November 24th, Thursday.
At Dream Fulfillment Investment, only He Desheng and Pei Qian were in the meeting room, but the projector screen displayed more than ten video windows.
He Desheng said, “Mr. Pei, everyone’s here. Shall we start the meeting now?”
Pei Qian took a sip of tea. “Mm, let’s begin.”
Today, Pei Qian came to Dream Fulfillment Investment at He Desheng’s strong insistence, just to make an appearance.
So far, Dream Fulfillment Investment had strictly followed the rules Pei Qian had set, investing in about ten companies, with investment amounts ranging from one to two million yuan per company.
These investment amounts were determined by He Desheng based on the scale of these companies and the approximate funding needed to launch their business models.
Put simply, if a company were a startup and its business model didn’t require that much capital, He Desheng would approve less funding.
Because investments were made strictly on a first-come, first-served basis, the first batch of invested companies was primarily startups. After all, these companies needed money the most and were the earliest to seek investment.
If any of these companies made a profit, according to Mr. Pei’s requirements, He Desheng would immediately sell the company’s shares and continue investing in the next company in the queue.
If all companies consistently failed to make a profit… then Mr. Pei would be popping champagne in celebration.
Although the money had been invested, Dream Fulfillment Investment had assigned dedicated financial personnel to each company to monitor their daily expenses and hold regular remote meetings to report on financial conditions.
These financial staff were all Tenda veterans, deeply indoctrinated with the Tenda spirit. After being dispatched, they received generous allowances, and the financial reports they produced were supervised by Tenda’s financial department.
One couldn’t say there was no possibility of them being bribed, but the likelihood was very low.
The first video window showed a woman in her thirties with short hair and glasses. She was a core Tenda employee—the most experienced and capable among all the dispatched financial staff.
Her name was Jing Haibing, and she was responsible for Cold Face Girl’s financial work.
The reason for assigning her to Cold Face Girl was mainly because this project had left a deep impression on He Desheng and was a priority among the currently invested batch of companies.
The reporting formally began.
Jing Haibing looked down at the report in her hand, then looked up and said, “Mr. Pei, Mr. He, everyone. Before reporting on Cold Face Girl’s financial status, Mr. He hopes that I will once again emphasize some common financial tricks to everyone, which will take a few minutes of your time.”
Not all of Tenda’s dispatched financial staff were worldly and experienced.
Since the dispatched financial personnel had to be insiders who had been indoctrinated with the Tenda spirit and were well-known to the company, they were all Tenda veterans.
However, many of them had joined Tenda shortly after graduation and hadn’t seen many tricks of the trade.
After all, Tenda operated with 100% strict compliance with laws and regulations—from procurement and reimbursement to taxation—everything was completely transparent. These people wouldn’t have had opportunities to witness various shady operations.
But in outside companies, they would inevitably encounter all kinds of tricks. Some inexperienced financial staff might be easily deceived.
So, He Desheng wanted to use this meeting to have Jing Haibing remind the other financial staff about potential issues they might encounter at work, giving them an early warning to prevent them from failing to detect shady operations when they happened.
Pei Qian also wanted to listen. After all, financial reports were just piles of numbers, overly dry to listen to, while these “tricks” sounded more interesting.
Jing Haibing organized her thoughts and began her explanation.
“The money we invest is transferred to the company’s business account. No one would be stupid enough to directly transfer these funds to personal accounts. These so-called tricks are essentially ways for company managers to burn money on actual business operations while secretly pocketing a portion through concealed means.”
“So, there are several common areas that must be carefully scrutinized. For instance, when a company purchases office supplies, they might deliberately buy items that cost 1 yuan at places that sell them for 2 or 3 yuan, or the unit price of supplies might be reasonable, but bulk purchases don’t show significant discounts. There must be problems behind these scenarios.”
“Then there’s promotional materials—posters, banners, display boards, flyers, and so on. On the surface, they might order 5,000 flyers, but in reality, there are only 4,000, or these materials might be a mix of genuine and fake. There’s considerable profit margin in this area as well.”
“Additionally, are there ghost employees on the payroll? Is there collusion with headhunters for kickbacks through fake contracts? Are there tricks in the advertising placement channels? How many of the app registrations are from genuine promotions, and how many are artificially inflated through programs? For physical items, rebates, and coupons given away in marketing activities, are there instances of fake orders, fake deliveries, or false marketing?”
“If we were auditing or supervising, it would be very difficult to clarify these issues. But now that we’re directly responsible for these companies’ finances, we can find ways to avoid these problems.”
“For example, for office supplies procurement, we can unify purchases through Tenda’s trusted channels to prevent invested money from being misspent.”
