"Today I'm tired from work, I'm going home to steal some vegetables."
"The first thing I do when I get to the office in the morning is steal vegetables. All my colleagues at the company are playing. We calculate the time to harvest and steal vegetables, we don't even have the mind to work anymore."
"What you guys are doing is nothing. My mom is amazing when she plays. She created four accounts in one go, weeding and debugging for each other every day, and even using her main account to steal vegetables from her smaller accounts.
Last night, her alarm even woke me up. I was wondering what was going on, and then I saw my mom stealthily run to the study, skillfully turn on the computer, and steal her colleagues' vegetables. Her spirit completely shocked me."
"Every day, I use an A4 sheet of paper to write down the harvest times of all my friends' farms in order. Then I watch and wait, and when the time is right, I switch over to steal vegetables before going back. Setting alarms in the middle of the night has become a routine operation."
"Waking up early to go to an internet cafe for half an hour to steal vegetables and park the car, who among you is more awesome than me?"
"My son is in fifth grade today. The first thing he asked me after school was if I had helped him steal vegetables."
"I recommend everyone to get a Renren membership. You can harvest all vegetables with one click, personally tested and it's good."
"My retired grandma even asked me to help her register for Renren.com; she wants to play too!"
"..."
The game "Stealing Vegetables" became a hit, is it a surprise?
No!
Chen Pingjiang was not surprised at all.
This is a game that people are still playing in 2024, and quite a lot of them.
Many elderly players even plan to play until the game is taken offline!
In this timeline, Chen Pingjiang's Renren Farm is more refined than the original QQ Farm; it was developed with time and effort.
Within 24 hours of its launch, Renren Farm's daily active users reached 1 million, a number five times greater than that of Renren Parking Scramble at its peak.
While Renren.com's 50 million registered users certainly contributed, the game of stealing vegetables itself was the main reason.
As soon as Stealing Vegetables launched, it turned the slow data growth, originally caused by new games being launched on other SNS social networking sites, into a vertical line.
Miao Bingwei was speechless after seeing the data.
He thought it would be popular, but not this popular!
Even though he had imagined the data's upper limit as much as possible, it still wasn't enough.
After 48 hours of being online, the game's daily active users soared to 2 million.
At 72 hours, daily active users reached 3 million.
5 million... this was already the peak number for the previous Parking Scramble.
6.5 million...
8 million...
10 million...
In just one week, Renren Farm's daily active users reached 10 million, directly boosting Renren.com's registered user count to 55 million.
And as word-of-mouth further spread, the daily growth rate became even larger.
Renren.com immediately went into a frenzy, frantically increasing the number of servers!
As the first generation of national social games, its popularity was beyond imagination.
Some people set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to harvest crops the moment they matured, their routines changing with the crop growth cycle.
Some were absent-minded at work, opening the webpage as soon as the boss left, and instantly switching back when the boss returned, finding it incredibly exciting; some spent tens of thousands on Taobao just to buy a high-level account with many assets.
Others became professional proxies, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting vegetables for dozens of people every day.
Simple to operate, strong instant gratification, and highly interactive, it appealed to all age groups.
When life got boring, as long as one could get online, they could find fun through Renren Farm.
Even in an era where mobile internet was not yet developed, users could still steal vegetables through the WAP webpage version of their space.
In just one week, Renren.com's active users surged by 33%.
Besides new users, the vast majority were returning old users, or accounts that previously logged into Renren.com once every two or three days or a week now logged in two or three times a day.
And because virtual items like "seeds," "pesticides," and "one-click harvest" were linked to Renren.com's membership mechanism, they brought immense profits to Renren.com.
People erupted with unimaginable enthusiasm for this game.
"A man was fired for playing Renren Farm, simply because he stole his boss's vegetables during working hours."
"A student suddenly rushed out of the classroom in the middle of a final exam, it turned out to be 'stealing vegetables' time."
"Grandpas and grandmas set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to steal a few cabbages."
"A nurse delayed treatment due to stealing vegetables during working hours."
"A father, fighting over a computer to play 'Stealing Vegetables', chased his son away with a broom."
"..."
These news stories were not hype orchestrated by Chen Pingjiang; rather, they were real cases that emerged across the country after Renren Farm became explosively popular.
This made him somewhat bewildered and amused.
A vigorous movement of planting and stealing vegetables swept across the nation, with everyone, regardless of gender or age, eagerly participating.
This level of popularity even alarmed some department leaders, who directly called Renren.com to ask them to change "stealing vegetables" to "picking vegetables."
Everyone at Renren.com was incredibly energized, like they'd been injected with a stimulant.
Even an idiot knew that with Renren Farm's explosive popularity, the company's valuation would likely more than double.
Shen Nanpeng, far away in BJ, excitedly called Chen Pingjiang that day and chattered on for half the day.
His only purpose was to urge Chen Pingjiang to quickly start the second round of financing, because he had already received news that many VC/PE firms were trying every trick to contact Chen Pingjiang, and he didn't want Chen Pingjiang to forget him.
