157: Chapter 158: Shoddy Workmanship Revealed by a Billion-Dollar Bonus!

It was early May.

The joint camp formed by foreign consortiums and the Beijing Circle had by now completely fallen into a fanatical state of being blinded by losses.

In a physical confrontation devoid of any fancy techniques.

Throughout the first half of the year, they had forcibly poured a full one billion dollars in subsidies into the domestic sinking market!

This staggering figure was more than double the total budget of the foreign capital for the entire previous year.

In Young Master Su Chi's calculations.

This tsunami-like shock of pure capital was enough to tear any local internet enterprise attempting to resist it to shreds.

However, faced with this apocalyptic-level capital frenzy.

Shen Du, sitting in his headquarters, did not show even the slightest hint of panic or impatience.

He let the foreign capital clamor wildly outside the city walls.

The massive profit cash flow on the books of Xinghuo Software and Meituan.

Was indeed poured back in its entirety, without reservation.

Transforming into the purest nutrients in the transfusion line, precisely feeding back into the hands of millions of grassroots merchants.

In the eyes of Young Master Su Chi and the Wall Street actuaries.

Jiyuan Technology's defensive strategy—which completely ignored pleasing C-end users and blindly "bled" towards the B-end—

Should have long since fallen apart under the strangulation of double subsidies.

But the final financial report presented on the foreign executives' desks delivered a result that left all the multinational executives collectively breathless.

Despite the disadvantage of not having any direct subsidies for C-end users.

Jiyuan Technology's development not only did not show even a hint of stagnation.

But instead shattered all financial models.

Compared to last year.

Its core user base, under the bombardment of billions in foreign capital, not only did not churn.

But instead grew by 8% against the trend!

And the pool of high-quality merchants deeply bound to it saw an astonishing 10% expansion!

No matter how high Young Master Su Chi burned the flames of the subsidy war outside.

The operation in Shen Du's hands was like a magical needle planted deep into the commercial bedrock, standing tall, motionless, and indestructible!

At first glance.

The bizarre stalemate before them completely violated the traditional economic logic accumulated by the West over a century.

In the eyes of those top Wall Street actuaries earning tens of millions in annual salaries.

The foundation of commercial competition is always cold data and financial models.

According to common sense.

When foreign capital utilizes double, or even several times the amount of funds.

To directly please and subsidize C-end grassroots users in the simplest and crudest way.

It should be able to form an absolute monopoly on traffic within a very short time.

But reality slapped the multinational capital hard in the face.

The foreign capital spent money to please users, but in return, they received overwhelming complaints throughout the Great Xia sinking market.

Yet Shen Du, who seemed extremely "stupid," not only didn't give users a single cent in red envelopes.

But instead distributed the hard-earned profits the platform made in full to the B-end merchants.

As a result, the entire Jiyuan Technology ecosystem was as solid as a rock, like a wall of bronze and iron!

Wall Street's logic completely crashed here.

This was not at all because Young Master Su Chi and his think tank team had miscalculated an account.

But because Shen Du had long since jumped out of the purely financial dimension.

And launched a philosophical interrogation against the entire foreign capital camp.

In this resource allocation game that seemingly was just "sending money into different people's hands."

Hidden within was the most profound and fatal core of the commercial soil: the greed and checks and balances of human nature.

When the two camps injected billions of dollars in subsidies into the different blood vessels of buyers and sellers respectively.

It was like dropping a catalyst into two completely different chemical reagents.

Ultimately, in the entire sinking ecosystem, it irreversibly catalyzed two violent reactions heading in extreme directions.

Young Master Su Chi's C-end direct subsidy strategy, which was copied from the Wall Street playbook.

Its most fatal flaw lay in his underestimation of the most primitive human greed in the sinking market.

In this model that seemed to be for pleasing users, we can intuitively deduce the underlying physical logic:

Suppose a product's original normal selling price is 100 yuan.

Under the crazy subsidizing of the foreign platform.

The user gets a 20-yuan large coupon and only needs to pay 80 yuan to purchase it.

On the surface of this transaction, it seems the user has gained a huge advantage.

And the foreign platform has also successfully bought what is called "user stickiness."

But Young Master Su Chi alone miscalculated the most core link.

The merchants' greed.

Those millions of grassroots sinking merchants have no loyalty to capital whatsoever.

When merchants discover that the platform is spending huge amounts of money to crazily subsidize users.

In order to bite off a bigger piece of meat from this massive capital pool.

They will instinctively engage in shady operations:

Secretly raising the base price of the product by 10 yuan, or directly shipping with inferior, lower-cost defective goods.

The result is that the real money the foreign capital threw at the users.

Is swallowed in disguise by the merchants' infinite greed at the end, or even crazily "skimmed" off!

The users happily take the subsidies, but what they buy back is a pile of industrial garbage that has been secretly price-hiked and corner-cut.

