Chapter 180 – The Birth of a Business Legend
TN: I have placed all the Translator Notes (TN) at the end of the chapter as not to be intrusive while you read. Just click on the [number] if you want to know what it is right away.
Meng Meng was an ordinary girl.
Her family was ordinary, her academic performance was ordinary, her high school was ordinary, her appearance and height were ordinary, and she belonged to the kind of ordinary that is completely inconspicuous in a crowd.
Of course, 18-year-old girls have their own interests and hobbies. Meng Meng likes singing and listening to music. She can even sing a few simple songs while playing the guitar, although the level is also very ordinary.
The most glorious moment in her 18 years of life was when she sang the song “Edelweiss” while playing the guitar at her school’s New Year’s Day party last year, which won the applause and praise of many students.
It was a pity that she wasn’t able to win the favor of the male god[1] senior in her mind.
But Meng Meng wasn’t sad, because she knew the distance between dream and reality. She just silently liked, never expressing her love, just as she liked several singer idols, but she wouldn’t go crazy to chase stars and spend money on peripheral products.
Those products just cheat people out of their money!
She said to herself that, if she liked a singer, just buy their album. Other products were there just to cheat fans out of their money.
Sometimes, Meng Meng also feels inconceivable by her rationality.
Until two months ago when she saw a video in a WeChat Group.
The content of this video is a clip of a college graduation party, in which a very handsome boy played guitar and sang a song called “Those Flowers” on the stage.
It was this video, which Meng Meng watched over and over again, that got her to know Lu Chen!
This girl’s heart was suddenly knocked open.
Meng Meng became a fan of Lu Chen.
She searched for information related to Lu Chen on the Internet, learned about the latter’s blog, post bar, QQ group, and live broadcast, and joined Lu Family Army, the fan support group of Lu Chen.
In Lu Family Army, where boys accounted for more than 80%, Meng Meng’s ID “Meng Meng”[2] has gained high popularity because of her ability to write small fresh articles and song reviews, and that she was a girl.
This allowed Meng Meng to spend most of her spare time in Lu Chen’s fan circle.
In this virtual family, she was confident and beautiful!
September 23rd was a Wednesday, a very ordinary day.
At 10:25 in the evening, Meng Meng finally finished all her homework exercises for the day.
Senior high school studies are very arduous. Although her parents didn’t have much expectation for her, Meng Meng wanted to be admitted to an ordinary university, so she was still very serious about her usual study.
She hoped to improve her academic performance in her last year of high school.
But this didn’t hinder her from liking Lu Chen.
Putting away her exercise books and test papers, Meng Meng couldn’t wait to log on to Inspur blog.
Browsing blogs has become one of her daily habits. Lu Family Army V in Inspur blog was one of her online homes. She likes to talk about music and Lu Chen’s songs with thousands of friends in the discussion area.
In this way, Meng Meng could release the pressure from her studies.
According to her habit, she first opened Lu Chen’s personal blog.
Lu Chen FMX, number of fans: 6,720,056.
The number of his fans has increased again!
Seeing that the number of fans on his blog has increased by tens of thousands, Meng Meng smiled with delight.
When Lu Chen’s popularity grew, she always has a sense of achievement and was genuinely happy.
In the past, she used to secretly despise those brainless fans of so-and-so star. But she seemed to be turning into one fast.
Meng Meng stuck out her tongue and looked at Lu Chen FMX’s latest blog post.
Her eyes lit up suddenly!
“You Who Sat Next To Me” album crowdfunding campaign has begun!
Meng Meng has long known about this CD album that will be released on QQ Music website.
She was in favor of it and was eagerly looking forward to it.
Of course, the album downloaded from the website was very cheap and convenient. But there was no sense of reality, making her CD player useless, which was really a great pity.
Meng Meng, like many music lovers, firmly believed that the sound quality of CD was better than that of lossless high-quality audio files.
She was very excited to see the long-awaited CD record coming out.
But what she was wondering about was, what is “crowdfunding”?
After reading the content of the blog, Meng Meng understood that the so-called “crowdfunding” was everyone pooling money!
If the goal in pre-funding is achieved, then the official CD album will be released. If the goal is not achieved…
How could it not be achieved?
Meng Meng knew that many Lu Family Army fans were waiting for this CD album to come out just like herself.
She must do her part.
Meng Meng clicked on the website in the blog post and entered the so-called crowdfunding website.
Logging in was very fast, the design of the website was simple and lively, clear and refreshing without any annoying pop-up ads, and the banner area in the middle was the promotional picture of the album “You Who Sat Next To Me”. Lu Chen holding a guitar looked very handsome.
Following the website guide, Meng Meng smoothly registered an account.
After her account was successfully established, she could choose which way to support Lu Chen’s first album.
There were a total of four options.
The first option, which was a lottery, was directly ignored by Meng Meng. She never believed that such a luck-based event with such a small probability would fall on her, and she had never even bought a lottery ticket.
The second option was the 15 yuan support in exchange for a genuine record. Meng Meng subconsciously wanted to choose it.
But the third and fourth support options made Meng Meng hesitate.
Autographed poster, customized USB flash drive, key chain, metal nameplate… she really wanted them too!
But buying such peripheral products went against her previous beliefs, which made her very tangled.