It wasn't until his father Chen Guangming called Chen Pingjiang to complain about not being able to sleep recently, always being woken up in the middle of the night by his mother Xu Fangjuan's vegetable-stealing alarm, that Chen Pingjiang truly gained a clear understanding of Renren Farm's reach.
His mom didn't even know how to use a computer!
......
At the internal meeting of Renren.com, the mid-to-senior executives present, though appearing somewhat tired, were full of spirit.
"Boss, there are increasingly more news stories like 'fired for stealing vegetables, students neglecting studies for stealing vegetables.' I'm worried it might create negative public opinion."
Chen Pingjiang nodded, thought for a moment, and then said,
"There's nothing wrong with the game itself. This situation is unavoidable. Let's put a text reminder within the game."
After a pause, Chen Pingjiang's gaze shifted to Miao Bingwei.
"If I'm not mistaken, Xiaonei.com, Kaixin001, and even Tencent should be working overtime to copy us. In at most two months, they will definitely launch their own versions. At that time, we will have to compete with many fake farms for users."
"I hope you'll be well-prepared and wait for them. Accelerate product development, optimize user experience; innovate around features, and iterate products frequently."
Miao Bingwei said,
"I have already assembled an elite team to operate Renren Farm. This team consists of various roles such as project manager, product, UE design, frontend development, backend development, testing, and operations.
We use a one-week iterative development cycle, completing multiple deliveries and releases within one iteration. Even if a user makes a casual complaint, I require them to react quickly to fix bugs, ensuring they are resolved within two hours."
He deeply understood the importance of Renren Farm to Renren.com.
For the past week, Miao Bingwei had even slept at the company.
Because he found that he could only sleep soundly at the company; when he went home, he couldn't sleep.
Constantly coordinating with the server operations and maintenance department and the Renren Farm development and maintenance team, and intensely monitoring market feedback, had truly worn Miao Bingwei out.
But the more exhausted he became, the happier he felt.
In the entire history of the internet, few people have been responsible for a game with such a massive user base.
For Miao Bingwei, this was both a challenge and an achievement.
Chen Pingjiang clapped his hands, drawing everyone's attention:
"For a period going forward, everyone must act proactively. Before similar games from other competitors are launched, we must accumulate a sufficiently large advantage and dig our moat deep enough."
After the meeting, Guan Yifeng came over with a list.
"Here are the VC/PE firms that have contacted us in the past three days. There are already fifty, and the number is still increasing,"
Guan Yifeng said with a smile.
"These people are acting like crazy, constantly inviting me to meals, but I've rejected them all."
Chen Pingjiang smiled and glanced at him, saying,
"You need to handle some key institutions well. If it's really hard to refuse, go have a meal. You can accept some cigarettes and alcohol if offered, but nothing valuable."
This was a win-win strategy.
It wasn't the optimal time for financing yet, and Chen Pingjiang didn't want to meet those investment firms or convey any information.
Having Guan Yifeng handle it was just right, and it also gave him some experience.
Guan Yifeng, fearing Chen Pingjiang might misunderstand, quickly waved his hand:
"I'm not going."
"I'm telling you to go, so go. It's fine."
The reason these VC/PE firms were rejected by Chen Pingjiang last time, and yet came back persistently this time, was precisely because they saw the potential.
Often, company founders introduce other VC/PE firms to control the equity percentage of certain investment institutions and ensure their own control over the company's security.
Furthermore, given the current explosion of Renren.com's data, the amount for Series B financing will definitely be substantial, something that cannot be handled by just one or two firms.
The outside world has now generally reached a consensus.
Currently, Renren.com's overall valuation exceeds 15 billion.
This figure is not a wild guess.
Firstly, during the first round of financing, Renren.com's valuation was already as high as approximately 2 billion.
At that time, Renren.com had only over 5 million registered users, and now that number has expanded tenfold.
Secondly, just a few days ago, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, acquiring a 1.6% stake.
Finally, even Xiaonei.com, which was constantly being outmaneuvered by Renren.com, received a valuation of 6.3 billion from SoftBank.
In comparison, Renren.com's 15 billion valuation is not high.
After all, although it's unknown when the domestic SNS social battle will end, there is no doubt that this war has entered its second half, and Renren.com, from any perspective, possesses the qualities of a winner.
Regarding Renren.com's financing, Chen Pingjiang wasn't particularly nervous yet, but Chen Yizhou of Xiaonei.com had already started to get anxious.
If Renren.com secured a very good valuation and raised a large sum of money, he truly wouldn't know how to fight this battle.
He was already being outmaneuvered, and the gap would only widen.
If Chen Pingjiang hadn't refused, he would have intended to use all his money to directly invest in Chen Pingjiang.
It wasn't self-deprecation, but Chen Yizhou felt as if he had fallen into an endless abyss, from which he seemed unable to climb out, no matter how hard he tried.
(End of chapter)