Ordinary Road 2010

"So I recommended you to Li Robin as the chief scientist of the institute. If you are willing, we will arrange a meeting as soon as possible, which is probably equivalent to an interview."

Lin Yi explained the matter clearly, and he didn't hide his small thoughts. He knew that the female professor was a very happy person.

Sure enough, Li Feifei smiled when she heard the words: "I didn't expect you to prepare such a big gift for me. With Xiongchang and Wanli's status, the chief scientist of this research institute is very important."

"I'm really interested."

Li Feifei did not hesitate, "Spending your money to do my research is the dream state of every scholar. Of course, I should do some work for you during this process."

As soon as Lin knew that he would not refuse, the two chatted again on this topic for a while, which seemed to coordinate the relationship and position between Wanli Chuxing and the female professor.

Of course, this appointment still needs to be approved by Li Luobin, so Lin Yi immediately made an appointment with him.

After finalizing the matter, Li Feifei suddenly suggested: "If I remember correctly, Mo Yan should be graduating every two months, right?"

"You can go back and ask her if she is interested in being my graduate student?"

Lin Yi was taken aback by what he said. He almost forgot that he was a student. How could he remember that his senior sister was about to graduate?

However, there is nothing wrong with calculating the time. The senior sister is one class higher than him, and this is indeed her last semester, but both of them haven't gone to school for a long time.

If ordinary students were absent from class like this, they would have been expelled long ago, but the Wanli Travel founded by the two is already a well-known alumnus of Jingdian.

This kind of trivial matter in school can be accommodated, and it will definitely not delay the senior sister's graduation certificate.

Lin Yi immediately agreed, but when he went back, he thought with emotion:

When I was reporting, I still vividly remember the moment when I reunited with Li Jianguo and his senior sister at the barbecue stall.

Chapter 494 Very Sexy New Business

"Let me be Professor Li's graduate student?"

The senior sister was still very surprised when she heard the news. Of course she was a good student in the past, but since starting a business with Lin Yi, she has been completely unable to take care of her studies.

For example, it is the second semester of senior year, although there are no courses to take, but it is reasonable to submit a graduation thesis.

If it weren't for the school's "reasonableness", she probably wouldn't even be able to graduate normally, so why graduate?

Besides, with her current status as the president of Wanli Travel, no matter whether this career succeeds or fails in the end, a master's degree is not necessary for her.

Lin Yi said: "Professor Li understands that we asked her to be the chief scientist of this joint research institute because of our personal relationship with her."

"So she recruited you as her graduate student to fulfill your status as a teacher and student, so that it will be more convenient for everyone to do things in the future."

He knew very well that the senior sister didn't like such "not worthy of the name", so he specially explained:

"You don't need to take any classes, and of course you don't need to do research with Professor Li. This is a special recruitment, and it won't take up the normal enrollment quota."

Since this is the case, Li Moyan still agreed, she did it purely for the purpose of treating this matter as "official business".

After the matter was settled, Lin Yi immediately arranged for Professor Li Feifei to meet with Li Luobin's Xiongchang team. In the end, nothing happened. Professor Li was qualified to take up this position due to his status in the world.

After finalizing the candidate for the chief scientist, Lin Yi didn't worry too much about the joint research institute, and left it to his CTO Wang Kai to handle it.

His mind was already preoccupied with another matter.

"Tutu Taxi did not stop there after launching the express service, and then launched a ride-hailing business."

Although Cheng Wei and Liu Qing called their company Dudu Kuaidu with great care in public, Lin Yi and the others were of course more casual and did not deliberately emphasize the opponent's full name.

What's more, what happened to Kuaidu is their regret.

"The business of this car ride has gone further. There is no requirement for the qualifications of the car owner. It is completely an ordinary private car."

"So correspondingly, its freight standard is also much lower."

"Although Dudu has not invested much in this business, the effect has been very good since its launch, and it is steadily contributing to the order volume."

Lin Yi commented: "Cheng Wei didn't get a yellow card for the express business. He felt that the attitude of the above should be to encourage technological innovation, so he became wild."

That being said, he knows that the ride-hailing business is very important to the ride-hailing industry.

"From the perspective of its own business logic, Shunfengche is the original idea or carrier of online car-hailing, that is, to activate the resources of those sleeping private cars, and to open the seats on the car to fellow passengers by sharing the itinerary. The sharing economy is also."

"For Dudu, the ride is not just an increase in capacity, it has two main meanings."

"One is to increase the profit margin. In the current situation of continuous high subsidies in the industry, especially the express car, a product whose cost cannot cover the income at all, is only used to cope with the fierce industry competition. It was created, which greatly dragged down the profitability of the company.”