“Of course, everyone has limits to their abilities and energy. We can’t guarantee that every penny will be problem-free, but we should strive to keep company accounts clean and not make basic mistakes…”
While Jing Haibing explained these common “techniques” in startups to the other financial staff, she also taught everyone which aspects they should be vigilant about and how to prevent issues.
She emphasized that if problems were discovered, they must be reported immediately.
Pei Qian was listening attentively, maintaining a poker face while his eyes were being opened.
These operations were truly sophisticated!
When it came to scamming investors’ money, various geniuses kept emerging, inventing all kinds of schemes.
Of course, not all the blame necessarily fell on the entrepreneurs. Some innocent entrepreneurs might have been corrupted by investors. Investors would guide entrepreneurs to fabricate results, then dump them on the next sucker while quietly making fortunes.
Pei Qian’s original thinking was simple—he just didn’t want these entrepreneurs to live extravagantly on his invested money, which was why he chose the somewhat troublesome monitoring method of assigning financial personnel.
Now it seemed this step was truly the right one.
Pei Qian didn’t feel this would affect his goal of losing money, as the failure rate of startups was too high. Even with completely legitimate operations, most startups could hardly escape bankruptcy.
When faced with the same bankruptcy and loss, some investors made fortunes through various gray-area methods, while others could only earn a meager salary or even end up in debt. If Pei Qian had to choose, he would choose the latter.
Anyway, the money had already been invested. If they made money through their abilities, that was their good fortune, and Tenda would immediately divest; if they lost money through their abilities, they would receive Mr. Pei’s gratitude.
The only thing Pei Qian absolutely could not accept was them taking Tenda’s money without doing honest work, while lining their own pockets.
Soon, Jing Haibing finished discussing common financial issues in startups and continued reporting on her work at Cold Face Girl.
Pei Qian had briefings on each company’s situation in front of him and casually picked up Cold Face Girl’s report to flip through.
From the current situation, Cold Face Girl’s development was going very smoothly, completely following the script that Meng Chang had initially planned.
Cold Face Girl’s first flagship store had already opened in the Imperial Capital. Pei Qian glanced at the photos—the store looked quite nice.
The exterior featured huge floor-to-ceiling windows, looking clean and tidy. The sign above had Cold Face Girl’s signature logo, stylish with a touch of classical elegance.
The interior of the store seemed to target Western-style fast food. There were beautiful food photos above the cashier counter, and the tables and chairs were similar to Western fast food establishments, but with a slight addition of Chinese elements.
In the store, there were exclusively young, beautiful girls as waitresses. They had no signature polite smiles, no standard six-tooth smiles. Though seemingly aloof, their almost imperceptible smiles were still somewhat alluring.
Then came a series of marketing activities undertaken by Cold Face Girl, and the enthusiastic response they generated online.
For example, Meng Chang specifically rented a supercar and had beautiful women delivering grilled cold noodles in the supercar, earning a spot on the trending topics list.
The grand opening special offered the first 100 customers who came to the store a free serving of grilled cold noodles.
Girls who ate at Cold Face Girl and posted about it on Weibo while tagging the official account could participate in regular drawings to win a 1,888 yuan fashion gift package.
They launched a “Largest Order” campaign—the largest order placed at Cold Face Girl during the first week of opening would be completely free, with gifts also available for second and third place.
In addition, they arranged some special holiday activities. For example, on the 7th of next month, which was “Great Snow” day, Cold Face Girl would launch unique “Snowflake Grilled Cold Noodles.” Customers who consumed at the store that day and posted on Weibo would receive a free serving.
Behind these marketing activities was the rapid consumption of Cold Face Girl’s funds.
Meng Chang had received 2 million from Dream Fulfillment Investment and 1 million each from two other investors, totaling 4 million.
However, money was being spent quickly.
Store rent in the Imperial Capital’s downtown area, renovations, salaries for a bunch of pretty waitresses, various burning subsidies, buying Weibo trending topics, and so on—money was needed everywhere.
4 million might seem like a lot, but it could be spent very quickly, especially since Meng Chang planned to open more branches. Each additional branch would be another bottomless pit.
Nevertheless, Meng Chang hadn’t played any tricks with money, as Cold Face Girl’s finances were managed by Jing Haibing.
If Meng Chang wanted to play games with office supplies, promotional materials, and labor costs to squeeze out some money, Jing Haibing would certainly notice.
Of course, as a high-level player, Meng Chang had no intention of using such despicable means to save money in the first place.
Not to mention the feasibility issues—even if the accounts were manipulated, when the business was later sold to a buyer, the new company would easily discover the fraud as soon as they audited the accounts, which could land Meng Chang in prison.
So, manipulating materials and marketing expenses was too low-end a behavior; Meng Chang disdained such tactics.
Soon, Jing Haibing completed her report.
The financial staff from other companies also reported on their respective situations.