The Principal took a sip of water and lowered his gaze, evidently deep in thought. After a moment, he spoke.
“Since that’s the case, the school can approve a space for you. As for funding, don’t even think about it! And this is a one-time exception. There won’t be a next time!
If everyone came straight to me like you did, I wouldn’t get anything done all day—I’d be stuck listening to all your college students’ startup pitches! All right, off you go!”
After the Principal finished speaking, he waited a long while. Seeing that Gu Chuan was still sitting there and showed no intention of leaving, he looked at him in confusion.
Gu Chuan flashed a bright smile.
“Principal, since you’ve approved the space, why not go all the way and approve a few computers for us too?”
“Don’t push your luck. Do I look like a computer to you?”
“Heh, Principal, you’re joking. I know the school just replaced a batch of computers, so you must have kept some in reserve. Please approve a few for us. As the saying goes, ‘To do a good job, one must first sharpen one’s tools.’ Right now, we’re like a clever housewife with no rice to cook…”
The Principal watched Gu Chuan prattle on in front of him, thinking, You don’t just want computers—you want new computers, too?
Gu Chuan rambled on for at least ten minutes before the Principal finally gave in. With tears in his eyes, he approved another seven computers for him.
The school was only lending them the computers. If any were damaged, they would have to pay the full replacement cost.
After Gu Chuan wheedled and pestered him some more, the Principal even had an internet connection installed for them.
Watching Gu Chuan leave, completely satisfied, the Principal felt a familiar sense of frustration. The kid launched into a long-winded speech at the drop of a hat, longer than the one the Principal gave at the opening ceremony. He could now understand, at least a little, how the students felt when listening to him.
As he got more and more irritated, the Principal suddenly broke into a smile.
“You know, with that kid’s shameless persistence, his startup might actually succeed!”
That night, Ye Xuchen tossed and turned in bed, unable to stop thinking about Gu Chuan, whom he’d met earlier that day.
That guy seemed a little off. Could he have been deliberately trying to swindle him?
What kind of temporary job paid four thousand a month?
He didn’t look like the entrepreneurial type, either.
Forget it. I already agreed. I’ll give him one day tomorrow. If I don’t hear anything from him, I’ll go look for a job.
Ye Xuchen kept overthinking until midnight before finally falling asleep. He opened his eyes again when his phone started ringing.
Groggily, Ye Xuchen picked up his phone and saw the caller ID: Gu Chuan.
His mind went blank for a second. Who was Gu Chuan again? Had I saved his number?
Oh, right—the guy I’d spent half the night thinking about yesterday.
He answered at once. “Hello!”
Gu Chuan heard the heavy sleepiness in the other man’s voice and immediately urged him on.
“Get up, get up! This is the perfect time to work hard, so why are you sleeping? Get up and come to work! Hurry up, get ready, and come downstairs. I’m waiting for you on the first floor of your dorm!”
After saying that, Gu Chuan hung up. He got out of bed, washed up, and changed his clothes.
He had just finished changing when someone knocked on the door.
When Ye Xuchen opened it, he saw that Gu Chuan had changed his look. Surprise flashed across his face, followed by an expression that was hard to describe.
“You said you’d wait for me on the first floor. You never said you lived on the first floor!”
If I’d known you lived on the first floor, would I have needed to rush like that?
Gu Chuan gave an awkward laugh. “It’s all the same, it’s all the same! Yesterday, I applied to the school for a space and equipment support, and submitted the company registration documents, too. Our main task today is to recruit the team. Once everyone’s here, we’ll get to work!”
Ye Xuchen was dumbfounded. “You only applied for support yesterday. The school approved it that quickly?”
“This humble one has his own clever ways!”
Next, Gu Chuan and Ye Xuchen got started on putting together the team. Ye Xuchen brought in a friend he knew, someone he’d worked part-time with before. After that, their recruitment methods grew increasingly absurd.
Ye Xuchen and the other newly hired employee stared, dumbfounded, as Gu Chuan wandered around campus, stopping random people to ask if they wanted a part-time job. The two exchanged a look, their eyes plainly asking: Is it really reliable to work for him?
In fact, Gu Chuan wasn’t approaching people at random. He could check talent levels through the System, and only those at Level Three or above caught his eye.
After wandering around campus all morning and recruiting people by hook or by crook, they finally had enough for their startup team.
Including himself, there were seven of them. The only disappointing thing was that Ye Xuchen was the only Level Four Talent; everyone else was Level Three.
And that was only after he’d gone through all sorts of back channels to round them up.
Just then, the System’s notification rang out.
【Congratulations, Host, on successfully hiring six employees. Ten yuan per person. The system reward will be deposited into your account by midnight tonight.】
……
Six employees meant sixty yuan a day, or 1,800 yuan a month.
But Gu Chuan would have to pay those six employees a total of 19,000 yuan a month: 4,000 for Ye Xuchen and 3,000 for each of the others.
Great, just great. Earning 1,800 a month—enough to laugh all day!
No, this wouldn’t work!
He had to exploit a bug. He had to find a way to exploit a bug!
But that could wait. The most urgent thing right now was to get the website up and running.
Gu Chuan took the newly hired employees to the logistics department, borrowed a handcart, picked up the computers, and hauled them to the space the school had approved for them.
Calling it an office space was a stretch. It was really a huge warehouse, divided into compartments of various sizes to serve as offices.
Once everything was in place, Gu Chuan gathered everyone for a meeting.
Since the team had been thrown together at the last minute, Gu Chuan wanted to put everyone’s doubts to rest and make sure they could focus on their work. He advanced each of them 1,000 yuan in wages, which helped put their minds at ease.
He also made it clear to everyone from the outset that he was the absolute Boss of the project and would bear all the profits and losses himself. The others only needed to collect their wages.
With that ground rule established, they moved on to the specifics of developing the website.
“First, we’re going to build a real campus social networking site. We’ll call it the ‘Campus Network.’ It’ll be based on ‘strong ties’ in real life.
We’ll use university IP addresses, email verification, and real-name authentication to implement the Real-name registration system and ensure the information is accurate. We’ll bring people’s real-world relationships online. Users will even be able to find friends and classmates they’ve lost touch with for years. That’ll make the information on our site more trustworthy and keep users more engaged…”
Gu Chuan went on at length. Fortunately, everyone there worked in the internet industry and was familiar with SNS communities, so they had no trouble understanding what he meant.
Everyone’s eyes lit up.
Now that they heard the idea, it really did sound promising!
Although it was also a social platform like QQ, it avoided competing head-on with QQ’s instant messaging and instead took a completely different approach: a real-name community, rather than QQ’s virtual social networking.
In short, it had real potential!