Chapter 141: The Heart of Sima Zhao

After the dinner ended, Li Mu and Dong Ai said goodbye to Kong Lingyu and Lin Qingya, and took a taxi back to school together. Halfway there, Li Mu received a text message from Kong Lingyu: "Boss, how should I talk to Lin Qingya about the options?"

Li Mu thought for a moment. He hadn't mentioned to Kong Lingyu yet that he was planning to give him 3% in options, so he decided to bring it up together now.

Kong Lingyu had taken a taxi to drop Lin Qingya home first. Just as he finished dropping her off, his phone received a reply from Li Mu:

"After the company is incorporated, you will have a 3% equity option in the company, which can be cashed out after the Series B financing, with 1% allowed to be cashed out per year. If Lin Qingya joins this month immediately and her salary meets her requirement of 7k, she can get a 1% equity option, and her cashing-out terms will be the same as yours."

Kong Lingyu stared at his phone, trembling all over with excitement.

A 3% equity option was more than three times his expectation. The current valuation already reached 1.5 million RMB. Although Li Mu required that they could only cash out after the Series B round, he knew clearly in his heart that he must hold onto these three percentage points of shares no matter what. Because he had such great faith in Li Mu, he believed that if he followed Li Mu closely, these three percentage points of shares would become his greatest wealth in the future.

Overwhelmed with excitement, Kong Lingyu immediately called Lin Qingya. As soon as the call went through, he said to her, "Miss Lin, can you start working this month?"

Lin Qingya, who had just parted ways with Kong Lingyu, asked with some surprise, "President Kong, is it that urgent?"

"Yes!" Kong Lingyu desperately suppressed his voice, which was trembling with excitement, and said word by word, "I have already asked the major shareholder. If you can join this month, your monthly salary of 7,000 will remain unchanged, and you can get a 1% equity option in the company."

Lin Qingya never expected the other party to be so generous! Even though a single percentage point of shares was only one percent, she knew that the company had gone from zero to a valuation of fifty million in just two or three months. One percentage point of shares meant fifty thousand—wait, five hundred thousand. Calculated according to the development trajectory of internet companies, the valuation during the Series B round would at least multiply by five or more.

For Lin Qingya, who had just stepped into the workplace for a little over three years, this was simply a blessing she wouldn't even dare to dream of.

Almost instantly, Lin Qingya agreed and said, "Then I will immediately go through the resignation procedures. It will take two weeks at the absolute fastest!"

...

Mid-October in Yanjing was already starting to feel chilly. After the enthusiasm of the freshmen entering school was exhausted, things quieted down a lot. The upperclassmen's enthusiasm and curiosity toward the freshmen gradually cooled down along with the weather. The Renmin University campus was much quieter compared to September and the days right after the National Day holiday.

Li Mu hadn't had a moment of rest these days. While Muye Technology was still in the middle of registration, he was already preparing to launch 3321.

Yiting Network and Tieba would naturally be transferred under the name of Muye Technology and become corporate websites after Muye Technology was successfully registered. However, 3321 was registered under Li Mu's own name, and he didn't plan to use 3321 to attract investments, so he was ready to fund and operate it himself after launch.

Li Mu already had a rough promotional plan for the initial stage. The initial promotion model had to be on-the-ground promotion (offline promotion), and the specific method would imitate Didi Chuxing and Ele.me in the future.

In the initial ground-promotion stage, Didi Chuxing directly threw its ground-promotion team into places where taxis gathered, such as airports and railway stations, starting with taxi drivers; Ele.me's ground-promotion team directly plunged into all kinds of large and small restaurants in the streets and alleys, attracting restaurants as merchants into the platform, and then moved to food courts near major office buildings to directly promote the product to users.

Referring to these two cases, Li Mu decided to start with college students, form a ground-promotion team, and then go deep into the universities to gather students who were inclined to do part-time tutoring onto 3321. Once the platform gathered more than one or two thousand students, he would shift his focus to major high schools and residential communities in Yanjing to start promotion at the level of students' parents.

As for how to build this ground-promotion team, Li Mu also had a clear idea in mind: start with his roommates and fellow provincials around him, as well as those girls from Zhao Ziqiu's and Han Xiaoxiao's dormitories at Peking University. This would gather a dozen or twenty people. First, lead them to execute a few rounds of ground promotion so they could grasp the essentials of it, and then let them mobilize other classmates and friends around them to form their own ground-promotion teams and scatter them into various universities.

Of course, Li Mu wouldn't let everyone help out for free. He established a salary standard: a base salary of five yuan per hour, a commission of three yuan for every successfully attracted student registration, and moreover, every student who successfully registered and passed identity verification would receive a twenty-yuan subsidy. However, this subsidy would first be deposited into their 3321 account and could only be withdrawn together with their salary after they successfully achieved their first tutoring order.

Li Mu roughly calculated that using this promotional model, the cost of growing to one thousand student registrations would only be the base salary plus a few thousand yuan in commissions. As for the 20-yuan subsidy given to each student, these didn't need to be calculated temporarily because once the students achieved orders on 3321, 3321 would also get a 5% commission cut from both the students and the students' parents, so the financial pressure was not particularly heavy.

