Besides, back in 2001, Principal Wang was only thirteen years old. He had no clue he was a rich second-gen kid—his dad had kept the whole family-wealth thing hidden from him until college, when he finally came clean. That's why Principal Wang always had a soft spot for street food stalls later on.
Pure nostalgia...
It didn't take long for Mavi's insane Alipay bill screenshot to blow up across online media. They ran with it everywhere, and pretty soon the name "Mavi" became a massive sensation among China's rich second-generation crowd—an internet celebrity overnight.
The only catch was that Mavi stayed super low-key, and his bodyguards were pros at blocking photos. The media couldn't find a single clear front-facing shot of him. The few pictures out there usually showed him wearing sunglasses or a mask, making him tough to recognize.
Still, that didn't stop netizens across the country from remembering the name Mavi. For the first time, a lot of people got a real taste of just how ridiculously wealthy a true world-class tycoon could be. He blew past second place by more than four hundred million yuan—and everyone knew this was only the tip of the iceberg.
On top of the Alipay bill going viral, the third-round voting results for Sochi's Olympic bid came in. With Mavi's massive funding and support, Sochi crushed it with a commanding thirty-nine votes, beating Paris and London to take first place.
This pushed Sochi one huge step closer to hosting the Olympics. It also meant a certain someone was about to open his wallet in a big way!
"Mavi, Sochi made it to the final round! It's down to us versus London now. From the third-round numbers, my dad says it should be pretty much in the bag," the Anfiliya sisters texted him right away.
Mavi stared at the message, not sure what face to make. Once Sochi actually won the bid, that sixty billion US dollars he'd bragged about would start getting spent for real.
"This is what happens when you talk big," Mavi thought, shaking his head helplessly. "Bragging always comes back to bite you…" He quietly checked his bank account balance.
Luckily, with company stock prices climbing and products selling like crazy, he could still pull together three to five hundred million dollars without breaking a sweat. The good news was that city infrastructure and Olympic venues would be paid in stages—build it, inspect it, then pay. No need to dump everything in at once.
Plus, that sixty billion figure was priced for 2012 dollars, which already factored in inflation. In today's 2001 money, it was closer to around ten billion.
By early 2002, once Google—destined to be worth trillions—went public, the cash would be there instantly. And Mavi still had his smartphone ace up his sleeve, set to launch by mid-next year. He was confident his Google phones would dominate the market just like Apple had in his previous life, crushing Motorola, Nokia, and every other giant…
He wouldn't even sweat going up against Apple or Samsung. After all, in this lifetime, Mavi could legitimately call himself the father of the smartphone.
Two weeks later, Sochi, Russia, lived up to everyone's expectations and officially became the host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The second the news dropped, every TV station, radio network, newspaper, and website in Russia scrambled to cover it.
On Russian state television, the female news anchor announced with clear excitement: "Breaking news! IOC Chairman Mahaye officially told the world at ten a.m. today that our city of Sochi, Russia, has been selected to host the 2012 Summer Olympics! This marks the first time in twenty-one years that Russia will host the Games again."
The country erupted in celebration. Every Russian sitting in front of a TV or hearing the news from friends was buzzing with excitement and pride, like they'd just chugged an energy drink.
It felt exactly like when China won the bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympics—pure national pride.
Mavi's feelings were more complicated. It wasn't because he was about to drop serious cash, and he wasn't so emotional he wanted to cry. What weighed on him was that right before Sochi 2012 came the 2008 Beijing Games.
Honestly, Mavi had only gone after the Olympics out of curiosity—he'd never experienced anything like it before. He hadn't been trying to outdo anyone. But regular people being regular people, they were definitely going to compare the two.
Now that he had the bid locked in, there was no way Mavi was going to let Sochi or Russia lose face. He'd need to recruit top talent and plan everything down to the last detail.
With Sochi winning the Olympic bid, the land plots Mavi had bought earlier shot up in value. For the Ma V Group's 2001 annual meeting, he once again chose to host it in Sochi—and this year's event was going to be even bigger and more lavish than last year. The group now had 7,500 employees, after all.
In addition to his own executives and staff, Mavi followed tradition and invited all his major business partners to Russia for the meeting. That included Alibaba's Boss Ma, Amazon CEO Jeff, the heads of CNPC, Sinopec, China Mobile, and China Unicom, plus Tencent's founder, President Ma Huateng.
On January 12, 2002, a Boeing 747 flying in from China landed smoothly at Sochi Airport. Quite a few passengers on board were there specifically for the Ma V Group annual meeting.
Thanks to Mavi's connections, heavy hitters like Alibaba's Boss Ma, Tencent President Ma Huateng, the CNPC chairman, Sinopec's head, China Mobile's boss, and others all ended up together in first class, getting acquainted during the flight.
They were all still young at this point and had no idea how massive their companies would one day become. For now, they were simply grinding hard to build their businesses.
"Boss Ma, I heard you attended last year's group annual meeting too," Tencent President Ma Huateng asked on the plane. "An American friend told me Mr. Mavi dropped over twenty-five million US dollars right there on the spot?"
It was funny how they all shared the same surname Ma—including Mavi himself.
Recalling last year's meeting, Boss Ma nodded with a vivid memory. "That's right. It was insane. I bet he's spending even more this year."
The twenty-five million was just the employee bonuses Mavi had handed out. When you added venue costs, catering, accommodations, transportation, and everything else, the total spending was on another level.
If it had been Alibaba or Tencent, they wouldn't have dared splash out like that. Back in 2001, they were still growing fast—even a million-dollar annual meeting would have felt like a stretch.
…