Chapter 189 Users Are King
Seeing the three people standing at the door, Pony was momentarily stunned.
Among them, he only recognized one—Xiao Shouping, a big name from Yuanxin, currently the technical head of the VCD division.
Standing next to Xiao was a man with messy hair, looking half-asleep.
And standing in front of the two was an extremely young man, who looked at Pony with an amused smile.
Pony immediately thought of one possibility—
The legendary Su Yuanshan was said to be this young!
"No need to stop," Su Yuanshan said, glancing at the blackboard with a smile.
"We'll just sit in and listen."
Pony glanced toward Xiao Shouping for help.
Xiao Shouping winked at him, then quickly introduced,
"Pony, this is President Shan and President Li Mingliu."
"Ah... Welcome, President Shan, welcome, President Li, and welcome, Director Xiao!"
Pony strode forward. His mind was a little blank, but he still remembered to tell his team,
"Everyone, let's give them a round of applause!"
The meeting room erupted in clapping.
Since Xiao Shouping had visited before, the team already knew him.
But it was the first time the young engineers were meeting the legendary Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu, so everyone hurried forward to shake hands—
Later, someone joked that after "rubbing off their aura," their code was bug-free for the entire day.
After everyone returned to their seats, Ding Lei, having heard the news, hurried over with his assistant—
only to be pulled down into a chair by Su Yuanshan himself.
"Join us for the product meeting," Su Yuanshan said.
This left Pony feeling even more pressured.
Returning to the blackboard, he coughed lightly, adjusted his glasses, and, avoiding eye contact with the senior executives, pointed at the board.
"Since our executives are interested, let's continue discussing the two options."
But after waiting a few seconds, no one volunteered to speak.
The normally talkative, argumentative engineers were dead silent.
Pony knew:
they were intimidated.
Well, truth be told, he was a bit nervous too.
Especially seeing Li Mingliu here—he hadn't expected that at all.
When Ding Lei had come to set up the Internet R&D Center with him, he had shared countless stories about Yuanxin's legendary figures.
Besides Su and Xi, Li Mingliu was considered the most formidable—
A man who had dared to argue head-on with senior engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Who wouldn't be in awe?
Still, Pony wasn't about to lose his nerve.
He coughed again and smiled.
"I'll start first. Connecting with paging systems not only has potential for revenue, but it also helps define our target demographic."
He wrote "target users" under "Paging."
"Why?
Because the current market for pagers is still developing.
Those who own pagers are relatively wealthy and trendy—the same demographics we want for Internet users."
He paused for breath.
"Also," he continued,
"according to the communication equipment division, the domestic GSM network will begin wide-scale deployment before the New Year, and several key cities will complete network setups before the Spring Festival.
This means the future belongs to GSM."
"And GSM phones," he added,
"can receive a thing called 'Short Message Service'—SMS."
"So that's another possible direction for future development."
"As for offline messaging..."
Pony coughed again and stole a glance at Ding Lei, who kept a poker face.
"I personally believe that offline messaging will become a core feature of future communication software."
After saying that, he erased the word "Email" from the blackboard and replaced it with "Offline Messaging."
Then he wrote two more words below it:
The Future.
Turning around, Pony saw Su Yuanshan already clapping with a smile.
Pony exhaled lightly in relief.
...
Later, Ding Lei led Su Yuanshan and the others to the R&D center's break room.
Having worked at Yuanxin before, Ding had replicated many small touches,
including setting up an area where programmers could relax, have coffee, and even eat lunch.
The break room was tastefully decorated, complete with an unmanned bar (stocked only with food containers and a coffee machine).
"Not bad," Su Yuanshan said as they walked in.
They gathered around a round glass table.
Soon, a receptionist brought over coffee—instant, of course.
"Learned from the headquarters," Ding Lei said, smiling.
Su Yuanshan nodded and looked at Pony.
"Pony, you summed it up well earlier," he said.
"But there's one issue..."
Pony immediately sat up straight. "What issue?"
"The billing model for the paging function," Su Yuanshan said.
"You're the creator of EM—you must know that charging users for a communication software like EM is tricky.
After all, there are countless free forums out there."
Pony nodded.
"That's why we thought about relying on partnerships with paging systems and future SMS services to find a revenue model."