"In terms of scale, after experiencing the violent growth and rapid maturity of the subsidy war, the industry is no longer talking about expectations and prospects, and the capacity itself is very large."

"But neither Dudu nor we have the ability to achieve profitability, and we can't even come up with a timetable. This is the most concerned issue for investors."

"And Shunfengche's profit model is very beautiful, and it has the opportunity to become the largest source of profit in the ride-hailing industry. Of course Cheng Wei will be tempted."

"Secondly, as I said just now, the so-called sharing economy concept of ride-hailing has been a hot topic in the past two years. There are too many stories to tell from investors, which is very important for the company's valuation. help."

Lin Yi's words were purely a compliment, Li Moyan frowned and asked, "Do you mean that we also follow up the ride-hailing business?"

"We're going to follow up, but not in a beeping way."

Lin Yi said unexpectedly, "I only said half of what I just said. The beautiful profit model of the ride-hailing business is based on the premise that the platform does nothing."

"Why is Dudu's ride-hailing profitable?"

"Because they have relaxed the review requirements to almost none. As long as they have a car and a driver's license, it seems that anyone can register for a while, and they don't take the safety of passengers at all."

"From the perspective of business logic, Dudu can say that it is only a matchmaking between car owners and passengers, and it is not a direct service, and it has nothing to do with it."

"But at least in my case, that logic simply doesn't hold water."

"The ride-hailing industry is not doing public welfare. It charges both parties during the matchmaking process, so it cannot completely disregard its own safety responsibility."

"In the online car-hailing industry, the platform solves the problem of how to establish mutual trust between passengers when they board a stranger's car."

"When the company brags in front of investors, it always says that the sharing economy is such a beautiful and idealized prospect."

"The basic principle of all the rules in this world is the unity of rights and obligations. You can't say that it has nothing to do with me while collecting money."

There are still several partners from Wanli Travel, and Liu Jianni is actually very worried after hearing Lin Yi's words.

She didn't want to deny that what Lin Yi said was reasonable, but business matters should not be too idealistic.

The early history of tuk-tuk has proven that if one party is timid and the other is bold, the latter is likely to survive.

As a veteran of venture capital institutions for many years, she knows how important a beautiful profit model and optimistic expectations are.

Liu Jianni would like to remind, don't forget how Cheng Wei's former opponents died.

But before that, Li Moyan spoke first: "I have something to add to what Lin Yi said."

"I saw that the promotion plan of Tutu Taxi in the ride-hailing business is very problematic, and it can even be said to be very dangerous."

"Dudu's ride-hailing business focuses on the concept of social networking. It claims to be able to meet reliable people and get a good social experience. This can only be regarded as picking up on Uber's original wisdom."

"But the general manager of their business department said publicly that the ride-hailing business is a very futuristic and sexy scene."

"Although her original intention may not have some kind of hint, but in the actual implementation process, Dudu's team does not mind its driver's taking the ride as a means to strike up a conversation, flirt with girls, and hunt for sex."

"In terms of publicity, they even added some luxury car drivers with other purposes to the ride-hailing business as a gimmick and selling point."

To a certain extent, if it is something that both parties agree with each other, the platform is of course neither willing nor qualified to interfere, just like many social softwares have developed into "artifacts for dating X".

But everyone here can understand that taxi-hailing software and social software are two different things after all, and the hidden dangers of indulging in such a trend are obvious.

Liu Jianni sighed, but didn't say what she wanted to object.

She knew that if Lin Yi and Li Moyan, the two most important characters, both had such thoughts, it would be difficult to change the outcome of this matter, so she could only ask pragmatically:

"Then how do we deal with it? We can't just do nothing, right?"

Chapter 495 Product Line Sorting

"We certainly can't sit still."

Lin Yi had considered this for a long time, and now he took it out.

"Tutu Taxi is now constantly increasing its transport capacity through business diversification. Of course, we can also diversify our business."

"Wanli Travel currently has three business lines, namely the most traditional taxi business, the private car business for high-end customers, and the express bus business for economical customers."

"Our users are actually the same group, but they choose products according to the difference in payment ability, so the direction of our business line expansion is nothing more than upward and downward."

"In addition to the private car, we can also customize a luxury-level concierge car service. This type of business may be biased towards business customers. The total demand will not be too large, but the profit should be considerable."

"On the other hand, high-end services usually directly represent and even define the brand image. Part of Uber's high-end sense comes from its American origin, and part of it comes from the fact that it started from the luxury car business."

"If this service can be unveiled on major international occasions or large-scale business events, it will definitely improve the brand of Wanli Travel."

"Under the express car, that is, directly in the field of tut-tuk ride-hailing business, of course we can also come up with such a product line, but we can't ignore it like they do."

