In April, Lashou.com ran two group-buying specials on FoxTao. The results? A total sales volume of 57 million yuan and an influx of 230,000 new customers.
Lashou paid 20 million in marketing expenses and another 9.2 million in new customer acquisition rewards. The return on investment barely scraped 2%—hardly worth it on paper.
But that 57 million in sales gave Lashou a 3.5% market share in April's brutal group-buying wars. It crushed Meituan, Wowo.com, and Gaopeng.com. Even Juhuasuan—with its tens of millions of daily active users—failed to surpass Lashou in its first month in the arena.
Chen Yansen had kept an eye on the group-buying chaos at first. But soon, he was buried in preparations for the April 22nd Super Sale Day and stopped paying attention.
With the advertising team, events team, and operations team firing on all cylinders, FoxTao's daily active users broke 3 million for the first time after the three-day event.
Chen Yansen knew better than to get carried away. Based on current weekly retention rates, if DAU stabilized at 2.7 million by month's end, that would be a win.
The campaign closed with 93 million in total sales—though publicly, they claimed 100 million.
Gross profit margin dropped from 10% to 6.3%. After deducting the paid advertising team's costs, the campaign's net revenue was nearly zero.
But the brand was established.
After over half a year of market cultivation and user education, even potential users who had never touched FoxTao no longer looked at shopping guide e-commerce sites with suspicion.
Chen Yansen set down his books—Introduction to Algorithms and C Primer Plus—and headed downstairs.
He was still chewing on a problem: how to fix Android's lag.
Truth was, Android lag wasn't entirely a software issue. Hardware limitations played a big part.
In 2011, mobile processors had low clock speeds and few cores. Calculations took time. Phones chugged along.
And RAM? Typically 512MB to 1GB. Internal storage? 4GB or 8GB. Read/write speeds were slow. Lag was inevitable.
Chen Yansen couldn't change the hardware. But at the system level, he wanted a more efficient memory management algorithm—something to tackle memory usage and fragmentation.
Two approaches floated in his mind: optimize the process scheduling algorithm to boost system response, or adopt a generational garbage collection algorithm—tweaking the triggers and strategies to improve efficiency.
With his thoughts sorted, Chen Yansen walked to the Aurora R&D team's area and called Wang Teng out.
"Brother Sen, Aurora's initial architecture is done. Three interface prototype versions. The system startup and file system modules just passed testing..."
Wang Teng, assuming Chen Yansen was checking on progress, launched into a report unprompted.
"That's not why I'm here." Chen Yansen waved it off. "Got any good ideas about system lag? Phones running slow?"
He led the way to a temporary meeting room, and the two sat down.
"The usual fix: reduce animations, lower screen resolution—sacrifice some user experience. Or throw hardware at it: more RAM, a beefier multi-core processor." Wang Teng frowned, drawing on his OPPO experience.
"Better options? System-level?" Chen Yansen leaned back. He didn't want to compromise user experience, and he wasn't about to pacify users with low-end processors.
"Improving memory management or optimizing process scheduling—but OPPO and other domestic manufacturers have tried. Results were meh." Wang Teng shook his head.
More than a decade later, Android phones would run smoothly for years. That came from two things: Google continuously upgrading the OS, fixing early flaws; and hardware racing ahead—16GB RAM + 1TB storage became common. Lag naturally vanished.
"I have an idea." Chen Yansen spoke slowly. "Split data into young generation, old generation, metaspace. Create different memory regions. Based on garbage collection time, frequency, memory usage—combine intelligent algorithms to help users clean junk data in real time, in the background..."
As he explained, he sketched out the code implementation verbally.
Wang Teng's eyes widened. His jaw might have dropped.
He remembered clearly: just over twenty days ago, Chen Yansen knew almost nothing about programming and algorithms. He'd asked Wang Teng to recommend books.
Now? Less than a month later, the man was at a professional level. Clear thinking. Reliable technical solutions.
Wang Teng's mind churned. He desperately wanted to ask: Brother Sen, how did you even get into Xucheng Academy?
With learning ability like this? Tsinghua? Peking University? He could walk into any top-tier university in the country.
"Hey. You with me?" Chen Yansen raised his voice, noticing Wang Teng's vacant stare.
"I'm listening, Brother Sen. Please, go on." Wang Teng snapped back to reality.
"Bottom line: I don't want a copy of OPPO's Unique UI. I want something completely new. A custom UI." Chen Yansen patted his shoulder.
"Understood. I'll talk to the developers right away about the generational garbage collection algorithm you mentioned. We'll implement it as soon as possible—exactly as you outlined."
Wang Teng mulled it over. Chen Yansen's plan was solid. He gave his assurance.
"Good. Get back to work."
Chen Yansen turned, headed back to the second floor, grabbed his books, and walked to the library.
Lately, he'd been spending a lot of time there—devouring computer science and software engineering texts, occasionally flipping through French vocabulary books.
After mastering English, he'd discovered a pattern: seven days to learn a new language.
Days 1-2: vocabulary, grammar, parts of speech, sentence structures.
Days 3-4: watch ten films in the original language.
Days 5-6: integrate, adjust pronunciation and expression through deliberate practice.
Day 7: speak fluently.
Africa was the third-largest smartphone market. Seventy percent of adults were under 30. Their hunger for digital products rivaled Southeast Asia's.
Chen Yansen wasn't about to miss that market. Learning French now was preparation for expansion.
Nearly 200 million people in that country used French as an official language.
He carried his freshly borrowed books to the upstairs reading room and dived in, utterly focused.
If Chen Guobin could see this, he'd be stunned. Chen Yansen had never been this diligent in his entire life—from childhood to now.
Buzz, buzz, buzz—
His phone vibrated. He pulled it out and answered.
"Mr. Chen, the US warehouse is set up. Staff is in place. When can FoxTao launch the cross-border e-commerce support function?" Liao Wei's voice came through.
"Anytime. Just don't mess it up this time." Chen Yansen's tone was light, but the warning was clear.
"Don't worry. I'll oversee it personally." Liao Wei understood exactly what Chen Yansen meant.
The last fake liquor scandal had hammered Yunsu Express. Even with Chen Yansen's intervention, Jiushen.com had ended its exclusive partnership and chosen another courier.
Liao Wei knew: if he couldn't satisfy Chen Yansen this time, he'd be fighting to keep Yunsu afloat.
He had to seize this chance.
"Good. Add the person in charge of order processing to the project group. Launch as soon as possible."
Chen Yansen agreed readily.
The overseas transit warehouse idea had been in the works for nearly two months. It had taken longer than expected.
But Liao Wei had managed to rent a large overseas warehouse and hire staff—no small feat. Someone else might have fumbled it.
Chen Yansen stepped into the corridor and called Zhuang Rui.
"Launch the cross-border e-commerce transit function. The one we pre-developed."
"Got it, Brother Sen."
Zhuang Rui moved immediately. First step: select 20% of users for testing. Observe the new function's conversion rate.
That would determine whether to roll it out fully.
With nearly 3 million daily active users, launching a new function site-wide was risky. A/B testing. Unit testing. Minimize losses from potential bugs.
Standard procedure. Smart move.