My Age of Investment

Jeremy looked at Xia Jingxing with piercing eyes, and asked, "Daren, you should have investigated City Search before deciding to invest in Yelp, right?"

Xia Jingxing nodded slightly.

Jeremy continued: "Can you tell me? Why invest in us and not them?"

"It has been established for too long, the growth of the enterprise scale has stagnated, and the entrepreneurial passion has been lacking."

Xia Jingxing's reason surprised Jeremy a little.

He originally thought that Xia Jingxing would say that he liked a certain function of Yelp, a certain quality of the team.

But if you understand it the other way around, isn’t it because their team is younger and more entrepreneurial?

Jeremy smiled: "Then let me talk about the difference between us and City Search!

City Search combines user-generated information into an online city guide that provides information on businesses in U.S. cities in the dining, entertainment, retail, travel and professional services categories.

Unlike us, Yelp encourages people to share comments through likes and likes, something no similar online product has done before.

In other words, we intend to add the concept of social networking to review sites.

How powerful is the social network? I believe that no one on this planet understands it better than Darren! "

Xia Jingxing smiled, this is not necessarily true, he knew that there was someone who was more social than him.

Jeremy continued: "Let me tell a little story about Yelp's development process!

In February of this year, we launched the Yelp 2.0 version, but suffered from insufficient funds for national promotion, so we decided to first focus on making Yelp famous in San Francisco.

We then hired a marketing expert in popular communications, and with his help, we invited the most active users on the site and threw them an open bar party.

Through such parties, we identify the most active commentators on the site and call them Yelp's "elite army."

And the organizer of the party, we call the "community manager".

These people don't get paid a penny,

But their sense of belonging to the site has been maintained through parties sponsored by Yelp.

In addition to contributing high-quality reviews to the website, they also continue to help us expand merchants.

Think of it as an offline version of social networking!

With Facebook's support, I believe we can do a better job and allow Yelp to expand much faster. "

Hearing this, Xia Jingxing understood that this brother hired a group of white workers.

But this is also a skill, convinced.

He has almost imagined the scene of the party, a group of people drinking wine, talking about which restaurant you have eaten recently, and which restaurant I have eaten at, and then everyone agrees with each other, and finally summarizes the discussion and publishes it on Yelp On the platform, it becomes a high-quality review of every restaurant.

This kind of high-quality reviews refers to detailed reviews from the dining environment, to the surrounding traffic, to the service attitude, etc., which have great reference value.

It's not the kind of "delicious" or "not delicious" that can be compared.

For a start-up local life review website, this kind of high-quality UGC content can cultivate a good community atmosphere.

In short, it is to make a sample for later users: if you see it, let us comment like this, and don't fix those useless ones.

Xia Jingxing savored the other party's words carefully, the password for Yelp's rise in the previous life also added the concept of social network.

At present, Yelp's products have basically taken shape, and a set of low-cost expansion methods has been found, that is, to enter a city, hold a party, screen out the most active users, and then enrich the restaurant and store reviews in the city, and then a large number of Ordinary users are attracted to...

It's a virtuous cycle that keeps Yelp moving forward.

The cooperation with Facebook can help Yelp divert a lot of traffic and accelerate Yelp's expansion.

Xia Jingxing smiled lightly: "It's impossible for you to make activists work for free forever, right?

You have to give others a little benefit, so that this matter can last for a long time, not a momentary passion. "

Jeremy nodded, "Yes, so after the financing is completed, we plan to give community managers a full-time job, so that they have sufficient motivation and energy to organize parties and expand merchants.

For the active users of the website who comment enthusiastically, we also plan to introduce a points system. Post comments to get points, and the points can be exchanged for restaurant and various store shopping coupons, discount coupons, etc. "

Xia Jingxing felt that the other party was avoiding the important and taking the light of the matter, so he simply pointed out: "Facebook can't guide you for nothing. Even if I come forward, I can only give you a preferential price at most. It is impossible to completely waive the cooperation fee."

Golden Retriever Russell asked: "Then Darren, how much do you think we need to raise?"

"Let's raise at least ten million dollars!"

