots with ease, Zhang Yiming, standing to the side, cast an appreciative glance at him.
An 18-year-old boy showed no stage fright at all when facing these men in their thirties and forties.
He could handle any conversation thrown his way and even posed questions to them from time to time; his social skills were truly impressive.
Seeing that everyone had finished their initial chatter, Zhang Yiming raised his glass and said, "Everyone is here, so let me first propose a toast. It is my honor to sit here with all the shareholders at tonight's gathering. I am also very grateful for your trust. It can be said that without everyone's support, ByteDance would not be where it is today. Thank you all once again!"
After Zhang Yiming finished speaking, everyone stood up one after another, raised their glasses, and began to toast together.
For this ByteDance evening party, photographers had been specially invited to document and take photos.
Seeing the scene of several big shots raising their glasses, the photographers nearby quickly stepped forward and snapped several photos.
After the group finished their toast, the atmosphere began to warm up.
Shen Nanpeng of Sequoia Capital seemed to be very interested in Jiang Cheng.
He asked Jiang Cheng once more, "Chairman Jiang, could you share your thoughts on ByteDance Company?"
Looking at Shen Nanpeng, Jiang Cheng recalled a segment from an interview he gave on CCTV in 2018.
Sequoia Capital was also an extremely powerful investment firm.
Shen Nanpeng said that he initially couldn't understand what Zhang Yiming wanted to do.
Because at that time, ByteDance relied on Jinri Toutiao.
And the big data classification that Zhang Yiming was doing was something no one had done before, either domestically or abroad.
Therefore, during the first round of investment, he maintained a cautious attitude and did not invest.
However, he later regretted it.
Jiang Cheng said with a smile, "As for President Zhang, although I haven't had much face-to-face contact with him, I am very interested in what he is doing and, one might say, highly supportive. I believe President Zhang's vision is very forward-looking."
As Jiang Cheng spoke, Zhang Yiming's expression didn't change; he maintained his usual smiling face and appeared to be listening intently.
Jiang Cheng continued, "President Zhang has gathered news, stories, and images through the internet. The most crucial point is the big data recommendation that ByteDance is working on."
"In the past, we had to go online ourselves to find news we wanted to know about or content we were interested in. But after ByteDance's big data was developed, news is now presented to customers based on each person's different preferences; the system automatically pushes it to the users."
"This is a first, both domestically and internationally. To be honest, if I had been born a few years earlier, I definitely would have invested during President Zhang's first round of financing. Unfortunately, I was still in junior high school back then..."
After Jiang Cheng said this, everyone couldn't help but nod in appreciation.
Weren't the big shots present also feeling regretful?
Previously, one could become a shareholder in ByteDance with just a few million, but now it would cost at least tens of billions.
When ByteDance first started financing, it wasn't smooth sailing; not many investors in the industry were optimistic about it.
Shen Nanpeng, present at the scene, was one of them.
Shen Nanpeng nodded and continued, "Actually, when Zhang Yiming first approached me for investment, I said 'No,' so I missed the first round of financing. As an investor, I was too rational. I did a lot of very cautious investigative work and even visited many of his competitors. Then I found that all the big companies wanted to make this short video product."
Then he pointed to Li Songbo of Sina Social Media Platform next to him and said, "I remember your company was also going to make this product at that time. Sohu was going to do it, Xiaomi was going to do it, and Penguin was going to do it too. So, after a comprehensive discussion among several partners in our company, we all felt that the competition in this market was simply too intense. ByteDance was just a small company and had a high probability of dying halfway."
"So I gave up during the Series A investment. However, after the second round of investment, I found that our estimation was wrong."
Li Songbo of Sina Social Media Platform added, "Although ByteDance is now developing steadily, there are still many problems at present. Besides the Jinri Toutiao platform, the TikTok software was only officially launched last August. The traffic in the first few months was also very poor. Although it has recently begun to experience an explosive surge in popularity and the number of people downloading TikTok is increasing daily, the competition in short videos is still very high. After all, there's more than one company making short videos."
After speaking, Li Songbo said to Zhang Yiming, "Isn't this Series D financing proceeding a bit too quickly?"
Zhang Yiming looked at Li Songbo and shook his head with a smile.
Originally, the Series D financing was scheduled for the end of the year.
However, because of Jiang Cheng's proactive promotion, it has now been moved forward by several months.
Zhang Yiming remembered that when the shareholders' meeting was held, Li Songbo and Shen Nanpeng had voted against it.
Fortunately, two-thirds of the shareholders agreed, so the progress of the financing was accelerated.
Zhang Yiming looked at Jiang Cheng and said, "When Manager Chen from Chairman Jiang's company talked to me back then, I was actually hesitant. Later, Chairman Jiang gave me a call, which I still remember vividly to this day."
"He said to me, 'TikTok is making enemies everywhere now. Do you know how we should handle it when we face a siege?'"
After Zhang Yiming said this, everyone looked at him curiously.
With a look of appreciation, Zhang Yiming patted Jiang Cheng's shoulder. "In the end, President Jiang told me: while we are still developing, don't think about going head-to-head with powerful enemies. Don't be like them, thinking about sticking out a foot to trip someone up."
"We just need to keep running forward. As long as we run faster than everyone else, until they can't catch up with us, we win."
"And financing just happens to accelerate our pace of development. When I heard those words from him, I agreed to his financing request without hesitation. Because I felt that with someone like President Jiang, who could say such things, walking alongside a person like him would surely be a very secure matter."
After finishing, Zhang Yiming said to Jiang Cheng, "To be honest, when you said those words, I felt a sense of familiarity. They sounded very familiar to me, though I couldn't recall where I had heard them. But upon careful reflection, they made a lot of sense, and they happened to align perfectly with my own thoughts."
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