Although she didn’t have much money, Meng Meng could still afford it. But if her classmates and friends found out that she, who never bought any peripheral products of stars, suddenly made an exception, wouldn’t she lose face?
Whatever!
Meng Meng gritted her teeth and controlled the mouse to click on the fourth support item.
She wanted to buy a 188 yuan set!
But what Meng Meng didn’t expect was that just after she clicked the mouse, an eye-catching prompt popped up on the screen – [Sorry, this item has been sold out, you can choose other support items!].
What?
Meng Meng suddenly had the feeling of being struck by lightning. How could it be sold out?
It was only then that she noticed that under the support button, there was a display of the number of supports: 1000/1000!
Limited to 1000 sets!
Meng Meng realized that she was late.
Fortunately, the 100 yuan set above showed 975/1000, indicating that 25 sets have not been sold.
So Meng Meng hurriedly clicked on the third option, before it was too late.
[Sorry, this item has been sold out, you can choose other support items!].
It was still the same prompt!
Meng Meng was stunned. She quickly pressed F5 to refresh the page. It turned out that it was already 1000/1000!
And the word “support” on both buttons has changed to “sold out” and buttons have turned gray, and could no longer be clicked.
Both sets were sold out!
“Ah!”
Meng Meng dropped the mouse and shouted with both of her hands holding her head.
She was really depressed to the extreme.
There were all there just a moment ago. In the blink of an eye, they were all snatched away!
If she had known that would happen, she wouldn’t have hesitated, maybe she could have grabbed a set.
That were limited edition items of Lu Chen’s first album.[3]
The 15 yuan CD record[4], however, has no quota limit, so she could buy it wantonly.
But Meng Meng felt as if she had lost her beloved treasure.
With infinite resentment, she went to the discussion board of Lu Family Army V to pour out her grievances.
As a result, Meng Meng found that there was more than one person who had the same experience as her.
A lot of people were complaining that they didn’t get the limited edition set, or that they hesitated and was too late to buy it.
Some people jumped out to show off their gains with pride.
One guy actually opened five accounts and bought five of the 188 yuan limited edition set!
Meng Meng finally knew the reason why she couldn’t get one. And for the first time, she berated someone on the Internet.
Then the other party was drowned by countless saliva, heavily berated, and quickly disappeared.
There was nothing they could do about it, so they went to Lu Chen’s blog one after another and urged to reopen limited edition support option!
Such a situation was something Lu Chen had never thought of.
When Miss Meng was complaining on his blog, he was in the 29th floor of the same building as his studio, the headquarter of the online crowdfunding – Beijing Muchen Crowdfunding Network Co., Ltd.!
The newly established company, which was spun off from Lu Chen Studio, covered an area of 500 square meters. The renovation alone cost 1 million yuan, and was completed in a hurry.
Currently, the company has employed nearly 30 employees. As the crowdfunding has been officially launched that evening, more than half of the employees were working overtime in the office area to ensure the smooth operation of the website.
And they were fortunate to witness the birth of a business legend!
“The 100 and 188 sets are sold out in only two and a half hours…”
Li Mushi, the young lady[5] of the Li Family, stood in front of the projection screen and proudly announced to the staff: “We have achieved the target of the crowdfunding. Our first project was a great success!”
A newly established website, a new business model that has not been tested in the market, without any advertising investment, the first operation project was declared a success in just over two hours.
500,000 crowdfunding target has already been broken, and it was still climbing.
Although the 7% commission wasn’t much, which website could make money as soon as it went online?
Most of the websites go all out and spend a lot of money in the early stage, and relied on free services to attract customers.
Online crowdfunding has subverted this conventional model, which was simply an incredible miracle!
Among the employees present were experienced insiders who have been dug up by headhunters, and they knew very well what this means!
This company has a bright future!
Everyone was very happy that they were the first batch of employees to join the company. Because the company has promised that as long as they work hard and performed well, they would get option incentive[6].
If one day the online crowdfunding goes public, employees who own shares may become millionaires in one fell swoop!
Such stories were common in the IT industry.
Everyone couldn’t help cheering and clapping their hands!
Li Mushi turned around, held out her hand to Lu Chen, smiled and said, “Congratulations, Chairman Lu Chen!”
Lu Chen shook hands with her and said with a smile, “Same to you!”
___________
TN: Click on the number again to go back to where you were before in the chapter.
[1] Male God or originally 男神 (Nanshen) is a neologism word to means a man who is typically handsome, caring or wealthy that a girl is infatuated with; the girl’s dream guy, Prince Charming, or Mister Right in real life.
[2] Her name, Meng Meng, is written as (孟梦), while her ID, Meng Meng, is written as (梦梦). The two are pronounced the same but written differently. Her ID is translated as Dream Dream in English.
[3] To clarify or for what I understood at this part, the limited edition here were the items along with the CD record, which are the customized USB, key chain, and metal nameplate. All the CDs in in options 2,3, and 4 are all the same.
[4] This is the second option.
[5] This could also be translated as “Big Miss”, a title, referring specifically to the eldest daughter of a big family.
[6] Option Incentive – a company benefit that gives an employee the right to buy stock shares at a discounted price.
TN: If you like my translations support me in ko-fi: Here.
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