Xia Jingxing also enthusiastically helped to make a fund allocation plan: "5 million US dollars will be used for Yelp's daily operations, and the other 5 million US dollars will be used to place Facebook ads.

As long as all the data on the website are uploaded, Yelp's valuation can increase tenfold in half a year. "

Russell smiled wryly, "Daren, Yelp's pre-investment valuation is only 20 million U.S. dollars. If it raises 10 million U.S. dollars, it will dilute 33.33% of the shares. This is too much, and we need to raise money later."

Jeremy nodded in agreement: "Yes, 10 million is really too much financing, in fact, 5 million is enough.

Advertisement on Facebook, we can't afford it yet.

In fact, we want Facebook to open the interface and let the two websites share with each other. "

Xia Jingxing smiled, "Tell me, how does Facebook share to Yelp?"

Jeremy scratched his head, it's not easy to fool around!

Xia Jingxing felt that this kid had really become a habit of whoring for nothing, not to mention the active users who went whoring for nothing, and now he's making his mind on investors.

Seeing that Xia Jingxing didn't speak, Jeremy kept looking at himself playfully, and finally felt a little embarrassed.

However, he has always been thick-skinned, and said with a smile: "Then, Darren, we still need to raise 5 million. After the next round of financing is in place, we will go to Facebook to cooperate."

"The layout needs to be a little bigger, why bother to hold on to that bit of equity."

Jeremy was dumbfounded by Xia Jingxing's expression of hating iron for nothing.

If Xia Jingxing hadn't exposed the fox's tail, he might really be lied to.

"That's it, don't mention it, let's raise 7.5 million US dollars!"

Jeremy refrained from pain, and after saying this, he quickly gave his partner Russell a look to hint, making the latter swallow what he was about to say.

Xia Jingxing reckoned that it was about the same, and he couldn't push too hard, so he nodded and said, "Okay, let's sign the contract!"

Jeremy said with a smile: "Well, our angel investor, Max Levchin, the owner of the MRL Ventures business incubator, is next door, and we have to communicate with him."

"Okay, let's go together!"

After finishing speaking, Xia Jingxing got up and left the office in a hurry.

Seeing the office door suddenly opened, there was a line outside, and the young people who were waiting for the opportunity hurried to the side.

After Xia Jingxing went out, he even lifted up his trousers, which was actually to straighten the hem of his shirt that had been drilled out.

Behind him, Jeremy and Russell were full of joy, smiling as they walked.

Looking at this posture, the PY transaction was successful?

Looking at the crowd, some people cast envious eyes at Jeremy and Russell.

Someone else glanced at their watch and it took half an hour to finish?

Didn't everyone say that Darren is a real man for ten minutes? Why is it taking so long this time?

Xia Jingxing ignored the strange stares of the young people beside him, led the way by Jeremy, and visited Max again.

Max was blond, in his mid-thirties, and had been PayPal's CTO.

His name is very close to Musk, and both of them have cashed in a lot of cash through the sale of PayPal.

Musk took the money to start a small rocket, so he founded a business incubator, worked part-time as an angel investor, and occasionally started a business to test the waters.

Interestingly, Max also founded a social networking company this year, called Slide (sliding), to do slide social...

Therefore, Xia Jingxing did not regard Max as a competitor.

On the contrary, Xia Jingxing also wanted to encourage the other party to transform to develop third-party tools for Facebook.

In the previous life, Swipe Company did this, and it was a well-known third-party developer of Facebook.

For Xia Jingxing's arrival, Max was very happy.

Last year, when he celebrated his 29th birthday, Jeremy and Russell "cheated" him out of an angel investment of US$1 million because he drank too much.

At that time, the two only had a small idea, not even a business plan, nor a team.

When he sobered up the next day, he regretted it.

Today, if Yelp wants to develop, it needs new investors to join in. Although Vision Capital needs a lot of shares, it also has a lot of investment. At the same time, it is willing to promote the cooperation between Yelp and Facebook.

After a brief chat, Max readily agreed to the financing plan.

Then, Xia Jingxing asked Rich to sign an investment agreement with Yelp on behalf of Vision Capital, planning to exchange 27.3% of Yelp's equity with an investment of 7.5 million US dollars.