Liu Jianni finally had the opportunity to remind: "Hitch car owners are very different from other business drivers. According to business logic, they should work part-time as a part-time hitchhiker to earn some gas money while on the road."

"Our drivers have always had a higher entry threshold than Dudu, which was not obvious before, because it is worthwhile for a full-time driver to do the work every day after registering once, not to mention that there is a local push club to assist."

"However, part-time car owners may not be willing to disclose too much personal information. After all, the privacy and security records of domestic Internet companies are worrying. If this is the case, it will be difficult for us to attract free car owners to join."

"On the other hand, risk verification itself is a cost. It is not financially wise to pay the same verification cost when the contribution to a single driver's business is lower."

Lin Yi naturally knew these reasons, and he was not persuaded.

"Doing business is to settle accounts, but not just to calculate economic accounts."

"Dutu has set the threshold for ride-hailing so low, which is to open an opening for drivers who cannot normally run the express car business, so that they can enter this market at a low price."

Lin Yi fully understands Liu Jianni's concerns and her position as a CFO, so she doesn't have any opinion about it, but she doesn't intend to continue to entangle her ideas.

"Let me directly talk about my suggestion. Considering the practical difficulties mentioned by Jane just now, we can add a carpooling option within the express train business to achieve the purpose of backward compatibility."

"That is to say, if there is a demand for roughly the same route in the middle of the same trip, the two orders can be combined into one."

"The essence of this arrangement is to break up the seats in the car and sell them. The idea is the same as the ride-hailing business, and it is safer and more controllable."

"In order to encourage both drivers and passengers to accept carpooling, we can provide support in subsidy policies, such as giving them environmental protection points in the name of green travel, which can be used to exchange for discounts or rewards."

In this business design, the fact that carpooling is more environmentally friendly is just a name, and the company's actual starting point is to solve the problem of insufficient transportation capacity.

It’s okay to do carpooling, but the problem is that the price will definitely exceed the price of a carpool.

But Liu Jianni knew that this should be the greatest compromise that Lin Yi could make. Both Lin Yi and Li Moyan had the same stubbornness in some aspects, and they didn't look like successful businessmen at all.

Liu Jianni can only think optimistically, under the background of high subsidies in the current industry, she hopes to close the price gap with free riders.

No matter how they plan their product lines here, the competition with Dudu and Uber is still primarily about funds.

After she stopped objecting, the matter was considered settled, and then Lin Yi added one more item:

"There is another product line worthy of development, which is e-driver. In fact, there is already a successful company in this business in the market, which is e-driver."

"However, Wanli Travel came from the taxi-hailing industry. With its huge size advantage, I think it should be a dimensionality reduction blow. If it can't directly crush the opponent, it means that the team has failed too much."

"The advantage of a replacement driver is that you don't need a car, and the fee is relatively high. I think some drivers will be interested. Try to choose from our library."

He only said a few words and didn't talk any more, because more details are the affairs of the specific executive team, and there is no need for them to discuss with the top management here.

The other three people have no objection. The business scale of the driver service is still relatively limited, and there is not much room for imagination. They don't care how much money they earn, which can be regarded as a horizontal complement.

Now they have reorganized and expanded the business line of Wanli Travel, of course it is still on paper, and the next most important thing is the issue of candidates.

Choosing the right path is half the battle.

Only by choosing the right person can the rest of the journey be completed.

"Before Wanli Travel, the personnel structure focused on the front line rather than the headquarters. Except for us, many positions were only established at the department level. We can absorb more executives. At this scale, many companies have already become vice presidents. A lot."

"In addition to the strength of the middle and back offices, a large number of people are scattered in other cities and regions. It is necessary to enrich the structure and management functions of the headquarters through the restructuring of the business line."

"Before, Wang Yuqi was co-managing the Taxi Business Department with his senior sister in the capital. It's justifiable for her to become a full-time employee this time."

"In the private car business department, I prefer Zhang Xiaochuan who is currently in Pengcheng, and I will transfer him directly to Beijing to be responsible for building a higher-end product line."

"The current competition in the express business department is very fierce, and we need a reliable person who can fight tough battles. Mo Qing did a good job in Yangcheng back then."

"It should be more difficult when the Shunfeng business department starts, so let Shaoyu take this position."

"Replacement driver, let Zhang Xun come back and do it."

No one else has any opinion on the selection of these candidates. They should be counted according to their internal qualifications and abilities.

The only special thing is that Lin Yi let Shao Yu, who was relatively close to him, be thrown into the Shunfeng Business Department, which was a hard job.

There are always some labor-intensive jobs in the company that are not easy to achieve results, and someone has to do them.

For leaders, the key to whether they should be "cultivated" or "assigned" depends on whether they will be compensated or promoted afterwards.