Li Mu decided to start ground promotions inside universities this coming Saturday, so he notified his roommates, Zhao Ziqiu, and her roommates in advance, saying he would treat them to dinner on Friday night and had something important to discuss with them. As for what the matter was, Li Mu deliberately kept them in suspense.

...

At noon on Wednesday, Li Mu took the promotional graphics made by the graphic designer to an advertising production store outside the school gate, and ordered several sets of pull-up banners, horizontal banners, and a large number of flyers. According to his plan, he would prepare these things himself first, and when the two dormitories had dinner together on Friday night, he would bring up the matter with everyone. If no one had any objections, they could take this pile of stuff and start working on Saturday morning.

On Thursday afternoon, Li Mu received a call from the shop saying that everything he had ordered was ready and he could go pick it up.

Looking at his class schedule, the last class of the afternoon was a public elective course, and public classes didn't take attendance. Li Mu decided to skip class directly and go get the stuff back to Yucheng Garden first.

Coincidentally, however, this afternoon's public class happened to be scheduled in the same session as Su Yingxue's class.

Sometimes, public classes would have seven or eight classes and several hundred students attending together. Such classes were generally held in large tiered lecture halls, and attendance was not taken. Students came and went as they pleased without anyone stopping them, and the back door remained open the whole time during class to facilitate student entry and exit.

Li Mu didn't know at first that Su Yingxue's class was also scheduled in this public class. Just as he stepped out of the teaching building after the first class ended, Su Yingxue sent him a message saying, "I looked at the schedule for the next public class, and it seems our two classes are in the same classroom."

"Really?"

"Yeah, Educational Technology Building 201A, Deng Dun."

Li Mu then asked, "Do you want to skip class?"

Su Yingxue replied, "That wouldn't be good, right? I'm the class monitor for our class..."

"When did you become the class monitor..."

"The counselor asked everyone to vote, and I somehow got elected..."

"Alright, beauties have the advantage."

"I don't want to be it at all, okay? Are you still coming to the next class? If you are, I'll save a seat for you."

"Alright, save a seat for me, I'll go keep you company."

"Okay, thank you so much!"

"Try to sit a bit further back."

"Okay!"

Li Mu, who had already run out of the teaching building, had to sprint all the way out of the school gate, pick up a pile of things, and quickly rush back to the dorm, before heading out again toward the Educational Technology Building.

The Educational Technology Building had four large tiered lecture halls, each capable of accommodating at least five hundred people for lectures, and public classes were generally arranged here. When Li Mu leisurely arrived at 201A, the huge classroom was as noisy as a vegetable market, with hundreds of people chatting in groups of twos and threes inside, making the scene somewhat chaotic.

After entering, Li Mu directly looked toward the back row seating area, staring for a long time without seeing Su Yingxue until Su Yingxue saw Li Mu and waved at him.

Li Mu walked over and found that Su Yingxue was sitting in the second seat close to the aisle, while a man was sitting in the seat next to her, turning his head to talk to her. When Li Mu got close, he realized to his surprise that the person sitting next to her was actually Wu Shuai, the president of the Southern Jiangsu Hometown Association.

When Su Yingxue saw Li Mu approaching, she said to Wu Shuai with a cold face, "I'm sorry, my friend is here. This seat is saved for him."

As soon as Wu Shuai looked up and saw Li Mu right in front of him, he felt extremely furious inside.

As a junior senior running over to attend a freshman public class, he was already extremely bored to begin with. After coming over, he went straight to Su Yingxue and shamelessly insisted on sitting next to her, even though Su Yingxue kept emphasizing that the seat was saved for someone else. Yet he remained unfazed, acting shamelessly in front of so many people. Hundreds of freshmen could easily see through his ulterior motives.

Right now, Li Mu had arrived, and Su Yingxue was once again coldly telling him to give up his seat. Wu Shuai couldn't save face, and his heart was quite annoyed.

Seeing this fellow sitting next to Su Yingxue without moving an inch, Li Mu smiled and said, "Senior Wu, you're quite enthusiastic. Being a junior, you still run over to attend freshman public classes. Have you failed too many courses and are preparing to be held back a year?"

Li Mu's words attracted the attention of many students. Feeling the mocking gazes around him, Wu Shuai bit the bullet, stood up, and said to Su Yingxue with a feigned relaxed expression, "Yingxue, our Southern Jiangsu Hometown Association is planning an autumn outing activity this weekend to climb the Wild Great Wall. Are you interested in joining? I'll sign you up."

Su Yingxue shook her head. "I have things to do this weekend."

Wu Shuai didn't give up and continued, "If you're busy this weekend, how about we postpone it to next weekend?"

Su Yingxue was getting a bit annoyed, and her tone carried a hint of disgust as she said, "I have arrangements every weekend. Please don't come to me for these kinds of things in the future."

Seeing that Wu Shuai kept getting ruthlessly rejected by Su Yingxue, yet remained utterly shameless despite her unwavering attitude of refusal, several boys and girls nearby couldn't help but let out low, rustling laughs. This made it impossible for Wu Shuai to keep up a bold front any longer.

"Well, alright then. No matter what, for every future event, I'll send you a message in advance."

Having said that, Wu Shuai didn't wait for Su Yingxue to reject him again, turned his head, and left. (To be continued.)