Evening.
Liu Yutong had dinner at school and rested in her dormitory.
Li Xiaohui chatted with her about the current situation of the club she had started.
Currently, the Purple Dragon Club had only formed one CrossFire gaming team. However, this team could only participate in minor tournaments because, so far, the official CrossFire organizers had not yet established a standardized professional league system.
The club could only compete in sponsored events like city leagues and the WCG. Given the current development trend, it was highly unlikely for the club to turn a profit within the next few years; instead, it would require continuous financial injection.
When Li Xiaohui reached this point, she looked a bit anxious. After all, she knew very well that it seemed inappropriate to let the company keep burning money just for the sake of her own hobby.
After listening to her account, Liu Yutong naturally expressed unconditional support. She told Li Xiaohui to just go for it and not to worry about the funding.
Li Xiaohui was so moved that she was just short of hugging Liu Yutong and pledging to devote her life to her.
Sister Yutong, Fang Haoran and the others have recently been looking into some other games. They mentioned that Dao... Dao something... anyway, the game is quite competitive. I heard that many tournaments for this game have already been held abroad. Even though it is a mod based on Warcraft, its competitive depth is pretty good.
Is it DotA?
Yes, yes, yes! That is the one!
Li Xiaohui nodded hastily. There are already some online tournaments in the West. Although the scale is not large, the prize pool is much higher than the CrossFire city leagues. I heard that some wealthy second-generation heirs in the country are privately organizing tournaments with exceptionally high prize money. Fang Haoran and his team went to an offline exhibition match last week, took second place, and got a share of five thousand yuan in prize money.
Five thousand? Can grassroots tournaments offer that much? Liu Yutong asked.
Yeah, and that was just a small tournament. Rumor has it that a boss over in the Magic City is organizing an even larger-scale event, and the champion prize could reach fifty thousand.
This prize amount was absolutely nothing compared to the prize pools of various gaming tournaments in later generations, but right now, it was enough to ignite the passion and motivation of many gaming enthusiasts.
However, the gameplay is much more complex than CrossFire. It has a steep learning curve for newcomers, and it is hard for spectators to understand what is going on.
Sister Yutong, do you think this game has a promising future?
Even though Li Xiaohui knew perfectly well that Liu Yutong rarely played games and was not as passionate about them as she was, she still could not resist asking for her opinion.
Because in her eyes, Liu Yutong was omnipotent.
Liu Yutong was indeed not a hardcore gamer, but Li Xiaohui had certainly asked the right person. She was well aware of the general trajectory of how things would unfold.
For instance, she knew that the release of Dota 2 would spawn an entirely new professional esports ecosystem. Or that League of Legends, a game already in development and expected to launch in the second half of next year, would become the future overlord of the PC MOBA genre.
Since Li Xiaohui and her team had already stumbled upon it, making early preparations would not be a problem at all.
You can pursue this project. Xiaohui, you should actually pay special attention to this MOBA genre of games; its future development potential is immense.
Having received Liu Yutong's approval, Li Xiaohui instantly perked up again.
Okay, okay.
I will definitely keep a close eye on it!
................
The next day.
The temporary headquarters of the Wanlonghui Group.
Except for Yun Cheng and Ma Da, who were absent due to work commitments, basically all the executives who could make it were present.
Recently, the Wanlonghui Group had undergone massive changes.
First, the Wanlonghui Group had established a new property management company. All future operations related to the Wanlong Shopping Center would fall under its umbrella, with Yun Cheng holding a concurrent post as its head. Furthermore, the first Wanlong Shopping Center was about to open, with the grand opening scheduled for October 1st, the National Day holiday.
The physical Wanlong Supermarkets had not seen much change; all their expansions were synchronized with related properties like Wanlong Plaza. However, the supermarket division had launched an online shopping channel that supported multi-warehouse shipping. This was essentially creating an online, self-operated supermarket platform capable of instant delivery.
At present, there were no plans to develop it into a comprehensive online mall like Dongdong.
The internet cafe and restaurant businesses were systematically opening new branches alongside the group's related industries. At the same time, the internet cafe division had spun off its milk tea service and established a brand-new milk tea brand, Wanlong Tea.
This brand had already expanded to over a dozen branches, advancing more or less in step with the other industries. In the future, this milk tea brand would consider adopting a direct-sales plus franchise model for broader expansion.
Wanlong Logistics was still developing steadily, though it continued to operate at a loss. Its employee count was also gradually becoming the highest among all the subsidiaries in the entire group.
Over at Wanlong Technology, the main focus remained on Wanhui Select, which was about to undergo its Series B funding round. The valuation for this round of financing would exceed two billion.
The reason for such strong momentum, apart from the excellent data, was that Yu Xin had explained to the investors the future prospects of Wanhui Select on mobile platforms.
Mobile platforms were gradually starting to gain attention. In particular, the innovations of the Fruit phone from across the ocean had allowed visionary businessmen to see that mobile would undoubtedly become a crucial direction for future development.
Yu Xin also proposed the idea of establishing a mobile phone department to lay the groundwork early.
Hearing Yu Xin's proposal, Liu Yutong suddenly had a mischievous thought: what if she brought out the exterior design of the wildly popular 4 phone from her previous life ahead of time?
Developing proprietary phone hardware and software would definitely lag behind foreign countries in the short term, so they could only make assembled phones. However, they could certainly hire someone to design the exterior first.
If they actually managed to produce a phone before Fruit released the 4, using an exterior design they had patented in advance, the Fruit company would probably be completely dumbfounded, right?
Who would be the copycat then?
When the time came, they might even be able to hype up the buzz and genuinely get the mobile phone project off the ground.
At this thought, Liu Yutong hardly hesitated and nodded in agreement. We can set up the company first. Yu Xin, you can concurrently act as the head for now. We can recruit personnel slowly, but we can start by bringing in some talent in exterior design.
Understood, Yu Xin nodded.
She then reported another piece of news, which was that there had been progress regarding the acquisition offer she had made to Degao Maps on behalf of the Wanlong Group.
Degao has relented, but their asking price is a bit high. They want four billion.
Four billion is too high. Three point two billion at most. If they do not agree, they can forget about going public.
Understood!
Currently, Degao Maps was planning an IPO, but Liu Yutong had no intention of giving them the chance to go public. She knew very well that the growth of such electronic maps would be limited even if they went public, and in the future, they would inevitably have to align themselves with a major capital backer to survive comfortably.
Since that was the case, it was better to acquire them early.
If the other party disagreed, she naturally had her ways of obstructing their listing process.
All she had to do was explain the pros and cons to the venture capital firms backing Wanhui Select, and they would be more than happy to throw a few obstacles in Degao Maps' path. After all, those investors were eagerly waiting for Wanhui Select to go public. The expectations and importance they placed on Wanhui Select far exceeded their interest in some so-called map company.
Especially once they realized the massive benefits that integrating Degao Maps into the Wanlonghui ecosystem would bring to Wanhui Select, they would undoubtedly rush to have an earnest heart-to-heart with Degao's founding team, making absolutely certain to nip their IPO dreams in the bud.
After her morning meetings wrapped up, Liu Yutong spent the afternoon immersed in reviewing documents and approving funds.
In just a single afternoon, the funds approved by her signature alone exceeded five billion yuan. It was the true definition of spending money like water.
Fortunately, the financial foundation she had built up previously was solid enough to sustain such a massive investment.
Just as Liu Yutong finally finished signing off on all the required project documents, her assistant, Su Mansu, knocked on the door and walked in.
"Boss, President Lin Muyang has invited you to meet at his company. He said that he has already brought over the person you wanted to see."
..............