"Good," Su Yuanshan said.
"But have you considered: if we partner with the telecom bureaus—
How will users pay when they send a page through EM?
Who do they pay?
How much?"
"And keep in mind," he added,
"local call rates are dropping.
As the country rolls out its key infrastructure projects, public telephones will only become more common—and calls will only get cheaper."
Pony opened his mouth but had no immediate answer.
He was a tech guy—his instinct was always to build first, figure out the rest later.
"And," Su Yuanshan continued,
"right now, Internet speeds are terrible—and expensive."
"Your idea is good, but it's too ahead of its time.
It should be introduced later, as an extended feature."
Pony hesitated, glanced at Ding Lei, then cautiously asked,
"So we should prioritize offline messaging first?"
"Exactly," Su Yuanshan said.
"Focus on offline messaging—target the West and Japan, where networks are mature and PC penetration is high."
"As for monetization..."
He smiled.
"Don't worry about that yet.
First, dominate users' desktops.
Once you have users, the money will follow."
"That's one of the main rules of the Internet era."
If you looked at it historically, China's Internet development went through three major phases.
Phase One: 1995 to 2000, the Internet's Wild West days—
Venture capital flooded in, hoping to strike it rich with portal sites and early platforms.Phase Two: 2001 to 2010—
The era of diversified revenue models:
games, video platforms, Web 2.0 blogs, and maturing advertising ecosystems.Phase Three: Post-2010—
Mobile Internet took over, ushering in mobile games, live streaming, social apps, short videos, and content islands.
(We'll dive deeper into this later.)
But no matter the era—
users were the foundation.
Without users, there was nothing.
...
After spending a full day at the Internet Center, the next day Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu went to inspect the newly built mobile phone production facility—
and ended the trip at the motherboard design center.
Since following Su Yuanshan's and his sister's advice to relocate the center to the Special Economic Zone, Chen Daohua had felt like he was riding a wave of good luck.
Over the past year, Chen had witnessed firsthand how Meijie Motherboards had risen from near-collapse to soaring success.
He also realized just how terrifying Su Yuanshan's foresight was.
Take diagnostic features, for instance—
Even ten months later, rivals still hadn't managed to circumvent the patents Su Yuanshan and Meijie had filed together.
The competition could only argue that "if you have a diagnostic card, you don't need a motherboard diagnostic display"—
forgetting, of course, that Su and Meijie had also invented the diagnostic card.
Moreover, with strong R&D investments and relentless hiring both locally and abroad, Meijie had rapidly innovated in areas like power efficiency, safety, and overclocking.
Now, Meijie was a leader in the DIY market,
while also cementing OEM deals with major system manufacturers.
...
"President Su, President Li, please come in," Chen Daohua said warmly as he welcomed them into his office.
After the secretary brought tea and closed the door,
Su Yuanshan pulled out a tightly wrapped plastic package from his briefcase.
"Chen, this is some tea from Sister Jing—it's a specialty from the mountains."
"Oh? Very thoughtful of her," Chen said, carefully unwrapping and sniffing the tea leaves before rewrapping them.
He joked,
"She hasn't been causing you trouble at Yuanxin, has she?"
Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu both burst out laughing.
Chen realized too late how awkward his casual comment sounded.
Waving his hand, he laughed at himself,
"Oops, that came out wrong..."
It was funny—his sister was now a jet-setting CEO who wouldn't bother with a contract under a hundred million dollars,
and here he was, still speaking as if she were a small-time office worker.
...
"President Su, let's rest a bit, then I'll take you into the factory."
"Sounds good," Su Yuanshan said, smiling.
Li Mingliu looked at him curiously.
Su Yuanshan explained,
"Chen and his team have completed the design for a 3D accelerator card.
Scott Schiller begged Senior Brother Xi to come witness the milestone, but Xi's too busy—so they dragged me instead."
"This will be the first-ever 3D accelerator card designed specifically for PCs," he said.
"It's destined to be historic."
He grinned at Li Mingliu.
"You should be thanking me for letting you witness it too."
Li Mingliu: "..."
Thank you for the support, friends. If you want to read more chapters in advance, go to my Patreon.
Read 20 Chapters In Advance: patreon.com/Albino1