After coming up with this idea, Pei Qian felt completely enlightened.

Opening a zoo to raise animals was definitely a good idea!

Of course, it wasn’t that simple and would require a series of preliminary preparations.

After searching online for relevant information, Pei Qian gained a basic understanding of the situation.

Currently, there were many private wildlife parks in China. You just needed to obtain the appropriate photography permits.

For instance, a famous crosstalk performer had bought 60 mu of land in the suburbs of the capital to open a private zoo, which was a much-discussed topic.

And yes, it truly burned through money.

For Tenda in its current state, obtaining the necessary permits wouldn’t be difficult. After all, they had so many successful projects in Jingzhou City, and the investment in this zoo would definitely not be small.

As for burning money, that was exactly what Pei Qian wanted.

Others created private zoos often out of love—they genuinely liked animals.

It was like many people who opened cat cafés. In reality, cat cafés hardly made any money because few customers visited daily, and the spending per customer wasn’t high. Relying solely on selling coffee generally resulted in losses.

The expenses of running a cat café were actually quite high. Besides necessities like cat food and litter, if a cat got sick once, it could cost several thousand yuan. If cats were raised to high standards, the vast majority of cat cafés would go bankrupt.

So many cat café owners had to find side businesses, like making short videos to generate some income to subsidize the café’s expenses. In the end, after all that hard work, far from exploiting cats, they were actually being exploited by the cats—humans working for cats.

The situation with private zoos was even more challenging, with operational difficulties far greater than those of cat cafés.

On one hand, animals were expensive. Ordinary mammals wouldn’t cost less than twenty to thirty thousand yuan, common birds wouldn’t be less than a few thousand, not to mention rare and precious protected animals.

Moreover, to take good care of these animals, there were expenses for cages, feed, transportation, salaries for zookeepers and cleaners, and veterinary costs, all of which added up to a significant amount.

Additionally, zoos showed very obvious cluster effects. Some small private zoos only had a dozen or so animals and no particularly precious rare species, so no matter how cheap the tickets were, few people would go to see them.

When tourists wanted to see animals, they would definitely go to large municipal zoos. Over time, small wildlife parks would incur increasing losses and naturally couldn’t continue operating.

This was obviously bad news for others, but for Pei Qian, it was clearly good news!

The more losses, the better!

If these animals could really eat to their hearts’ content and bankrupt Tenda, Pei Qian would probably bow to them on the spot to express his gratitude.

After consideration, Pei Qian decided to put building a zoo on the agenda.

However, there was one problem: Tenda currently didn’t seem to have anyone suitable to be in charge of this zoo.

In Pei Qian’s view, the most important quality for a zoo director was a genuine love for animals and the intention to stay in this industry for life, plus mastery of basic professional knowledge, respect for animals, and scientific breeding practices.

But Tenda really didn’t have such a person.

The vast majority of people had grown up in cities and basically had a “love from afar” for wildlife. They had no problem viewing lions and tigers from a distance and might find it novel to occasionally see monkeys jumping around asking for food. But if they had to spend extended time with animals and worry about their daily needs, most people would definitely not be able to persist.

The only person in all of Tenda who had anything to do with animal care might be Xiao Tang, since she was a cat caretaker and chief litter scooper. But the problem was that raising cats was worlds apart from raising wildlife.

Moreover, although Xiao Tang was an academic high-achiever, she didn’t study veterinary medicine. Wouldn’t making her the zoo director be a waste of talent?

So this person in charge would have to be found externally, and the specific plan for building the zoo would need long-term consideration.

Afterward, Pei Qian began to consider the final issue: where to allocate the 10 million yuan allowance (converted from 100,000 yuan out of his own pocket) in which industry.

For Pei Qian, who had a bit of decision-making difficulty, this was indeed a problem.

Because this allowance was neither too much nor too little.

If he wanted to keep it simple, he could just throw it at any industry, since it was pure charity and required no thinking. But the problem was that pure charity would inevitably raise awareness and reputation for that industry. Projects that weren’t popular might become popular, and already popular projects might become even more popular.

One wrong choice, and the 100,000 yuan out of his own pocket would trigger a chain reaction, meaning he would have fallen for the system’s trap again.

So how to choose?

Pei Qian looked at Tenda’s diverse array of industries and felt a headache coming on.

Hilarious—he couldn’t choose at all!