What makes the merchants even more disgusted is that Young Master Su Chi's subsidies are always only given to users.

As B-end merchants providing goods and services, not only do they not get a single cent of the platform's dividends.

But the actual profit they get is no different from before.

And they are even forced to deal with the multinational platform's cumbersome and long-cycle settlement mechanism.

Under this vicious cycle without any extra profit incentive.

Why should the merchants cooperate with the platform to maintain the ecosystem?

Why should they care about the life or death of the foreign capital?

They only have one thought in their minds:

While this bunch of stupid, moneyed foreign capital is still crazily throwing money around, hurry up and fleece them.

Once the operation completely rots, leave without hesitation!

Completely different from the stupid approach of foreign capital that attempts to use cash to forcibly distort market laws.

What Shen Du threw out was an open conspiracy that could be called a dimensional strike.

He did not test the human nature of the sinking market.

Instead, he used a crude method to weld the core interests of the platform and the merchants together.

That is the incredibly crazy "dynamic dividend" mechanism.

Shen Du directly showed his cards to the entire network:

Xinghuo Software and Meituan, all the massive net profits retained each month—the platform won't keep a single cent.

All of it is taken out as a dividend capital pool and directly fed back to all B-end partner merchants!

And the underlying distribution rules of this dividend system reek of the most primitive, yet fairest, scent of blood:

No seniority, no scale, only the most real transaction volume and reputation rating.

The higher your sales volume and the more positive reviews you have.

When settling at the end of the month, the thicker the slice of the dividend cake you cut from that massive capital pool!

More work, more pay, no upper limit!

Once this bundled interest engine was ignited.

It directly reshaped the mindset of millions of grassroots merchants on a physical level.

When the merchants realized that their biggest source of profit was no longer the three or five yuan squeezed out from a single item.

But the huge platform dividend at the end of the month that was enough to make people envious.

All shady operations and price fraud instantly lost their meaning.

In order to crazily push for order volume and snatch that massive dividend at the end of the month.

These originally greedy merchants were even willing to voluntarily give up single-item profits!

As long as the final selling price could cover the cost of goods.

They would, without hesitation, start the most brutal price-reduction marketing.

They no longer cut corners.

Instead, they would treat their shop's positive rating like they were serving their own father.

Fearing that a single negative review would cause them to lose their qualification for dividends.

There was no need for Shen Du to issue any strict management directives.

Profit is the best conductor's baton.

Shen Du used the purest distribution of interests to transform the greed of human nature into the most powerful productivity.

He bloodlessly turned the millions of domestic grassroots merchants who originally had no loyalty whatsoever.

Forcibly into a crazy, iron-willed sinking market promotion army that shared in the glory and ruin of Jiyuan Technology!

When this interest-driven trend of lowering prices while maintaining quality.

Spread fully across the entire sinking market and formed an unstoppable ecological closed loop.

The power it erupted with was terrifying.

Calculating carefully.

In this money-burning war that shook the entire network.

The subsidy funds Shen Du actually took out from the company's books were, at most, not even half of Young Master Su Chi's!

However, relying on this half of the capital amount.

Jiyuan Technology achieved, on the market side, real user stickiness, reputation ratings, and fanatical cooperation from merchants.

Which formed a merciless crushing of the foreign capital camp that had thrown down one billion dollars!

Young Master Su Chi spent twice the money, but in return got a poisoned pill operation filled with price fraud and a garbage ecosystem;

While Shen Du used only half the cost to forge an indestructible commercial fortress.

What made those Wall Street actuaries on the other side of the ocean feel a bottomless despair.

Was Jiyuan Technology's freakishly healthy hematopoietic center.

This brutal, nearly year-long confrontation did not damage even a shred of Shen Du's vitality.

Spark Live platform, although it took all its massive earnings to fill the B-end merchant dividend pool.

It remained an inexhaustible, terrifying money-printing machine itself.

And on the Meituan side, the commercial cooperation and settlement fees for millions of merchants were not a cent short.

All were paid in full at the most punctual time nodes.

There was not even a single day of delay in the account settlement period.

The cash flow operation of the entire market was as smooth as a precision war machine lubricated with oil.

Until this moment.

If Young Master Su Chi could see clearly the true bottom-layer financial statements of Jiyuan Technology.

He would definitely feel a fear that made even his soul tremble.

Because fighting until now.

This business ecosystem had perfectly achieved self-circulation.

Shen Du hadn't even used a single cent of his overseas personal reserves to fill the company's deficit!

If it weren't for Shen Du deliberately holding back the operation, in order to forcibly raise the threshold of this subsidy war to the extreme.

Attempting to use the method of cutting meat with a dull knife to slowly wear out the foreign capital's base position to death.

If it were just maintaining normal commercial defense.

Then in this state of war where billions are burned at every turn.

Jiyuan Technology could even directly achieve an incredible absolute profit on the books!