“Forget it, why should I rack my brains over this? Wouldn’t it be better to let the department heads consider it?”

“I’ll just let them submit applications themselves, clearly stating their reasons for needing this funding, and then choose the industry that needs this money the least. Wouldn’t that work?”

Pei Qian was impressed by his own cleverness.

The more a department needed this money, the greater the effect and impact would be after receiving it.

That being the case, they absolutely couldn’t get it!

Conversely, those departments that didn’t really need this money and were just joining in for the sake of it probably couldn’t write particularly convincing reasons, and wouldn’t be able to make much use of it after receiving it.

Pei Qian could take the opposite approach and give them the money with peace of mind.

The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more it made sense. He immediately wrote a simple notice, asking department heads interested in competing for this funding to submit a report.

……

……

January 16th, Wednesday.

Pei Qian arrived at his office to continue his unfinished work.

Whenever settlement was approaching, Pei Qian would become very busy, which made him a bit dejected.

Especially now, when schools were about to start their winter break and the New Year was coming next month, it happened to coincide with the cycle settlement.

Pei Qian would have liked to enjoy his freedom like other students, but he couldn’t. In order to rest easy during the Spring Festival holiday, he needed to arrange the settlement issues in advance.

If he gave up now, then all his efforts from more than half a year would have been in vain.

First, he opened his computer to check the applications submitted by various departments.

Pei Qian had already converted 100,000 yuan from his own pocket into a 10 million yuan allowance. A couple of days ago, he had asked each department to submit applications, detailing the reasons why their department needed this money and how they would use it if they received it.

All the department heads were very efficient and had already sent in their applications today.

Moreover, the content of the applications was very detailed. Each one promised that if they received this money, they would definitely use it properly to maximize popularity and help their department’s industry develop and expand rapidly, capturing more market share!

Especially Slackin’ Takeout, Slackin’ Internet Café, and other physical businesses wrote particularly sincere and moving applications.

Other departments were equally competitive, each with their own reasoning.

Some departments that currently weren’t very popular believed the money should go to them because development was uneven across departments, and they should receive special attention. Once they developed, they naturally wouldn’t compete for similar resources again.

And those departments that were already popular also believed the money should go to them, as they could get better returns after receiving it.

Established departments felt they didn’t receive as much attention as new departments and should receive some subsidies.

Meanwhile, new departments believed they were in a period of growth and development, representing important directions in Tenda Group’s industrial layout, and should therefore concentrate resources for a breakthrough.

Pei Qian spent a great deal of effort reading through all the reports sent by these departments.

The result not only didn’t cure his indecisiveness but actually made it worse!

“This is frustrating!”

“The way you all wrote these, I really can’t decide who to give it to!”

“If I give it to unprofitable departments, you promise you’ll improve the loss-making situation; if I give it to profitable departments, you promise you’ll make even more profit.”

“I see you’re all just trying to make things difficult for me!”

Pei Qian was speechless. He knew these department heads were all unreliable—they couldn’t even help him decide where to allocate a small sum like 10 million yuan, let alone projects that would lose hundreds of millions!

In the end, he still had to do everything himself!

Flipping through these applications, Pei Qian once again fell into a dilemma.

But as he continued reading, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

“Wait? I think my approach is wrong.”

“I’ve fallen into survivorship bias. The departments willing to put effort into writing these applications are definitely those that need this money more. And since they wrote them, they would naturally want to make them look good.”

“That being the case, why don’t I just look at which departments didn’t submit applications at all?”

“Not submitting an application means they don’t really need this money, which means throwing money at these departments won’t have a significant impact on their profitability.”

Pei Qian suddenly had a direction and immediately went through the list of reports, matching them against Tenda’s main departments one by one.

However, he found that among the larger departments, only the GOG project team had not submitted a report.

“Huh? It’s actually the GOG team that didn’t submit.”

“Hmm… that makes sense, after all, GOG’s revenue is too strong, and its current market share in China is basically approaching the ceiling.”

“If this money were distributed in the domestic server, it would essentially just be a pure welfare activity and wouldn’t have any impact on GOG’s market expansion.”

“As for revenue… it definitely wouldn’t have an effect either, because this is a pure welfare activity, not a discount promotion.”

“The GOG project team probably considered that the cost-effectiveness of taking this money would be very low, and they felt a bit embarrassed about it, so they didn’t write an application.”

“Good, then it goes to you guys!”